loonyblog.

The biggest problem with portable devices these days, whether it’s a PDA or cell phone (or both), is squeezing in a keyboard without making the product too large. With a cell phone this is a much bigger concern, and while I think the Treo 600 is a step in the right direction, it still seems a bit on the clumsy side. Ultimately, I do want to get a combined PDA and cell phone. Right now I have my t68i, and am quite happy with it, although sending e-mails with its keypad is a serious pain in the neck. For a PDA I’m still using my Clie N760C, which has served me well for the past two years, and even though it doesn’t have Bluetooth or an integrated keyboard like Sony’s more recent models (this one in particular looks awesome) I’m in no rush to replace it. What I imagine I’ll do is wait for someone to really get the PDA/cell phone thing right before replacing either, and then replace them both with a single unit. But I’ll definitely wait for someone to get that combo-device thing down pat first.

And it may be coming sooner than I had expected. This article at Mobile Burn looks at the Fastap keyboard from Digit Wireless. Check out their web site to get a demonstration of the technology, as this is really some clever stuff. Basically what they’ve done is put the number keys on top of the letter keys, with one being raised and the other depressed. It’s not going to be as effective as a QWERTY keyboard, but it looks great, and I could definitely see myself using this over the thumb keyboards that those BlackBerry devices made so popular.

Most exciting however, is the fact that since the keyboard can be so compressed, it’s possible to use this technology to create much smaller, and elegantly designed devices. If someone manages to create a phone that looks just like those great old StarTACs, with a full keyboard and integrated Bluetooth, I’ll be first in line to buy one.

I’ve figured out how I managed to have my ATM/debit card number stolen, and boy is it embarrassing. You see, last Friday, after waking up hung over (as I do on most Fridays), I went to check my e-mail, and in there was an e-mail from the “ICQ support team” telling me that they were going to be implementing a one-time fee of $9.99, and that “After 1st of July 2003…all accounts which have not been secured payment for, will be disabled or deleted.” And I fell for it, figuring that since I’ve been a satisfied user of ICQ practically since its inception, $10 wasn’t at all an unreasonable a fee.

Yes, I fell for a scam, so poorly written that it wouldn’t have passed fifth grade English. I can’t quite comprehend how I could possibly have been duped by such a stupid, stupid spam scam, but I did indeed follow the link from the e-mail, which used the old IP-in-the-URL hoax to make it look like I was actually going to Mirabilis’ web site (here’s an example), and I entered in my debit card and paid my $9.99 “registration fee.” I then forgot about this entirely until yesterday, when I suddenly remembered how stupid I really am.

It’s amazing to me. It really is. One possible factor in this is that now that I use POPFile, so little spam actually gets through that when something like this does, I’m much more likely to believe it. But that’s still no excuse.

Ordinarily when I do something really stupid, I’d pledge some kind of insane penance, like forcing myself to play Tomb Raiders 1- 4 in a single sitting, or even worse, Square’s Unlimited SaGa…but considering that I’m going to rightly be the butt of Nigerian scam jokes for the rest of my life, I think I can forego that this time.

Just so everyone can see just how stupid I really am, I now present for you the e-mail that duped me. Enjoy, and gaze in disbelief at my stupidity:

I’ve got my money back. Yay! Actually technically, I’ve only got a credit while the investigation is going on, but I’ve got money again, and that’s what matters. Granted, it’s not enough for me to swim around in, throw it up and let it hit me on the head, but it’s enough to live off of, and that’s what matters. After all, if I don’t have money for beer, how can I possibly function?

The pair of Scrooge images I’ve posted here over the last few days got me thinking about those great Carl Barks comics, which I’ve read, but never really been able to afford buying. Gemstone started up their line of reprint books again this week, but just like the last time they did this, they’re priced way too high for a monthly book. I want to read these, but at $7 a month, they’re far too expensive. Hopefully they’ll realize that there’s a huge market for these books if they were only more affordable. I can safely say that if they put out a single, $3 comic of Carl Barks stories every month I’d snap it up in an instant. And failing that, $20 collections with a few hundred pages in them. Or even better, a line of Barks books like Marvel’s “essentials” line, where the stories are on low-cost paper and in black and white, but you get a good 400 pages for $15. Now that would be great.

Yesterday, Apple unveiled their new G5 systems. They are impressive, sporting new 64-bit processors, up to 8 GB of RAM (yowza!), and cutting-edge technology like PCI-X and Serial ATA. They also made the wise decision to include several glaring omissions from the current mac lineup, like a real digital audio in and out, and USB 2.0, and USB/FireWire ports on the front. But there are also a few things I found surprising.

