http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V31POD2otRk

The real reason Steve Jobs hates Flash – I don’t know if I buy the argument, but it’s a pretty interesting one nonetheless. Personally, I think the move towards “cloud computing” is slowed every time Gmail is down.

The Definitive Guide to Telling Vermont and New Hampshire Apart – Summary: New Hampshire = libertarians; Vermont = dirty hippies.

MLB.tv and the PS3 – “Last week, though, I discovered MLB.tv in a way that is no longer just good enough. It is amazingly awesome, and it’s MLB.tv through a PlayStation3.” Goddamn it.

Yankees Fans Are From Mars… – A comparison Yankees and Mets fans in New York City. It even has a handy quiz that tries to guess which one you are (it worked for me).

The 15 Most Exciting Summer Movies – I only link this list because it has the right movie at #1. I haven’t even heard of a few of the movies on the list. God, this summer sucks.

Hue Shift on Kongregrate – I think I’m the only person I’ve showed this Flash game to that loved it, but I’m posted it anyway. The problem isn’t with me, it’s all YOU people. Rock, Paper, Shotgun liked the game and they know their PC gaming shit, ok??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Crw85HvIFs

Phillies 2012: A Look Ahead – MLB Trade Rumors gives me hope that the Mets will be able to win the NL East in two years. Hopefully by then Fernando Martinez will be in the OF; Ruben Tejada or Wilmer Floree, 2B; Josh Thole, C; and Jenrry Mejia in the rotation. I wonder if that last sentence was at all grammatically correct.

Ken Blackwell, Author Of ‘Blueprint,’ Tries To Convince Jon Stewart That Obama Is A Tyrant, Fails (VIDEO) – I’m just kinda embarrassed for this guy. He wrote a book and he’s not even able to back it up. At all.

Team Fortress 2: 119th Update! – I haven’t played TF2 for quite a while, but it’s easily one of my favorite games of the past few years, and it’s certainly one that keeps on giving. Valve rocks. I need to load it up just to get my GRIZZLED VETERAN medal.

The Chase is on – Adam Rubin lobby that Chase Utley is “poised” to take the title of Most Feared Opponent of Mets Fans from Chipper Jones. I’d say that already happened. My mancrush is only proof of how terrified I am whenever he comes to the plate. For an opposing player to already have unofficially claimed naming rights to a section of a stadium is just impressive.

Apple shutting down Lala music service – I thought Microsoft was supposed to be the evil company? Now I can’t stream the albums The A.V. Club reviews? Fuck you, Steve Jobs.

Blame The Superstar Syndrome – Why David Wright was getting booed. Or why Mike Francesa was saying to trade him a year and a half ago. Or why sometimes I end up talking about trading Jose Reyes.

Batman 3 Release Date Set – I was really tempted to make this its own post. But all I have to say is July 20, 2012. I hope it doesn’t suck; I don’t want Christopher Nolan to go out on a bad note before the world ends.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW0bb2wxH5Y

The 120 Minutes Archive – Remember when MTV used to play music videos? Me neither. But here’s your time machine. YouTube can still be immensely useful, it seems.

The Art of Naming A Fantasy Team – I take pride that none of my three teams this year fall into one of those most popular categories. F-Core Future wins.

FSI Language Courses – This is pretty insane. Learning material in PDF and audio form for 41 languages. I’ve always wanted to learn Swahili.

What if I had bought Apple stock instead? – Makes me wish I bought Apple stock when I was 11 years old. What kind of dumb kid didn’t realize Steve Jobs was about to rescue his company from irrelevance?

Mike Pelfrey and His Soft Stuff – Some light, PitchFX-informed discussion about Mike Pelfrey’s early season success. I think any Mets fan should be interested. Summary: he isn’t throwing his fastball as much.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy – No, this is not the book, but a review of it. A review with which I agree wholeheartedly. So you should go read the book. ASAP.

This week — I don’t even remember which day of the week anymore — I went up to Smithhaven Mall with the sole intention of making a beeline for the Apple Store there and to plop down in that pristine white space and mess around with a new piece of hyped-up technology. I haven’t really provided many of my own thoughts on the iPad up until this point, only creating a 1st-grade-level photoshop, and linking to a few articles about it. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t waste any words on it before giving it a test run, since my feelings and preconceptions weren’t affected much.

The one thing I hoped they’d have loaded on the iPad was the MLB At Bat app, so when I quickly saw it on the first collection of icons, I clicked it and immediately looked for a way to watch a game on it. Unfortunately, the quality was pretty damn shitty, which I originally chalked up to an overworked internet in the Apple Store, but 1) there weren’t many people in the store, and 2) it was recently brought to my attention that MLB.TV was performing terribly the first few days of the season — or maybe that was just Opening Day. No matter the reason, I’m not ready to blame the iPad directly for the awful, pixelated stream. It did have a lot of cool pop-up boxes, though!

Oh yeah, the other thing I immediately realized was that — contrary to what I’ve heard numerous people say — the iPad is not that heavy. I don’t know what people were expecting, but it’s pretty much the exact weight I expected a computer tablet to be. Did people seriously believe it’d be anywhere as light as a Kindle? Yeah, you’re not going to be holding it up to read for any extended period of time, but don’t a lot of people rest a book on an armrest or something while they’re reading, anyhow? I think the discussion is moot, though, since I can’t imagine trying to read a book on an LED-backlit screen. Reading an internet article of any sort of length is tough enough for me.

