Early Adopter?
"I used to dream of the day when my computer would be as easy to use as my phone. It has happened. I no longer know how to use my phone." &mdash Bjorn Stroustrup
I seem to own a ton of consumer electronics now. I didn't really ask for them; I've acquired everything as a series of gifts. I feel guilty of excessive consumerism, and thinking about the amount of nitric acid that must have been needed to produce these items makes me cry. I have to admit that they are nice toys, though, and they're expensive enough to make me quite reluctant to return them, on account of the feelings of the gift-givers. Anyway, I thought I'd write a little bit about the most recent items I've acquired:
Pandigital 11" Digital Picture Frame
I confess that I've wanted a digital picture frame for a long time now, because I have a strange habit of collecting images off the internet, but haven't had any way to display them. I fantasized about putting a frame in the window of my office, if I ever had an office, and displaying hundreds of different comics&mdash like the usual strip tacked up the to door, except a lot better.
The Pandigital frame hasn't really lived up to my hopes. The first warning sign came when I plugged it into my computer through the USB port: the name came up as all-caps and eight characters long. It didn't seem like a device that would be Macintosh-friendly, and, sure enough, it registered every file I put on it as several files, treating the resource forks as individual entities. It's formatted as MS-DOS File System (FAT32), according to Disk Utility, and while I suppose this makes sense, it's pretty inconvenient. I've thought about formatting it as HFS+, but I'm not sure whether this would do anything unfortunate to the frame. I'll probably try it later.
I duplicated the images I was planning to upload and used FinderCleaner to strip their resource forks and associated hidden files. (Yeah, I could have just used the command line, but I didn't feel like it.) Uploading pictures to the internal memory is quite slow. I'm still not sure why this is the case.
The frame has a stand which rotates to allow it to stand in a portrait orientation, and I thought this was a better use of the rectangular display. Unfortunately, the stand is the only concession to a portrait mode that the Pandigital 11" possesses. It doesn't detect its own orientation, like at least one other frame I've heard of does, so every picture I put on it must be rotated before it's uploaded. While the remote that comes bundled with frame possesses a "rotate" button, there's no way to rotate a group of files, and the rotate function rotates the displayed picture the wrong way. Worse, files rotated by the frame itself don't look very good, and every rotation creates its own text file on the drive, and the picture frame occasionally forgets that a picture has been rotated, usually at the start of a slideshow. I solved this problem by creating an Automator script (which had all of two steps) to rotate all the pictures I planned on putting on the frame. Alas, Automator choked when I asked it to handle 150-odd fairly-high-resolution images lacking resource forks, and would frequently quit in the middle of the process. Finally, in accordance with Murphy's Law, I initially rotated all the images in the wrong direction. It was at about this point that I scrapped everything and started over.
I quickly discovered that the picture frame can only display JPEG files. No GIF, no TIFF, no PNG. And from there I learned that only some JPEGs work: the frame does not support "progressive" JPEGs. I don't know what that means, and I see no reason why I should have to. It took a while to work this out, because the frame displayed only a helpful "Format Not Supported!!" message.
There are other miscellaneous problems. Should some poor fool dare use the rotating stand, the frame is designed so that the power switch winds up on the bottom of the frame, the least accessible position. The remote uses cheap bubble-y switches, and possesses no power button; while the frame can play music (for the love of Bob, WHY?), the remote also lacks any way to turn the music off its endless loop, although it can control the music's volume. The mini USB jack juts directly out of the back of the frame, meaning that it is impossible to lay the frame flat while transferring files without risking damage to the connector. The frame has only 256 MB of internal memory, which seems odd, given the price of USB drives. The power cord is oddly short. There's no way to create playlists of either pictures or music; should you desire such an odd feature, the best way to achieve it seems to be to use a different SD card for each slide show. While navigating menus, the frame occasionally exhibits an odd bug in which part of the screen moves off-center and wraps around to its other side.
All in all, a stellar example of industrial design. It has funny transitions between pictures (which I can turn off, thank god) and can play MP3s, badly.
I think someone failed to put much thought into this product's core function&mdash displaying pictures.
