weblog November 15th, 2009
After using my MacBook’s awesome, massive trackpad recently, I’ve become increasingly annoyed that I can’t use my four finger swipes and such on my desktop computer. I’ve been starting to think that perhaps a massive trackpad would actually be a better input device than a mouse.
Apparently Apple aren’t quite at that point yet, and so have tried to make a mouse trackpad. Still, I couldn’t quite resist it, and have picked one up. Here’s my mini review.
Pros
- Let’s get it out of the way to begin with: it does look awesome.
- It moves about nicely, in the sense that it moves as well as any optical mouse I’ve used.
- Scrolling is pretty awesome for someone who’s come from a 1-d scroll wheel. No more shift-scrolling. Also, it can scroll “with momentum”, allowing you to flick your finger across it with force and let it scroll happily away by itself (and be stopped if you put your finger back down), a la iPhone.
- It’s raised from the ground by two easily cleaned plastic strips. Previously I’ve only ever used mouses with four little rubber sections that gather caked-on dust. I don’t anticipate this problem here.
Cons
- When you’re moving your fingers across a trackpad, you can move your whole hand. No such luck with a mouse; some of your fingers have to stay behind to keep the whole thing from moving. Not quite as comfortable.
- The surface resembles the glass of the iPhone more than the slightly less shiny surface of my MacBook Pro trackpad. If you’ve got clammy hands, therefore, the scrolling doesn’t come as easily.
- In comparison to the glorious set of trackpad options you get given by Apple, the Magic Mouse’s preference pane has only four options, with the only obvious multi-touch option being two-finger swipes, and only left and right. The surface of the mouse is smaller than a trackpad, so I understand a reluctance to offer more options, but two and three finger swipes up and down are easily manageable (three-finger swipes left and right are a bitch though).
- No middle click!
Extra Bits
Luckily for those last two cons, people are already working on ways to get around the lack of customisation:
- Middle-click. If all you’re after is a middle click, Clem has your solution. Simple and works well.
- BetterTouchTool has far more options (including middle click). I’ve found it a little ropey so far–my two-finger swipes in Firefox keep getting forgotten–but if you want some excessive customisation, this is for you, and it’s under very active development. I should point out that it’s based on…
- MultiClutch, which I’m still using on my MacBook Pro, but which needs a bit of fiddling about to work with Snow Leopard, as per Prashant’s forked build and SIMBL plugin.
So, in conclusion, I’m afraid I still want a giant trackpad. The Magic Mouse is cute, but it’s the child of two worlds and fits comfortably in neither (except, not as cool as that sounds). If I could change just one thing about it, it’d be making the surface less glossy. Actually, if I’m getting wishes, I’d probably go for less clammy hands, but you get the point.
Posted by Tom Charman to apple, mouse | 2 Comments »
weblog November 5th, 2009
So, I walked past some news today on my way home. As you can see, it was pretty impressive. It’s not every day you see a collapsed building. Roads were shut off, people were milling, TV crews were talking into their cameras. All very exciting.
And so then I think to myself, “I’ve got my camera. I could take a picture.” Almost half of the people there had the same thought; you can even see a reasonably elderly woman taking a snap with her camera phone, presumably so she can then twitter and facebook it to her peeps. But suddenly the idea felt creepy. Had people died? Would it be wrong to be casually snapping away at the scene of a fatal accident? News photographers do it all the time, but they’re servicing the public interest, or at least managing a close approximation of it. Does my massive contingent of 29 followers count as the public? I doubt it.
Anyhow, it turns out no one died and so I vaguely regret not trying to get a good photo. But I can’t quite decide though if I’m a bit disturbed by everyone milling about and recording the event, or whether I’m impressed by them actually doing something vaguely constructive by spreading the information around their various networks.
And briefly, an old man rant: One of Channel 7 News’ leading stories today consisted of announcing that Britney Spears had entered the country, that they hadn’t been able to get an interview or footage of her, and reading out what she tweeted when she got off the plane. This followed the startling revelation that the winners of the Melbourne Cup were “happy”. If I could remember Seven’s news tagline, I’d quote it here, ironically. That’d show ’em.
