Rui CarmoIt never ceases to amaze me how little attention I can pay to a computer these days. Maybe it's the walks by the riverside (10C with a hitherto unknown wind chill factor), or my still feeling somewhat under the weather and having my nose permanently stuck in a book, but truth be told that there isn't a lot going on right now.
Some personal observations, then:
- The websphere has been echoing with the gleeful sounds of European Wiiers (well, at least those who're too tired to raise their arms and can still type). That in itself is neither good nor bad - anything new these days causes a stir - but I'm finding this particular Hype cycle pretty fun to follow, if only due to the hilarious self-referencing Rayman Raving Rabbids videos. Sony or Microsoft don't seem to have fostered anything half as fun, and to my mind that speaks volumes about each company's strategy. However, Nintendo will only "win" if the titles keep improving, not re-using the "let's bundle a bunch of party minigames" logic. And what's with the Opera delays?
- The Apple rumor front has been amazingly active, coughing up anything from ultra-slim laptops to Leopard UI tweaks (along with far too many iPhone nonsense to keep track of). Me, I'd love to see Leopard going back to, say, a NeXTSTEP look... Just joking, of course.
- Network Computing, one of my pet interests, is still throwing down one technical barrier after another. At this stage it's conquering graphics acceleration, and I fully expect things to keep improving. Although there are still too many variants, my dream of having a single CPU in the house with a bunch of remote displays (including a "dumb" laptop) can now include 3D acceleration.
- I've read this twice over now (warning, extremely obnoxious Flash banner on the original version), and the gleaming gears somewhere at the back of my mind are still grinding over the past few years and finding scarily accurate matches. The key to avoiding burnout, I think, is to understand the corporate dance. You have to know when to step back (avoid getting too involved), forward (getting involved in the stuff that matters to you) or sideways (escaping collisions with those dancing to a different tune). And, like a professional dancer, you have to keep smiling - or, better still, finding things to smile about.
- Finally, I ended up buying a pack of iPod socks to carry my 2G nano around. There were two main reasons for it: they also fitted my K610i, and I figured that if I was going to get socks again this Xmas, I might as well be the one buying them.