Apple..../sigh

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g3VlcR9gb5Ad3aCQ7b9QUZgOUJ_g

I am mainly talking the part where Apple says they would be willing to shut down the iTunes Music Store.  What.  The.  Hell.

I got my first iPod 10 months ago, my great 8Gb fat nano.  I use it everyday, I have bought several albums, movies, and singular songs with it.  I jumped on the iPod bandwagon after my first MP3 player was no longer supported by Windows Media Player mainly because I wanted to centralize everything and have access to arguably the best music store.  But the fact that Apple is willing to shut it down in a wink of an eye angers me.  The single most redeeming fact about Apple is only important to them if they make money from it.  I know that this is just useless squabble between record companies and Apple, but Apple's fleeting support for one of its best products makes me not want them anymore.  At least the DSi is coming out next year...maybe a 16Gb SD card will too.  My first iPod will most likely be my last.  

It's Been Awhile

Whatever.  This blog will be somewhat sporadic, so at least I got around to posting again.

The first round of tests are over to pretty good fanfare, I'm pulling B+ or greater in every class.  The first Engineering project is almost over with somewhat little success, but still taught me the "concept" of engineering.  My group ended up pushing two ideas (which kind of slowed us): freezing the soil to measure volume change with strain sensors, and measuring weight of completely dry and saturated soil and forming a relationship between weight and water content.  Good ideas, it is just that 20 or so hours isn't enough time to get anything done.  English is going great, two short papers and one big one down with another major paper due soon.  This next one is about digital literacy, and I decided to explore anonymity on the Internet.  I finally feel that I have a handle on writing well, mainly because I finally found the connection between having good ideas and getting them on paper. 

I'm going to post several things about things I've been doing, but they deserve posts of their own.  A battery of posts coming your way!

Death Magnetic

My thoughts on the new Metallica album Death Magnetic are all very positive.  From what I have heard so far, the album is really shaping up to be a great one.  The best thing is that this album has direction, focus if you will.  But here's my song-by-song analysis:

The Day That Never Comes - Beautiful song.  It took me a while for the effect to sink in, but this almost has the chills that I get from the beginning of "One".  The only thing I don't really like about it is that some of the riffs don't match up as well as they could have.  But it's not that noticeable to be a huge negative.

My Apocalypse - Solid beginning, really nice hook.  The lyrics are Slayer-esque, which is really kind of bad.  The riffage in this song is awesome, the lyrics really take away from it.  "Dripping bloody valentine"?  Seriously?  But nevertheless, the music is solid as granite.

Cyanide - Better lyrics, much better focus than the song above.  Nice off-tempo stuff in the middle.  That's old Metallica speaking through.  Pretty good overall, although somewhat tiring to listen to repeatedly.

The Judas Kiss - My favorite song so far.  Awesome playing, great lyrics.  The other songs took a while for me to start singing (mentally or actually), this one I was getting into on the first time I listened.  Very nice vocal style by James.  So much power.

The Unforgiven III - Nice break from the style of the rest of the album.  The beginning is done real well.  The transitions are a bit abrupt, but it flowed okay together.  Very beautiful lyrics though.

The other half will come tomorrow.  I'm tired. 

Soil Moisture Part 2

So we finally broke out into groups yesterday.  The other two guys in my group seemed focused, always a good thing.  We came up with 2 different designs, both being somewhat off-the-wall.  The first is freezing the soil and somehow measuring the volume change (initially I thought it was mass change until I was corrected by someone else in the class later, so embarassing...).  The other was to use a completely "dry" sample and a saturated sample, store their masses, and use them as benchmarks for all the test samples.  Of course from my novice engineering speak, what I might be saying is completely ridiculous.  We sent off a memo to our professor, so hopefully he will give us clairity to our ideas.  But progess is great!  Can't wait for tomorrow....except for getting up at 8.  

The Fall of a Giant

http://kotaku.com/5047632/shane-kim-delivers-death-blow-to-ensemble

A very depressing day for me. Ensemble Studios, creators of the Age of Empires franchise, will be shut down once Halo Wars is shipped. In a climate of PC piracy and ever-increasing console sales, awesome PC studios like Ensemble closing down is understandable, but very low on Microsoft's part.

The main reason why this is so important to me is that my first real gaming experience was through Age of Empires I. Every week, I would go to my friend's house (while my sister went to Girl Scouts, I think) and play it. We were never good at it, but it was so much fun. It led me to buy Civilization II, the first game I really owned, and Age of Empires II, such a classic that was. It was the game that propelled me to all others. And for a while, when I was younger (like 13 or 14), I really wanted to be a programmer there. I don't know why, but the idea of working there seemed brilliant and it was a source of earlier inspiration for me. I probably won't be a designer now (probably is the key word), but the thought of working at a place as cool as Ensemble kept me in the right mindset school-wise.

I guess this might be a sign for me. A sign to move on, to have new experiences. I suppose that is appropriate, but I will never forget my past. But if I can't handle something that shouldn't affect most people, like a video game developer closing, what about bigger hurdles?

Apple

Apple is ticking me off right now.  Why?  It's new product release time.  And they replaced the nano.  Again.  WHY?  It's not like they weren't selling.  I just feel so irritated after getting the last edition thinking that it would be that way for a while.  "Constantly improving" business models are good when you think about it, but it makes customers feel shafted.  Kind of like Rock Band 2 being able to transfer all the songs from Rock Band 1.  I can just rent RB1, and get 50 songs.  Simple as that.

 

Soil Moisture

So soil moisture sensors..... my first "engineering design" project.  I felt like we got somewhere today, but it was in the last 5 minutes with the whole narrowing down the target audience.  It's hard to work backwards from a product to an audience, mainly because if you can't find one, you're screwed.  The guy at least gets engineering though, it seems.  He understands the complete picture and always seems to bring it up.

About engineering in general, I was having an identity crisis: what should I do? Computer? Electrical? Mechanicial? Chemical?  I had no clue.  Luckily, the feeling I get is that it doesn't matter.  According to several professors I had listened to, people hire engineers, not ____ engineers.  Of course, it's good to have a focus, but focuses breed stagnacy.  That's a good thing for me to hear, because now I can worry less about taking the right classes and worry more about those.