Posted by Tom Charman to media, tv | 3 Comments »
weblog November 2nd, 2009
In loving memory of the hopes I had cultivated of actually doing NaNoWriMo this year, I’ll be attempting to post at least something to atypicalreview every day of November. Two things today though, to make up for yesterday.
As those of you who will have read Jackson’s Star Trek review will one day know, this year J.J. Abrams brought us a pretty impressive film. I was even able to rise above my childhood Doctor Who versus Star Trek rivalry to enjoy it. Perfectly paced, funny, exciting, moving.
It’s just out on DVD, Blu-Ray, and iTunes as well. May I caution you as an aside; do not just buy it on iTunes. It’ll cost you $25 there, but for an extra $5 you could get the blu-ray edition which comes with its own digital iTunes copy. Even if you don’t have a blu-ray player, one day you might. Think about it.
Anyhow, that’s not the point, as you may have guessed from the picture up in the top left hand corner. What people often rightly applaud Star Trek for is its agenda of social progress and togetherness and the triumph of humanity against its base urges. The first inter-racial kiss on television. The first romance between a cyborg and an artificial intelligence. So it surprised me somewhat to be watching the scenes deleted from Star Trek and to find a pretty ropey scene between our hero Kirk and an Orion woman. Allow me to paraphrase:
KIRK: I’m really sorry. I realise it looks like I used you shamefully but I won’t actually come out and say that I did. I’m very awkward right now. I’m even a bit reluctant to make eye contact with you but I clearly have on several occasions in this sentence.
…pause…
You’re not Gaila, are you?
For those playing at home, that’s a joke about how all girls with green skin look the same and how Kirk can’t tell them apart. And we’re not talking about girls he’s barely met. We’re talking about girls he’s slept with. Take a moment to think about just how that’d play if, say, Kirk had the same issue but with Uhura and another girl of similar skin colour.
Luckily, it didn’t make it to the film. But not because it was in bad taste — in fact, J.J. and his crew still seem to think it’s really funny. It’s all a bit weird. How tragic that on the same day that I note that anti-robot stereotypes are on the decline, we see once again the ugly face of intergalactic racism. Truly, equal rights in genre movies is an ongoing battle.
Posted by Tom Charman to film, Star Trek | 3 Comments »
weblog October 8th, 2009
It’s all about this crap, you see. It is a storm in a teacup, but it’s a very badly handled storm. Frankly, no matter where you’re having a storm, you probably don’t want Daryl Somers in charge. He’ll probably just slip his arm around the storm and explain to it that it’s slightly out of shot and he’d like to move it a few feet to the left.
To Daryl. I strongly suspect that an apology would mean more if you apologised to the people you thought might have been offended by the sketch, and not to Mr Connick Jr.
To people whinging about ‘political correctness’. Call it what you like, but it seems to me that it’s only manners to avoid pointlessly offending people.
To people saying that if it was acceptable years ago it’s acceptable now. Lots of things used to be OK that aren’t any more. I don’t expect to see you attempt to prove your point by marrying your 13 year old cousin and taking a slave tomorrow. Console yourself in the knowledge that lots of things that used to be frowned upon are more accepted now. Enjoy them! Leave the house without your hat, vote to choose your leader, and let someone have sex with your bottom.
To people arguing that Harry Connick Jr may be a hypocrite. That’s not really the point here, is it?
To me. Admit it. You’re kind happy because now you have a morally justifiable reason to think Hey Hey sucks.
Posted by Tom Charman to five things, tv | Comments Off on And now, five things I’d like to say to particular people
weblog October 6th, 2009
The 2010 Doctor Who logo has been announced.
The answers to my questions turn out to be “Above”, “No”, “Serif”, “Neither” and “the coloured lights are inside it”. It hearkens back strongly to the older, simpler logos, which is nice. I see everyone at the BBC still gets excited by lens flares. I’m reasonably keen, though I’m curious to find out when they use the initials and when they use the full word. It’s certainly a nicer logo for putting on DVD spines which is obviously my main concern.
Hrmmm.
