Because I was a very good girl this year, Santa left a PS3 under the tree for me!

We’ve been going around in circles since getting our TV as to what kind of peripherals to get for it. Until now we’ve been using my laptop for Netflix (which is okay, except it doesn’t output in particularly high resolution) and debating whether to get an Apple TV and a BluRay player (and maybe a Wii or an XBOX someday), or a PS3.

The ease of having one media player and one input, along with the additional ability to play games (even though from what I can tell, PS Move can’t even begin to compete with XBOX Kinect) won out.

After a day, I’m pretty damn pleased with the features of this console. We’ve setup Netflix, watched a BluRay disc and messed around a bit with the PS Network and some of the network sharing features.

But I have yet to get into the games. And this, gentle reader, is where I ask for your help (*cough*especiallyyouKimli!*cough*).

I am intimidated!

Let me sum up my lifetime gaming experience for you:

Atari: Pong, something with spaceships and shooting
Playing on my uncle’s original Nintendo: Tetris, Mario, Frogger, Duck Hunt and some track & field game on the Power Pad
Playing on my friend’s Super Nintendo: Zelda of some flavour
486 computer: Duke Nukem, Castle Wolfenstein
Sega Genesis: Sonic the Hedgehog, Echo the dolphin
Anything this decade: Rockband, Wii Sports
Fin.

I have occasionally touched a modern videogame controller, and am hopeless when faced with the number of buttons and the sensitivity of the controls. I am lost when it comes to the complicated storylines and goals of most modern games. I have (so far) no desire (probably tied to my total lack of ability on modern gaming consoles) to play virtual sports or careen around in a virtual F1 car or skulk about killing virtual zombies or nazis.

So I am looking for suggestions on games that’ll be a kind and gentle (read: stupidly easy and forgiving) to someone who is, for all intents and purposes, new to gaming. We don’t have the PS Move at this point, and I’d like to avoid buying a 2nd controller at least until the post-Christmas cash-stores have been replenished a bit.

I have so far figured out on my own that Little Big Planet is probably a good place to start. But what else do I need to know? Where else should I be looking?

Until then, I’ll be over here on the couch, with my PS3 remote sadly serving the single-purpose of being a glorified NetFlix surfing/video playback device.

I have some news. This may surprise you. Are you sitting down? I hope you are – or were, since the title kinda gives it away.

We canceled cable.

Which means we also got rid of the TiVos.

And what prompted this? We got a new TV.

Stay with me here – it eventually makes sense.

Our previous TV was old. A 100lb Tube monstrosity kinda old. It worked with the TiVo, but the TiVo didn’t work with digital cable. We were being harassed weekly by the cable company to get a digital box before the conversion to all-digital cable happened, but I was not about to embark on even more channels without a PVR, and with a perfectly good TiVo, I was DEFINITELY not going to pay $700 for the cable company’s sub-standard PVR.

And then the cable company’s internet service really started sucking.

And then Neil got a bonus from work.

And lo, the wheels of change were set in motion.

We bought a fancy new TV. We canceled the TiVo subscriptions. We canceled our cable+internet from the cable company, and went with a new internet provider. We bought a cheap HD Antenna and signed up for Netflix.

We are happy!

We followed the advice in this great HD OTA intro and tutorial for Vancouverites from John Bollwitt. We happen to have a balcony with direct line-of-sight to Mt. Seymour, the site of most of the local digital broadcast towers, and we’ve consistently gotten five channels in perfect, crystal-clear HD (CBC, CTV, CityTV, Global and Omni) with a sometimey 6th (KVOS). This should only improve as more networks make the switch to HD. And just those five channels listed cover 85% of the content we used to watch.

I also signed up for Netflix as soon as it came to Canada. It’s important to note that I am apparently an anomaly in TV and Movie-land. I watch fewer than 10 movies a year (that includes both theater visits and rentals). I can only really manage to follow 3 or 4 TV shows at once. And especially these days, a LOT of stuff is just plain on past my bedtime. This makes the content on Netflix PERFECT for me. There are tons of movies I’ve never seen. There are dozens of TV shows I haven’t yet watched (I’m currently starting Season 2 of MadMen. In network-land it just wrapped up season 4).

Currently available in the US, but not yet in Canada, one can even stream Netflix directly from the particular model of TV I have. I’ve got my fingers crossed that functionality will make it across the border soon. In the meantime, I just hook my laptop up to the TV and watch that way. It’s been great. We’ve also been contemplating acquiring a PS3, since it can play Blu-Ray discs and stream Netflix, though neither of us are much for its core purpose: video games.

