Upcoming gadgets, and currently hot items- literally

Christmas is still four months away, but for the tech industry it’s already time to preview the Holiday shopping season.

PlayStation just debuted it’s PS3 Slim, a slimmer (duh) and cheaper version of it’s console. With it’s 120 GB hard drive and $299 price tag it’s set to truly compete with the XBox 360, which has the same amount of storage space for one hundred dollars more. PlayStation also introduced it’s newest generation of portable gaming, the 16GB PSP Go, and a new, smaller assortment of PSP games. They’re called PSP Minis, and won’t exceed 100 MB. Sony calls them “snackable” gaming experiences, meant to compete with casual gaming concepts usually found on the Nintendo Wii. Among the titles currently available from Sony’s Minis collection are a Sudoku game, Tetris and Galaga, i.e., arcade classics. The Minis store and the PSP Go will go live October 1. The PS3 Slim releases September 1.

Bill Gates, always the one-upsman, is working on a peripheral for the 360 that will, once again, revolutionize the gaming industry. You may have seen Microsoft’s Project Natal previewed on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. The best description I can come up with is that it’s a wireless, virtual controller. A camera/infer red detector puts the player in the game. Like the Wii, a player’s movements control the game. But, unlike the Wii, there is no controller– every movement of the player’s body is read by the detector and is translated into game commands. On Jimmy Fallon a simple kickball game is demonstrated, as well as a not-so-simple driving game. The device’s accuracy seems to be above par. Expect to see this cool gadget on store shelves in time for Christmas 2010. Sorry, you’ll have to wait a year to experience the next level in virtual gaming.

iPhones are blowing up– literally. There have been at least two reports of exploding I-tech in recent days. An iPhone 3GS owner in the Netherlands reported that his celly blew up while it was sitting on his car’s front passenger seat. It was “locked in his car at the time of it’s combustion,” according to a report from slashgear.com, a technology news site. In another incident a teenage girl’s iPod Touch “made a hissing noise,” and within 30 seconds “there was a pop, a big puff of smoke” before the MP3 player exploded ten feet into the air. Apple offered the Liverpool girl a $271 refund but required that the girl sign a confidentiality agreement, which she did not. In both cases Apple refused to admit liability for its volatile products.

NBC invites us into it's Community

My faith in the sitcom format has recently been renewed, thanks to NBC’s Community. It stars the hilarious Joel McHale of The Soup fame, along with legend Chevy Chase, John Oliver (senior British correspondent for The Daily Show) and Ken Jeong (the Asian dude in The Hangover, Role Models and Pineapple Express). Focusing on Greendale Community College, Joe and Anthony Russo direct and executive produce the series. If they bring to it the cult-like fan devotion their Arrested Development garnered, this show will be a runaway hit.

In a bold marketing move that other networks are sure to imitate, NBC previewed the show on the Facebook, the most popular social networking site. American Facebook subscribers were jilted– the pilot was only viewable by users outside of the US. This was an attempt by the Peacock Network to get an unadulterated opinion on it’s new show.

The show focuses on McHale’s character, Jeff Crocker, a lawyer who discovers his undergraduate degree is not quite legit– it’s from Colombia, not Columbia. He’s forced to go to community college, and runs into Professor Ian Duncan (Oliver), a former client that he got off of a DUI charge. Crocker uses their relationship to his advantage, hoping to skate through college with Duncan providing him test answers. Of course Crocker falls for a fellow student, The Book of Daniel’s Gillian Jacobs as Britta (not like the water filter). He pretends to be a board certified Spanish tutor to insinuate himself into her graces and, eventually, pants.

From what I’ve seen, the cast is stocked with actors who are in their own right funny, but as an ensemble will prove to be blatter-bustingly so. If you can’t find a bootleg of the pilot online, you can at least see clips on NBC.com/community, and see the show's website at Greendalecommunitycollege.com.

El Nino

You may have noticed that this year has been wetter than last. It’s rained almost every day this summer, where as last year it was devastatingly dry. It’s not that the South’s long drought is over– it’s actually El Niño. El Niño means “the child” in Spanish, but more specifically refers to the Christ child. It is so named because in South America the phenomenon is most noticeable around Christmas. Also called the Southern Oscillation, El Niño occurs every three to eight years, though it has no well-defined period.

Scientists have known about El Niño for a long time. The phenomenon was observed as far back as the Holocene epoch, 10,000 years ago. The first time this recurring weather pattern was referred to as the Christ child was in the late 1800s. Around that time scientists began to notice that droughts in India and Australia occurred simultaneously. In 1924 Gilbert Walker observed the interactions between warm sea air and cooler land air in the Pacific ocean. He called the predictable pattern the Southern Oscillation. The Southern Oscillation is the atmospheric counterpart to El Niño, and is what drives the system. We now know that the Walker circulation (named for Gilbert), a group of trade winds in the Pacific, begins to falter as one of the first signs that an El Niño event is beginning. When these trade winds die, water in the Pacific produce warm waves that travel along the equator to the South American coast, which is usually cold due to upwellings of cooler, deeper waters. But the added warmth of these waves begins a trend that builds over time until an El Niño event occurs.

