Mike Flacy

I’ve may have fallen into a Mobius Strip of writing endlessly until it’s time to sleep again.  I’m content to repeat that cycle over and over while my bank account gleefully greets the array of dead presidents being added every day.  The lucrative lifestyle makes me want to move again, perhaps up north for a few months.

I’ve been receiving an inordinate amount of Facebook friend requests lately; many from complete strangers.  No matter how many times I passively hit Ignore, they keep firing pleas at me.  Facebook desperately needs to add more options for my possible response.  Speaking of Facebook, the new look absolutely stinks.  It’s slow to load and I have to browse those stupid tabs to read someone’s page.

I’ve been playing around with the Flip Mino for a week now.  The video and sound quality is really excellent for the size of the camera.  It’s about the height of my iPhone, but skinnier in width.  I wish I had the camera when my sister and I filmed our Rock Band session a couple weeks ago.  Unfortunately Mikey and Gerbil broke up after our three day World Tour in Rome, London and Paris.

Here is a quick preview of my most recent Twitter application addiction. It’s a GPS aware app for the iPhone.

I picked up my 3G iPhone last Friday.  The consumer madness was in full swing at the AT&T store.  They had 40 iPhones in stock and about 60 people in line.  I snagged the 8 gig model and spent the rest of the day checking out the applications on iPhone.  Here are some of my favorites:

Shazam: This music app is great for people who are clueless to the names of songs and artists.  It can listen to any song playing on the radio or over a loudspeaker and identify it through the iPhone’s microphone.  You can mark the song for download on iTunes, watch any Youtube related video about it or send a link of the song to your friends.

Box Office: This simple app takes your GPS location and finds all the movies / theaters in the area.  It offers the Rotten Tomato rating for every movie and can be organized by rating or title.  Most importantly, it offers fast access to the showtimes in all the nearby theaters.

NetNewsWire: This is the fastest way to read RSS feeds on the iPhone.  I can rummage through posts on 15 sites when I wake up in about 10 minutes.   Just be careful to keep up with the feeds otherwise there will be a huge number posted on the icon all day.

AOL Radio: Turns the iPhone into a radio with 200 stations of music.  You can bookmark stations and mark songs for download on iTunes later.  The sound quality is extremely good for a web based radio.  Pandora is also pretty good for specific artist preferences.

Tap Tap Revenge: It’s Guitar Hero for the iPhone.  It’s only 3 buttons and four songs, but there are four levels of difficulty and the possibility of downloadable songs in the future.  You can also shake the iPhone to hit the right beats instead of tapping the screen.  Lots of fun and it’s free!

Graffitio: This app uses the GPS to figure out where you are and looks for nearby restaurants, bars, stores, parks, events, etc.  The apps creates persistent online graffiti walls for you to write notes about the business.  You can also read notes from people who have been there before.

• Still up in the air about the 3G iPhone and it’s only a few days away.  It’s going to raise my phone bill another $30 a month.  I really don’t mind that much, but I have plenty of wi-fi access for net browsing.  Maybe I’ll try canceling the 3G data plan after I sign up.  I will get 150 more texts messages though; yet I’ve never broken 40 in an entire month.

• I’ve been looking at apartment sublets in Chicago lately and feel like moving there for a couple months or two.  I picked up a part time gig at Mahalo recently writing guides and it’s fairly lucrative for the amount of “work” I have to put into it.  Anyway, I’m weighing my options while stockpiling money like Scrooge McDuck.  Maybe it would be cool try some sort of urban nomading for a while; limited to cities without the need for a car.

• I’m not going to E3 this year.  I have the press pass ready to go, but flights were ridiculously expensive this year.  It was going to cost me something in the range of $1,200 for airfare, hotel, various expenditures.  Boooooo!

• I totally want a Flip Mino so I can start cranking out some Vlogs.  I played with one at Best Buy and just loved it.  The video quality isn’t HD, but the quality is darn good.  My Canon digital camera shoots average video, but the microphone just plan sucks.  Plus the Mino takes about an hour of video.