There’s not actually very much to say about a new logo. I should have covered the Apple event instead. They’re much more contentious. I went onto a Who forum to try to find crazy fans whinging that the new logo doesn’t do target disk mode, but no such luck.
Posted by Tom Charman to Doctor Who, tv | 1 Comment »
weblog October 5th, 2009
2009 has been a quiet year for Doctor Who news, so the BBC are stretching things out as much as possible. The latest in a slow and meticulously planned trickle of announcements is the new logo, to be announced this Tuesday. This throws up all sorts of intriguing questions. Will the “Doctor” be above the “Who”, or to the side? Will any parts of the word be set in a rakishly cheesy angle? Will it be serif, or sans serif? Arial or Helvetica? Or will it just be the old logo bent a little bit with coloured lights behind it?
The excitement never stops around here. I hope you’ll join me for the unveiling tomorrow.
Posted by Tom Charman to Doctor Who, tv | Comments Off on Logo
weblog September 8th, 2009
Apple has gone and confused people (not that difficult) by naming the 2009 iPod event after a Rolling Stones song on the same day the Beatles are re-releasing all their albums.
That can only mean the perpetually rumoured Apple Tablet is coming. Except not really. The only thing certain – a professional pundit will complain afterwards that it was not announced, despite almost everyone else (besides shareholders) knowing that it wouldn’t be.
Will Steve Jobs be giving the keynote? Will the iPod Classic finally die the wretched death it deserves? Will the Apple TV get a Take 3 and become useful?
Pretty standard bunch of questions really, but regardless I’ll be on hand to relay the answers to all these questions as the keynote unfolds – answers laced with just enough vitriol to create the impression I’m not some kind of apple fanboy. Which I’m not. Or at least I won’t be after tomorrow if Apple does not announce HD television for the Australian iTunes store!
Seriously Apple. Fuck you. I can see it sitting there on the American store. If I wasn’t so lazy I would buy an American gift card from eBay.
So there it is. If you only read one live blog of this event, then I strongly recommend Arstechnica’s. Because that is what I’ll be plagiarising reading. But if you read two you could probably read Macworld’s because that is generally excellent. I won’t mind because strictly speaking mine won’t be a live blog. More like a delayed-by-ninety-thousands-of-minutes blog.
I’m sure as hell not getting up that early.
Posted by Jackson Kearney to apple, Apple TV, ipod, itunes, music, Television | 1 Comment »
weblog August 18th, 2009
There are some things in life that I’ll just never quite understand. Grown men enjoying Pink. Owning more than two pairs of usable shoes. Rugby.
Today I have added Playstation Home to the list.
Apparently it’s a bit like Second Life, which I’ve never looked at. In fact, I always had the sneaking suspicion that Second Life was invented by cultural studies students so that they’d have something in cyberspace more interesting to talk about than chat rooms. So it’s a little disturbing to take a step into this peculiar world — a world which for all I could see was completely pointless. A step into the unknown. How exciting it would be.
Well, first I pressed the button that said “Playstation Home”. That was pretty exciting right there. I’d previously downloaded the program when it was released, attempted to run it, and found that connection issues prevented me from even entering. Not a good start. Now, months later, I try again and find that there’s a system update. No worries I think, lulled by the efficiency of updates on the Xbox 360. Hah. 5 minutes I wait for the progress bars to dance their merry yet predictable dance across the screen. Then we’re in. Right?
Well, no. Then I get to go to a new and entirely different progress bar when I eventually launch the game. It’s caching vital elements, or somesuch. I can’t argue with that. Vital elements are vital. Any fool knows that. More minutes pass. It’s just as exciting as I knew it would be. Finally the caching is finished. Thank goodness. It’s time to enter Playstation Home.
Oh no, wait on. Another progress bar. I appear to be downloading my home, which is a studio. Sounds swanky. More minutes.
