The New New Year

Well if I had to sum 2008 in one word, it would probably be the same word I used to describe 2006 and 2007: transition. Each of the past three years have been pretty heavy with transition, especially socially, academically, and professionally.

While 2006 was a pretty rough year for me socially, and 2007 was a rough year academically, 2008 has been a great year, especially professionally. Again, it was an even year that rocked. I graduated BGSU in May after a spectacular final semester (got to meet a lot of new people!). I sent a good portion of my summer getting reacquainted with an old friend of mine (World of Warcraft, that is). And of course, I eventually landed a great job in September...

Which brings me to today. In reality, 2008 has been a pretty simple year: graduate and get a job, but these two things represent the culmination of my life up to this point. I went to school to get a good job that will allow me to support myself, and I have accomplished this. With a great job secured, I'm at a pretty good point to make 2009 rock: I intend to pay off my car, get financially healthy and stable, then draw up plans to move out on my own - and that'll be the big event of the year, no doubt.

I'm also making a few lifestyle changes - alterations to my daily routine, the way I schedule my calendar out, and monthly priorities in general - that has already made an impact on how I feel from day to day... certainly a positive turn of events for me.

Anyhow, I'm going into 2009 with high spirits and a hugely positive attitude... and I intend to keep it that way all year long. See you in the new year.

Windows 7 First Thoughts

I've never been big on examining pre-release software, especially operating systems, but for some reason Windows 7 was too tempting... and with the Build 7000 beta finding its way to the usual torrent sites, I decided to take it for a spin. The 2.5 GB-ish file is in the form of an ISO, and for the most part, is pretty solid.

I don't intend to do any real computing with this beta - obviously, I wasn't handed a beta key (that's for those attending CES next week). But I did get to try it out for a couple of hours today, which was all I wanted to do. My initial thoughts based on my time with Windows 7:

• From the moment I hit the desktop after a sloooooow installation (I installed Win7 in a virtual machine via VirtualBox), I instantly reconized what Windows 7 was: a finished version of Vista. As where Vista felt like a rearranged, lethargic version of Windows XP, Win7 is definitely a more complete, unique operating system. The full boot sequence - from power-on to desktop - is fairly quick. More importantly, even on an unoptimized virtual machine, Win7's desktop felt snappy. Speed and responsiveness was everywhere, and it felt great to use.

• The new taskbar doesn't seem as awe-inspiring as I first thought. First off, it's much taller than the XP/Vista taskbar. This is because tasks are now prepresented with an icon, rather than text. I found the lack of text to be disorienting at first, but the taskbar now does some cool things. The icon representations of running programs tell a lot about the status of your desktop without using text, which has a bit of a learning curve (programs of similarity get overlapped icons; for example - Word documents all stack on top of one another). The new window controls (shake to clear desktop, drag to top of screen to maximize, etc.) are immediately useful, and long-overdue. The new desktop features are best used on a hi-resolution monitor with Aero features cranked up.

• The lack of the usual Windows programs - Movie Maker, for example - keep the default Start Menu lean and just how I like it - ready to make it my own - without having to clean up Microsoft's crap.

I know that was a rather quick, superficial look at Windows 7, but I could only form so many impressions in just a few hours. I don't plan to use the beta after this week, but if I do have anything else worth adding, I will update accordingly.

So far, so good, I say. Windows 7 is on track to be what Vista should have been, and I found this beta to be a solid peek at the future of Windows. Come late 2009 I might actually finally give up Windows XP and move to Windows 7. Shocker, I know.

B3 out.

Songbird

Freedom at last.

It's been tough for me to find "the definitive" music player for my personal use. Windows Media Player is a fine choice for playing music that "just works." However, I like having a few more advanced features: library support for organizing my music, instant search, CD ripping and burning, playlist support, and more importantly, an intuitive interface.

The de-facto standard for my media player of choice has been Winamp. First Winamp 2, briefly Winamp 3, and Winamp 5 for years now. It provides all the features I want, deep customizatoin, and most importantly, a user interface that gives me easy access to all of those features.

Since being acquired by AOL, however, Nullsoft hasn't been putting out the same quality Winamp releases that I've been hoping for, and Winamp 5.5 definitely steps away from the Winamp I know and love. Which means that I have been in the market for a new media player that fulfills my needs - obviously, no easy task.