The biggest surprise is that these are well…kinda ugly. Apple makes great, elegant hardware, and these? These don’t inspire me in the slightest. Already, some of the more cynical sites have taken to calling these the “cheese grader” macs, because of the metal grating that adorns the front and back of the unit. While I’m sure they’re quite functional, they’re a little hard on the eyes.

And then there’s Apple’s puzzling decision to only include one optical drive bay. On my G4, I have a SuperDrive and a separate, significantly faster CD-R/W drive. I love having two drives like that, and can’t imagine myself going back to having just one. Of course, it’s easy enough to get a FireWire drive as the second one, but I like the elegance of internal optical drives.

The biggest thing that would keep me from upgrading (aside from financial reasons…I won’t be ready to buy another desktop for at least two years) is the fact that my current dual 1.25 GHz/1 GB RAM G4 is more than enough for my needs. I don’t play games on it, so it’s just there for Photoshop, Dreamweaver, BBEdit, and all the other programs I use. And unlike my previous, Windows desktop, I can have as many programs as I like open at once, with no slowdown of any kind. So while Apple’s new machines are really very nice (albeit slightly ugly) I can’t see any particular reason for upgrading. I will of course be moving up to Panther as soon as it’s released. My system may not be able to take advantage of the 64-bit features of the OS, but it can more than handle anything else it throws my way.

Yesterday, on my way to the MoCCA art festival, I stopped off at a cash machine to get some money (for to spend on comics, of course). As I tried to take out some cash from my checking account, I got a strange message that I had exceeded my daily limit. Since I hadn’t taken any money out since Thursday, this was really quite odd, but it was a crappy ATM in a check cashing place, so I didn’t think anything of it.

When I got to Manhattan, I stopped in a branch of my bank to use their cash machine, and got the same error. Upon checking my balance, I was shocked to see that it was significantly less than it was supposed to be. Now, I’m a pretty upbeat guy, so I figured it must have been a temporary glitch, and went off and had a good time at the festival. I wasn’t totally without cash, so I was able to pick up a couple of books from Eddie Campbell (including an X-Men book he did a few pages for…go fig).

I then went home, and the first thing I did was call my bank. While I was on hold, I pulled up my transaction record online, and was absolutely horrified to discover a series of $120.38 ATM withdrawals throughout the weekend, plus scattered $30 and $60 transactions. After speaking with my bank, it became clear that someone had managed to get a hold of my card number, and access my account from ATM machines.

Now, there are two strange things about this. The first, is that I never let my bank card out of my sight. Never. The second, is that I’m extremely paranoid about identity theft, so I always make it a point to shred all bank records and receipts that have my social security number or account information on them. But nonetheless, someone managed to get my card number. I was told by my bank that this sort of thing happens, and that it’s possible for someone to clone a card, create their own PIN number and go on an ATM rampage with someone else’s account information. Grr.

So obviously, my card has been shut down. I’ve been told I’ll get all the money back, but I have to wait for the first charge to clear, which takes two to three business days. Hopefully I’ll get that back tomorrow. In the meantime, I have to go pick up a temporary ATM card today from my local branch. If I can’t get one, I’ll be forced to write myself a check in order to get cash. And that would just suck.

Sigh. These things happen, I suppose. But there is one promising lead…whoever this jackass was that swiped my ATM account, he made the blunder of placing an order with Google Answers. With any luck, I’ll be able to track him/her/it down through that. Nobody touches my money bin without incurring my wrath. When I track this person down, I’m going to get all cerebral bore on their ass.

Now that I use POPFile, the little spam that makes it through my filters is more amusing than anything else. That’s certainly the case with the spam I just got, which is actually some kind of wacky evangelical diatribe, which aims to prove that Jesus, and in particular, radically conservative Christianity is the only True Faith. The e-mail then points to this site, which is filled with all kinds of diatribes, including this one condemning the NIV translation of the bible. As I have a small library of bibles, and actually find the NIV to be the best available translation (particularly for academic purposes), I found this to be a really entertaining read. And of course there’s this accompanying image, which is just a hoot:

It’s good to know that a faith that condemns so many things has found a nice wholesome outlet like spam for finding a new audience.

This Sunday (assuming I’m not held over from someone coming to fix the floor in our apartment), I’m looking forward to attending the MoCCA Art Festival, which looks to be better than last year’s already impressive show. Among the many, many attendees are local guys like Paul Pope, Art Spiegelman and Howard Cruse and the dynamic duo of Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer, but this year there are going to be some really cool out-of-towners, including Dennis Kitchen and even Eddie Campbell. Should be a hoot.

I just have to make sure I don’t spend much money, which shouldn’t be too hard. Last year I came home with a small stack of books, but really didn’t spend a whole lot on them. Although with Eddie Campbell there, I’m sure I’ll be tempted to buy his entire library…but I can fight that urge. I think.