...sadly, this is pretty much par for the course for consumer electronics products I've used. Apple's products are pretty good, and I have an unhealthy love for my HP laser printer, but everything else seems hastily thrown together to satisfy a list of bullet points. I'm probably going to stick with this model, because digital picture frames in general seem terribly poorly designed, and I doubt that I can find a better one.
Tom-Tom One XL GPS Unit
This was described as a "mercy gift". Most of you are aware of my uncanny talent for getting lost&mdash
paraleipsis particularly, perhaps. I was given a GPS to attempt to remedy this situation, and, to my great surprise, it mostly works. In fact, it works so well that I am now convinced it is a thing of witchcraft and devilry which must be burned. I am wary of associating with Global Positioning Sorcery.
In one of my early tests of the device, I was able to navigate to a distant location without ever having the faintest idea where I was or where I was going. Worse, it got me there on time. This was a rather creepy feeling, and blindly following the instructions of the GPS reminded me eerily of Marshall Brain's hypothetical program Manna. (Disclaimer: I have a deeply-felt animosity towards Marshall Brain's writing, and towards a lot of his thinking as well.) It was suddenly very clear to me how people could drive off cliffs while listening to a GPS unit&mdash mine could have easily directed me to Idaho, or into a wall, without my realizing it.
I'd owned a GPS unit before, but it wasn't nearly as threatening. It was a Magellan model with a tiny LCD screen, and most of the amusement one could derive from it stemmed from turning on and leaving outside for fifteen minutes while it vainly attempted to find a satellite. Sometimes it would get lucky and manage to figure out the latitude and longitude of where it was, which I imagine gave it a great sense of personal satisfaction.
I was encouraged to name my new GPS, and so I named it Julie, because I've always wanted to name an inanimate object Julie. I set Julie's voice to be British and told her to display distance in metric units, because I wanted to gain an intuitive understanding of metric units. This also has the advantage of confusing anybody riding in the car with me.
I don't know about 99% of the Tom-Tom One XL's features, and I don't care about them. Even though it's probably one of the most useful things I own, I never actually wanted a GPS, and the entire utility of it lies in its ability to flawlessly direct me to places I've never been to, or places I've been to lots of times and can't remember how to get to. There's some software included with it on a CD-ROM, and it can connect to my computer, but both these features are quite useless to a person equipped with a Macintosh. This is kind of a shame, because I could theoretically give Julie a New Zealand accent. The Tom-Tom One XL also comes with a set of international plug adaptors&mdash which is interesting, given that I can't find any clear information suggesting that it can load a map of anywhere but the United States&mdash and a suction cup which is meant to be used to affix the GPS to the car windshield. The suction cup is about as useless as any other suction cup I have ever used. I think I'm going to have to superglue the GPS-holder in place, or something.
Of course, that might be a bad idea, because someone might decide to break into my car(*). The Quick Start guide to the Tom-Tom One XL begins by noting that GPS units are popular targets for theft, and suggests taking the GPS with you whenever you leave the car; similarly, the shutdown screen displays an image of a person putting the GPS into some sort of briefcase. I've been informed that merely having a suction cup on the inside of one's windshield significantly increases the risk of having one's car broken into, as thieves will operate on the assumption that there's a GPS somewhere in the car.
(*)It's not actually my car, I just use it.
Altogether, this is probably the most futuristic thing I own.
Olympus Stylus 770SW Digital Camera
This is more of a note than a review, because there's a scarily comprehensive review here. The important part, however, is that the Olympus Stylus 770SW is crushproof (up to 220 lbs), freezeproof (down to 14 degrees Fahrenheit), waterproof (to 33 feet), and shockproof (it can survive a drop of up to 5 feet). My last camera had a resolution which is now regularly surpassed by the cameras on cellphones, so I'm quite happy to have a new one. The 770SW has a ton of features that I don't understand, and they're all buried under menus accessed via several very overloaded buttons, but I'm actually interested in trying out all the options, so I'll learn them eventually. With the aid of the National Geographic Guide to Digital Photography, most likely. So far, I've only had two major disappointments: 1) the camera's night mode is hard to use without generating very blurry pictures, and 2) it takes xD cards, so I can't use an awesome wireless SD card.