Other than the near-daily rain, El Niño also effects the South in other beneficial ways. The summer temperature is lower during El Niño, and the added rainfall reduces the risk of wild fires. We’ll also experience a wetter, milder winter this year. And because it diverts heat from the Atlantic to the Pacific, expect this hurricane season to produce few large storms, thanks to El Niño.

But not all the effects are good. Warmer water off the coast of South America reduce the nutrient content of the water, harming the fishing industry. And a wetter growing season means later and smaller crop harvests, in most cases. Midwestern states are more likely to flood as well. There is also some evidence of a correlation between the increase in algae blooms (or red tide) off the California coast.

Though it can last for up to two years, this El Niño is expected to only last through winter. If it persists Spring 2010 will be colder and dryer. La Niña, the sister system to El Niño, always follows. Expect a hotter, dryer summer next year. So enjoy this respite while you can, because next year promises to be nearly unbearable.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow to be hobos

To the freshmen now flooding the sidewalks and congesting the thoroughfares, welcome to Valdosta! We’re so glad to have you and your money (and your parents’ money). Most of you are coming from communities much smaller than V-town, places we refer to as the Boonies, or BFE. As such you’re going to experience things that you never would at home. For instance, Valdosta doesn’t shut down at nine each night. The bars are open til two, followed by late night trips to the Waffle House. You could actually stay out all night and be thoroughly entertained. And we have two (count them, two!) Wal-Marts. We refer to them as Wal-Mart, and the good Wal-Mart. Valdosta is almost an actual, bona fide metropolis. Our downtown scene is really spectacular– on top of the multitude of bars at which to wile away hours waxing philosophical in an inebriated state, there are beautiful boutiques, superb shops, great galleries and rad restaurants. And the bums are the bomb. Any metropolis worth living in has them. We have a standard assortment– there’s the sweet guy who sleeps on the bench but doesn’t bother anyone, the old, thin one who talks to himself, and the one who isn’t homeless but looks like he is, who chases you around on his Rascal asking you if he can “warsh yer windahs,” which I think means “wash your windows.” My bike has no windows, though, so he usually leaves me alone. The standard urban legend about the homeless is that they’re secretly super rich, with a stash of gold doubloons hidden somewhere in the sewers. Heck, some of you doe-eyed freshmen may some day, if you apply yourselves correctly, join the unwashed masses and become bums yourselves. Yes, a leisurely life of panhandling may be in your future, if you play your cards right. Imagine how at peace you’d be with no school, no job, no family, no cares in the world. Just you, your bindle (that’s the hobo stick with the handkerchief at the end) and perhaps a mangy mutt as your faithful companion.

If you’re now considering a life as a vagrant, you’d better first figure out what type of bum you want to be. There are a few varieties of vagrants. A hobo, for instance, tends to travel more than a standard bum. Hobos wonder from city to city, with no real base of operation. They’re the type who travel in open train cars. If this appeals to you, consider becoming a hobo. If you’re prone to motion sickness, consider a more stationary vagrancy, like being a tramp. They travel by foot. If you see a tramp on a bike, feel free to kick him off. Tramps aren’t allowed to use vehicles of any sort, so by his violating that rule he forfeits his right to the Huffy.

If you, like me, like to drink– a lot– then you’d be most comfortable as a wino. I know what you’re thinking, you don’t like wine. Me neither, but the modern wino doesn’t necessarily have to drink that potent potable. No, winos enjoy all varieties of liquors. Gin and juice is popular for black bums, but white bums prefer whiskey. To each his own.

Unlike success in life, becoming a bum doesn’t require hard work nor discipline, but it does require practice. You can tell the difference between a bum who has been on the street for decades from one who is fresh on the job– there are subtle panhandling techniques that one masters only after years on the job. But don’t worry about that, it’ll come with time. If you really want to free yourself of the burdens of society and start a carefree life as a vagrant, all you have to do is ignore every piece of advice your mother ever gave you. It turns out all that nagging was geared toward preventing you from becoming a bum.