Songbird is beginning to come awfully, close, however.

Songbird is an open source media player, built primarily on technology from Mozilla, including the Gecko rendering engine. What this essentially means is that Songbird shares a lot of technology with Firefox. This is important, as you'll see, because Songbird is built to be tightly integrated with the Internet, much more so than Winamp could ever be in its current form.

Below I highlight what I feel are the strongest and most unique features of Songbird.

• Interface: iTunes' interface tends to be love it or hate it, but from a usability standpoint, Apple really did nail it. iTunes is best at organizing a large collection of music, creating and editing playlists, and playing music, plain and simple. Songbird apes iTunes' interface almost 1:1, and I find this to be a good thing. The default "Gonzo" interface could be mistaken for iTunes by almost anyone, with solid whites and grays defined by sharp lines and curves in all the right places.
  

• Connectivity: As I already said, Songbird is built on some of Mozilla technology's, and actually shares the feature core of Firefox. This makes Songbird one part iTunes, one part awesome browser. This allows me to do my two most common tasks right next to one another: listen to music and browse the web. With the tabbed interface enabled, Songbird feels and acts just like Firefox, but with a permanent tab always available to access your music library. More importantly, Songbird allows the web to integrate with your music: Last.fm support is built right in, and album art for your music can be pulled from the web as you play your songs, among many other possibilities.
  

• Extensions: Another great feature carried over from Firefox, Songbird allows for the same extensibility as the popular browser, and in fact already shares many of the same browser add-ons. The ability to extend features of the core music library is great, though, especially with the ability to add new features that Songbird won't or hasn't supported yet.
  

• Compatibility: Songbird supports iTunes' style syncing with iPods and any MTP device, meaning that it's bloody easy to keep a huge music library synced with a portable device.
  

There are a few downsides to Songbird thus far, so here are those in all fairness:

• CD Ripping/Burning:There are a lot of features that Songbird simply doesn't have, either in the core package or via extensions. CD burning and ripping is something that would be great to have. This is coming in a future release, however, and hopefully it rocks as good as Winamp or iTunes' ripping (auto-tagging, album art, etc.).

• Customized sorting: As it is, you can only sort one column in your library/playlists at a time, which makes sorting by artist/album/track very difficult. This is a feature coming down the line, though.

• Configurable interface: I would like to see some components of the Songbird user interface configurable. If the playback controls don't suit me in a particular location, I would like to drag and drop them somewhere else. This level of interface customization is possible with add-ons (via skins), but I wouldn't mind being able to accomplish the same thing myself. Songbird's iTunes-esque interface is a solid start for a music player, but in order to draw in more users, an easily customizable interface would kick ass.

I highly recommend you try Songbird if you're in the market for a new music player / organizer. If you're on the fence, wait until April of 2009, when Songbird is expected to pick up CD ripping / burning and sorting. By then hundreds, if not thousands, of skins and extensions should be available too, meaning that Songbird can be whatever you make it to be.

It's certainly looking promising thus far. B3 out.

Facebook Connect FTW

Facebook Connect is a big deal, I believe, for the Internet as a whole.  I could blab on for hours about the neat positive points and the scary negative points of the new platform, but instead I'll just cut to the chase and get the brief, important points out of the way.

What It Is:

Facebook at one time (early 2007) had planned to introduce an advertising platform called "Beacon," which would allow advertisers to access your profile information and attempt to directly suggest products, services, etc. to your profile / News Feed in Facebook.  This was met with harsh criticism from many privacy advocates, not to mention the Facebook user base at large.  The project was largely abandoned just weeks from going live.

Now in late 2008, Facebook Connect comes along, and is based on a similar concept but with an important twist: user opt-in.  Connect is a similiar concept to Beacon in that advertisers will be able to post in your News Feed, but in a very intuitive way.

Facebook Connect allows third party websites to use your Facebook login information for their site.  In other words, imagine finding an awesome website that you love, but it requires you to sign up for the site - to create a username and password.  While many people already have dozens of login credientials at different websites, Facebook Connect allows this website to use your Facebook information as your login - eliminating the need to sign up for yet another username and password.

