The Whitehawk

Well, I’ve been a bit “busy” lately playing with Kingdom Hearts 2, which I have been eagerly waiting for many countless months, and I have to say… that I’m finding the game a double-edged sword.

While the main purpose of the game seems to be to reunite [tag]Sora[/tag] with his friends. When you travel to the many “worlds”, they mostly feel like you’re playing “mini-games” between the events that actually drive the story, and in some of the worlds, no story development happens whatsoever (except for the story of that world of course) and I leave to another world with an empty feeling thinking that I just wasted time there.

Another thing that I find different from [tag]Kingdom Hearts 1[/tag], is that, while in the original, the difficulty of the game and the monsters in general became harder (even though you became more powerful). In [tag]Kingdom Hearts 2[/tag], the rate at which you become stronger surpasses by far the rate at which the monsters do. One of my friends told me he had read about this issue before, but when I started playing, I chose medium difficulty, and I didn’t find the game easier than the original during the beginning. But after a few hours play, you do start to notice a difference.

With the exception of the “useless” planets, the ones that do drive the story forward, make the experience slightly more rewarding, but the problem, is that while in Kingdom Hearts 1, you were actually doing something meaningful towards a clear goal, it’s unclear to me at this time what the goal of Kingdom Hearts 2 really is. And at the rate the story develops between the meaningless ones, which is a slow rate by the way, I can’t help but fear that the climax will be too sudden and too quick to understand what is going on, leaving us with only more questions than the first one and paving a road for third game in the series.

Then again, I might be wrong. When I finish the game, I’ll be sure to tell you how it really went.

Recently my Objects Oriented Programming teacher, who is, I mean was, also Vice-Rector of the University was demoted from his position. The Rector claims that his act was based on an e-mail he received from my teacher. After reading the e-mail in question my belief in our University’s organization greatly decreased.

To put it short, my teacher was demoted for showing interest in helping the students of a particular course. And for expressing in a direct, but polite, way how he was upset that the decision he made, with a group of colleagues responsible for the course in question and the university’s management, was easily disregarded and stepped over.

What can I learn from this and apply in future situations?

Well, for starters, if your rank is dependant on someone higher than you and you wish to keep it, it’s best to follow orders blindly like a soldier instead of being a “warrior” who is willing to do anything to protect and defend his group’s best interests.

Secondly, absolute power corrupts absolutely. If I said, out of context, that a leader expelled his right and left-arm men without any regard for their opinions simply because they expressed grief when their work latest work had been made obsolete. You would surely think I was speaking of something dictatorial or from the middle ages. Unfortunately, it happened right now, in the 21st century.

As my teacher said in his first interview about this, I fear what will happen in the University due to this.

I have a few hours of sleep to catch and I’m sitting in a room right now listening to a woman mumbling about arrays and strings for an hour as if we don’t know what those are in the second semester of the computer engineering course.

I have a feeling our former teacher would just write what we need to know on the board and get us working in 5 minutes.

Today I learned a valuable lesson in design and how you can apply what you learn on the web about design and usability in real life situations.

It started when I bought a lamp for my desk and I wanted to place it there. Sounds simple enough, right?

Wrong.

My desk space is very limited. And even though I have another two “tables” in my room to put my things on, they are already occupied and aren’t good to serve as working desks. So basically, I wanted to put on my desk my laptop, the speakers and sub-woofer, the router (preferably in a position where I could see it’s leds) and leave enough room for me to write and work on.

After various attempts I think I found the perfect layout for working space without compromising functionality, but, what I did sacrifice was design. Just before I made this change, my desk looked neat and tidy. Now it looks smaller and cluttered but at least now I can use it without sacrificing my sight (due to low light) and still check things on the laptop if I need to.

When you are building a website, or re-arranging something, whether it’s your room, your office or your desk, keep in my mind that the nicest arrangement of the items is not always necessarily the best. Even though things might look nice to you, you shouldn’t place things in a way that will make the way you interact with them harder.

