But before the CD, and before the cassette, there was the LP.  And it reigned supreme for a very long time before it was supplanted by digital formats.  DJs still spin vinyl to this day, even when the source material is digital, thanks to the magic of time-coded vinyl and the software it interfaces with.

Analogue vinyl is beginning to finally show its age, though; production of the venerable Technics SL-1200 turntable was discontinued in 2010.  There are still other turntables on the market, but the workhorse turntable DJs have loved for several decades is no longer being manufactured.

For numerous reasons, I recently decided to purchase a turntable.  And since the Technics is no more, why not own a piece of history as well?  I found a used Technics SL-1200MK5 on Kijiji for a reasonable price, and bought it. In addition to being a beautiful, high-quality turntable, it’s engineered well enough to last me the rest of my life.  Based on the serial number, it rolled out of the factory in February 2010, so it’s about as new as possible (the MK5 ended its run in April 2010).  I also picked up a new cartridge for it (an Ortofon 2M Blue), although the Shure M44-7 I bought with it is certainly no slouch and may come in handy when I run into vinyl that hasn’t been well-cared-for.

To celebrate, I bought 2 used albums from one of the record stores in my neighbourhood: Fables of the Reconstruction by R.E.M. and Exit Planet Dust by the Chemical Brothers.  I had heard both before, but didn’t own either, so figured this was a good time.

I also now have custody of all of my parents’ (mostly my dad’s) old vinyl which is quite exciting.  There are definitely a number of gems in the collection, although I’ll be a while even just cataloging the 200+ albums let alone listening to all of them.  It’s a fascinating way to learn about your parents; some of the albums I knew were there, and head heard as a child, but there are some I don’t ever remember hearing and yet they’re in there.

This is a new adventure, and in a way it’s a window into the past and my parents’ history, so it’s especially cool.  When the weather worsens (and it inevitably will), I’ll have something else to keep me busy.

For numerous reasons I decided to buy a new wireless router.  The features I wanted were:

• Gigabit ethernet LAN ports
• Dual radios (2.4GHz and 5 GHz)
• Ability to create a “guest” network.
• IPv6 support.

Out of the box, my new Netgear WNDR3700 supported all but the last one.  I don’t understand why it’s so uncommon for home routers to support IPv6 out of the box.  But anyways, that problem was pretty easily solved by switching to DD-WRT-related firmware, and the rest was a matter of configuration.

I now have a somewhat interesting setup, summarized here:

• Each radio has 2 SSIDs, one “trusted” SSID for my own stuff, and one “untrusted” SSID for when people come to visit and want to get on the internet.
• The trusted radio connections are bridged with the LAN on br0
• The untrusted radio connections are bridged on br1
• These two networks (br0 and br1) can’t talk to each other at all (the firewall drops all traffic).
• Both networks have IPv6 enabled, on their own subnets, both tunneled via Hurricane Electric.
• The usual assortment of firewall rules keeps the bad stuff on the internet out of the local networks (both IPv4 and IPv6 are firewalled).
• IPv6 connections are not masqueraded, but simply routed.  So the computers on the network are globally addressable via IPv6 (though behind the firewall).

Here is a diagram of the setup which I drew for myself in case I ever have to do this sort of thing again.

MindManager

OK, I’ve been using this one for a while, but it bears mention here.  I use MindManager almost every day for one thing or another.  I use it to collect my thoughts, analyze documents I’m reading and reviewing, brainstorm ideas, and numerous other things.  Fundamentally, it’s a mind mapping application, but for my money, it’s the best one.  Mind Mapping applications live and die based on their user interface, and on that basis, you’re better off buying one than using FreeMind (sorry, FreeMind).

Worth the money because: Very easy to use UI, can export to OPML, compatible with the Windows version.
Pet peeve: DEVONthink can’t automatically index MindManager documents
Windows Version: YES
Alternatives: NovaMind, FreeMind, others.