It’s been four months since we cut cable, and so far I don’t miss it. I do miss having a PVR, but considering we watch so much less TV now overall, it feels much less of a hassle to wait for a commercial break to pee, or sit through commercials at all on the things we do watch live.

I NEVER thought I’d willingly live without cable, but with so many more options, it’s another bill I’m pretty happy to have kissed goodbye.

In the week before I left my last job, I had an epic hardware failure.

My work laptop, which had the most current incarnation of my iTunes library on it (and my iPhone backup data), gave up the ghost and refused to give me anything but a BSOD.

Right around that same time, my iPhone (which I’d recently jailbroken) started getting exceedingly cranky.

I was slowly in the process of restoring my data from both, when I was laid off, and suddenly lost access to the computer with my iTunes. Crap.

I also ended up having to restore my phone to factory defaults, which meant in one week I’d lost about 6 albums worth of recently purchased music and about 20 apps.

I was pretty much resigned to writing off the loss to my own poor planning and lack of backing up, but I started googling, just in case I found some miraculous way to restore my music & app libraries.

Turns out there is a miraculous way. It’s called “Ask Apple Nicely.”

I came across this blog post from way back in 2006, and whaddya know, the link to let Apple know you’re an idiot and beg for mercy still works.

So I did just that, and they re-set my purchase history to download.

And poof! it all came back! Onto my own personal computer, which is now backed up.

So let this be a lesson to ye!

Do not be as foolish as I was. Keep your iTunes library on a computer you are unlikely to suddenly find yourself without, and back that mofo up!

Though if you are insistent on following along my errant path, at least you can take some small comfort in knowing that a well-placed mea culpa is still likely to give you that second chance.

I know, it’s been a shill-a-minute around these parts, but I have just one more cool product to tell you about before we get back to business as usual.

So, without further ado – The Oral B TRIUMPH with smart guide!

Yes, TRIUMPH necessitates the caps.

I’ve had electric toothbrushes before, and yes, they get your teeth cleaner than manual brushes (noticed by me, anecdotally, and my dentist professionally). But the reason to spring for the $150 TRIUMPH over any other electric brush ($30-50) is the sheer gadget factor.

First off, the stand for it (I prefer the term “dock”) looks like a flying saucer. The toothbrush has metallic touches, and it comes with a wireless digital display that indicates how long to brush (most Oral B electric brushes do now indicate when you’ve hit the 2 minute mark, but this one has a countdown timer!), when to move to the next quadrant of your mouth, four different modes (regular, sensitive, massage and whitening), and a warning indicator to show if you’re brushing too hard.

The other nice thing about the TRIUMPH is that apparently the higher price tag includes the cost of having some usability design people at the product. It comes with a really nice travel case, the charger can be used independently of the dock (and vice versa), and the charger is even a bit more streamlined than other models, with an integrated cord-wrapping velcro-thingie.

So, if you’re heading out for some last-minute shopping, and need a gift for someone dentally challenged, pick up any of the Oral B electronic toothbrush products. And if you’re looking for a special gift for the gadget hound in your life, go for the TRIUMPH! It’s a useful, quality present, with the bonus feature of being really, really cool.

Annoyed at my css right now, so I have kicked it out in a moment of spite.

It’s time for a new theme anyhow – perhaps one that I actually figure out how to build and/or install myself for a change!

Upgrading wordpress this morning. Please excuse the mess.

**And done – with much thanks to the husband, who made this go much faster than it would’ve, were I left to my own devices.

Please let me know if you encounter any strangeness over the next few days!

So I’m trying out this twitter thing. 140 characters seems entirely manageable right now as far as blogging and updates go.

Feel free to follow me here.

The blog is undergoing a long-overdue upgrade to the newest version of WordPress. If you experience any weirdness over the next couple days, that’s probably why.

The management thanks you for your patience.

Update: upgrade complete, and spanky new design now showing! It’s worth clicking through to my actual site to see the loveliness that Kyndra created!

(Already crossposted to facebook – with a couple comments there.)

So I went to BarCamp Vancouver 07 last Saturday. I was… underwhelmed.

Having never attended a BarCamp before, I was pretty excited, since everyone I know who has gone has always spoken quite highly of them. But I just wasn’t feeling the love and/or usefulness.

I suppose this makes sense if, like me, you actually enjoy traditional conferences. I like seeing the conference theme, session briefs, schedules. I like planning ahead to see what’s coming up and scheduling my conference experience. Hyper-organization thrills me in a special way.

BarCamp, being an “unconference” is the antitheses of this. While some sessions are determined ahead of time, much of the content and the entirety of the schedule is done up “on the fly” – set the morning of the gathering with the potential to change during the day.

I’d seen a couple sessions I was definitely interested in on the Wiki – but after the “scheduling jam” was held, they all turned out to be after 2:00pm.