During my big sell-back spree at my local GameStop this past weekend, I was persuaded to join their discount club, which gives me a 10% discount on all sales at the store, and a free subscription to Game Informer magazine. Since I spend a lot of money at that store, and had credit to spare, I figured it was a good deal all around. And it is. But reading through the issue of Game Informer I took home, I was suddenly reminded why I stopped reading gaming magazines.

The thing that’s always sucked about these magazines is that they’re filled with non-content. “Previews” that are totally pandering (even for game previews), news that’s long out of date by the time the magazine ships, and lots and lots of dull screenshots with very little text to go alongside them. I guess if I didn’t have an internet connection I’d be interested in these images, but since I do, and have already seen 99% of those shots, I just skipped right by them. And sadly, there’s not a whole lot else in that magazine beyond that stuff.

It didn’t always used to be that way, mind you. I have many fond memories of Next-Generation, which not only provided thoughtful, insightful articles, but also well-written interviews, previews and reviews, and even the occasional news scoop. Sadly, those days are long gone. Even the best of the current gaming magazines (that’d be PC Gamer) is mostly screenshots and old news. But at least that mag has decent editorials and reviews. Game Informer seems to be lacking on all fronts.

In other countries, the situation isn’t nearly as grim. In Japan, the weekly gaming mags like Famitsu not only have huge numbers, but are the primary source for Japanese gaming news (and that includes in this country, since the larger sites employ people to scan the Japanese mags for news every week). And of course the UK is home to Edge, the last great English language magazine. For years I’ve been toying with the idea of getting an imported subscription to Edge, although at nearly $100 it’s an expensive idea.

Part of me hopes that someday we’ll get another really good gaming magazine in this country. Despite not being all that interested in overly technical aspects of game design, I used to read Game Developer, and that magazine is a step in the right direction. What we need is a good mass market gaming magazine in this country. And as soon as someone steps up to make it, I’ll be first in line to buy a copy (or beg for a job, whichever comes first).

After some 4 years of happy use, my Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer kicked the bucket over the weekend. For a few weeks I’ve been having increasing problems with USB in OS X, where all of a sudden I’d lose power to all my USB devices. Unplugging and plugging my keyboard would usually fix the problem, although I was getting extremely frustrated over the weekend when even that wouldn’t work, forcing me to force the system to restart in order to get my keyboard and mouse control back. At first I thought it might have been the USB gamepad adapter I use (which lets me use a PS2 controller on my G4…very cool), and then i figured it must have been my Bluetooth Adapter. But then yesterday when things got really bad it occurred to me that the problem must be my mouse…and after switching to Apple’s single-button “pill” mouse, the problem disappeared completely.

C’est la vie, I suppose, but I really did like that mouse. As I can’t stand that Apple mouse(it’s a fine mouse, but I hate the single button), I’ve already ordered a new one. Rather than pick up the latest version of the Intellimouse Explorer, I’m using this as an excuse to jump back to Logitech’s side of the fence, where I’ve already ordered an MX 500 Optical Mouse. This looks to be a slight step up from my old Intellimouse, as it has a whopping 8 buttons, and an uber-optical system which should hopefully overcome my one problem with my old mouse, which was the lack of precision that plagued the first generation of optical mice.

While I’m sure the mouse itself is going to work just fine, I can’t say I know anything about Logitech’s OS X support. I’ve got a zillion and one application-specific commands assigned to the various buttons on my Intellimouse, and hopefully I’ll be able to adapt those to my new hardware. I’m optimistic. And for what it’s worth, 4 years is a long damn time for me to stick with a single piece of hardware. Especially one I used all day, every day for much of that time. That mouse long outlived the machine it came with, and the only piece of that box that’s still around is the case (which is in remarkably good shape, although it needed a new power supply after the original literally went down in flames). Hopefully this next mouse will last just as long.

There’s an AP article up on CNN today regarding the mania that’s surrounding the upcoming release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. And lest there be doubt, it really is mania…we’re talking about a countdown in Times Square, over a million copies pre-sold at Amazon.com alone, and lots and lots of kids who have been waiting eagerly for this book for years.

It’s easy to forget in all this hysteria that all of this isn’t about a movie, or a new toy, or even a video game…it’s all about a book. And a big one at that, clocking in at 255,000 words, making it some 70,000 words longer than the New Testament. How cool is that? I mean, besides a few crotchety British writers and some religious nutjobs, who could find anything wrong with this? I think it’s great that kids are lining up around the block to get their hands on an actual book. Besides, I’m looking forward to reading it as much as they are (well, not quite as much, but I’m looking forward to reading it after Heather’s done with it). Harry Potter is remarkably well written…yeah, it’s no Shakespeare, but who cares? It’s intelligent, surprisingly mature in its subject matter, and kids eat it up with a spoon. I say keep ‘em coming.