Another post about tablets, ereaders, and the like.

(Recap: some time ago (2000 or so), my friend Joe and I detailed something called The Device, which was an amalgam of the features all these other little-d devices we saw popping up like crabgrass (mp3 players, gps devices, etc). Now, of course, there are a great many devices (iPhone/Droid/Pre first among them) that do pretty much everything on our 'this would be the perfect device' list back in '00.)

Now, another generation of tablet computers is upon us, and I'm still missing half of my feature list. This may be the year that I finally purchase such a device, despite the (to me) feature holes. Here's what I'm looking for from The Tablet: 

• It should be able to read electronic books as well (or better) than any current dedicated devices on the market. (Currently, all of the tablets on the market have a crappy pixels-per-inch. The iPad, for example, feels very low-res to me.)
• It should have a full-color capacitive touchscreen. Sorry, Kindle.
• It should have 3G (or better) connectivity, bluetooth, GPS, etc. These are the basics.
• It should have a web browser, naturally. And it should be fucking awesome. I'm not at all sold on the necessity of Flash, but I'd like to have the option to install it. Hardly a deal-breaker though.
• It should have robust note-taking features, so much so that people re-evaluate "Do I need to take my notebook with me? I'll have my Tablet..." Right now, tablet laptops are big and clunky, and way too awkward to consider as a true 'doodling in a coffeehouse/taking notes for class/jotting down memos in a meeting/putting entries in my diary' note book. Hard to believe that not a single tablet maker has focused on this as a key feature. If you can't replace a pen and paper—remember that ease-of-use (e.g. quick access) is a feature—then why use the 'notebook' form factor?
• It should be able to stream all of my content (movies, photos, books, music, etc), all of the time, from either the cloud, or from a 'home computer/server' that I connect to. If I have a data signal and my computer is set up properly, this is a no-brainer. It should Just Work.
• It should have some sort of analogue to WhisperSync (i.e. remember your place in a book), but for *all media* across *all other devices*. This is a big deal in getting people to accept a third device (or second, if they have a dumbphone or no phone) into their lives. If I'm watching a video on my home computer, I should be able to leave home, put The Tablet in a backpack/bag/purse/holster/whatever, and when I sit down somewhere, whip out The Tablet and have my (wireless, of course!) headphones switch to it w/o a hitch and remember my position in the video.
• I should be able to 'lend out' a book (or any other media!) to another user an unlimited amount of times for either a) an infinite duration or b) set an 'expiration date' on the rental (so the ability to read it on my own device automatically returns to me after, say, a month). There's a place for DRM, but it should broaden options, not restrict them. The narrower the restraint, the more resistance to it.
• A nice bonus would be the ability to use it as a second (or third, or...) monitor. Alternately, a trackpad-type surface. Also, a TV remote control. Why not?

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/updates

My players and I just don’t see any accurate way to refer to these
than ‘patches’.

These missives are NOT errata. Errata is a correction of a mistake or
misprint. They clearly INTENDED Rain of Blood to be that huge AoE, do
all these neat things, and so forth. They just realized that it was
broken, so they changed it. That’s not fixing typos, that’s a patch.

What’s particularly frustrating to me as a DM is that due to the way
the character builder (and other things) have their hooks into us,
it’s extraordinarily difficult to say ‘no, we’re not going to use this
fix or that fix’. There’s no easy way to say ‘lock this in to the
current version of the rules’ without also saying ‘no new books’.

They either need hire more playtesters, or release content more slowly
so their current cadre of playtesters can keep up. This ‘release
broken powers and classes; we can always patch it away later’ BS is
goddamned annoying.

Okay, nobody's actually claiming it's 'errata'. It's an 'update'. Suuuure.

No matter what it says on the tin, it fundamentally changes the way
the game is played. It invalidates printed rule books and it confuses
and disappoints players. It alters the game on a scale that has never
been attempted in a Pen-n-Paper RPG.

There's a reason it hasn't been attempted, though: it's not a very good idea.

WoW (and the like) come with the expectation that both game rules and
player abilities will change as time goes by. Classes will get new
powers, aggro will work in different ways, some powers will get
weaker, some stronger. All well and good: same game manufacturers even
hand out respecs whenever major changes occur, allowing players to
swap out old-and-busted abilities for whatever's on top in this patch.
A get out of gimped-character-jail free card, if you will. Again, this
is fine.