Brush your teeth. Oral hygiene may be the most decisive factor in becoming a street urchin. Regardless of their individual situations, all bums have bad teeth– it’s as if they’re British. I’ve never seen a bum with Da Vinci veneers. According to a statistic I just made up, the average street beggar has six teeth, and when you think about it, you don’t need any more than that. Three teeth on top, three on bottom. Two molars for crushing, two canines for ripping, two bicuspids for cutting. When you live your life on the move, you’ve really got to streamline your body, dumping excess weight that only slows you down. Considering that, losing unnecessary teeth only makes sense. Dumping two ounces of teeth makes you two ounces faster. And while you might not think that small weight would make a difference, it could be the deciding factor in whether you clear the chromed bumper of the rapidly approaching H2 as you jaywalk across the interstate. So if you want to be a bum, stop brushing. Also, consider trying meth, as it’ll help you rid yourself of unwanted teeth.

Don’t do drugs. I don’t mean weed, smoking pot won’t set you on a path to bumdom, contrary to what your parents, priest, guidance counselor and favorite NBC stars may tell you. The more you know, my butt! To become a bum you’ve got to do hard stuff. Start with crack, since you don’t have to inject that (though if you do, you’ll trip your balls off). Drinking heavily helps too. If you can manage to sell off all your possessions for drugs and booze you’ll be a bum before you can say “spare change?”


Always wear clean underwear. And, as an extension of that, always wear clean clothes. This one is pretty obvious in it’s effect– bums are always dirty, usually wearing the same clothes until they (the clothes) fall to pieces. Most often you’ll see bums layered in clothing, kind of like a protective shell of filthy fabric. This serves three main purposes. First, it’s insulation against the elements. Second, it’s padding, helping bums to survive the impact of the chrome H2 bumper that clips them as they jaywalk across the interstate. Third, the dirty layers of laundry act as people repellent. Nothing annoys a bum more than people coming up to them. Ironic, isn’t it? But being a bum usually requires a certain degree of antisocial tendencies. Those seven stinky shirts help bums shun civilians.

Eat your veggies. One of the best kept mom secrets is how exactly veggies are good for you. The truth is that green vegetables promote positive brain chemistry. Little did you know that broccoli fights dementia, brussel spouts prevents paranoia, and spinach cures syphilis. Interesting side note: cucumbers can cause syphilis, if used inappropriately. Eating your greens may be the one thing preventing you from a life of giving zj’s under the overpass for fifteen bucks a pop (if you have to ask what a zj is, you can’t afford one).

A few weeks ago I lost my job waiting tables at a local restaurant. I won’t say which one, but I’ll give you a hint: it has an Australian theme and it’s name rhymes with Goutback. I’m estranged from most of my family, by choice, so I had to depend on my friends to survive until I (luckily) got a job. I realized how close I was to homelessness. Good thing my roommates are so compassionate. Otherwise, I would have been one of those perpetually drunk derelicts asking to “warsh yer windahs.” If you find yourself being excessively harassed by a street person, try this trick: keep a few of those tiny two-for-a-dollar bottles of gin in your purse or pocket, and any time a bum accosts you toss one of those suckers to distract him as you make your getaway.

District 9 delivers actions, attempts social commentary

Twenty eight years ago a massive alien space craft (remember the mother ship from Independence Day?) appears over Johannesburg, South Africa. Instead of sending down a envoy or attacking, it merely hangs there, motionless in the sky several thousand meters up. After three months mankind eventually sends a recon team up to the ship. They discover that it is silent and inoperable and that the aliens aboard, who seem to have evolved from crustaceans, are extremely sick, malnourished and on the verge of death. They appear directionless, as if they are but the worker class and all their leaders are gone, presumably killed by some disease, the same disease that has left the remaining aliens in such a sickly state. The aliens, pejoratively called “Prawns” for their resemblance to the delicious crayfish, are ferried down to the Earth’s surface and detained in District 9, an area of Johannesburg that soon becomes their ghetto. D-9 quickly accrues all the vices of any slum, including drug trade, prostitution, illegal weapons dealing and every other black market activity you could imagine. Fast forward to the present day, where Multi-National United (MNU) is contracted to relocate the alien slum to a new camp hundreds of kilometers away from the city. Bumbling middle-level bureaucrat Wickus Van De Merwe is charged with heading the ambitious operation– his father-in-law/boss dismisses the charge of nepotism– and leads his team into D-9 to notify it’s residents of their impending eviction, backed by battle-hardened paramilitary soldiers MNU contracted as the muscles of the mass move. Bumbling Wickus, while searching for contraband in one alien’s shack, stumbles upon a canister of liquid that he accidentally exposes himself to, making him ill and taking the story from it’s expected path.

The beginning of the film is presented as a documentary. We see various employees of MNU as well as people on the street react to the alien’s arrival and to Wickus’ actions that by the end of the movie we learn lead to an unexpected upheaval in the status quo. Traditional Hollywood film techniques are employed, interspersed occasionally with the aforementioned documentary interviews and security footage.