DEVONthink

DEVONthink is one of those applications you have to use for a little while first to realize why it’s worth the money.  I picked up the Personal edition 1.0 for free during a MacHeist giveaway, and recently upgraded to the Pro version 2.0.  This is an application for collecting, organizing, searching, collating, and mining information.  I use it to organize the random stuff I run across on the web, cross-reference that with book references, and sort and search the growing number of PDF e-books in my collection.  The PDF search, PDF annotation, and cross referencing features are worth a lot more money than I spent on this application.  Search alone is worth the price of admission.  If you have a lot of PDF e-books, stop reading and go download a trial right now.  Oh, and Windows users, this one is worth switching for.

Worth the money because: PDF Search, fantastic AI and research support
Pet peeve: Import Web Site feature needs a lot of improvement; doesn’t play well with FireFox
Windows Version: Unfortunately not
Alternatives: None that I am aware of.

Scrivener

Scrivener is an application for writers.  If you’re an essayist, journalist, novelist, or short fiction author you may want to take a look.  It has some of the same features of DEVONthink but it’s oriented towards the writing process as opposed to the research process.  For writing short fiction, I’ve started to use DEVONthink to collect up all of my ideas and do some of the research heavy lifting, and when I decide to launch a writing project, I move into Scrivener.  The Edit Scrivenings feature makes writing from an outline work the way it should, and I can always reorganize my thoughts later with the corkboard.  Brilliant.

Worth the money because: Makes writing from an outline or set of ideas easy, collects all of my writing ephemera right next to the manuscript itself.
Pet peeve: Doesn’t do PDF search like DEVONthink does.
Windows Version: Unfortunately not
Alternatives: The vendor has a comprehensive list.

OmniGraffle

I like pretty pictures, and OmniGraffle lets me draw them.  For anybody who has ever used Visio and wishes there was a Mac version, this is what you are looking for.  If you’ve never used Visio but have the need to draw diagrams of any sort for work, school, or your volunteer projects, you should take a look.  As a basic example of what OmniGraffle does, when you draw a line between two shapes, then move the shapes, the line stays attached (Visio does that too).

I use it to draw diagrams for work, from UML Diagrams (be careful, this is a diagram tool, not a UML Modeling tool) to User Interface wireframes to flowcharts and everything in between.  The automatic alignment and spacing guides save tons of time, and the ability to do things like “copy the color of this circle to that square” quickly is another huge bonus.  One of its coolest features is its support for linked layers.  If I have a collection of drawings in the same document and I edit part of one of them, linked layers lets me automatically ensure that the changes happen in all of the other diagrams as well.  It’s not a feature everyone needs, but once I discovered it, I almost immediately remarked that OmniGraffle just paid for itself.  If you’re a Windows user, this one is worth switching for.

Worth the money because: It’s Visio.  For the Mac.  Actually, it’s what Visio aspires to be.  Seriously.
Pet peeve: Can be a little tough to do with a trackpad – a mouse works much better.
Windows Version: Unfortunately not; Visio is about as close as I’ve seen, and it doesn’t measure up.
Alternatives: None that I’ve seen.

Of course, I also do other things with my Mac like audio recording and photo editing; a discussion of those applications will have to wait for another post.

Full disclosure: I own all of these products and use them regularly.  I received absolutely no compensation or consideration from the vendors for writing this article.

1. Wizards of the Coast, who produce the popular Dungeons & Dragons game, decided to stop selling PDF versions of their products via web stores like DriveThruRPG
2. In response, other RPG companies have announced special sales, discounts, and giveaways of PDF products.  They seem to be trying to gain market share from this event.  And why not?

At present, I material for several different games, and I often consider buying RPG products in PDF form as an alternative to buying books.  PDFs are great when I have problems tracking down paper copies of games (my FLGS doesn’t stock products from some of the smaller companies, unfortunately) or when I can’t justify the cost of a paper copy.   PDFs are also useful for test-driving a new game or supplement, which may prompt me to start spending more money on paper copies.

