Petezah

As for “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” I have never seen the original movie, but a scan of the poster for the original is on a news article for the remake. It looks like Plan 9 From Outer Space to me. Actually, if you read the write-up, it has a pretty similar premise too. So, the question is: how bad was the original, and do they intend to make the new one just as bad? I can’t say I really care, but I do like Jennifer Connelly, (mostly for Dark City) which is why I clicked on the article to begin with.

I was just at the Apple store today—firstly because I needed to pick up something for my iPod, but also because I wanted to look at the new iPod Touch. While playing with the new iPod, it struck me that apparently Apple doesn’t “get it” anymore. I started to suspect this after their “Apple TV” device came out, but now it’s becoming more and more apparent.

I mean, the Touch is a pretty cool gizmo, but a few things are off about it. For one thing, the features I need in the calendar app versus the contacts app are pretty much flip-flopped. It lets me enter new contacts with the touch keyboard, but the ability to enter new events into the calendar is strangely missing. I almost never need to enter new contacts when I’m out; usually I’m getting business cards from people, which are most convenient to enter into my home computer and sync to my Palm or my phone. Conversely, I’m always needing to enter events into my datebook when I’m out, because it’s just as fast as writing them down on a post-it, and I don’t end up with a wallet full of sticky notes. Furthermore, the notes application is missing; I’m going to need that if I don’t have an eBook reader of some kind.

Here’s the deal: I don’t need a device to be perfect if an SDK is available, and I don’t need an SDK if the device is perfect. Give me one or the other please. I write software for a living; I’m used to solving my own problems in my own way; but with a locked-down device I’m left with nothing. I guess I’ll stick with Palm.

When I first got to Phoenix, I and some of my new coworkers went out for a bit of Teppanyaki at a place downtown by the office. It was more than tasty, but somehow, we never really got around to going there again. Then, maybe four or five months later, it was closed; and a couple months later than that, if we weren’t really convinced that it was closed, it was utterly demolished.

For a while we wondered if the owners moved it somewhere else, or if was just under renovations because of the recent upkeep in the Biltmore district. Today I happened across a little half-article tacked onto the end of another article in a rather perfunctory way. Essentially, the story is that Ayako of Tokyo had been there for twenty-five years, but was suffered recently at the hands of a rent-hike.

Shigehisa Ikematsu, the chef, then bought the restaurant in 2005, added his own touches, and renamed it Akita-ya. It closed last year for the same rent-hiking reasons. Apparently, the tasty Japanese restaurant wasn’t cool enough for the mall’s owners. Not to worry, Ikematsu-san apparently just opened a new restaurant north of us called Shiro. They don’t have Teppanyaki, but I don’t need that all the time anyway. We will definitely have to check this place out.

After reading many of the corporate reports and live blogs that are coming out of this year’s E3, I’ve only come away annoyed with the quality of the reporting; the overall attitude of the writing just bugs me. The way journos just like to gloss over stuff that doesn’t interest them is a major reason that it’s useful for developers to attend conferences like these. Reading much of this coverage, even from the indie or semi-indie places I get this information, just makes me feel like I’m not getting the picture I need. Last year, attending the conference, I ran into a ton of stuff that was extremely interesting, but that just wasn’t important enough for the press to cover.

Anyway, it’s one thing to miss details—because every person has their own point of view—but it’s quite another thing when I can read, in the subtext, that someone just couldn’t be bothered to write something down because it didn’t interest them. Now, notably, there were exceptions. Nintendo Gal is always a refreshing break from the norm. (Thanks Andrea, keep it up) I got some interesting information off of Gamespot today as well.

I went on to the TSA website, just out of curiosity, to see what was on the list these days. As I scanned the list, I was delighted to find that in the list of Medication & Special Needs Devices, between the toothpaste and tweezers, “Toy Transformer Robots” are definitely allowed for both carry-on and checked. Huzzah! I’ll be set as long as I can play with my transformers.