Renegade Folk Hero

I couldn’t believe the traffic I had to go through to get to work today. On my 3 mile stretch of 280 there were 2 two accidents involving 9 vehicles. The first, right on the Race St. entrance where I get on. One vehicle was completely flipped. I managed to snap a photo of that one as I drove by. Seriously, upside down. WTF.

The second accident was on the I280 -> H17 interchange. Cars everywhere. My picture here doesn’t do it justice. It was like a procession of the damned with all kinds of cars just strewn along the side of the road in various states of smashedness.

Now, it seemed to me that the 6 car pile up happened more recently than the 3 car acrobatics. Which kind of makes me wonder: If you just saw a car flipped over on the side of the road, wouldn’t you be at least a little more cautious in the immediate time thereafter? Did all 6 of these people think to themselves “well, this freeway used up it’s accident quota for the day, lets jam on the gas.”

I’m beginning to believe Judy when she says that traffic is getting worse.

I haven’t been sleeping well lately. Things in general are good, but I’ve got a lot on my mind. I hope I can sleep well soon.

Apple’s recent update to iTunes brings a few new features, some good, some bad.

-_-;; Some of you probably noticed a while back when Apple completely ditched FireWire for their iPod line as the default means of syncing. I’ve had a 1G iPod and a 2G iPod, both firewire. Today I got a 2G iPod nano and I’ve finally realized why. The flash writing processes for this thing is so god-awful slow compared to my 2G iPod. Writing to this thing is painful. It makes sense though, NAND flash ain’t the speediest writing medium. Anyhow, writing only happens occasionally so It’s not a show stopper. I’m still miffed it took me more than a half hour to sync my music library.

^_^ There’s a firmware update on day one??? Version 1.0.1 is available for the 2G iPod nano, the day after it’s released. As WTF as this is, it does bring up a new feature of iTunes 7. iPod firmware update is now built into iTunes. From a consumer standpoint, this is a big plus. No more weird dangerous utility thingys to download and find. Click, done.

b^o^d Useless 3D effects! I like useless features. Now iTunes has a browse cover art mode where it renders your music library as a fan of CD inserts. This is well integrated with a less useless feature: Get Album Art. CD-Ripping users can now leverage iTunesMusicStore’s vast catalog of album art to automatically add cover art to their CD-Ripped songs. I was surprised to see (well, in a nostalgic sense) many album CD covers to MP3s in my collection for CDs that I’d lost long ago.

@_@ Broken User Interface. Apple keeps doing this. It’s getting ridiculous now. They keep applying custom UI elements to their first party software. Gee, lets make our Apps better by totally breaking system UI conventions! iTunes now has these stupid custom scroll bars that don’t look like the rest of the system, and all the UI widgets are now custom, non-aqua, sheenless grey. Since version 4 iTunes has gotten a progressively more muddy UI with every release. In iTunes 7, all the buttons look the same, are all grey, and all inconsistent. WTF Apple. WTF.

x_x Lanyard headphones: not compatible with 2G iPod Nano. Stupid Apple Store salesguy!! ARG!

Oh, no you didn’t. Oh, yes I did!

I’ve always wanted an iPod mini. I like the metal, I like the small form factor. With Apple’s new 8GB Black Metal iPod nano I bit. So, today I was at the Apple Store today looking for a new backpack to relieve my contorted spine. It seems like every time I go there, the sales people are less and less friendly. None of the black shirts even stopped to ask if I need anything. Both occasions where I needed help, I had to ask and wait and wait for it. After finding that they no longer stocked their once wide variety of notebook computer backpacks I was a bit bummed out. I was thinking about getting a bluetooth Mighty Mouse too, but after trying the BTMMs in the store, I decided they suck hard.

So I got a black iPod nano instead.
$20 off with Student Discount

So it looks official, Gainax is revisiting Evangelion in the form of four new movies (with ”a large amount of new material”) retelling the basic story of the TV series. The first one is due Summer 2007.

I’m not gonna say we’ll definitely do the Sokodei thing to the new stuff, but you bet we’ll be taking a close look at it. Oh baby.

EDIT (9/7): I first read the news off Anime News Service which had a rough translation of the news as published in Newtype. Anime News Network has posted their own article which suggests the new movies will not be a remake of the original series, but will still be set in the same continuity. The plot thickens?

EDIT (9/8): Now this article from ICv2 says it is a remake, with the goal of making the show more “comprehensible”. For now, I’ll let them all speculate and wait ’til we actually see some footage of the thing before commenting any further.