So any website that uses Facebook Connect allows you to use your Facebook credientials locally.  In return, that website gets access to your profile information and - this is the kicker - gets to post stories in your News Feed about your activity at that site.  This will allow your friends to see actions you take at other websites, which is the basis for hidden advertising, so to speak: word of mouth.  Your friend buys a shirt from site X after they used their Facebook account to log in; a News Feed item appears on your Facebook homepage showing your friend and a picture of the shirt.  You like the shirt too, so you go buy one from the site.  Advertising built right on top of the user - brilliant, I say.

My Initial Reaction:

So far I've only used Facebook Connect on two websites: Gizmodo and Kotaku.  Instead of signing up for a username to being a registered commenter on those sites, I can use my Facebook profile as my registration, and my name, picture, and profile information are automatically presented on those sites, with links back to my original Facebook profile.

I think Connect is a great idea, very akin to OpenID - the concept of having one username / password / profile that is shared among any site you may visit.  I can certainly see privacy issues; my picture, full name, and any information in my Facebook profile is now available for the world to see on any external site that I choose.  Still, I like the idea of my online identity being available on multiple websites, and I think the New Feed linking/posting is a great way to see and track habits of friends (kind of stalkerish, you say? No, just classic Facebook).

Go here to get a growing list of websites that use Facebook Connect to let you login.  Each website applies it's own privacy policy to your use of their site, even with your Facebook credentials, so read the fine print before diving in to see where your information is going.

It'll be interesting to see how this grows and how big of a privacy concern it will grow to be.  I'll certainly be watching, but not from the sidelines, but as an avid user of Facebook Connect.

B3 out.

QuickLinks

Well I'm expanding Critically Correct a bit.

Recently I've built up a huge list of links and URLs from around the web - YouTube videos, blogs, articles, new stories - pretty much anything that I stumble upon at home, work, or on the road.

To help collect these awesome links and one place, and to share them with my readers, I have created a Google Sites page to post links to. I can't promise that I will update this page often, but I will keep it up to date with the best stuff I find on the internet.

Take a peek at the first build of it right here.

B3 out.

The Geek and The Girl

Here's a short look back a time in my life that was full of transition, and more particularly, embarrassment. When a geek who knows more about nits that tits crosses paths with a beautiful girl, you get something that looks like this:

In my early years at Meijer, somewhere in the neighborhood of 2002, I was focused pretty hardcore on Lacey as "the" girl in my life. We were both juniors at Otsego High School at the time. I wasn't completely ignorant of other beautiful girls around me, but my heart was set and little would change that. Come late 2002, I was firmly entrenched at Meijer and got along with several of my favorite people at the time: Jaime, Ashley, Brittany - all girls, yes, but none a challenge to Lacey in my eyes.

As a teenage guy not yet two years away from graduating high school, I did not even bother to consider myself eligible for all of the college "hotties" at Meijer. I was an uber-geek, after all, chasing after my own beautiful cheerleader, so what chance would I ever have to even talk to the twenty-something poster girls at Meijer?

One of the head cashiers just happened to be one of these incredibly beautiful poster girls. I (the dorky, pudgy, video game-obsessed redhead) found pure beauty while working at dirty old Meijer: long, straight-back midnight black hair, bright green narrow-cut eyes, curves where they counted, and a seductive tan that wasn't obnoxious yet remained irresistibly hot. I even found beauty in her name at the time: Kristen. Stunning all around.

But again, she was a college girl, whatever that entailed at the time of my interpretation: hard-parties, drinking, sex, and generally other more "adult" things than I didn't have much of an interest in during high school. Despite all of Kristen's beauty, it was back to Lacey for me.

Now Kristen and I got along in plenty of fun, relaxing ways while at work. I was a "bagger" at the time - the only position minors were allowed to fill at Meijer at the time - which pretty easily pooled me into a certain stereotype that all the underage workers carried at the time: that of less maturity and experience. Despite this stigma, rumors circulated between a few people at Meijer that Kristen - a twenty-year old college hottie - was going to ask me out on my 18th birthday in the coming weeks - October 4th, to be exact. This was impossible, of course. My mind was made up. Lacey was the center of my life, and even if she wasn't, I was not Kristen material by any means. Any means. Two different worlds - her and I - plain and simple.

