I know it's kind of contradictory to what I said in my last post, but I bought a MacBook. I was originally planning on getting a MacBook Pro so I could have more screen real estate, ports and performance. In a nutshell, I basically decided paying $400 extra was not worth it.

I guess it all started after the overpriced MacBook Air disappointment which put me back into the market for an older Mac laptop model. I was sure the MacBook Pro was going to be the right one, but then I saw someone with a black MacBook in class. I saw that the screen resolution wasn't all that bad, and that the laptop would actually perfectly suitable for my needs. A MacBook Pro is more of a desktop replacement, and I just simply don't need that. I mainly use my laptop for class, so something small and simple would be perfect. I was even starting to think my 14.1" Thinkpad was too big. So right after class, I ordered one.

It has since come in, and I love it. One of the main things I love is the battery life. On the ThinkPad T60, I'd get like 2 hours. But with this, I can max it out to about 5 hours of normal web surfing and note-taking, which is perfect cause I'm in class for about 5 hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

At this point, I think I can call myself a switcher. Now this isn't my first Mac, I bought a Mac Mini last year just to try it out and now it's my main desktop at home. Now that I've replaced my laptop, I no longer have to use Windows on a personal computer. The main reason I've come to this decision is that Apple is the company who is innovating, they're the ones who are coming up with all the ideas. Windows seems dead in the water and isn't bringing anything new and innovative to the table. It just seems like such a clear, obvious choice. It was hard to accept at first since I've been with MS since DOS back when I was six, and it's hard to say goodbye to the OS you grew up with, but I think it's the right decision.

With the Vista flop, XP not going any further, and the release of Leopard, now is the perfect time for people to switch and not be left behind by something MS is doing.

As you know, Steve Jobs gave the keynote speech at MacWorld 2008 yesterday, as he always does. If you missed any of the coverage, check out the video here. I gotta say I'm a little disappointed, but a few minor announcements may have made up for it.

Firstly, I'm very glad to have the highly-desired iPhone apps on my iPod Touch, like Mail, Weather and Maps. Gmail may have updated their interface yesterday, but it's still nothing like having a native Mail app. But the catch was that to get these apps, you had to buy them in the iTunes store for $20. This caused a riff with some, but not for me since I still hadn't used a $25 ITunes gift card I got for Christmas (thanks Mom). But it's not only that I didn't really have to pay for it, it was a pretty big upgrade, and with most software, you have to pay for the big upgrade. But was the upgrade enough to justify the price? Why not just bundle it with the 1.1.3 update? I'm not sure yet, what do you think?

Time Capsule is pretty neat, but I don't think I'll be wanting to use something like that until the Drobo has some sort of network attachment feature. The key difference, and it's an important one, is Drobo's method means more reliable data. I cannot fully trust a single hard drive to keep my data safe. Actually, I don't even really trust backing up to something in my house, unless it's also being backed up online; there's always that what-if scenario. So for that reason, I use Amazon's S3 service. But anyway, instead of getting the Time Capsule, I'd rather see a network storage solution for the Drobo that will support both Windows and OSX writing to it, then from there, I'd sync it with S3.

Online movie rentals in HD! This was particularly exciting for me because I want to move into the HD movie world, but I don't want to commit to and particular format (Blu-ray, HD-DVD, HD-VMD, etc.). Online movie rentals through iTunes can allow me to simply rent an HD movie, have it within a few minutes, and watch it. Although, I think I read somewhere that you have to have an AppleTV to have access to the HD version, which is a problem for me cause all I have is a Mac Mini I hook up to the TV occasionally. Well with the new AppleTV pricedrop and software upgrade, plus the ability to watch podcasts on my TV which is more desirable than watching on my computer, I might seriously consider that. But $4.99 for an HD new release? That's going to add up quick. I propose a subscription service like Netflix does, except for HD movies on iTunes. Follow the netflix model of two movies out at a time or something for like $14.95 a month, and people will rejoice.

And finally, how about this MacBook Air thing? Well I said earlier I was somewhat disappointed. The reason is that I was hoping for what all the rumors were speculating towards, and that was pretty much a mini, 0.8" MacBook Pro, with a 13.3" 1440x900 screen and everything, to replace the MacBook line. If that was the case, I was going to order one right away; instead, they came out with an airplane wing type laptop. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the design. Maybe I like symmetry or something because I'd rather just have it the same height all around. It just looks strange to me, but then again, it'll probably catch on and I'll love it in a few months. But for now, I'd rather just get the MacBook Pro and have all the ports, optical drive access, and screen real estate I need. Plus the screen could have been slightly larger to efficiently use the front panel space. 1280x800? The people need more resolution!! But it's a great achievement to have created the thinnest laptop in the world, plus the remote disk thing is genius (knowing Apple, you'd think they'd make you buy the external optical drive), but it's just not for me.

