I think I've done too much physical activity in the last week.

I had soccer on Monday, went biking on Tuesday, wakeboarded Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and biked again on Sunday.

Now I have scratches all over my legs and arms from the thorns in the bushes, and my arms are sore from all the pulling from the boat.

It's time to take a rest.

The iPod is so not cool anymore. It has reached critical mass. I can walk the two blocks to my grocery store and pass by 20 people with those characteristic white earphones (why don't they at least change the headphones?). Every hipster/professional/runner in Seattle has an iPod. It gets even worse if they have a Shuffle and decide to wear the lanyard. Those people are the bane of my existence.

When everyone has the same thing, the cool kids need to differentiate, and that time has come. Drop your marble white earphones; drop the gray touch wheel; drop the stainless steel backing with your fingerprint smudges all over it; drop the iTunes using, legal music downloading, DRM supporting lovefest and free yourselves from the slavery to "hipness" that Apple has you bound and chained to.

Yes, I'm a hater.

Just came back from the 7:30 am showing of Star Wars III. The company booked the theatre.

I got there about 10 minutes late, and there were already people waiting in line for the 11:00 am showing -- some people are nuts.

It was pretty good though, even for a movie that we all knew the exact plot to. Copious amounts of light sabre fights, limbs being chopped off, glass windows blown, explosions in outer space, and cheesy dialogue. Lucas should have gotten the likes of Tarantino to write a good bit for Samuel L Jackson, he has such a forceful presence, but very little to say.

Favourite line from the film:

Anakin: If you're not with me, (pause), then you're my enemy.
Obiwan: Only the Sith speak in absolutes.

Photos.

There's been a lot of chatter on the net about the next generation consoles coming out. Both Sony and Microsoft (and possibly to a lesser degree, Nintendo) are big players in this.

Here is the short version:

XBox360: 3.2 GHz 3 core on die PowerPC, 1 TFlop floating point performance, 512 MB RAM, ATI graphics, 500 million triangles/sec, 12X dual layer DVD, WiFi (a/b/g), 3 USB ports, up to 4 wireless controllers, 1080i video, 5.1 digital audio, backwards compatible on some games, ...

PS3: 3.2 GHz Cell processor, 2 TFlop floating point performance, total of 512 MB RAM, NVidia graphics, Blu-ray disc, WiFi (b/g), 7 USB ports, up to 7 Bluetooth controllers, 1080p video, 5.1 digital audio, full backward compatibility, memory stick, SD and CF (really? that doesn't sound like Sony) memory slots ...

Based purely on tech specs, the PS3 wins. BUT ...

Many of XBox's parts of off-the-shelf (so to speak), and are at least readily available. If Apple can make a profit selling the Mac mini at $400, I think Microsoft won't take too much of a hit if they priced the console at $300-$350 at release time this year (maybe a $200-300 loss leader).

Sony, on the other hand, is using technology that are not even in production yet. They just announced the Cell processor a couple of months ago, and they probably haven't started mass producing it yet (and the 7 or 8 cores on die is going to make it more expensive to manufacture). The Blu-ray player is also going to put a big dent in the cost (considering Sony's Blu-ray player currently sells for $2000 and the recorder for over $3000 in Japan, and a single disc costs $28 to buy right now). Even if the price drops to 1/2, or even 1/3 of today's price in 10 months, that's still over $1000 of hardware, and quite a markup on the cost of the discs. Sony may have to take a big loss leader in order to bring this into the affordable range (people won't want to buy $800 consoles, no matter how powerful it is).

There's another thing I don't quite get. Sony wants to do 1080p standard. This doesn't really make sense to me. The average cycle between new generations of players is ~3-4 years right now. Currently, it's hard to even buy an HDTV that will do 1080p (trust me, I've looked), and the ones that can are EXPENSIVE. I think it will take at least 2-3 years before 1080p will even become popular enough that common customers will start buying TVs that will do 1080p, and by then, it's time for a new generation. It just seems overkill.

Cormie has preempted me in posting pictures of our new apartment.

I guess I will too once I get my act together.

Those of you interested in buying some loose diamonds for you next coke habit, and those of you interested javascript, check this out.

Saturday night was a drab night, I watched some TV and played some minesweeper.

At midnight, I began feeling hungry. Instead of going out and buying a $4 hot dog from a street vendor, Cormie and I drove to the 24 hour Safeway, bought ourselves a big package of hot dogs, and grilled it up at 12:30 in the morning. It was very satisfying, at the time.

Since moving in to the new place, almost every single meal I've cooked at home has been done on the grill, and it's been great.

Things on my wishlist are some grilling planks, or maybe a smoker.

When there's nothing else to talk about, talk about the weather.

There's a noticeable trend in the weather in Seattle. It's cloudy, cold, and miserable in the morning. When I get to work, the first thing I do is put up the blinds that I put down the previous day (for reasons below) to get some light into the office. At around noon the wind picks up a little, and the clouds begin to break, with streaks of sunlight peaking through the openings. By 4 pm the clouds have dissipated, although sometimes it's still a little hazy, and the sun shines through my office window, right into my face. It's so bright that I have put down the blinds or risk permanent damage, nevermind not being able to see anything or do any work. By the time I'm outside waiting for the bus it's so hot underneath the sun that I have to take off my jacket. At night the temperature drops, the clouds roll in, and we start all over again.

This has been happening for the past 2 weeks.

The move took longer than expected. We got the truck early (because apparently other people are on top of things and returned it early), and went by to pick up John's Bar-B-Q from his previous house (there's an interesting aside to this story, but I'll let John elaborate on his blog when he gets a chance). While dodging bombs dropped by their giant dog, we managed to move the Q out and onto the truck. I was driving about 5 mph up the hill, back to the new apartment when we heard a loud BANG in the back. Apparently I wasn't driving slow enough, and it toppled over. We spent the next little while buying a broom from QFC to clean up the mess. Amazingly, it still works, and the propane tank didn't even explode.

Then I went home and did more packing as the kids arrived sporatically to help. I realized that I have a lot of shit. The hours came and went, and we were still moving. It took us until about 9 pm before we finally finished with the 3rd truck load. Some of the furniture just barely managed to fit, with only millimetres to spare on either side, but we managed, and with minimal damage (to the furniture anyways, the hallway and the stairwell I'm not so sure).

Afterwards we fired up the grill and cooked up some burgers and sausages, and sat among the boxes drinking beer.

I've been cooking on the Barb for the past 3 days in a row, burgers, burgers, and steak. Maybe I'll diversify into chicken and fish soon, but I can already see that this is going to be a good summer.