The big buzz for years has been the concept of “software as a service” … more specifically, productivity apps that run via your browser instead of a local install. Whether they are free apps that you hit from any ‘net connection or for-pay packages that you drop a few cents on every time you want to use, the promise and the potential is huge. But there are downsides, and they have always managed to toss some ice cold water on whatever embers the True Believers manage to fan to life.

This may now be about to change, simply because – no surprise here – Google has waded into the fray. They just purchased Writely and they are about to give it the full backing of the Google marketing might. Yeah, it’s beta (natch) but if you can deal with the necessary limitations that come from a published application, you just might find it your cup of tea. Hurry and sign up now … until the whole mess is moved over to Google, the user base is going to be limited.

30: The percentage of adult females in the U.S. who have a bra cup size of “D” or greater.

What else is there to say? They’re slippers, and they mop.

If you are one of the many people who really wish they could make 3000 pieces of sushi and hour in the comfort of their very own home, then the SushiMaster 3000 is the product for you. The promo blurb also has some of the best Engrish that I have seen in quite some time.

Two quick things here:

1 – I was being a little bit hasty (and ultimately both unfair and inaccurate) when I said that Average Homeboy was the “worst anything of all time“. While I do believe with every cockle of my heart that he is indeed the worst rapper ever, the title of “worst anything” will forever be beyond him as long as we have Jandek. While there are some who believe that Jandek is a musician of such subtlety and vision that we simply don’t have the emotional and mental tools to actually evaluate and appreciate his work, the majority opinion is that, well, he sucks. I spent time at a campus radio station that had a rather extensive Jandek catalogue and my personal leaning is somewhat heavily towards the latter point of view. So chin up pal, you still have rungs further down the ladder to aspire to – until your lyrical output is as inspired as “You’re a teenage runt with a lot of cream, Sparky” you will remain in the shadow of the king.

2 – Average Homeboy is actually the name of the song, not the, er, “artist”. His stage name is “D. Blaze” which is probably a surprise to no one.

2 – If you missed the comments, or were simply confused by them, there will be a phone interview with D. Blaze himself this Friday night at 9:00 p.m. EDT on WCBD-FM in Albany, NY. If you are out side of the local area you can listen in at the Radio Albany web site – note that Windoze Media Player is required.

If you are shockingly old-school like myself, your iPod has a standard 6-pin FireWire port that it uses to talk to the world. If you have a fancy new iPod, however, you have a somewhat-more-robust 30-pin “docking” port that – if you know what you are doing – sings, dances, and (for all I know) makes nicely-cooked al dente pasta.

The problem to this point was actually harnessing the vast array or outputs that are available here – most docks and peripherals talk to a mere slice of these pinouts, keeping to the safe confines of ground, iPod data in and out, and some left and right audio data. If you want to really get into grokking you ‘pod, you are going to have to do it yourself.

If you want to get started with your feet at least pointing in the right direction, then you may find this recently-decoded pinout diagram to be a helpful. And, when you do come up with the design for your frankenaccessory, you can hook it up with this handy homebrew iPod connector.

Some of you with some experience at the cold end of a soldering iron might look at this and think, “Hmmm . 30 pins, size of a fucking dime, this might actually drive me into documented insanity to try and work with.” You would probably be right.

4: The number of MBAs in the list of CEOs of the top 50 companies in the Forbes 400.

If you ever played any games on the first-generation Macintosh you will immediately recognize the graphic and animation styles that are employed here. The side-by-side two-player “gameplay”, however, is lifted directly from River City Ransom which is probably still the best ever co-op fighting title for any console system ever. The entirely ridiculous power-ups are also a tribute to RCR, but I can say without any reservations at all that including Walter Sobchak is reaching into the realm of creative license.

Two things become evident after watching this. One, this dude has some serious roots in 8-bit gaming and Motorola 68000 graphics and is therefore a God among Geeks. And two, PIRATE BABY RULES!

The gang over at Homestar Runner (”It’s dot COM!”) are flexing their retro chops again, with a new version of Thy Dungeonman featuring awesome 1984-style graphics and oddly-accurate “interactive fiction” gameplay.