I think that a business model that ignores the PDF marketplace is a mistake for any RPG company, especially smaller ones.  Here’s why:

1. In many cases a PDF is produced at some point on the way to paper publication (or it’s easy to produce as a by-product), so there isn’t much additonal cost.  And because the delivery cost of a PDF is very low, they can be sold more cheaply and end up in the hands of gamers on tighter budgets.
2. There are already established businesses like DriveThruRPG who do a large amount of business selling watermarked PDF files.  Although I don’t know their business practices, given the amount of products they carry, I imagine they would be happy to sell PDF products of even very small companies.  While watermarking does not prevent piracy, it is a deterrent, and most people I know are pretty honest when it comes to paying for products they enjoy and find useful.
3. PDFs allow you to sell products that are out of print, and where demand exists but is too low to justify another 5000 copy print run.
4. Many (most?) RPG companies offer all of their products in high-quality PDF format as well as on paper.  White Wolf is a good example.  If you don’t offer PDFs, you will be at a competitive disadvantage.

As an example of a company that has really embraced PDFs as a key part of their strategy, consider Paizo.  Their Pathfinder Core rulebook is currently in beta form, and is a completely free PDF download (for now).  Paizo expends a lot of effort creating and selling source materials for the Pathfinder system, and has a very interesting subscription model for their published scenarios.  The best part of the model:  If you subscribe to the paper publications, they give you a free copy of the PDF as well.  So, you can download it and start reading it before your paper copy arrives in the mail.  This is a fantastic idea; I wish more companies would provide free PDFs for people who purchase their books in paper form.

Paizo also strikes me as a company that is willing to almost give away the core system in hopes of getting you hooked and selling you lots of supplements.  They produce fantastic source material, scenarios, maps, and other things for the system.  While none of them are free, you can buy them a la carte, either in print or PDF.

It’s great for people like me who want to sample things – I can spend $10 on some PDF material before I decide whether it’s worth investing $50 in paper copies.  Even if I hate what I buy, I’m only out $10 in the worst case, and if Paizo impresses me, they’ll get another $50 out of me as I buy a bunch more stuff.

Like it or not, gamers like me are demanding PDFs as an option today, and this trend will probably continue.  As soon as I can buy an eBook reader for under $200 that works well, is easy on the eyes, and supports PDF, I will be buying one, and I’ll probably reduce my print RPG purchases even further.  And I’m sure I’m not alone.

When I bought my iPod Nano, I was replacing a 5G iPod Video. The size and heft difference is quite noticeable. And quite ridiculous when paired with my headphones.

As an aside, why is it there are so few iPod Nano cases that have belt clips?  I’ve only found one case worthy of consideration, and it’s more money than I want to spend.  Doesn’t anyone else want a belt clip for their Nano?

I should have guessed from the download size, but wow is version 6 ever a behemoth.

Version 2: 186MB
Version 6: 2.5GB

Ummmm…..  Good thing I’ve got (or rather I had) plenty of free disk space.  Yeesh.  And bear in mind this is Photoshop‘s Little Brother.

Prior to the launch of the video iPods in 2005, only one company wrote software that ran on the iPod platform. Apple. A few third party developers have been allowed to develop games for the iPods starting with these video-capable models, but remember that Apple was very picky about who they allowed to do this. Many longtime developers who had excellent relationships with Apple were denied this ability. Most still are.

If we forget about the phone part of the iPhone, it’s just another iPod model. The forthcoming SDK will mark the first time in history that Apple will allow all but a few select third parties into the iPod software platform. Why is Apple suddenly willing to give up the tight control they have over their darling hardware platform?

They won’t.

In the announcement, Jobs mentions Nokia’s restriction that applications running on their newest models must be digitally signed. “While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction,” says Jobs.

Apple must now perform a delicate balancing act. If they too require that applications be digitally signed before they will run on the iPod, developers will cry foul. And, someome will write an unlock program that allows unsigned applications to be run anyway. But Apple has all but admitted that they will be somehow restricting access to the platform; they just haven’t told us how yet. Apple won’t open the platform completely. Nobody has asked Apple how open it will be, and Apple isn’t telling anyone either.

