Day: January 9, 2007
Rollin’ rollin’ rollin’
As strange as it may seem, there are actually people out there on the internets—most of whom I don’t work with—who read the drivel I occasionally post to this blog. There are very few among those sorry souls who have actually announced the fact, however, and I think having such poor taste deserves some public ridicule: so thanks, Paul! If this sort of thing keeps up I’ll have to change my theatre bio from writes an unpopular weblog
to writes an only slightly unpopular weblog
.
Seriously, Paul Gorbould’s gor[b] has been on my own blogroll indirectly for quite a while now, via Planet CBC. (Here’s a piece that I think will give a good idea of why I read gor[b]: Paul’s remembrance of Lister Sinclair.) It’s kind of strange to know that someone at my favourite Canadian institution is actually reading what I write, not just about it but everything else.
(Don’t) Call me
Take away most of the iPhone‘s extras—phone, camera, wifi—and drop the US$600 price (including required two-year cell contract) and you’ve probably got a nice, reasonably-priced media device that I’d consider buying; it’d probably be on par with a current video iPod, if the memory capacity were bumped up sufficiently. I don’t need a lower-resolution camera than the one I’ve already got, and I don’t need to be connected to the net 24 hours a day (which, granted, is only about 3 hours more than I am right now). Frankly, I don’t need video playback either, although it’d be nice to replace that functionality with some more open and/or lossless audio codecs.
But most of all I don’t want a cell phone! Don’t use one, don’t need one, don’t want one. Can’t think of anything less desirable that doesn’t involve physical pain.
It’s an impressive bit of tech, cramming all that stuff in there, but it’s not for me. Given the level of similarity I’ve discovered I share with the average consumer, they’re gonna sell billions of these things.