Then again, I’m not saying to go back to early Web 1.0 design either. I’m just saying that there is always a middle ground between the elements of design and usability in everything so you can find peace of mind without sacrificing a lot of sore sight.

Yesterday I had a bigger lunch break from college so I decided to go pickup the iPod Nano a bit earlier (since I was carrying the money on me) but it was only at around 7pm that had the time to actually open it up.

I was thinking of recording the moment with pictures and post them in this article, but then I thought to myself that it would be too cliche. Little did I know what I was about to find. Something that has drastically changed my vision and comprehension of some software and hardware companies, similar to finding out that women also get diarrhea sometimes (except that the feeling is opposite of that of course).

First, let me start off with Sony. If you’ve ever purchased any product from Sony (except headphones) you’ll understand that is virtually impossible to put the contents of the box exactly as they were when they came from the fabric. Those bending card-boards that fit together in ways more complicated than any Origami model I’ve ever seen.

You need 2 minutes to take everything out of the box, and 10 to put everything back in correctly. Ok, so I may be exaggerating a bit, but the boxes are exaggeratedly complicated with absolutely no reason for being so.

On the other hand, opening the iPod Nano’s package rates (in terms of difficulty) as easy as opening a DVD package. You take out the plastic wrapper, slide the content out and break the sticky tape. As you open the “book”, like a child opening a Christmas present you find the iPod on the right and and a container on the left with everything you need for the player.

To take out the iPod, you just need to apply a bit of pressure on the sides or on the back of the cardboard and it comes out nicely. You don’t need to strain your arms trying to break industrial plastic nor cut it with a small scissor as if the plastic was actually metal. The first rule every company that puts their products in boxes should follow is:

#1 – Don’t make your boxes as hard to get into as Fort Knox, we are customers, not robbers. Sure, there are reasons behind it, but the security of the reseller shouldn’t be your concern. The iPod is easily one of the most successful and sold products in existence, and one could easily pick up a box that isn’t sealed and just walk out with it from the Apple Store (at least where I live). That doesn’t mean Apple makes it impenetrable to users. We shouldn’t need to use scissors to open any product.

The second thing that struct me after I stopped admiring the nano was the rest of the package. The rest on the contents are placed inside a “box” attached the other half of the “book-like” package. When you open it you’ll find, 4 small papers, two of which are the manuals in english and french, and the other two are terms of usage and burocratical things. Companies, count: 4 small papers that are thinner than a music CD booklet. It took me 2 minutes to read the whole manual and learn everything there was about the iPod. I’ve had my Sony Walkman for many months and last week I found out the use for one of the “buttons” on it… I shouldn’t have to memorize a large instruction manual in order to use a product, ever!

Mind you, it’s not that I’m too dumb to understand how a product works, but, as an example, even though the Sony PSP’s manuals are rather big. Mine was imported from Japan, and still, without understanding any Japanese I’m able to use my PSP fully and know exactly how to use it (which I actually found surprising since Sony products are usually complicated to use or to understand all of the features).

I should probably create a new category for rants in which this would be the first, but I don’t want to suffer from a “disease” that many blogs come across which is the “too many categories for one or two articles only disease”, that happens to be very contagious also.

Anyway, as I continued unwrapping the contents of the package I found those 4 papers, two attached little grey bags with small cuts on them to help you open them (once again companies, take note), a small grey leather sleeve to put your iPod in and another small paper with two “Apple Logo” stickers. I’m trying to think hard to see if there was anything else, but I think that was all.

What did the two bags contain? Well, I don’t know exactly what was in each one, but this is what was in both:

• Phones with a small, easy to take out plastic strap around them
• Another two small bags with those black things that you cover the tip of the phones with(I’m Portuguese, please bear with my lack of dialect, I think they’re called “muffs”)
• A plastic base that helps you plug the Nano to any older iPod accessories you might have (docks, stereo speakers) without having to buy a new one
• The cable to connect it with the pc (with nice protective tips, that besides serving the purpose of protecting the tips of the cable also help in keeping it wrapped)

And unless my memory is failing, that’s it!