There are any number of possibilities, but one thing that isn’t possible is for Apple to pull back the curtain completely. They won’t do it, because then they would lose control over their most valuable asset: the iPod platform.

Why did I commit this mortal sin, you might ask?

Ah, the things we do for work. I’m working from home tomorrow so I brought my PC home with me. Rest assured, it’s only temporary. My condo will return to pure Appleicious glory on Friday.

So what’s hot on my iPod these days? Well, if recent history is any indication, it’s Tom Novy‘s dance track Take It. Though I still maintain that Madonna rocks out to Faster Kill Pussycat on her iPod. Unless Miss Thing decides to settle the matter once and for all, I guess we’ll never know for sure.

Part of why I got a last.fm account to begin with was to see the stats on what I actually listen to. Some of the numbers don’t surprise me, but there are a couple that do. Apparently I really like the Chrono Cross soundtrack, because 光田康典 (Yasunori Mitsuda) is my top artist according to last.fm. I listen to that stuff quite frequently at work, which I guess accounts for the fact that it’s what I’m listening to more than 5% of the time.

And considering I was waffling on even buying the damn album in the first place, I would say it turned out to be money well spent.

Turns out that the rumour was either false, or only applied to stores in the USA or something. I showed up at the nearest Best Buy just before they opened (along with about 12 other folks). There was no long line up or anything, just a few people waiting outside for the store to open. Most of us moved pretty quickly for the Wii section of the store only to find that the store was out of stock. Obviously these other people had picked up the same rumour that I had.

Since there was a Zellers, EB Games, and Walmart nearby, and since I wanted to hit T&T for some Pocky goodness and coconut milk anyways, I thought I would check all of them. No luck. Nada. No Wii for me.

Apparently EB Games got a shipment on on Friday – a whopping 5 consoles. They all sold the same day (duh).

So, now I’m wondering when the stock will stabilize at the local retailers. The Wii has been out for a couple of months and it still can’t be found anywhere.

Maybe if I wait another month…

Now that I have an iPod, I’ve been spending a not-insignificant amount of time working with the metadata for my iTunes library. I’ve fixed bad metadata (incorrect track names or artists, mostly) on about 100 tracks, and I’ve managed to rate over 80% of the music in my library. This opens the door for a number of smart playlist tricks that will make my iPod listening more rewarding, and I hope to get some funky smart playlists set up over the weekend. Given the amount that I use my iPod, I’m sure this effort will pay off very quickly.

It’s a little surprising just how quick I was able to rate this many songs. My best estimate is that I’ve spent about 9 hours rating the 2,400 some odd tracks that I’ve gotten to so far. Definitely quicker than I would have thought.

I’ve also spent a bit of time organizing my podcast audiobooks so I can play them back start to finish. I’ve got a growing list of audiobooks I’ve obtained via services like podiobooks.com that I have to manage in addition to my usual music collection.

I also have to mention that I didn’t accomplish all of this completely unassisted. In this process, I’ve made judicious use of several applescripts I obtained from Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes, which has proven to be an indispensible resource. If you run iTunes on a Mac, you’ll no doubt find at least a few gems in Doug’s collection of AppleScripts.

And now it’s time to get back to enjoying my music.

1. A Honda Civic
2. A Toyota Corolla

Both cars fit your criteria. You just have to pick one. Here’s the $1,000,000 question: which of the following would pull more weight with you?

1. A paid television advertisement for the Honda Civic, which highlights the excellence of its engineering and how fun it is to drive.
2. A trusted friend’s informal, unsolicited review of her Toyota Corolla, which she absolutely adores and can’t stop gushing about.

If you picked B, you’re a winner. Or rather, Toyota is the winner, since you’re busy driving your brand new Corolla.
Here’s the catch. Everybody knows this. Even slow, lumbering multinational corporations have figured this out by now. And so the marketing departments now have some new pages in their playbooks.

