On Dots, Baseball and the Depravity of my Mind

CONFESSION TIME: I spend a lot of time watching baseball games on the internet. Now I know what you may be thinking, “Why does this warrant a confession, Tom? I watch stuff on the internet all the time. In fact, I just watched an episode of Parks and Rec on Hulu. Boy, that Leslie Knope sure is hilarious!”

The thing is, friend, that I don’t watch actual games on the internet. I watch a two dimensional Java application that updates the game action through use of various colored dots. I do this because A) I’m a really exciting person, and B) I have fantasy baseball players to keep track of, and most of Jaime Garcia’s starts are not nationally televised affairs.

Here’s a picture of what I’m dealing with, just to give you a better idea:

So if the pitcher throws a strike, one of those little red dots appears, and if he throws a ball, a little green dot pops up, and if the batter makes contact with the ball, a little blue dot pops up and then you are told via textual updates what the outcome of said contact was (groundout, flyout, single etc.). Cute, isn’t it?

Actually, it’s not cute at all, because those little dots are going to fucking drive me insane. I’ve come to realize that the dots are not here to pass along information to me about the game, they are here to mock me and my inability to not obsess over the outcomes of ultimately meaningless baseball games.

Watching a live baseball game (either in person or on TV) comes with a certain kind of rhythm that prevents you from having to think too much. The pitcher throws the ball, the batter steps out of the box to fidget with his testicles, the ball is returned to the pitcher, the pitcher wipes some sweat from his brow, resets and throws again. That’s basically 90% of the action during a game, and it’s really quite comforting in its monotony.

The Dots (I capitalize here, so as to fully portray their menace), on the other hand, take everything that is comforting about this monotony and replaces it with anxiety and self-loathing.

There is no rhythm or flow associated with the cold, faceless dots. You simply stare at the screen until a dot appears (Red dot! Strike, woohoo!), and then you wait…and you wait…and you wait…until eventually another dot appears (Blue dot! Ball, fuck me!). The entire time you are waiting for the next dot to appear, your mind is racing and slipping deeper and deeper into madness, because there is no brow wiping or nut adjusting to comfort you, there is only the rattling of your own brain.

An example:

“Okay, 1-2 count, gotta strike him out here. Throw the slider in the dirt, Jaime. C’mon throw it. Jesus Christ where is the next dot? Why is this taking so long? Did something happen to him? Oh God what if he hurt his elbow on the last pitch and there are taking him out of the game and that’s why this is taking so long? SERIOUSLY, WHERE IS THE NEXT DOT?!”

Blue dot—Homerun.

“GAHHHHH!”

None of this has been exaggerated. It is pathetic and disgusting and I do it every day.

That's right, it's always a party

at Tom's apartment!

And I haven’t even mentioned the comments section at the bottom of the page, which usually consists of people with screen names like GOSAWX691!!1 typing things like, “Phil Hughes throws like a FAIRY!” And yet sometimes I find myself actually reading through some of these comments, as there often people out there who are bigger losers than me who like to watch the game on TV and on the computer at the same time; and these cretins will often alert you when something big happens long before The Dots have time to update.

The worst part of all of this is that while you are sitting there watching this bullshit, you are perfectly aware of how ridiculous and inane the whole thing is.

Another example:

“God, I can’t believe that I’m sitting here watching baseball on a fucking computer screen. It’s 70 degrees outside right now. What the hell am I doing with myself? This isn’t healthy; I really need to re-evaluate my--Red dot! Yes!”

It makes you feel like a heroin addict who knows that he’s destroying his life, and yet he just can’t stop chasing that dragon. Only in this case, I just can’t stop chasing that red dot.

The Dots aren’t digital representations of simple information. No, they are in fact mirrors of a sort, mirrors that reveal to all those who look into them the true nature of the human mind. A mind that at its core is obsessive, neurotic and ultimately masochistic.

So, if you plan on watching a baseball game on the internet, be careful. You might not like what you see.

Feel free to contact the author of this post at leyt345 at gmail dot com.

3D And Movies: A Blessing, A Curse, or Both?

3D isn't anything new. It's been around for nearly 60 years, in many different formats and mediums. It's been thrilling people since it was developed at the end of the 1940s, whether it's at the movies, in magazines, and now, even on Television.

Despite the expansion of the 3D format, it's undoubtedly most recognized for it's role in movies. 3D movies were a huge trend in the 50s, 60s, and into the 70s, and now the craze is back, as in the past few years almost every other film is being released in 3D. Is it a blessing or a curse? Read on to find out my opinion!

Experiment: Seven Days In The Browser

By Aaron Ting

I embarked on an experiment recently to see whether I could make it a full week using only the web browser on my PC. To be clear, I promised you readers that I would not use any locally-installed applications. The advent of full browser-based computing with efforts like Google's Chrome OS raises an important question: Does the internet offer web-based solutions to every task I perform on my computer?

The answer: Not yet, but we're close.