It turns out my room is swanky. It is also very small. I have entered a thrilling virtual world to find out that my house is pokier than my actual house, and lacks a bedroom, or kitchen, or any sort of room. It does have a sweet view, I can’t deny that. It also has some very bland furniture. I try to put a TV in — my first instinct in any house — but it appears I don’t have a TV. Dear god. I’d slit my virtual wrists if I could find the right button. After wandering up and down my porch and moving the couch to and fro, I decide it’s time to go outside. The helpful door informs me that the world outside is about 40mb and needs to be downloaded before I go out. It kindly suggests that I could download it in the background.
I kindly suggest that it could have started downloading it in the background while I was wandering about my tiny tiny room. Where else was I going to go? But it’s not listening, because it’s a door.
I eventually go outside. There’s a poster which I can look at, but it’s blank; completely black. Let me get this straight. You spent three minutes downloading 40mb of outsideyness, and that didn’t even include the posters? I keep walking. I see a bowling alley in front of me. Ooooh, I’ll wander over there. Ah. More downloading. Background please. Thanks. I wander further. I’ve got time to kill. My movements are jerky and strained for a while, as the download of the bowling alley appears to be taking priority over simple movement. This makes me grumpy and I’m thinking of turning off the console when a virtual person walks past.
“Hi fatso.”
I’ve been in Playstation Home for about 10 minutes, and my avatar is already getting bullied by random people. I’m not even fat; I only slightly raised the weight of the avatar above the median default value. I’m just big-polygonned. It’s enough to make you want to start taking cultural studies. Which is how you know something is wrong. Just as the bowling alley helpfully advises me that it’s ready for me now, I turn it off.
I’m sure once you’ve downloaded a whole bunch of Playstation Home, it becomes a lot more seamless. I’m just not clear what on earth would make someone want to keep exploring after a first-run experience including six progress bars and no discernible entertainment. So: it’s just one of those things then.
Posted by Tom Charman to games, playstation 3 | 2 Comments »
weblog August 11th, 2009
An update to Xbox 360s everywhere has been pushed out today, which brings the thrilling ability to buy more hats for my teeny little Xbox person. Woah, you might say, that’s pretty exciting right there. And I say to you; hold your horses. This thing’s not over yet. We can now buy entire Xbox 360 games online! Not this pissy old Xbox stuff we used to get.
And of course, because these are games which have been out for years, and they don’t have to sell them to retailers, hold stock in stores, make cases for them, make books for them, or transport them anywhere, obviously they’re… more expensive. I haven’t seen value this good since Village Cinemas started charging me a dollar extra for doing my own ticket-booking online. Mass Effect, an excellent game which you can get for $89.98 on JB Hi-Fi Online right now, is $99.95 through Games on Demand. Phwoar.
I’m done being sarcastic now. Maybe I’m just out of practice, but I’m finding it quite difficult to maintain. Perhaps you can get nasal injections for that.
Anyhow, it turns out that the prices are much more reasonable if you’re not in Australia. Which of course makes sense; the tubes to Australia are much longer and clearly Microsoft’s Australian division will need extra money to suck the content all the way to us.
But I reckon they don’t need it, because as far as I can see, they’re sucking pretty good already. Ba doom tish. Oh yeah.
There are actually some good, if subtle changes, like better sorting in menus and a rating system for content which could get very handy. I feel I should point this out in the interests of balance. Also, some games are only $49.95 and much much better value. On reflection, it’s almost not worth writing about, but there hasn’t been anything posted here for over a month so I’m hardly going to go around slashing perfectly adequate paragraphs now.
Posted by Tom Charman to games, Xbox 360 | 4 Comments »
weblog June 29th, 2009
A month of xbox live for a dollar. That’s value I can’t refuse. You, however, may decide to refuse it when you find out that buying it gives MS the right to charge you for a year’s membership when the month ends unless you make a nice long call to a guy in India who can’t understand why on earth you’d want to cancel something so wonderful as an xbox live gold membership.
I also couldn’t refuse Guitar Hero 3 with a wireless guitar for $74. Possibly not the best course of action for someone trying to pay off a credit card, but I felt like the gods of Buying Day were smiling on me when I got home and found the Halo 3 theme free to download for GH3.
Posted by Andy Cocker to games, guitar hero, xbox live | Comments Off on Irrefusable value