Recently, there have been a couple of news items that illustrate the emerging trend of using weblogs as marketing tools:

1. Sony has admitted that the website http://alliwantforxmasisapsp.com/ (seemingly now offline) was a fraud, created by a marketing firm that Sony hired.
   
2. More recently, Microsoft gave brand new laptops loaded with Windows Vista to prominent bloggers as gifts. This action has caused at least one blogger to reconsider the ethics of accepting gifts from vendors.

Going back to the original question, there are two key phrases in option B that are the focal points of the new marketing plays: trusted friend and unsolicited review. By creating alliwantforxmasisapsp.com, Sony was looking to trade on the unsolicited review bit. Rather than having a slick, professional, corporate marketing website that just oozed Sony, they tried to create the illusion of an average Joe who was in love with the portable gaming device. On the internet, people sometimes pay more attention to weblogs that appear to be impartial than they do to the manufacturer’s own site. They’re looking for the real dirt, not the corporate line.

Microsoft was trying for a double-whammy – trusted friends giving unsolicited reviews. There are many bloggers who are rather influential with the tech set, and by giving them free review laptops with no obligations whatsoever, Microsoft was hoping that the bloggers would nonetheless feel obligated to write some sort of positive review of Windows Vista. These influential bloggers could easily have a significant impact on the general internet buzz surrounding the launch of Vista.

This whole mess has caused me a moment’s reflection about things I’ve blogged about. Just the other day I was raving about Solio. In my case, I didn’t buy a Solio, but it was a Christmas gift. Furthermore, and I’m sure nobody at Better Energy Systems Ltd. has even noticed that my weblog even exists, let alone has a positive review of their product. I don’t feel any ethical qualms since I’m fairly sure that the person who gave me the gift had no idea I would even want to write about it on my weblog. And as a personal thing, that’s the way I intend to keep things – all of the stuff I write is my own opinion. It hasn’t been bought via bribes yet.

Though I’m not sure I agree with the position Joel Spolsky has taken on the issue. Even without him disclosing the fact that by reading his weblog I’m indirectly contributing to the “Joel gets a Hot Tub fund”, I already knew that. I don’t trust him any less (or any more) for disclosing that, and I still take everything he writes with a grain of salt (as I do with information source).

I suspect that if people generally had better critical reading skills, this whole new frontier of weblog marketing would be less of an issue; the issue would still exist, though, since many weblogs are being written more or less anonymously, and it can be tough to even discover who the source is, let alone evaluate their trustworthiness or authoritativeness. Surrogates like Google Pagerank are helpful as a guide for assigning trustworthiness, but as with everything, the hard work is still up to us humans. And luckily for the marketing companies, that probably won’t change anytime soon.

I already use last.fm to track how many times I play my tracks (since it tracks correctly whether I’m streaming my music or playing it from the host computer), but I’d like to see things like a graph of track distribution per genre, how many songs contain foreign language vocals, and so on.

I use (and abuse) my metadata for iTunes extensively, and all of it is sitting there in a giant XML file waiting to be data mined. I wonder how many (or how few) XPath queries I have to write to get this information? It can’t be all that difficult. Maybe there’s an app here…

The current crop of computerized games do serve the following two useful purposes:

1. They allow players which are geographically distant to enjoy a game together.
2. They allow for a potentially much wider selection of players, which means it’s easier to play games at times that fit your own schedule, and also to find and play against players of a similar skill level. Sometimes, it might be one of the only easy ways to find other players who are even interested in a particular game.

These two needs are generally solved, although the mechanism sometimes causes the social aspect of gaming to suffer. For some games (notably, two-player abstract strategy games where both players understand the rules well and both understand a common notation language) E-mail may be all the computerization that is required. And in fact, this can work quite well.

I also see a third area where computerization of games would be beneficial: rules automation and game facilitation.