This is a camera that whispers to me in quiet moments. "Go outside," it breathes seductively. "I am waterproof. Take pictures with me. Stop sitting at the goddamn computer."
I seem to own a ton of consumer electronics now. I didn't really ask for them; I've acquired everything as a series of gifts. I feel guilty of excessive consumerism, and thinking about the amount of nitric acid that must have been needed to produce these items makes me cry. I have to admit that they are nice toys, though, and they're expensive enough to make me quite reluctant to return them, on account of the feelings of the gift-givers. Anyway, I thought I'd write a little bit about the most recent items I've acquired:
Pandigital 11" Digital Picture Frame
I confess that I've wanted a digital picture frame for a long time now, because I have a strange habit of collecting images off the internet, but haven't had any way to display them. I fantasized about putting a frame in the window of my office, if I ever had an office, and displaying hundreds of different comics&mdash like the usual strip tacked up the to door, except a lot better.
The Pandigital frame hasn't really lived up to my hopes. The first warning sign came when I plugged it into my computer through the USB port: the name came up as all-caps and eight characters long. It didn't seem like a device that would be Macintosh-friendly, and, sure enough, it registered every file I put on it as several files, treating the resource forks as individual entities. It's formatted as MS-DOS File System (FAT32), according to Disk Utility, and while I suppose this makes sense, it's pretty inconvenient. I've thought about formatting it as HFS+, but I'm not sure whether this would do anything unfortunate to the frame. I'll probably try it later.
I duplicated the images I was planning to upload and used FinderCleaner to strip their resource forks and associated hidden files. (Yeah, I could have just used the command line, but I didn't feel like it.) Uploading pictures to the internal memory is quite slow. I'm still not sure why this is the case.
The frame has a stand which rotates to allow it to stand in a portrait orientation, and I thought this was a better use of the rectangular display. Unfortunately, the stand is the only concession to a portrait mode that the Pandigital 11" possesses. It doesn't detect its own orientation, like at least one other frame I've heard of does, so every picture I put on it must be rotated before it's uploaded. While the remote that comes bundled with frame possesses a "rotate" button, there's no way to rotate a group of files, and the rotate function rotates the displayed picture the wrong way. Worse, files rotated by the frame itself don't look very good, and every rotation creates its own text file on the drive, and the picture frame occasionally forgets that a picture has been rotated, usually at the start of a slideshow. I solved this problem by creating an Automator script (which had all of two steps) to rotate all the pictures I planned on putting on the frame. Alas, Automator choked when I asked it to handle 150-odd fairly-high-resolution images lacking resource forks, and would frequently quit in the middle of the process. Finally, in accordance with Murphy's Law, I initially rotated all the images in the wrong direction. It was at about this point that I scrapped everything and started over.
I quickly discovered that the picture frame can only display JPEG files. No GIF, no TIFF, no PNG. And from there I learned that only some JPEGs work: the frame does not support "progressive" JPEGs. I don't know what that means, and I see no reason why I should have to. It took a while to work this out, because the frame displayed only a helpful "Format Not Supported!!" message.
There are other miscellaneous problems. Should some poor fool dare use the rotating stand, the frame is designed so that the power switch winds up on the bottom of the frame, the least accessible position. The remote uses cheap bubble-y switches, and possesses no power button; while the frame can play music (for the love of Bob, WHY?), the remote also lacks any way to turn the music off its endless loop, although it can control the music's volume. The mini USB jack juts directly out of the back of the frame, meaning that it is impossible to lay the frame flat while transferring files without risking damage to the connector. The frame has only 256 MB of internal memory, which seems odd, given the price of USB drives. The power cord is oddly short. There's no way to create playlists of either pictures or music; should you desire such an odd feature, the best way to achieve it seems to be to use a different SD card for each slide show. While navigating menus, the frame occasionally exhibits an odd bug in which part of the screen moves off-center and wraps around to its other side.
All in all, a stellar example of industrial design. It has funny transitions between pictures (which I can turn off, thank god) and can play MP3s, badly.
I think someone failed to put much thought into this product's core function&mdash displaying pictures.
...sadly, this is pretty much par for the course for consumer electronics products I've used. Apple's products are pretty good, and I have an unhealthy love for my HP laser printer, but everything else seems hastily thrown together to satisfy a list of bullet points. I'm probably going to stick with this model, because digital picture frames in general seem terribly poorly designed, and I doubt that I can find a better one.
