UPDATE: It seems I was wrong, but not before others picked up on this idea. As it turns out, the Google Nexus One isn’t nearly as disruptive as a VOIP-driven, ad-supported device could be. I still maintain that the below is possible, and hopefully we’ll see it one day soon.

This isn’t specific to film, but considering mobile devices today are much more than just phones — they’re connected computers that serve as our digital, personal assistants — this has bearing on how all of us will be interacting with each other (and content) in the future. So I thought I’d throw around some unqualified and totally speculative speculation about What’s Next when it comes to mobile platforms. (more…)

My three year-old MacBook Pro recently started emitting a constant racket from its left fan (which sounds something like this). Most people will tell you you need a new fan for $50, but I decided to try to fix it instead, and so far (it’s been two weeks nine months), the repair has worked great. As any google or youtube search for “noisy macbook pro fan” produces thousands of results, I hope this saves someone fifty of their hard-earned bucks during this, the winter of our hardships.

Why would you walk around with a shirt like this? Are you telling the world, “I’m going to die?” Are you telling others they’re going to die? I cannot begin to fathom why you would want a picture of your own head, circa 2090, emblazoned on your shirt. Do members of the opposite sex look at you and think, “yeah, that person must be good in the sack, because they have a human skull on their chest?”

Whatever. I’m too comfortable with my offline machinations to be self-conscious about my recent foray into online tech journalism. Although I will say that I learned a valuable lesson about the current state of the internet and the way traffic spikes–frankly, for the feature, my review methodology was not at all sound, and I was merely trying to get the review up before the weekend officially started, yet the timing ended up being more important than anything else. Regardless, I found it amusing when, in response to my recent propensity for blogging, someone called me a “nerrrrrrd” (via IM), especially when that someone hosts a weekly videogame show on GameSpot (just kidding, Rich).

Anyway, after much finagling, my MacBook Pro is on its way. Yes, I’m switching to a Mac. Why? Well, in this case, Final Cut Pro was a strong enough gateway drug to convince me to pay a visit to the dealer. Also, while I’m all-too familiar with the innards of PCs, I was tired of the paradox of choice–in Windows, there are too many applications and controls, and I just want the damn thing to work so I can be productive. I’ll keep my HP workstation around as a big, messy box of applications, storage space, and virus-protectors, and I’ll use the Mac laptop as a nice, pared-down, mobile model of productivity. That’s the theory, at least.

There are a number of drawbacks to my decision to switch to Mac, chief of which is my inability to use Microsoft OneNote, which is a terrific idea/journal/organizer program. Furthermore, one thing is undeniable: PCs are cheaper. And seeing as I haven’t been gainfully employed in almost a year, I was asked by a friend, “how in the hell are you affording this?” Good question.

After spending most the day in a Connecticut coffee shop, writing by hand on blank, unlined paper (I accidentally left my legal pad at a friend’s house in DC), I realized it was time to bite the bullet. So how does a starving artist with no full-time employment afford not only a MacBook Pro, but also another nonessential Apple purchase made back in December? If you head over to Apple.com and order a 2GHz MacBook Pro and 60GB video iPod, with tax, you’re looking at a hefty fee of $3,100. In my case, though, the two devices are going to end up costing me almost nothing. Here’s how:

-$2000: My Emerging Artist Grant from the NEA/DAC. I’m going to end up splitting the $2k between the MacBook and a copy of Final Cut Studio, but for now, it’s all going towards the laptop.
-$310: I actually got a free iPod from freeipods.com (I would not, NOT recommend this to anyone else), and promptly sold it on eBay (this was back when I was still anti-Apple).
-$267: My old MP3 player, a Rio Karma, bit the dust while it was still covered under Best Buy’s extended replacement plan, and they sent me a full refund. I used this towards the new iPod.
-$200: Amazon.com does not have physical retail stores like Apple does, so there is no sales tax.
-$150: Amazon also has a substantial mail-in rebate on the laptop.
-$75: I actually signed up for the Amazon VISA card, because of the rewards you get on a purchase of this size, and because…
-$30: Amazon also offers an instant discount for signing up for their card (this is the first time I’ve ever bit on one of these offers).

So, when it’s all said and done, for over $3,000 of Apple hardware, what did I pay out-of-pocket?

$68.

Here in New York, that’ll get you a steak, a vegetarian dish for your date, and a couple of cocktails. Depending on the restaurant, maybe just the steak.

If you’re an affluent first-worlder (not a word, I know), being cheap is one of the ugliest qualities you can possess–it’s just paper, it’s just numbers, it’s just money. I’m not trying to encourage penny-penching. But if being smart with your money can enable you–and I consider both of these purchases to enable me to get a lot of work done in the short-term, and to be a better filmmaker in the long run–then it’s obviously worth it. Thanks to the Durham Arts Council for the grant (this is a sad excuse for a thank you post, but my original post was lost to the wolves and the time for re-writing it has passed), and thanks to…

Wait, I almost forgot–as a filmmaker, both of these items are tax-deductible! By the time I’m done cooking the books, they’re going to be paying me.

Don’t buy anyone a Sony digital camera.

My DSC-P150 just broke yesterday, after 14 months of occasional use. Sony’s planned obsolescence worked to perfection here: the manufacturer’s warranty is only 12 months. Way to go. Also, a friend of mine, who recently sold his Sony on eBay, was just informed by the buyer that his camera kicked the bucket after a week of use (apparently he sold it just in time). And the Sony owned by another friend of mine broke right before she was going to New Zealand, forcing her to do the unthinkable: take along a regular film camera.