Oh – and if you don’t recognize the “chattering” sound in between each location, then I am guessing that you never owned an Apple ][ and it’s attendant external Seagate floppy drives. Your loss … for the rest of us, it is a sound that warms the very cockles of our hearts.

So there were more than a couple people asking what happened to the red ‘n white colour scheme. My original thought was to put it up as a tribute to the Red Wings only on the days after a playoff victory by that storied squad, just so it wouldn’t be seen as blatantly rubbing it in the noses of the Leafs fans.

However, I will defer to the wishes of the masses here, and the Red Wings palette will be in place until either the wings hoist the Cup or they go down to glorious defeat … two states of being that Leafs fans know nothing of unless they are about a million years old.

Also, I have corrected the red so that it is as close to the actual sweater colour as possible while still being web-compliant. That way the pictures of each stirring victory will mesh in seamlessly. You’re welcome.

In the battle of the search engines, Yahoo has been relegated to a poor second place by the juggernaut known as Google. In the battle of the mapping engines, however, Yahoo wishes that they were only second … the are so far behind that both MapQuest and MapBlast are mere specks on the horizon, and Google might as well be in a completely different universe. Essentially, there is no hope.

Apparently, though, the feeling down at Yahoo is that they at least have to try and in that brave-but-futile spirit they have released Yahoo Maps Beta. Some sarcastic types might point out that labeling the thing as “beta” might let them grab a little bit of Google’s cachet. Sadly this is probably not true – the “beta” label mostly likely stems from the fact that the thing sucks 90 kinds of dick, with still yet more dick waiting to be sucked in a line that stretches at least around the corner and probably halfway down the street.

Not that you would see that with Yahoo Maps.

The package is brutal in pretty much all respects, but here are some of the lowlights:
“Feature” searches (ie: food, attractions, what-have-you) are 100% U.S.-centric. Apparently, Yahoo is not overly interested in marketing this to the people in the other 200 backwater nations on this planet.

Address searches pretty much suck for any location that is not in the (surprise!) U.S. of A. As a completely random comparison of the Google and Yahoo map portals, I searched for 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa … an address of at least some small fame. Google found it and placed the location marker on the entrance of Stephen Harper’s driveway. Yahoo plunked the marker in the middle of Manitoba with the notice that “the address could not be found, so the location was in the centre of the requested city. I was not aware that the Ottawa city limits stretched quite so far west …

The satellite imagery is entirely useless. Zooming in on the aforementioned address in Ottawa with Google in satellite mode shows lovely detail, including Cowboy Steve’s big blue pickup truck. Zooming in on the aforementioned address in Yahoo gives you this:

This is not to say that this a completely useless product. It does have a little “navigation” map in the corner that is really handy for locating where you are in the grand scheme of things. This is really quite nice … especially since the gang over at Google added the same thing to their maps once Yahoo revealed it to the world. So yeah, thanks Yahoo. Thanks for the new Google navigation box. You just keep those good ideas coming …

50: The percentage of female characters in online role-playing games that are avatars for male players.

Under normal circumstances, me making fun of anyone’s musical skills would be an invitation to pull out the kettle and the pot and comment on their relative blackness. However, this is anything but “normal circumstances” … this dude is quite possibly the worst rapper … nay, the worst anything of all time.

And dude, put your shirt back on. Please.

Not so long ago I publicly said that I didn’t care how much I missed hockey, if they went to a shootout format I was never coming back as a fan. Bastardization of the game, I said … a sideshow that had nothing to do with the soul of the sport.

Yeah, so I was wrong. I did watch hockey this year, enjoyed the hell out of the new emphasis on skill and speed, and (as long as it never shows up in the playoffs) I don’t actually hate the shootout. In fact, there was a certain glee inherent in watching the Leafs lose shootout after shootout this year … the disappointment and heartache of their fans was all the sweeter when distilled down to these do-or-die situations.

Live and learn, I guess.

So the playoffs are now upon us, and I am jazzed. In that spirit, I humbly submit my fearless picks for the first round … excelsior!

