Haikus Are Fun...

I wrote an iPhone haiku on twitter for fun which iPhone Disapora put up on their website. Check it out if you're bored.

iTunes: Another Soul Lost...

So a couple of months ago, Tom got me into really using iTunes and it has kinda spiraled into this semi-encompassing obsession of cleaning mp3 tags, finding high quality album art, and systematically quantifying the value of a song between 1 and 5 stars. To date, I have about 30GB of music loaded into my iTunes library (conservatively about 40% of my actual mp3 collection), which translates into roughly about 5,000 songs and 340 albums. I dunno, there's something about a coverflow that seems to stretch on to infinity. I've also rated about 8 gigs or 1,300 songs out of the 5,000.

Well, like all good addictions, I had to spread the love. After a quick gym work out on Monday, Steve came over and I burned him about 4 gigs of music for his fledging iTunes library (he recently got an 8 gig nano). As he made his selections using iTunes' album view, I raved about the advantages of actually doing all the leg work that's required to make iTunes operate at its full potential. Long story short, I think I got him hooked on the idea of being able to quickly filter through gigs of music, make smart playlists on the fly, use Genius to build playlists for him and generally just have a very sleek and cool looking music library as opposed to viewing a bunch of directory folders through windows explorer.

Also we got to reminiscing about high school, and how we use to go to the store to buy CDs for bulky discman. Now all that fits in my pocket and I use it to make calls from as well as surf the internet. Sometimes I have to stop and remember how far we've come and how crazy the times we live in are. Seriously, what is going to come over the horizon? It's almost unfathomable.

Biting the Bullet...

So I finally bit the bullet and paid for my first iPhone app last night. After thoroughly researching and reading what must have been a hundred reviews, I shelled out $4.99 for the game Orions: Legend of Wizards.


Think Magic: The Gathering meets Risk. I've always been fascinated by TCG games but was never willing to invest the money in them. They were quite popular when I was in high school, and I remember several of my friends playing daily during lunch, until all card and dice games were permanently banned (oh noes, gambling bad!). I was more a table top, D&D kind of nerd. Anyway, certain things, because of their tedious rules and maintenance, lend themselves very well to computers and TCG definitely falls in to that category. The developer is obviously a TCG lover himself.

It's funny, I debated with myself for a good long while whether or not to actually buy this game. But in retrospect, it's only 5 bucks. I guess I was worried about that slippery slope other iPhone owners have warned me about. The app store is evil they cry. Things are so cheap. A dollar here, two dollars there. It quickly adds up. I'll have to be careful.

But I wanted a new game since I beat Tap Defense on Hard and an update looks a long time coming. I considered Fieldrunners or 7 Cities, but wasn't really in the mood for another tower defense game. And a man can only take so much Sudoku. Mainly I wanted something that would have high replayability, and with it's random duel feature, I could theoretically play it forever.

I played my first duel on Easy last night and prompty got my ass handed to me by the computer. And I haven't even touched the campaign mode yet. Yeah... it's going to be a good long while before I can beat this one. Luckily the holidays are coming up :)

Warcraft Goes Mobile...

Dang, this makes me wish I had gotten an iPhone 3G sooner. I just found out that they have apps for the Warcraft Armory, Warcraft Talent Calculator, and Warcraft Loot lists for the iPhone. That would have probably been pretty damn useful/a big damn time waster before I quit. Nerdy, I know, believe me.

Speaking of which, it's been what now... 2 or 3 months since I quit? Surprisingly no shakes, headaches, or other prominent withdrawal symptoms. I guess it's true, when it's time, it really is. While I still miss the people, more than I care to admit, I definitely don't miss the heavy time requirements. Besides, with my heavy work load and winter activities gearing up, I highly doubt that schedule would have been sustainable for much longer anyway. Feels good to be free.