Music
Ditching iTunes was a pleasure. To be clear, I pretty much hate iTunes. It's a bloated and frustrating experience, like having to store your music inside the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

I usually mix it up with Windows Media Player, Zune Player, and VLC. For the past week, I abandoned all of those programs and dusted off my Pandora and Last.fm accounts. Both are extremely versatile, but I started getting tired of 'recommended' music; for the record, Taylor Swift should not be played on my Train station. Also, I dislike commercials - even if they're implemented sparingly.

I also checked out Grooveshark, an interesting Pandora alternative which allows you to save and retrieve songs in a traditional playlist. I played with SoundCloud for a bit, which is an awesome platform for discovering a lot of independent music.

Unfortunately, I just couldn't find a decent cloud-based service that provides on-demand music. Spotify needs to come to the U.S., because until I can pick the actual songs I want to listen to, Pandora and Last.fm will only be an alternative to playing stuff out of my own music library - not a replacement. They're great for discovering new music, but aren't well suited to my musical ADHD. I'd like to see a web service that allows me to upload and play my personal music library from the cloud. I hear HP might do something like this.

Productivity

In my last piece, I was pretty honest about my fear of having to use Google Docs. I've had bad experiences with it in the past, but I decided to give it another shot. I have to admit, Google Docs has improved a ton since I last checked it out. I liked the ease of having my documents made easily accessible on the cloud without having to use a middle-man solution like Dropbox. Unfortunately, Docs still lacks a lot of richness that the standard Office suite provides. A lot of extras are available like footnotes, tables, and paragraph alignment, but none of them felt as precise or customizable as your typical Microsoft Word program. Similarly, creating detailed presentations and spreadsheets with Google Docs is totally plausible - but it just never felt preferable.

I also checked Microsoft's Office Web Apps - a suite of very simplified Office programs that run in the browser. Two major problems:

First, Microsoft blocks you from trying to use these web apps unless you're running Internet Explorer. This was ridiculously frustrating as I almost never use Internet Explorer. This was an incredibly incompetent implementation choice on Microsoft's part, and they need to resolve it if they want to become a serious player in the the web-based productivity war. If Office is available for Macs, then its web-Office should damn well be available to Chrome users.

Second, this web-based version of Word is pretty limited. It's like using Microsoft Office 95 - it just doesn't have enough rich functionality, which is unfortunate because that's really the best thing going for Microsoft's standard Office suite. I didn't get a chance to try out the beta of Microsoft's upcoming cloud-based Office 365 suite, which will replace their Web Apps to compete more closely with Google Docs.

Communications, etc.
Google Voice is great. Video chat quality was excellent, and making free calls and sending free text messages was spectacular. In fact, I really prefer it to Skype, but I'm going to continue using Skype until Google Voice becomes mass-adopted. Put simply, Voice isn't fun if you don't have as many people to talk to.

I really hate the clunky/buggy feel of Facebook's built-in chat and prefer using a separate IM client for chatting with Facebook friends. To replace my local instant messaging clients, I used Meebo. It's a decent browser solution for doing IM with Facebook and AIM contacts. Likewise, I ditched Google's locally-installed Talk client and just used Gmail for IMing my Google friends. I'm still not sold on browser-based IM. Meebo was pretty decent, but Facebook's built-in chat tool is so terrible and buggy. It really shouldn't be that hard to implement something better. Seriously, Facebook's own site shouldn't be offering the worst Facebook Chat experience on the internet.

I used a few other web services like Scripped and Adobe's browser-based Photoshop tool. In general, I was pretty impressed. I'm still looking for a good browser-based video editing tool.

Verdict
Sorry, Google fanboys, but I don't think the internet is rich enough yet to support exclusively-browser-based computing. There's a ton of stuff you can do in a browser these days, but I don't think we're at the point where you'd prefer to do a lot of this stuff on the web. Services like Picnik and Google Docs show that we're definitely headed in that direction. Running programs through the browser should be happening, because there are a ton of benefits. The consumer can gain a lot in regard to ease-of-access, software costs, and performance. Being able to edit heavier media like photos and sound files without having to leverage any of my own laptop's resources is fantastic - I really wish we could see more browser-based video editors to give Final Cut and Premiere a run for their money.

But until these offerings mature and provide benefits which eclipse the functional richness and high performance of locally-installed programs, we'll be stuck using Windows and Mac OS for a while.

Seven Days In The Browser

Today begins a seven-day experiment, loyal reader. For seven days, I will compute exclusively in the web browser. 

I was talking with a friend at dinner about how aggressively the internet has matured, providing countless browser-based solutions to tasks that used to require the installation of large programs on your computer. Basic photo editing, for example, used to require heavy (and expensive) tools like Adobe Photoshop. Today, there are a number of excellent sites like Picnik that allow you to upload and edit photos quickly and easily - all without having to create an account. The notion that computers would one day run exclusively in the web browser (meaning no other local programs installed/available) has been proposed countless times; Google's Chrome OS is an aggressively toward that vision of the future.