Where the iPad shines is in its internet browsing. It’s tough for me to admit, but flying around web pages and click on links with your fingers is fun, and compared to iPhone or iPod Touch, it’s about 50x as functional. Everything is bright and clear, pages load much quicker, and you can see so much more of every webpage. On the other hand, not having Flash functionality is fucking GARBAGE, and it destroys any chance of me agreeing with Apple’s statement that the iPad is “the best way to experience the web.” I guess I just contradicted the first sentence of this very paragraph. Basically, it’s awesome at browsing the parts of the web it actually supports.

What else did I do? Not much, since way too many of the apps loaded onto the iPad were iPhone apps. New York Times app for iPhone? No fucking thanks, I want to try out the version that has a resolution above 480×320. I guess Plants vs. Zombies was the one iPad-optimized game I played, and it was for about 15 seconds, since I rather just play the Steam version. Shit, there really were way too many iPhone apps on it.

I did get accustomed to typing on the iPad fairly quickly. With it rested on a flat surface, I was able to go at probably 80% speed with only a small drop in accuracy. I guess that bodes well for anyone who plans on doing a lot of typing on it, but I can’t see many people fitting that profile. I also can’t see all that many people even needing this admittedly impressive piece of technology. The iPhone (or smartphone of your choice) + laptop combination still makes way too much sense for someone on the move. When I’m at home, I’m not going to have the urge to use a gimped internet browser. I feel like even the hundreds of thousands of people who have already bought one see it as a complimentary device to use around their house, not some new type of computer.

BUT I guess the huge advantage an iPad has over a laptop — or even a netbook — is its battery life. I don’t know what to make of that, as I don’t travel often, and even when I have lately, I didn’t bring along my laptop. And that has nothing to do with having a monstrosity for a laptop, nope. I made use of my hotel room Wi-Fi with my iPod Touch. That was good enough. No need to buy a $500 king size version of it.

Damn, this post needed to be much more negative, if only to get Apple fans to post. I don’t think my heart was in it this time, guys.

But what spurred this post was browsing the internet with a newly-installed Firefox, visiting my own site, and seeing that the Song of the Week posts had that missing Flash plugin symbol. It had never even crossed my mind that those little things were Flash. I mean, of course they’re Flash, but I’ve never thought about this stuff before the iPhone and iPod Touch. I have an iPod Touch and I never even noticed it before — maybe because I barely use it. Combined with the now daily animated GIFs until I receive what I rightly deserve, it must take an obscene amount of time to load the site and then some of the posts end up being worthless anyway. On the other hand, I think stuff I post can wait until someone is in front of a computer.

I arrived at my aunt’s house shortly after 1 to help her figure out why the Spanish speech projects her students had put on flash drives wouldn’t play for her. That turned out to be an easy enough fix — she had to open the flash drives to look at the contents, so she could manually select the Audacity project files. She was probably clicking “Play” when autoplay came up, and it would try to play the Audacity file with WMP or some shit. Just a guess. What’s important here is that in the middle of this activity, I noticed an unopened iPod Touch sitting next to the laptop. How could that not catch someone’s eye? Apparently she received it free two months earlier when she bought a MacBook for her son (my cousin). Not a bad deal.

I continued cleaning up the messy computer: deleting programs, and telling others not to automatically begin their retarded processes on startup. Meanwhile, I continued to eye the iPod Touch, as I can’t help but be mesmerized by a shiny new piece of hardware. Apple products may be overpriced, but no one can deny that they’re almost all striking pieces of hardware. The Touch is half the thickness of my 2.5 year old 80GB iPod and has a screen double the size. It’s impressive before you even turn it on.

As I waited for the installation of Vista Service Pack 1 to finish (yes, I really helped my aunt out!), I mentioned how curious I was about the iPod Touch. I admittedly have been somewhat interested in the iPhone, but the monthly price would naturally keep any unemployed person away. I didn’t realize how easily that curious comment would be construed as wanting the iPod Touch. My aunt immediately replied with saying I could have it, and I was fairly shocked. The natural reaction to protest such a gift was somewhat weighed down by the thought of actually being able to mess around with such a gadget. I tried to tell her the various cool things she could do with it, but she wasn’t having any of it. I knew her son already had one, so I asked if her daughter (other cousin) would want it, and she insisted she would not be interested. I can’t say I put up the biggest fight at this point. I was getting an iPod Touch for Geek Squad work!

I didn’t think of the consequences of having such an awesome piece of hardware in my possession. Ignorance is bliss, and now the thought of having all the functionality of this iPod Touch practically all the time is already getting to me. The phone part of it barely fits into the equation. As I have already posted, I could check Fangraphs with the greatest of ease any time! I could watch Mike Tyson talking about stomping on children’s testicles whenever I wish! I could play games and annoyingly post my high score to Twitter every time! The possibilities are endless.

As for right now, I’m still giddy messing around with the few free apps I’ve downloaded. I’ve also uploaded some pictures and a converted episode of Peep Show (thanks, Handbrake) just to see how they’d look. It’s pretty much a technological marvel, but the iPhone is obviously on an entirely higher level, so having an iPod Touch only makes one realize how awesome having an iPhone would be. Goddamn it. Fuck you, Steve Jobs. Let Verizon in on your shit so maybe I could pay less than $75/mo for a reasonable iPhone plan.

Steve Jobs to me: Get a job, douchebag.