I took my birthday off work, of course, so it wasn't until October 5th that I was back to Meijer, and there was immediate awkwardness upon returning. It seemed that everyone in the Service Department drew harsh stares at me as I walked towards the time clock to punch in for the day. I was not sure why this was, but later that night I was told by several people that Kristen was disappointed to not have seen me on my birthday: she had worked the 4th, I had not. Again, I had the overwhelming feeling that this was a collective game that everyone was playing against me, a cruel trick that everyone enjoyed pranking on me, and I wrote it off just as fast as those stares caught me.

Come two days later, I walked into Meijer at my usual 5:00pm, not realizing that I would be making a decision that would be with me to this day, however small in meaning it may now be. Shortly after clocking in, I reported to Kristen (who had head-cashier duties that night) and asked about my first work assignment.

"Why weren't you at work on your birthday?" Kristen snapped at me. "I had a surprise for you."

Was everyone else right? I immediately thought to myself. No. Not possible. I was right. I had priorities in my life, and Kristen wasn't one of them. She was in college, why would she want Dorktastic for a date? I held my breath and pretended not to know about the rumors and jeers.

Kristen kept her eyes locked on me, then smiled. "I was going to ask if you wanted to take me out on a date now that you're eighteen. What do you think?"

I'm not exactly sure what went through my head right at that moment, but I do remember that shock and awe was involved, and my thoughts that probably looked like this: Did she have a crush on me? Did I miss some obvious signs? What about Lacey? Holy hell, what an opportunity! What next?

And of course, like a well-scripted prime time comedy, my uber-geek kicked in and threw all that tension to shit. "Well I don't think I could." I thought about Lacey. "I have a lot to do with school."

Kristen fought for her date. "Well I'm free this weekend. It doesn't have to be long. Just dinner and maybe we could hang out with my roommates."

"Well I don't really have money." I lied to her. I had plenty of money. I think the poorest man in the world would have had money at that point just to say "yes" to Kristen. I said no. I waved my arms in the air a little, cracked an awkward smirk, and laughed under my breath as I walked away from her. I volunteered to push carts on the parking lot. I spent the rest of the night out there thinking about Lacey and Lacey and Lacey some more.

Some years later I was reminded about this incident by a coworker at Meijer. By this time (2006-ish) Kristen was long gone from Meijer, but that incident was well-known to those people who knew her at Meijer. As where I always looked back on that offer for a date as a joke on Kristen's part, even in 2006 I was told that I was an idiot for turning such an offer down. I still couldn't explain myself then.

Now in 2008, graduated from high school and graduated from college, I look back on that incident at one of my many lifetime learning experiences. I wish now that I had gone on that date. To this day I doubt there was a legitimate crush there, I believe Kristen simply found me to be a fun coworker and wanted to extend some of that to a casual dinner maybe once or twice as friends. I took it all the wrong ways as an inexperienced high schooler.

Even if Lacey had not been the complete obsession of my life at the time, I'm not sure how my potential date with Kristen would have turned out. Would I have gone on it and had a good time? Would I have met a bunch of different people and took a completely different path through college? Would something have sparked between Kristen and I after all and lead me somewhere entirely different now if life?

Or did I do the right thing all along? I will never know the truth, and more than anything else, it's the curiosity that drives me further along as I grow older. Sometimes not knowing is the hardest thing to bear. In my case, not knowing is the reason for my reflection on this; fuel for the ever-classic "What if?" question that I stumble upon so often in my life.

Thanks for reading along with my memory trip. B3 out.

Mini 9 + Wow Video

Without a doubt, I have had huge traffic to my blog recently thanks to my Inspiron Mini 9 and WoW Performance article that I posted a few weeks ago. There is very little information on the Internet regarding how WoW plays on the Mini 9, and so I hope to fill that gap as best I can. Today I created a short (and rather blurry) video of World of Warcraft performance on the Mini 9.

You can watch it as an embedded video in the original article, or head over to YouTube to watch it.

By the way, if I get access to a higher-quality camera in the near future, I plan on redoing this video.

B3 out.

College 101

After I settled on a major in college, it took me a while to respect the importance of my decision and the impact of the learning process with the computer science curriculum. I began my CS career at BGSU with a certain amount of hesitation.

Prior to BGSU, my programming experience was hobbyist in nature: I learned BASIC on the Commodore 64 (an old hand-me-down) around 1994, and dabbled with BASIC in a couple forms (DarkBASIC, Visual Basic 4,5,6 in high school), but never considered it as a true career choice. After my first year of trying my hand in a couple different areas of study (VCT, creative writing) at BGSU, I gave up on trying to ignore the fact that computers were my primary interest. Midway through my second year at BGSU, I finally settles on computer science as my major. What a day that was: going from office to office around campus, gathering signatures from various advisors, to officially declare how the rest of my life would be shaped.