However, pen and paper RPGs aren't MMOs.

For one, they're just fundamentally different kinds of games, as
different as a board game is, or a bunch of people playing Werewolves
vs Villagers. If I buy a book, I expect /most/ of that book's rules to
be static. The 4E PHB and DMG have been gutted, replacing large chunks
of text with new, 'better' versions... so if I look up 'stealth' in a
theoretical 'up-to-date' PHB, I would see an entire page of red ink
where text has been altered, devaluing my purchase. Not only do the
world's fundamental rules change, but player abilities change as well,
almost always for the worse. This upsets players, and leads them
(reasonably!) to ask their DM to ungimp them... which in turn upsets
the DM, who both a) doesn't want to upset their players, and b) really
thought that power shouldn't have been printed in the first place.
Awesome, everyone's unhappy. Thanks!

I'm tired of trying to build a campaign this foundation of sand. I'm
tired of my players being upset. I've long since stopped buying books,
as I don't see what value they offer. The funny thing is, I like a lot
about the game. I think they've built a great tactical RPG... I just
wish they would've play tested more before releasing, and that they'd
leave the rules alone.

So, there's this thing. The "iPad". 

There has long been a trope in the gadget-loving (or gadget-paying-attention-to) world, where Apple announces a new gadget and then everyone bitches about some feature it doesn't have.

This time, at least for me, it's less about the hardware (though: no front-facing camera? really?) and more about the software. 

• STILL no multitasking. I can't run Pandora in the background, I can't browse the web or read email with a MLB.TV window off to the side. (Though, with the way my team plays, that's perhaps for the best.)
• No easy-as-falling-out-of-bed sharing. Okay, so I create a new Numbers spreadsheet or a new Pages document, how do I get these back to my Mac? Email them to myself? Sync them by docking? What is this, 1995? It really shouldn't be so hard to do this sort of thing. Two clicks at most. Send To -> My Mac. Done. Instead...
• Not just sharing, though. No presence-based or location-based computing at all, based on what I'm seeing. 
• No videoconferencing. No cameras at all, in fact, so even if there is an iChat app, there's no iChat AV possible.
• No lending of books, on any terms. (At least, not announced, and one would think that would be something you'd announce.) (On the other hand, I can take a song I've downloaded (iTunes+) and send a copy to a friend, maybe I can do the same with books? In any case, there's no "lend book to <username> for <duration" feature.)
• It doesn't replace a notepad. Good ol' pen-and-paper. I can see why they wanted to avoid a stylus, but I'm very disappointed that there's no 'sketch' ability built into the iPad's notes application.

I'm housesitting for my parents. Between this and visiting my girl up in Baltimore over the weekend, I've been living out of a suitcase and laptop case for the better part of a week. Last night, I went to bed with a nagging thought running through my brain:

I have too much stuff, and too much stuff I dislike.

I started mentally calculating what possessions of mine I wouldn't want to get rid of. It's a pretty short list. I've long been someone who tends to accumulate possessions, who enjoys creature comforts. I'm not sure that's changing per se, but I find that I want a vastly smaller quantity of possessions.

I want to take my books, and my couch, and my chair, and my table, and my desk, and my bed, and my dresser, and my clothes, and my bag and almost everything else I own, and give them away. 

This has been percolating for some time, now. For Christmas, I mostly focused on giving people crafts, software licenses, or things that let them use their existing possessions more efficiently or more often. While most of these gifts remained ungiven, my Wish List had a significant number of non-physical items (software, primarily).

I'm not sure where these feelings are heading, but it should be interesting.

First, read this: 

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dcsportsbog/2009/12/skins_reach_out_to_ticke... 

It would appear that the Redskins are reaching out to season ticket holders to ask them about the game day experience. I responded to "Claudia" with an open letter. It is below. 

--------- 

Claudia, 

Thank you for leaving that voicemail for Suzanne. It's good to know there are folks in the Redskins front office who are focusing on the game day experience. I know you didn't call me. In fact, I'm not even a season ticket holder (though my father is). I would like to share my game day experiences so far this season with you. I suspect he would agree with me on every point, but you can call him and ask him yourself if you're so inclined. 

I will avoid addressing the team's on-field performance, as that is outside of your domain. 

The Redskins' game day experience is, far and away, the worst I have ever experienced at any level for any athletic event I have ever attended. Without question. While I have had many enjoyable experiences at the game, it was inevitably /despite/ the stadium, much of the personnel, and many other aspects, not /because/ of them. 