So that’s three Sonys that have broken in the past month that I know of. Curiosity got the better of me and I tried to fix mine (the LCD panel started flickering, and then just stopped lighting up altogether), so I dissected it and ended up repeatedly shocking myself, all to no avail. I hoped my Asianness would get me past the fact that I had no idea what I was doing, but alas, I was unable to repair it.

Besides, in my experience Canon cameras render images that look more similar to what my own visual memory looks like–whereas the Sony sometimes produces pleasing images, its colors (too much red) and contrast levels (crushed blacks) just don’t come anywhere near the human eye’s own renderings. Good riddance.

After years of trying to avoid the iPod, because a) everyone has it, and b) I thought it sounded like crap, I finally gave in and got one. Why? Well as I was running out of space on my trusty, ugly, great-sounding Rio Karma, Apple was announcing that their new iPod plays video. This seemed like a no-brainer transition because, as an aspiring filmmaker, I could load full-framerate H.264 video on the iPod and show it to anyone, anytime. And while I thought the biggest part of Apple’s announcement was not the new iPods themselves, but rather the fact that you could purchase TV shows for $1.99 apiece–a significant shift in the revenue stream for television networks, and film content as well–the new iPod nevertheless inspired a bit of involuntary consumer lust in me. Especially since it comes in black, which I can plug a regular pair of headphones into, and thus avoid looking like a walking ad for the early 2000′s (which is what the ubiquitous white headphone cord will be remembered for). Or headphone cords at all, for that matter–it’s only a matter of time before we have high-quality wireless headphones. But the white cord is a particularly egregious offense. No shit. I understand you are listening to music. Why are you not breakdancing this very minute?

I was worried that the new iPod hadn’t improved in sound quality since the early models I’d listened to, which sounded canned and bass-deficient, but that fear was assuaged by some of the audiophiles on various sound quality and headphone forums.

Thus I became the one-billionth person to order an iPod last week. The Fedex tracking number Apple sent me Wednesday night said it was coming straight from Shanghai. I had selected “free shipping,” so I expected it to take a week or so. Then, Friday I logged onto Fedex.com to see where in the world my shiny object was, and it said “2:32 PM– Left at front door. Package delivered to recipient address. Release authorized.” What?! I’m sitting right here! No way. So I go downstairs, open the door, and there it is, sitting on the front porch. It took less than two days to get here from China. The globe is getting smaller. The World Wide Web is closer than my front door. Crazy.

I often wonder what my kids are going to say one day when I tell them that I had no internet, no e-mail, no instant messenger, and no cell phone growing up–all of the connectivity they couldn’t imagine living without, I didn’t have. Of course by the time I have kids (which will not be for a long, long time if I can help it), who knows what other developments there will have been. By the time they reach adolescence, I’ll be telling them “we had to sheath ourselves in latex to have sex! Latex!” And they’ll look at me as if they can’t believe their father is talking about sex–gross! And then I’ll say, just to piss them off, “your mom and I are still fucking like rabbits. In every position you can imagine, and then some.”

Or maybe I’ll be divorced already. Or maybe I’ll never get married–I’m still not sure what I think of that whole institution. As a twentysomething, it’s an issue you are either ultra-conscious of, or ultra-conscious of avoiding.

Anyway, back to the fingerprint magnet. iTunes asked me to name my iPod, which made me wonder how many people in the world named their iPods i[Something], and patted themselves on the back for being clever. I couldn’t resist the temptation either, but since self-awareness is half the battle, I went with iConform. And patted myself on the back.

My reel looks decent on the 2.5″ screen, although the iPod is only 65,000 colors, so the color gradations on the intro and outro animations are not at all smooth. Also, there are no brightness/contrast/saturation controls whatsoever; this is either because Apple wants to keep things simple, or because they want to save those controls for the widescreen, DVD-resolution iPod Movie, which you know is coming out in a year. Or less.

But it sounds good. Really good. Not good enough to make me do this, though.

Yes, it’s a rip-off MPC, the popularity of which I honestly did not understand until I was at a Guitar Center recently and realized why they’re so ubiquitous: you just mash on the damn thing. It’s like drumming on your desk with your fingers, except instead of sounding like wood, it sounds like… whatever you want it to. Welcome to the wonderful world of sampling! Also, it takes no special talent or knowledge whatsoever because, and excuse my non-PC-ness, it’s fucking retarded.

I love it.

Well of course this thing, which I didn’t think was going to arrive at my place for another few days (“this thing” being the M-Audio Trigger Finger, which is approximately 1/10th the cost of a real, sampling MPC) shows up the day before the grant application deadline. No human being in this world possesses the superpowers necessary to resist a shiny new toy when there is important work to be done. So there it is, sitting in a box next to me, as I sit there trying to explain to a committee of people why they should give me money. For a short while I managed to avoid it, not unlike the Bush administration manages to avoid accountability, but as soon as writer’s block set in… Out the thing came, like a replacement FEMA head.

And of course it didn’t work. After a half hour of messing with the shiny, slightly-too-plasticky device, I finally got it working with the computer (for non-Asians, it’d probably take at least an hour). And when I finally did? There’s a delay between when you hit the pad and when the drum sounds! Useless! Like an Arabian Horse Association commissioner put in charge of a life-and-death federal agency responsible for managing national emergencies!

Further investigation has revealed that I have to actually buy a sound card in order to avoid this delay.

Maybe I should ask for more money.