Anywho, point is, it wasn't until my final year and a half at BGSU that I took programming very, very seriously. For the most part, I was decent with programming, and took a laid-back approach to assisgnments, projects, and programs. I read the necessary textbooks, went over the necessary handouts, and got by from semester to semester for the most part. For a while, I was in college for the sake of finishing college. I think a lot of my friends were (and are) like that. There is a strong mentality, especially after five years, to want college to end - to do whatever it takes to be done. Now that I'm done and working professionally, I have this to say:

I wish I had more time. Taking college super-seriously for just three semesters is not nearly enough. In many ways I envy my sister... she didn't go to college right out of high school, instead opting to work and start a new life (almost literally). Having done that, I think she has had an opportunity to focus on what she would really want out of a college education. She will appreciate the fruits of the experience much better. I've seen plenty of people who "just work" for a living, and they all intend to or are just going back to college. They want to go to college. I didn't want to go to college; I just grew up learning that it was what came next after high school - and I consequently did not fully appreciate the experience until it was pretty damn late in the fourth quarter with my team down by a field goal. Luckily I made that field goal and finished strong.

But not is all lost for me, of course. I can already see the value of a masters degree down the road, and when it's time for me to focus on that education, I will certainly dive in head first, quite willing, able, and excited about the opportunities that further education can present to me.

B3 out.

Half-Life Redux

I can pick out my favorite game on any given gaming platform: Ocarina of Time for the N64, Yoshi's Island for the SNES, Super Mario Bros. 3 for the NES, Mario Kart DS for the Nintendo DS...

And Half-Life for the Windows PC. When Half-Life 2 came out in 2004, I immediately wanted a remade version of 1998's Half-Life done in the new Source engine that Valve created. Now I have it, in the form of Black Mesa.

The official trailer for the independent Source mod Black Mesa has finally been released, and I love every minute of it. Half-Life fans owe it to themselves to watch this trailer. I hope (expect, actually) Valve to scoop up these developers and release the game on Steam. Would I pay full price to play a ten-year old game? When it looks like this, absolutely.

YouTube: Black Mesa Trailer

B3 out.

Forcing Change Whether Change Likes It or Not

The last several months have been pretty much stagnant for my blog, with pretty much any of my interests outside of working or WoW consuming all of my time. I have not been able to give a fair amount of time to my other interests, primarily writing. It is hard to blog when it's so easily forgettable. It is also hard to blog when there isn't anything worth really blogging about.

So why not change that? Today marks a refocus for Critically Correct. I've dabbled with the idea of bringing a focused platform of writing to Critically Correct, although I also felt that would limit my eventual creative freedom. With such a low post count in the past few months, I have no choice. I can reinvigorate Critically Correct and work on writing at the same time (seems to go hand and hand, I know).

This is the intended general focus of Critically Correct that I'm leaning towards:

• Tech-focus: Links to my favorite articles around the web, and a short discussion to go along with it, Slashdot-style. Any tech-related news worth commenting on, or programming findings that interest me. This is the primary future of Critically Correct.
  

• Personal tech stories: Tech-related issues in my life, both personal and professional.

• Creative fiction: I still plan to publish my fiction (of any kind) on Critically Correct when the time is right.

• Updates: Rather than aim to write long, drawn out summaries of my life every month, I intend to put out short updates, almost Twitter-style, of what's going on with me from time to time, just to keep those afar informed.

• General purpose portal: I'm active on Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo!, AIM, and I practically live out of Google (email, docs, calendar, Reader, etc.), and with www.brandonbruno.com registered to me, this blog might as well as serve as a central portal to gather the tidbits from all over, so expect plenty of updates, news, etc. from all these other portals to filter to here.

So with all that said, expect a highly tech-focused blog that (I hope) will not alienate my current readership. Some of my most popular posts have been tech related (Vista, 300, DS 2, Dell Mini, just to name a few). I hope this new focus and format lets me write more often, with better focus, and overall improve my responsiveness and presence on the web.

Stay tuned. B3 out :-)