EAST

Ottawa / Tampa: People can (unjustifiably, I would say) point FIngers Of Doubt at Ray Emery all they want, but the fact is that Ottawa is a fucking juggernaut on offence and they are going to be firing at a couple of goalies that, well, suck. End of story. Ottawa in 5. And yeah, I am being pretty brave picking against the monkey here …

Carolina / Montreal: Huet will play his head off, but it won’t help. Unless Marty Gerber turns into Ken Wregget overnight and totally stinks the joint out, it’s the ‘Canes in 6.

New York / New Jersey: Two words: Marty fucking Brodeur. Jersey in 6.

Philadelphia / Buffalo: Unless the Flyers find a way to clone Peter Forsberg 18 times before the weekend, they are done. Buffalo is faster, smarter, has better goalies, and is hot right now. Sabres in 5.

WEST

Detroit / Edmonton: This is a really good matchup for Edmonton. But it won’t help. Wings in 5.

Dallas / Colorado: Turco .vs. Theodore should be an easy win for the Stars. But … but … I dunno. It’s hard to bet against Burnaby Joe when the chips are down. I agree with the monkey … Avalanche in 7.

Nashville / San Jose: Nashville is injured and tired. Paul Kariya is awesome, but Thornton and Cheechoo are way more awesome. San Jose in 6.

Calgary / Anaheim: The Flames have the best group of 6 defensemen in the league. Period. And their goalie should be MVP, Jagr be damned. So, well … thanks for coming out, Ducks, and we’ll see you next year. Flames in 5.

I am sure that many of you have now enjoyed a blissful journey through the online catalogue of The Bradford Exchange. The entertainment value there is incalcuable. But … as you scroll through the treasures contained in these pages, one nagging question keeps coming to the fore: Who is this “Thomas Kinkade, Painter Of Light” person?

Quite frankly, I have no idea. But whoever he is, his crowning achievement is without a doubt the Big Steaming Pile of Religion … er, I mean Faith Mountain. And yes, it lights up.

There are a grillion e-commerce sites. But there is only one that is worth visiting every day. Or, more accurately, every night … over at woot.com they have exactly one product for sale each day, with the item being posted for sale at exactly 1:00 am eastern time. It’s usually tech-oriented, always an actual bargain, and they shill each one in a oddly funny podcast.

Best item ever? The Bag Of Crap. I’ll refrain from spoiling the surprise. You just have to wait and see for yourself …

UPDATE: The link is now repaired. That Kinkade guy is everywhere, but this was just silly.

There is apparently some grumbling among the rank and file about this post. Most of the complaints can be distilled down to “Fruit juice, my ass.”

However … if we examine the Agriculture Canada rules for label and sale, we find that “fruit juice” is defined as any beverage that is comprised of at least 50% water and that has it’s primary colour and flavouring provided by the suspended solids, dissolved sugars, and/or soluble oils of a fruit. “Fruit” is defined as the flesh, pulp, skin, rind, pith, seeds, or nut of any vegetable that grows on a tree or vine and has the seed or nut primarily contained within or attached to the flesh.

So – coffee cherries are definitely fruit. And black coffee is absolutely flavoured and coloured by that fruit. So, while you may have to add the terms “technically” and “reconstituted” to the phrase if pressed, coffee is (by the letter of the law) a fruit juice.

Bottoms up.

There are some things that are pretty much confined to the United States. One such institution is the “Bradford Exchange”, a company whose name would be familiar to you if you had ever picked up a magazine or TV Guide in the U.S. of A. Their advertising reach is impressive indeed, and there is a direct correlation to the number of their ads in any given publication and that publication’s likelihood of being found in the racks right by the cash registers at the local Shop-n-Save.

If you are not a resident of the land south of the 49th, however, you may not be familiar with the Bradford Exchange or there (ahem) fine wares. If this is the case then you, my friend, are definitely missing out … but fortunately there just happens to be a handy dandy introduction to the whole kit and kaboodle right here.

BTW: If you are tempted to think that the illustrative examples that they give are somehow fake or exaggerated, there are real live links at the bottom of the article to the offerings and inventory of the Bradford Exchange … timeless items all. Number two is especially fetching and fraught with meaning and tradition …

The next time that somebody gives you grief about enjoying nature’s perfect beverage, you might want to politely remind them that black coffee is actually a fruit juice.