FedEx Field was built in about 2 days, and it shows. Foundations are cracking. Seats are turning an unpleasant shade of orange (rather than their original burgundy). Bathrooms are not so much 'cleaned' as 'hosed out'. (In fact, they're dirtier than the bathrooms at RFK, which is no mean feat.) The seats themselves are vastly inferior to seats at Verizon Center and at Nationals Park. The replay screens are a joke. The full-video screens are tiny, blurry, and I feel like I can see every light bulb. The other scoreboard, I don't even know what to call it except a Light-Brite. Even from all the way across the stadium, I can see every light bulb. Maybe I'm misremembering, but the team may still be using the same graphics from the RFK days, like the three humpbacked oafs exhorting the increasingly disinterested fans to chant DEEE FENSE. Instead of the Verizon Center's new (beautiful) HD banners and hanging screens, or Nationals Park's staggeringly huge HD jumbotron, Redskins fans -- who, remember, are paying more for their tickets -- get a system so old it looks like it was used at RFK. 

Stadium personnel are a strange mixed bag. Ticket takers, in my years of experience, are almost always very friendly and upbeat... in fact, I've never had a negative experience there. Sadly, though, the personnel situation goes down from there. 

Far and away the worst single thing about the Redskins Game Day Experience (worse than the Lite-Brite, worse than the sketchy bathrooms, worse even than the ticket prices) is Mark Kessler. Now, it's entirely possible that Mr. Kessler is a very nice person. However, he is atrocious at being the stadium's announcer. If you take nothing else from this, at least do me this favor: tell Mark that Redskins fans are generally pretty knowledgeable about football, and can generally tell when it's third down. We do not need to be told this, and especially not with his Big Announcer Voice. On a related subject, 'long' is somewhat ironically a very short word. Please do not try to compensate for this by saying "Third and lonnnnnnnnnnng!" It drives my father and I crazy. Furthermore, 3rd and 6 is not lonnnnnnnnnng. (It's not even long.) 

But enough about Mr. Kessler, let's talk about the band. I respect that the band is all-volunteer. It's hard work, and largely thankless. I am firmly of the opinion that the Redskins should keep the band, but that they need to support them a little more. The band isn't marching in proper lines, they miss half their notes, and they look like walking hot dogs. They don't produce enough sound, so they have to be mic'd, which exacerbates the situation. I don't know what it will take to fix it, if it means paying the band members, buying them all uniforms, getting them new instruments, increasing the size of the band, or what... but the band right now is a joke, and they need some sort of help from the team. They should be a source of pride for the team, not relegated to a handful of yellow-clad pensioners wedged under a scoreboard. 

A few minor items: Concessions are too slow, and offer poor value. Add more ATMs. Repaint the parking lot lines, you can barely see them. The speakers were never good, and though they've been replaced at least once, are still ear-splittingly awful. Whatever you have to do to get butts in those club seats, do it. I hate being told every game is 'sold out' and then seeing thousands of fans disguised as empty yellow seats. 

I have no complaints about the Redskinettes. (Yes, I'm going to keep calling them that.) 

My father is almost certainly getting rid of his season tickets this season. Some of that is due to factors beyond your control (on-field performance, ticket prices, etc.), but if you address these issues you'll have a vastly improved game day experience for your future customers. 

Thanks for listening.

Chris

So, I took my car to get repaired earlier this evening. I'm going to leave out the name of the place I took it to. 

I'm also going to write this post in the form of an allegory. 

I went to my doctor's office earlier this evening. I said, "Doc, I can't see clearly in my right eye." 

Doc says, okay, no problem. Let's take a look. He does. Comes back and says okay, we're going to have to perform very minor surgery. Looks like your cornea is busted, we'll just swap in a new one. 

"No problem," says I. 

He performs the surgery, and says I'm as good as new.

I go to leave the dealership doctor's office, and I notice that in fact I still cannot see entirely clearly out of my right eye. Things on the outside of my eye, toward the periphery, are still unduly fuzzy. I turn on my heels, and waltz right back into my doctor's office, and say, "Doc, I can see fine in the center, but the outside edges are still bad. Can you help me?"

He is of course mortified, as any good doctor would be. He immediately says he'll have me checked out, on the spot. He runs some tests, and comes back to me and says, it looks like there's a nerve that isn't connected right. We'll have to replace the entire eye to get it fixed, or you can save some pennies and leave it as it is.