There are a number of games I play that have a rule set that is in some way unruly. For instance, if your character becomes blessed in Arkham Horror, you have to remember to roll a die every upkeep to determine if your character remains blessed or not. This is the kind of thing that is easy to forget or lose track of, especially when you’re still learning the rules.

Another good example from Arkham horror involves monster movement. I can remember that the blue borders mean a monster is flying, but what about yellow borders? Red borders? Which one is stationary? Which one moves at double speed? This is another part of the rules where I would really appreciate some assistance in facilitating a game.

However, I can’t imagine playing a strictly computerized version of Arkham Horror. Too much of my enjoyment of that particular game is derived from the social nuances that would likely be lost in a computerized version of the game.

What I can envision is the integration of some sort of computer assist into the board game itself. Something packaged as part of the game that helps keep track of the fiddly bits and lets me focus on playing and enjoying the game, without getting in the way. I’ve never seen such a beast, and I don’t even want to begin what it would do to the sticker price of a game. Still, in a fictional universe, here’s what I envision at a very high level:

• The game still has physical bits that get manipulated, but they are all linked seamlessly into the software so it is aware of them.
• The game can manage the fiddly bits for me.
• The game has a training mode that can be dialed up or down to suggest moves and strategies at the highest level, or at the lowest level can at least make me aware of what moves are currently valid (or even only moves that involve the card or piece I’m currently holding in my hand).
• The computer system is unintrusive, and is part of the game itself – there are still real human players all physically present, and the same social interaction happens naturally.

My ideal implementation might be something like the following, though much of it is still science fiction:

• The board is actually a high-resolution display that also contains the guts of the hardware and software.
• The board includes “blank area” if required. For instance, for a game like Arkham Horror, your character sheet and your current cards would go in this area.
• All of the game bits (pawns, cards, etc.) can be sensed by the board itself, so the board is always aware of which bits are where. This could be done with something like RFID, although the location of each game bit would have to be resolved to a very high resolution somehow.
• Game bits that are strictly for housekeeping might not be physical bits any longer, but would become part of the game. For Arkham Horror, this would be things like the clue tokens, insanity and stamina counters, money, etc.
• The board would also be touch-sensitive, to provide a simple and intuitive way to manipulate these non-physical bits.

If such technology existed, it would be much easier to play games like Arkham Horror with a wider variety of people, since the rules are partially automated. I’d like to not have to remember that I need to roll to maintain my blessed status every turn – either the game would automatically roll for me, or it could somehow remind me that I need to roll.

Besides the technology, though, there is the question of how much of the game should be automated and how much should merely be assisted or facilitated. The balance is certainly delicate; if I had the Star Trek computer’s perky voice reminding me to roll for my blessed status every turn, I’d probably get annoyed very quickly. On the other hand, if that is automated completely, the tactile part of the roll is lost, and that can be an important part of the game experience.

Ultimately, I think the game would have to have some sort of slider you could adjust as to how much stuff is automated and how much is merely facilitated (for learning the rules), and then to what extent the game software is just sitting back and being silent until a rule is broken (most often innocently and unknowingly). This type of configurability would probably require the game to have physical bits that could be optionally used instead of digital counterparts. For instance, it would be nice to have the option to roll real dice if I wanted, instead of having the computer roll the dice when I tell it to. I might to do some types of rolls myself (combat rolls, maybe), and have the computer automate others (upkeep rolls, maybe).

The other route to achieving a sort of computer gaming panacea, is that the game will exist entirely in a virtual world. This may in fact be the more likely route, but only time will tell. Once virtual reality immersion technology exists at the level where at least the visual, tactile, and auditory senses are completely seamless, building a board game in a virtual world makes sense – social interaction becomes natural, and since the game is composed of entirely virtual pieces, it doesn’t matter if they get manipulated by a human’s avatar or by the software driving the game itself – both could easily be accommodated in a virtual world.

Though I guess until this sort of thing is both technologically possible and affordable by mere mortals like me, I’ll have to settle for gaming the old-fashioned way, with real dice and nobody to remind me to roll to maintain my blessed status.