This film is co-writer/director Neill Blomkamp’s first feature– he’s only done commercials and music videos before, and it shows. Though the film attempts to explore dramatic themes such as apartheid, prejudice, mob mentality and political economy, it meanders too much to give the viewer a good picture of how they relate to the action-driven plot. A more experienced director could have done a better job incorporating the serious social commentary into the sci-fi frame. But producer Peter Jackson owed Blomkamp for the aborted Halo movie they intended to make together, and since Blomkamp is from South Africa his perspective on racism helps articulate that theme. Had this film been made by a Hollywood director it would most assuredly have lost all social commentary in favor of an all-out shoot-em-up with space battles and one-liners. More context for the aliens would have been nice, but again I think Blomkamp could not have handled more than what he did without making the movie a labor to watch. As it is, it has plenty of action, spectacular effects (all the aliens are computer-generated), a vague-but-pointed social commentary and a guarantee of a sequel. In all, a good movie to end the summer smash season on.

Birthdays and Karaoke Legends

It may surprise some of my readers that I am not the young, sprightly figure that I present myself to be. It surprises me that I even have readers, let alone that they think about me at all, but if you do, then surely you must consider me young of heart. But I am actually twenty nine years old, an age that frightens many unmarried maidens and unaccomplished lads alike. I am especially distinct in that at twenty nine I am both unmarried and unaccomplished. That’s completely my fault, like world hunger and racism. If I weren’t so lazy I’d be married (or civilly united) and accomplished, and everyone would have full bellies and no one would be afraid of the black guy in the bar parking lot at 2 AM (in most cases, it’s just Shay macking on a semi-sober sorostitute).

But the world is not perfect and I’m not either. So at twenty nine, on the verge of thirty, I have done none of the things a less lazy person would have on a list of things to accomplish before aging three decades. I don’t have such a list– I’m too lazy to write one. But I’m trying to overcome my own mental inertia. My complacency is on my mind daily, but more so because of my birthday. I try not to think of aging negatively– rationally, the older one is, the more experience and knowledge one has. Realistically, the older one is, the more regrets and mistakes one has. But those regrets and mistakes are important in that no matter how much I wish I had accomplished I wouldn’t be here today without all the bumps and potholes that have modified my path. Sure, where I am is not where I want to be, but at least it’s not where I’d hate to be. I’m not dead, a meth addict or working a dead end job I hate. I’m alive, a pot head and working a dead end job I can tolerate. So at least I’m better off than a corpse. They don’t celebrate birthdays. In that respect the dead are like Jehovah’s Witnesses.

At some point birthdays lost their specialness for me. They became ordinary days, just like Tuesdays, tax days, election days and holidays. I don’t celebrate any of those, though I of course observe them. That is to say I know each of these “special days” are actually special, more important than regular days, like Tuesdays, though I would argue that Tuesdays were, until recently, one of my favorite holidays. That was the day I went to O’Corley’s for the dynamic duo of bar games, trivia and karaoke. Trivia challenged my mind– it pitted my intellect against the intellects of my fellow bar patrons, giving me a realistic view of where I ranked on the IQ scale. Some nights I’d go home feeling thoroughly defeated, others pompously triumphant. Karaoke challenged my inhibitions. It pitted my self-consciousness against my love for music and self-deprecation– singing badly never bothers me when I’m drunk. But at the end of July the music died. Since I can remember Mad Jim has MC’d karaoke at O’Corleys, but he took his last waltz last week. Tuesdays will never be the same.

When I first moved to Valdosta oh-so-many years ago I wouldn’t be caught dead on stage at a bar. I’d have been mortified to do karaoke. I drank less then, too, and the two are not unrelated– I needed more than a little encouragement from my friends Jack, Jim and Jose. Actually, I exclusively drank vodka and cranberry juice back then. I convinced myself that cranberry juice was good for my kidneys, thus mitigating how bad vodka was for my liver. I don’t remember the first time I actually sang karaoke, but I remember the song– Love Shack by The B-52’s. I also remember Mad Jim distinctly– he’s hard to forget. The tall man with a striking white mane of hair and beard, if he were in robes instead of a top hat, could pass for Gandolf the Grey. Always the showman, always the congenial host, Mad Jim will always be the first name I think of when I think of karaoke. Even when I didn’t deserve it, even when I made a complete drunken ass of myself, he tolerated me. That’s more than I can say about my family. For eight years Jim made Tuesdays important enough to request that day off from work every week. But all good things must come to an end. Jim is retired so now Tuesdays are just like birthdays to me– not special, just another day.

As for my unaccomplished, unmarried, lazy, twenty nine year old self, I’m okay with everything I haven’t done since coming to Valdosta seven years ago. Maybe it’s fitting that karaoke is no longer a part of Tuesday-holidays for me. I’ll use the last year of my twenties to work on conquering my various vices, though to do so I’ll have to stop letting my subconscious bully me around. Easier said than done– I envy anyone with a peephole through that locked door.