Just saying.

Unless you speak both French and Geek, you will probably need babelfish to decode the contents of this post. If you don’t feel so inclined, then you can get the gist of it here: In a nutshell, it appears that Apple has deliberately underclocked the graphics processor and the video RAM of the MacBook Pro. The speeds are not choked back by trivia amounts, either: The ATI Radeon X1600 graphics chip is wound down to 310MHz from the factory 475MHz, and the RAM is clocked at 278MHz – far less than the standard 470MHz.

This makes sense – the first production demos of the MacBook ran insanely hot due to the thin form factor – so hot that you couldn’t actually hold them on your lap. Additionally, this clockback probably increases the battery life by about 30 percent. But, if you want to live on the edge, you can wind those chips back up and probably see an almost fifty percent increase in graphics speed. Give ‘er.

10: The highest grade in school that was attended by former ABC anchorman Peter Jennings.

1972: The last year that the NHL needed to stage a tie-breaker game after the end of the regular season to determine a play-off position.

There are a lot of pattern and colour matching games out there, and they all have one thing in common. Whether it’s Bejewelled or Bust-A-Move or Meteos or Yoshi’s Cookie, they all break down to “yet another variant of Tetris” because – no matter what the actual gameplay mechanic – they all face the same limitatioin: The pieces are confined to a grid.

What happens when you get rid of the grid? You get Drifts – a deceptively deep colour matching game where movement and pattern completion is completely free form. The goal is simple – collect the green bubbles, touch blue bubbles to score, and stay away from the poisonous evil purple bubbles.

Simple goal, maddening result. Have fun.

Meanwhile, researchers in Singapore look to extend the potential audience for video games to untouched demographics with VR games that allow pets to engage in head-to-head competition with their owners. I’m not sure if I am ready for Joust: Beagle Edition, but it appears inevitable …

Ever wonder what the Gatorade people are really selling? Now you know.

Here are two undeniable truths:

1 – Watching a full game of baseball is more or less an interminable version of hell. All that standing around and stalling and on and on and eventually you have to sit there for three fucking hours to see 30 minutes of action. Luckily, the entire sport is saved baseball video games … you get all of the actual guts of the game – the strategy and pitching and hitting and whatnot – without all the standing around and doing nothing.

2 – The Boston Red Sox have always been and will always be a completely despisable outfit. This means, of course, that the tenth inning of game 6 of the 1986 World Series – where they throw away certain victory and hand the Mets the championship thanks to Bill Buckner’s hands of stone – will forever be a truly glorious thing.

These two undeniable truths converge here in glorious 8-bit action. And yes, this guy has way too much time on his hands …

So it turns out that the Senators do have a sense of humour, and they were pretty obviously just out there for a skate last night. Sending the fans of the blue and white out into the evening air with actual hope only to have their dreams crushed 15 minutes later was pretty fucking funny.

Yeah, so I try not to be overly self-indulgent here. Things that get posted here are (I hope) of at least moderate interest to at least one other person on the planet.

Until now.

This bit here is about my golf game, and is probably of no interest whatsoever to any sane person besides myself. So feel free to skip on to the next bit. And be aware that every time you see this particular title, it will be more of the same. I will probably bore the crap out of you with this garbage all summer long. You have been warned.

So – with that out of the way, here’s the deal. No less of an authority than Ben Hogan says that anyone – well, anyone who has enough coordination to do complex things like walk and sit down – can break 80. On this surface, this seems absurd. Most weekend hackers think that breaking 90 is the promised land, and 80 is the province of pros and cheaters. If you think about it, thought, it makes sense. Everybody, even the most pathetic of duffers, hits good shots once in a while. In theory, if you hit a good shot every time, you would be shooting some serious golf. The trick, then, is to find a way to consistently repeat the same swing you use when you hit those good shots.

Besides – who’s really going to argue with Ben freaking Hogan?

In that spirit, I have decided to quit hacking around the golf course and get a little more serious about my game. I don’t have stupid crazy hours at work any more – quite frankly, I had almost turned into one of those “live to work” people, which is scary shit indeed, but I nipped that in the bud and now prefer to think of myself as a “work the absolute bare amount to pay for green fees” person which is a whole lot healthier indeed – and I plan to use this summer to get my handicap to 12 or better.