"Whoa! Wait!," I say. "When I came in, I had a busted cornea. You knew it, I knew it, and all the nerves were clearly working fine. After all, replacing the cornea fixed part of the problem. If it was a nerve thing and not a cornea thing, replacing the cornea wouldn't have fixed ANY of the problem."

No, he says, it was definitely both things all along. We just didn't notice the nerve thing.

"Wha? Doesn't it make more sense that, in the process of replacing the cornea, you bumped something or scratched something, and jacked up the nerve? That seems like a much simpler explanation, in the face of all these, well, facts."

He takes a lot of pride in his work, says he. Done a million operations like this before, very, very certain he didn't do anything to mess it up.

I say, "I come to see you because I trust your ability. But I also am pretty sure that this is an instance where you (or one of your nurses, or something) messed something up by accident. I don't really care why it happened, but I'm pretty sure that it did happen... and I want you to replace the eye that I think got busted by someone on your staff."

He says he can't do that.

I sigh. Yes, he gives me the original cost of the first operation back, but is adamant that he can't/won't replace the eye. But I came in with one eye problem, and left with another, similarly severe eye problem.

I go to leave (once he's put my eye back together again a second time), and now I notice that I can see clearly out of all of my right eye, but now the periphery of my LEFT eye is fuzzy.

"See?" he says, when I mention it to him. "Clearly it's the nerve."

Gizmodo recently posted an editorial in which the author proclaims her disdain for eReaders, and says they're a doomed gadget category.

I agree, but I think perhaps for different reasons. I think the notion of a device that does little else but read books is downright silly. On the other hand, I think there's a great market for a tablet-form-factor device that does many things, including read ebooks.

(An aside: some time ago (2000 or so), my friend Joe and I detailed something called The Device, which was an amalgam of the features all these other little-d devices we saw popping up like crabgrass (mp3 players, gps devices, etc). Now, of course, there are a great many devices (iPhone/Droid/Pre first among them) that do pretty much everything on our 'this would be the perfect device' list back in '00.)

The problem right now with eReaders is that they're stuck in 2000 mentality, and aren't learning from the lessons taught us by the "iPhone Generation" of smartphones... they're stuck with the notion that "...this is an eReader, why would it need Feature X?" rather than the driving notion that people don't want to carry more than 1 (or maybe two, see below) devices on them at a time. 

In my mind, The Tablet should have the following features:

• It should be able to read electronic books as well (or better) than any current dedicated devices on the market.
• It should have a full-color touchscreen.
• It should have 3G (or better) connectivity, bluetooth, GPS, etc.
• It should have a web browser, naturally.
• It should have robust note-taking features, so much so that people re-evaluate "Do I need to take my notebook with me? I'll have my Tablet..." Right now, tablet laptops are big and clunky, and way too awkward to consider as a true 'doodling in a coffeehouse/taking notes for class/jotting down memos in a meeting/putting entries in my diary' note book.
• It should be able to stream all of my content (movies, photos, books, music, etc), all of the time, from either the cloud, or from a 'home computer/server' that I connect to.
• It should have some sort of analogue to WhisperSync (i.e. remember your place in a book), but for *all media* across *all other devices*. This is a big deal in getting people to accept a third device (or second, if they have a dumbphone or no phone) into their lives. If I'm watching a video on my home computer, I should be able to leave home, put The Tablet in a backpack/bag/purse/holster/whatever, and when I sit down somewhere, whip out The Tablet and have my (wireless, of course!) headphones switch to it w/o a hitch and remember my position in the video.
• I should be able to 'lend out' a book (or any other media!) to another user an unlimited amount of times for either a) an infinite duration or b) set an 'expiration date' on the rental (so the ability to read it on my own device automatically returns to me after, say, a month). There's a place for DRM, but it should allow broad options, not restrict them. The narrower the restraint, the more resistance to it.
• A nice bonus would be the ability to use it as a second (or third, or...) monitor. Alternately, a trackpad-type surface. Also, a TV remote control. Why not?

http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=19236&p=1

Point A: There are an overwhelming number of jobless Maryland residents seeking the aid of "safety net" benefits while job hunting and making ends meet.
Point B: There are not enough caseworkers to handle the influx of applications from unemployed residents.

...

...

...

Um...

...is it just me or is there a fairly clear solution to this problem?