Tom-Tom One XL GPS Unit
This was described as a "mercy gift". Most of you are aware of my uncanny talent for getting lost&mdash
paraleipsis particularly, perhaps. I was given a GPS to attempt to remedy this situation, and, to my great surprise, it mostly works. In fact, it works so well that I am now convinced it is a thing of witchcraft and devilry which must be burned. I am wary of associating with Global Positioning Sorcery.In one of my early tests of the device, I was able to navigate to a distant location without ever having the faintest idea where I was or where I was going. Worse, it got me there on time. This was a rather creepy feeling, and blindly following the instructions of the GPS reminded me eerily of Marshall Brain's hypothetical program Manna. (Disclaimer: I have a deeply-felt animosity towards Marshall Brain's writing, and towards a lot of his thinking as well.) It was suddenly very clear to me how people could drive off cliffs while listening to a GPS unit&mdash mine could have easily directed me to Idaho, or into a wall, without my realizing it.
I'd owned a GPS unit before, but it wasn't nearly as threatening. It was a Magellan model with a tiny LCD screen, and most of the amusement one could derive from it stemmed from turning on and leaving outside for fifteen minutes while it vainly attempted to find a satellite. Sometimes it would get lucky and manage to figure out the latitude and longitude of where it was, which I imagine gave it a great sense of personal satisfaction.
I was encouraged to name my new GPS, and so I named it Julie, because I've always wanted to name an inanimate object Julie. I set Julie's voice to be British and told her to display distance in metric units, because I wanted to gain an intuitive understanding of metric units. This also has the advantage of confusing anybody riding in the car with me.
I don't know about 99% of the Tom-Tom One XL's features, and I don't care about them. Even though it's probably one of the most useful things I own, I never actually wanted a GPS, and the entire utility of it lies in its ability to flawlessly direct me to places I've never been to, or places I've been to lots of times and can't remember how to get to. There's some software included with it on a CD-ROM, and it can connect to my computer, but both these features are quite useless to a person equipped with a Macintosh. This is kind of a shame, because I could theoretically give Julie a New Zealand accent. The Tom-Tom One XL also comes with a set of international plug adaptors&mdash which is interesting, given that I can't find any clear information suggesting that it can load a map of anywhere but the United States&mdash and a suction cup which is meant to be used to affix the GPS to the car windshield. The suction cup is about as useless as any other suction cup I have ever used. I think I'm going to have to superglue the GPS-holder in place, or something.
Of course, that might be a bad idea, because someone might decide to break into my car(*). The Quick Start guide to the Tom-Tom One XL begins by noting that GPS units are popular targets for theft, and suggests taking the GPS with you whenever you leave the car; similarly, the shutdown screen displays an image of a person putting the GPS into some sort of briefcase. I've been informed that merely having a suction cup on the inside of one's windshield significantly increases the risk of having one's car broken into, as thieves will operate on the assumption that there's a GPS somewhere in the car.
(*)It's not actually my car, I just use it.
Altogether, this is probably the most futuristic thing I own.
Olympus Stylus 770SW Digital Camera
This is more of a note than a review, because there's a scarily comprehensive review here. The important part, however, is that the Olympus Stylus 770SW is crushproof (up to 220 lbs), freezeproof (down to 14 degrees Fahrenheit), waterproof (to 33 feet), and shockproof (it can survive a drop of up to 5 feet). My last camera had a resolution which is now regularly surpassed by the cameras on cellphones, so I'm quite happy to have a new one. The 770SW has a ton of features that I don't understand, and they're all buried under menus accessed via several very overloaded buttons, but I'm actually interested in trying out all the options, so I'll learn them eventually. With the aid of the National Geographic Guide to Digital Photography, most likely. So far, I've only had two major disappointments: 1) the camera's night mode is hard to use without generating very blurry pictures, and 2) it takes xD cards, so I can't use an awesome wireless SD card.
This is a camera that whispers to me in quiet moments. "Go outside," it breathes seductively. "I am waterproof. Take pictures with me. Stop sitting at the goddamn computer."