12, not entirely coincidentally, is the minimum handicap that the Royal & Ancient demands that you have to be allowed to play the Old Course at St. Andrews.

I have discovered that there are three big hurdles standing in my way. One, my grip – the same one I have used since I was about 10 years old – sucks giant wang. Two, my right foot naturally points in exactly the wrong direction for a proper stance. And three, my upper body flexibility does not allow me a full backswing if I keep my arms in the correct position for a nice straight ball.

I figure number three will come with a nice dose of pilates and yoga. For now, I will just give the full backswing a miss and go with a three-quarter swing until I get some of that reach back. And two, well, two just means that I have to stand a little bit uncomfortably. No biggie.

But number one … this is going to be a bitch. A correct grip isn’t all that hard to do – the big key is not using the thumb and forefinger of your dominant hand to actually hold the club. But doing it after all these years … ugh. I worked out with a new and hopefully-correct grip today, and after 108 balls on the range my hands are killing me. As in I am not real sure how I am going to hold my fork at dinner. Which sucks, since I am cooking barbeque and (to be a little bit less-than-humble) I cook seriously good barbeque indeed.

But – it actually seems like it is going to work. I lost about 25% of my distance right off the bat today … but I will happily accept that since every shot actually went when I aimed it. And I assume that I will get some of that distance back with some sweat and some flexibility training.

Speaking of … I am told that the Winsor Pilates is the best DVD for that sort of thing … but I am always willing to entertain dissenting opinions. Feel free to chime in …

The Leafs fans are all in a tizzy, convinced that their semi-talented heroes are actually going to make it into the playoffs. You know what? They might actually be right. While it should be 100% obvious that the Senators are going to put the final spike into the blue and white corpse tonight, destroying the naive hopes of the losers who chant “Go Leafs Go”, there is also a distinct possibility that the Ottawa side will tank the game, throwing it in the hopes that the Leafs do sneak in to the last playoff position. After all, who would you rather play in the first round than the collection of goons and half-wits that inhabit the Air Canada Centre? It would be like warming up for the real playoffs against a Junior C team … the perfect way to get your playoff legs under you.

Now, as much as I would love to see that happen – the Leafs sneak in and then get hammered in four games straight by scores of about 10-0 – I don’t think it will happen. The Senators know that they get to make Leafs fans cry either way … but if they do it tonight they don’t have to listen to the wailing and gnashing for quite so long.

Much fuss has been made about Boot Camp, whereby Apple sort of officially sanctions running Windoze on the new Core Duo Macs. Big deal. It doesn’t really change anything … just because you can boot into Windoze doesn’t mean that anyone ever really will – most people will give it a go or two to see how it works, but the annoyance of having to log out in order to switch OS installs makes it pointless. There are just not enough apps that you need to run off both platforms to make the hassle worth while. There may be a game or a very specific app that people need to run once in a blue moon, but on the whole anyone who has the brains to buy a Core Duo box also has the brains to realize that virtually every task ever is better under OSX. No one in their right mind would do the regular workaday things like read email and listen to music on the Windoze side by choice … so no one is going to spend much time in the Windoze boot if it means using crap-ass apps to do their everyday tasks while they are there.

The real promise of common architecture for OSX, Windoze, and Linux is actually in virtualization. Remember that word, it will be on everyone’s lips come summer. Instead of a dual boot, where you have to choose your OS and then you are stuck there (tragically, if you booted into the Windoze side) until you log out, virtualization software lets the two (or three!) OS installs run concurrently with no detectable performance hit. Now you can justify the expense of buying a second OS for your Mac … you can now switch to whatever app you need to run in the Windoze environment without having to shut down all the stuff that brought you to OSX in the first place. And no, this is not an emulator – this is really both OS packages sharing the processor natively and on the same level. The days of “mousing through molasses” are done.

Best of all, if you have a Core Duo Mac you can start playing right now, for free. Download the beta of Parallels Desktop and start having fun.

Boot Camp, my ass.