Is it possible yet? Does the internet offer solutions to every task I might want to perform on my PC? This is what I'll be investigating for the next seven days. A week of delightful living. A week using only a web browser. 

For seven days, I will only open Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox on my PC, and no other program. I already migrated from Outlook to Gmail a couple years ago, but some other applications will be difficult to replace on a full-time basis:

For music needs, I'll be ditching iTunes and Windows Media Center for Pandora and Last.fm

I consume most video on my PC through the internet anyway, and I'll be making use of the usual suspects: YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix Instant Play.

As a full-time law student, I find myself constantly running various Microsoft Office apps - especially Word and OneNote. Since I do my email/task/calendaring through Google, I'll be trying Google Docs again for the next seven days. This is a bit nerve-wrecking, as I've had some terrible experiences with Docs in the past. I may also experiment with Microsoft's browser-based Office Live suite.

Homework requires me to do a lot of PDF-reading. I'll be ditching Adobe Reader and Foxit, substituting them with Google Docs Viewer.

I use Google Talk and AIM for my Facebook/Gchat/AIM instant messaging. This week, I'll be trying out Meebo, a browser-based instant messaging site that lets you log into multiple accounts at once.

I usually rely on Skype for voice/video calls. This weekend, I'll finally make some calls and send some texts with my Google Voice account.

Screenwriting is a hobby of mine, and I most often use Final Draft. I'll be ditching Final Draft and revisiting Scripped this week. From what I can tell, it's improved a lot over the last year.

There are probably a few other programs that I'm going to have to learn how to replace (or more likely, go without). I'll be back next week to let you all know how it went, and what I learned. And probably bitch about Google Docs. 

Cheers!

Thoughts on Google TV

The prospect of a TV-connected computer in every living room is a frequent obsession in the technology industry. It's been attempted countless times. Microsoft allegedly started the great Xbox experiment in order to prevent Sony's Playstation line from taking over the living room PC experience. Tivo, Roku boxes, and high-end media streamers have been available for years, but all have failed to achieve mass-market adoption. Apple tried a new approach recently with its new aggressively-priced $99 Apple TV, a simple media streamer with access to on-demand television and movie rentals. But even Apple remains skeptical of its adoption, referring to it as a "hobbyist" device.

Google TV represents a pretty ambitious leap forward. The idea is simple: create a TV-optimized operating system with online connectivity and have all the electronics manufacturers design new TVs or external boxes to support this new OS. It's a dream that Microsoft has been attempting for over a decade, and when it comes to mass-adoption, Google may beat them to it.

Taking what they learned from Android, Google created an open-source software platform for television. The possibilities are endless; take all the limitless functionality of a smartphone, and multiply it times the size of your 46" Sony Bravia. Imagine televisions with built-in app functionality. No need to pump Netflix or Hulu through your PS3 - just download the apps directly to your TV. Imagine turning your TV into a live-time CNN news ticker or conducting a four-way video chat from your living room - these are some of the things that become possible. A slick, web-browsing PC running on the largest display in your house. 

But Google TV's often-overlooked potential is in its potential as an integrated gaming platform. Just as the iPhone and iPod Touch are on a war path to obliterate Nintendo and Sony gaming handhelds, Google TV has the potential to replace your Wii or Xbox. While the graphics capabilities of a Google TV box would be initially underwhelming to a current 360 owner, the convenience of downloading games inexpensively and quickly instead of having to go buy them for $50 from obnoxious Gamestop employees is an advantage that deserves the serious attention of Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony. If Google succeeds and everyone has a cheap box or new TV running the Google TV platform, some families may choose to divest from dedicated gaming consoles - particularly since Google TV will support Bluetooth standards, which would enable a variety of different game controller options. 

There is, however, a major flaw in Google's strategy. Having new televisions come with Google TV built-in is a smart move, but most consumers would likely have to purchase an external box to experience Google TV. This is problematic, since external boxes have typically failed, and companies like Logitech and Sony aren't helping by announcing box prices of $400 or more. Moreover, if Android OS on phones is any indication, Google needs to be extremely wary of how much it freedom it gives to electronics manufacturers. If Google doesn't set proper compatibility guidelines and every manufacturer makes highly-customized versions of the Google TV software, we could see a massive splintering effect occur, similar to what is currently happening with Android phones. Essentially, an uninformed consumer could potentially buy a box that is unable to install future Google TV updates.

Bottom line, the 'smart TV' is coming. Whether it's Google TV, a future Apple TV, or some Windows-packing behemoth, expect this battle to be drawn out and full of fart-sound apps.

Coming Soon: Wizard Tech

That's right. You all laughed when I said, "Some day, I'm gonna be just like Harry Potter (minus the bad hair, ugly scar, and being a dude)!" Now certain magical objects from J.K. Rowling's world-renown Harry Potter series are making their way to the Muggle world...