Why is this simplicity so hard to achieve for other companies?

If you’re keen on reading the internet news, there’s almost no doubt that you came across the “What if Microsoft redesigned the iPod package” video mentioned in many blogs like my friend David’s. But I think that it’s only when you open a box so well conceived as the iPod Nano’s that you’ll truly understand what a difference the package makes, not only on the outside, but also on the inside.

But enough about the box and onto the player itself.

The first thing that hit me when I looked at it, was how tiny it was. It easily is the thinnest and most pretty gadget I have ever owned, beating even top model gadgets like the PSP or even the original iPod.

After turning it around and seeing my reflection on the back I turn it on and look at it’s beautiful screen which is perfectly readable even under direct sunlight (what happened with the network walkman and the PSP Sony?).

The next step was obviously learning how to walk, or should I say, how to use the clickwheel. It took a while to get used to it (like an hour or so of use), but fortunately I was able to get the hang of it, and now it feels much more natural than my old walkman, and faster too!

With the exception of a touchscreen, I believe the clickwheel might easily be one of the best and fastest ways to access an interface on portable devices. Sure, it’s not fitted for every interface, like a PDA, but it could and should, be adapted for more things than just the iPod.

The interface is simple to use, and doesn’t really need any introduction, however, I do have some negative aspects to bring out, such as the EQ which doesn’t really seem to do anything, if it does, the difference is hardly noticeable, or I’m just not using the right tracks to try them out. Then again, it already sounds great without the need for any change in the settings, unlike what happens with the walkman.

Battery life is somewhat disappointing, but that is perhaps due to the fact that Sony “spoiled me” with a 50 hour battery life that I only got to see the end of twice, once when I forgot to turn off the player and left it on, and another when I purposely didn’t connect the player and wanted for the battery to run out.

PC Software/Connectivity. I am not a fan of the iPod proprietary port, actually no, let me rephrase that, I’m not a fan of any proprietary port. That’s part of the reason why I made the choice to buy an MP3 player and not an MP3 capable phone like the nice Sony Ericsson phones, they use proprietary ports for the headphones, and there’s no chance in hell I’ll be using things like that.

Since the PC/iPod cable is only used for connecting the iPod to the PC and I used to carry a mini-USB cable around with me any way (for the network walkman) it doesn’t really make much difference to me, oh wait wait, it does make a difference, thanks to the small clip on the iPod cable it stays tidier and doesn’t get wrapped around like spaghetti.

iTunes? Well, it pretty much beats every music playing software out there. Windows Media Player is pretty close, but as long as they follow Apple’s footsteps they will always be one or several steps behind.

So there you have it folks, everything I think and feel about the iPod and why I love it so much and why it quickly became my favorite gadget.

[tags]iPod, iPod Nano, iPod Review, iPod Nano Review, Apple, Apple iPod, Microsoft, Sony, Packages[/tags]

And tomorrow I’m going to purchase one. Ever since it’s release, I’ve been looking at it with puppy eyes anxious to get my hands on one.

I love my current music player, it plays it’s purpose perfectly, great battery life (has more than 4 times the duration of the Nano’s), great looks (though most resume it’s looks with “it looks like a lighter”), but, it also has it’s downsides.

Sony’s software is horrible.

Mind you, it’s more “usable” now than it was when I bought my old Minidisk player, but still, it’s slow, very slow, it crashes sometimes for no apparent reason and for some reason, whenever you change your registry, no matter how little the change was, the program needs to access the internet and rebuild something. While this process only takes a few seconds, it makes no sense to me except to annoy and delay the music transfer, and if I happen to be in my mother’s apartment in which I don’t have an internet access it completely blocks my ability to transfer music or open the program altogether, which has made me curse a couple of times.

The players usability isn’t one of it’s strong points either. If you’re familiar with Minidisk walkmans with the small “remotes” then you can probably consider the Network Walkman an upgraded version of them. Which works perfectly well for a playlist of, let’s say, an album for example. But when you’re trying to “scroll” down 40 tracks it becomes less entertaining. It’s terribly easy to pause, increase/decrease volume and skip tracks without removing it from your pocket, but that’s as far as it goes, as for anything else you need to take it our of your pocket and navigate through the menus twisting it once each time you want to move up or down.