Considering I’d shown up at 8:30 for breakfast, session and scheduling jam and introductions – by the time I found out what would be taking place when (settled at 10:00am), I wasn’t really in any mood to hang around.

I did attend one of the first presentations of the day and was mostly interested – but 11:00am – 2:00pm felt like a LONG four hours to fill. I could’ve hung out and tried to make friends – but I’m a bit useless in large groups like that. My socializing and networking abilities seem to dissolve in groups larger than about 20.

Also, generally when I attend a conference, the sessions and presentations are organized around a central theme. There are usually a few sessions I’m really interested in, and some that only tangentially touch on stuff I want to know. But at least they’re 90% relevant to the theme of the conference.

Since BarCamp is an all-inclusive unconference, the sessions only follow the theme of “are you interested/expert enough in something to talk about it? then do so!”

That’s a huge draw for some, but not really for me. It meant that sessions ran the gamut from social media to ADHD to Drupal theming, to open source business development to apple widgets to social responsibility using the web to mainframes to cameraphones to advertising.

And most of that stuff, well I just don’t give a damn about it. It might be interesting stuff to many attendees, but not to me. Actually, not true. Had there been an “intro to Drupal” session, I might’ve attended – but why would I attend a session on Drupal theming when I hardly know what Drupal itself is? Same with the apple widgets. Cool, but I use a PC/Linux setup.

So yes. I left. And didn’t return for the sessions I wanted to see in the afternoon, because by then I was tired and didn’t feel like the 30 minute bus trip back across town. I’m sure I missed out. But I’m not that worried about it.

I came, I saw, and I’ve decided that BarCamp just isn’t for me. Anyone else feel that way, or am I the oddball in this one?

So I wrote that I didn’t think facebook was for me.

And then I figured I’d try it out before making a judgment one way or the other.

Thus far, I am completely unsurprised and underwhelmed.

All sorts of people from various past jobs, schools and affiliations are on there, and I have somewhere in the vicinity of 50 friends. I’ll admit that there’s at least one “friend” on there whose name sounds familiar from high school, but I don’t actually remember interacting with him/her at any point, or what s/he even looked like. But there doesn’t seem to be a good way to question friendships – it’s either confirm or deny!

So far, though, facebook hasn’t delivered anything to me I’d consider “valuable.” There are events being planned through the site that I’ve been invited to, though I’ve also gotten individual email invitations to said events, so I don’t think I was missing out by not having an account.

But in terms of knowing on a minute-by-minute basis which of my friends are now friends with others, and what any given person is… at any given moment in time – I just don’t give a damn. If I did, I would (and do) ask. And I hate small-talk enough, which is what the updates and wall posts are. So I’m sure that if I can’t be bothered to small-talk in the real world, the internets will forgive me for not engaging in it there either.

I’m also more than a little distrustful of their terms of service, which state that anything posted to the facebook site is property of facebook. From their TOS:

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

So this means that I suddenly grant the site creators unlimited rights to any blog posts, photos or other content I include on facebook. For me, this means that the one photo I’ve got up there is the only one that’s staying, and I’m going to be removing the “blog import” function in the notes section shortly. I’m not delusional enough to think that the facebook machine is going to get rich off of my paltry ramblings, but it’s the principle of handing over ownership of my creation. Homey don’t play that.

While initially I liked the idea of sharing my activities, events, photos and thoughts with an audience who would otherwise not be reading my blog or seeing me in person – I won’t compromise my own rights to those things for the sake of people with whom I don’t regularly interact, or have only a long-past place and time in common.

So the Verdict? Mildly interesting, ultimately not valuable to me.

I’ll stay on facebook for the sake of the invites that roll through there, update my “Jen is…” whenever I’m feeling clever, and probably leave some wall snippets or comments here and there whenever I’m so inspired. But until it actually prompts me to participate in a meaningful way – and one that leaves me feeling a little less violated – my public profile and private experience will likely be highly uninteresting.

Of Facebook.

I signed up. No promises that I’ll stay, but you can go ahead and attempt to find me and add me to your various networks.

So far I find the site clunky and annoying. Perhaps it can change my mind.

UPDATE (40 minutes in). Complaint the first: For various reasons, I use a couple different email addresses. They aren’t “work” or “school” addresses – but I can’t find any answers on the help page to consolidate multiple addresses (that have nothing to do with work or school) into one account. Evite lets me do this, why not facebook?

UPDATE (a few hours later) So it seems that, in a stupid, circular way, I can add email addresses. I can “change” my contact email, which will add the new address. Then I can change the contact email back. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to just add an email address and leave the contact email at the default.