That's what I think; what do you think?

Taylor and I have been wanting to start a podcast recently about weather. There's plenty of podcasts that tell you weather conditions but none that we've found that will teach you about weather. Inspiration of this idea comes from Robert Krampf's science videos and Neal and Cali who are full-time podcasters. Taylor is the one interested in meteorology and hopes to become a meteorologist some day, so it's right up her alley. I'd do a technology one, but it just seems there's too many of those in every different format, so I don't know what I could bring to the table that's new.

So this video is a sneak peak at what's to come on the site. It's the first episode we shot and it's pretty decent. I don't know how to do fancy animations to aid the explanations which would be nice, so the way it is will have to do for now. Yes, I know the audio is over modulated in the stand-up shots, we'll watch for that next time.

Any feedback will be helpful, but for now, Taylor is making go see the movie "Enchanted" at the Lyric Theatre. Later!

I guess I'll blog about this whole Gizmodo ordeal. I almost didn't because it's getting kind of old and a lot has been said already, but I have no tolerance for inconsiderate people and it just lights a fire in me, and not a good one.

I can see where there might be some humor in this, but it just shows how immature they are not be considerate towards presenters and vendors. Companies come to CES for business, to share why their product or idea is going to be the next big thing; now they get to have it ruined by some kids with a IR blaster. I'm not even sure prankster Woz would do something so low, he has ethics (Read iWoz, good book). It shouldn't even go as far as ethics, it's just simple common courtesy that decent human beings follow. Then to make it worse, they post a video of them doing it and seemed quite proud of themselves.

CES recognized Gizmodo as journalists who would just cover the products and news the way they were supposed to, instead they wreaked havoc on vendors and caused more trouble than what's worth having them there.

UPDATE: Looks like the person responsible has been banned from CES for life, thanks to Jim for the scoop.

One thing that would have been fun and interesting to blog about was my trip to the Orange Bowl in Miami last week. For those who are unaware, Virginia Tech played in the game, and I work for the athletic video department at Virginia Tech. We're the ones who film football practice for the coaches and run the video board during football and basketball games. We do a bunch of other stuff, but I'll save that for another time. So being part of the football staff, we got to stay with the team in their 5-star hotel, the Westin Diplomat. Well I can tell you I did not have a very "5-star" experience. When we got there, it took them about 8 hours to get us a hotel room. So we did a whole lot of nothing all day, unshowered, just waiting for our room to be ready. Our room never became ready, at least we'll never know if it did, because we finally found someone at the front desk with the bright idea to just give us a room that was ready. Just great.

Another fun experience was the Miami Improv. Laura, who also works with video, is a stand-up comic and thought it'd be fun to check out the Miami Improv. It was fun...for the comics who got to make fun of the only white group of people in the room. Yeah it was us. I made it sound like it wasn't fun, but I think we all had a pretty good time. Also I was finally able to see my girlfriend Taylor during the trip. She was staying with the band at the BahiaMar in Ft. Louderdale. We can't be away from eachother for too long, so I had to go see her.

Game time finally came and was pretty exciting since I've never really been on the sideline of a game before, I'm usually inside editing the rebroadcast of the game to air on Comcast SportsNet. I took my camera and got some shots of the action, but I wish I had taken my Canon HV20 instead. I actually was so caught up in all the sideline action that I forgot Katharine McPhee was coming out to sing the national anthem.I was rooting for her to win American Idol since she simply had a better voice than Taylor Hicks. So I was walking along the sideline and she walks right by me, like 5 inches away, and I thought, "Hmm, she looks familiar." Then I remembered. So she sang the anthem and all, then she just kind of hung out on the sideline for the first half of the game. So Scotty and I decided to try to get some photos with her and we were successful, as you can see. She seemed very happy to pose with us, so that was nice.

Another celebrity sighting that was exciting was the halftime performance by ZZTop. I'm a big "Back to the Future" fan, so I best knew the band from their appearance in the third installment of the trilogy as the band who played at the clock tower celebration. That was a cool performance even though they only played one song. Check out my Flickr for some photos of that, and of the game and scenes around our hotel.

You're probably thinking, "Again!?" Yes, I've decided to start blogging again. When I come to this decision every year or so, I think it's to fulfill a need to speak out. I have a lot of great experiences and come across a lot of interesting things, but I have no where to share them. The problem is I often start to neglect my blog and readers (yeah, I'm surprised people read it too) by not posting anymore. All I can say is that I'll try again.

As you can see, I've gone with a more minimalistic, simple, and I like to think, elegant look for the blog, but I'm not very happy with it, so I'll most likely be tweaking it over the days. I threw the design together in a few hours, but I'm sure it'll get much better with some fine tuning.

Anyway, stay tuned to the blog (RSS!) as I hope to share life experiences, interesting finds around the web, rants, and technology commentary.