Another downside is the lack of decent accessories in Europe for it. Japan has great accessories for it, and America is starting to see some of them appear, however in Europe it’s impossible, and it’s quite hard to find a trustworthy site that will ship them here. On the other hand I can get iPod accessories in almost any computer shop and I have one for each and every need I might ever have.

One for my car, one to hook up to a stereo, one for remote control, one for…

…God knows what!

Anyway, it’s almost time for bed, and I’m going to give my books a quick spin before hitting the sack and tomorrow I’ll be sure to bring you the first impressions I will get of my new gadget and hopefully I’ll even be able to study a bit tomorrow

[tags]iPod, iPod Nano, Apple, Sony, Network Walkman, Sony NW, Walkman[/tags]

Last semester was as incoming train crash. I hope that this month (brings up the cliché text) I will study much harder than last time and succeed where I failed.

Instead of saying to myself “I’m going to pickup my books and study for no reason” I’m going to spend my time passing the things that were given in class in clean on another book. That way it will force me to read everything twice and whilst doing it and trying to understand it eventually, some of it, hopefully, will stick inside my head.

Today, one of my favorite pets was put to sleep.

He was 13 years old and wonderfully strong even in sickness. Out of all his brothers and sister dobermans he was the only one that survived a sickness that came over all of them.

He gave us 13 years of joy and happiness and always made our hearts soft when we looked at his shinny puppy eyes. Some people consider doberman a ferocious breed of dogs. I wish you could have seen him before he fell sick.

Rest in peace my dearest friend. May you have gone to a better place.

My doberman is still sick. And me and my father are becoming sick from it also. Since wednesday last week I’ve been going to vet every day with my father and he’s been injected for an hour or two to try to keep him alive since he can’t keep the food he eats inside him.

Not only is the dog suffering a lot, me and my father are also suffering because of it. We’ve been a bit down lately, and very stressed. As soon as his blood analisys come back we will have to decide whether we will put him to sleep or not.

This has also been affecting my blogging capabilities and personal life since I end up not having much time or patience for either one due to this problem. He is suffering a lot, every day, we are suffering a lot.

There are two ways for making things better for him, but the only way to make it better for me and my father is if he gets better.

Yesterday was a great day for me, on the opposite all the years before (except for last year) Valentine’s day has always been a really sad day for me. However, I’ve had the same girlfriend for two years in a row now, and thankfully things are still going well with signs of many more years of relationship to come.

Today was the exact opposite of that. My pet dog, a doberman, has been sick for a few days, with difficulty in keeping the food he eats in him and feeling weak, though he recovered a bit after my father talked with some veterinaries he knows he started vomiting again so we took him to the vet.

On the way down, my father was holding him and said to me “I love this dog Marco, and he is quite old, if the doctor says he can’t recover I’m afraid I’ll have to put him to sleep. I don’t want him to suffer”. Though I was very saddened by this I understood, since we had already lost two dogs on the last two years and one of them died of being old and sickness.

The way for the vet was exhausting, the dog still hadn’t been seen and I was already stressing out from hearing all the dogs from “behind the bars” barking (we went to the local animal’s protection society). After a long wait he went in with my father and I stayed outside waiting. And to wait I did, and then a bit more. And still a while longer, and an hour and half had already gone by.

I went out of the building and sat down on a bench waiting with my heart skipping beats and my arms trembling. I remember thinking to myself on that moment “this must be what people feel when they’re waiting to hear the results of an operation in the hospitals”. Then, suddenly, out of the blue I heard my father shouting my name. I turned my head back and saw him giving out a deep sigh of relief holding the dog’s chain with the dog attached to it.

Then I went to get him and tomorrow we will begin his treatment. Thankfully he is better now, and should start healing from today onwards. But I can’t recall the last time I was this stressed out.