• And if my sister is reading this, the answer to your last question is SHIRTS!  I’m completely dependent on your fashion sense and survive from Christmas to late July on whatever clothing items I receive from you.

• Despite my constant workouts, push-ups are my Achilles heel.  That’s why I started up the One Hundred Push-Ups challenge this week.  I just hope my forearms don’t snag like twigs somewhere along the way.

• This one is pure, unadulterated vanity. Check out the Kor One water bottle:
  
  Pretty damn sleek and perfect for those skinny treadmill cup holders.  But more importantly, it’s open / close with one hand.  I want one now.

• I discovered Popurls through Stumbleupon this week.  It’s a web 2.0 type site that collects the rss feeds from popular sites (Digg, Fark, Google news, Youtube, Flikr, etc…) and displays them on a aesthetically pleasing page.  You can move around the order of the sites on the main page or even go with a category layout if you prefer.  Anyway,it’s now my home page in the new super-fast version of Firefox.

• 20 Superfoods to lose body fat and gain muscle; I eat about 13 out of 20 of those on a daily basis and can attest to their success.  I’ll have to pick up some Quinoa tomorrow as well as some fish oil.

• Youtube recommendation for this week: Peep Show.  Not a youtube series at all, but rather a popular British comedy.  It’s about 2 guys living in a flat in London and their successes / failures in their careers / relationships.  Extremely funny and very easy to understand (No thick accents like The Office).

I was chatting with a friend about the upcoming 3G iPhone and we got stuck on the topic of GPS for a while. Obviously GPS isn’t a new idea. Plenty of people are perfectly happy with their in-car GPS systems or even the current capabilities of their GPS enabled phones. There’s no real added value for current GPS owners to switch over to the iPhone specifically based on the hardware.

Apple’s strategic advantage will be in the applications that are created with live tracking GPS in mind. Apple already demoed Loopt.com; an app that tells you your friend’s exact location, recent pictures, little messages and alerts you when they are nearby.

The possibilities are so ridiculously intriguing. For instance, imagine twittering, blogging, or updating your Facebook / Myspace status with not only a message, but also your current location automatically.

Locating nearby restaurants is nothing new for GPS, but imagine a one click Yelp.com application that automatically recommends the top 3 nearby Italian restaurants based on user reviews and according to your GPS location.

Imagine a music application that offers a list of upcoming, nearby concerts based on the type of music you keep on your iPhone (or your Pandora.com likes / dislikes) and your current GPS location.

Imagine being in an unfamiliar city and desperately needing to find a public restroom. One button click on the iPhone, your GPS location could be sent to Mizpee.com and a list of the closest toilets (along with reviews if you are a clean freak) would pop up along with directions to each.

Imagine not only all of your pictures being geo-tagged with locations due to GPS, but also tossed into a map-like trip diary documenting vacations as you travel or even the mundane details of your life; all via a one click social networking app on the iPhone.

Imagine sitting at work and hitting a one click Craigslist search that allows you to find nearby apartments (obviously to save on $4 a gallon gas) based on your current GPS location.

The point I’m trying to make is that the iPhone is going to make this type of techy GPS stuff incredibly easy to do. Blackberry already has plenty of GPS apps, but they aren’t for the casual phone user; they are mostly for the tech-heads. Ideally, iPhone users will just load up the App store with one click, download & install a GPS application within a few seconds and away they go. The streamlined process will ultimately increase the number of users and bring these sort of live tracking applications into the mainstream very quickly.

So Steve Jobs and his legion of Apple minions announced the next iPhone for release on July 11th and I’m scratching my head on buying it next month.

The Good:

- The price is reasonable now and within my range; $199 for the 8 gig model. The 2 year contract doesn’t bother me since I’m already with AT&T.
- GPS is cool and actually portable compared to my car GPS.
- Internet browsing is almost 3 times as fast as the older model.
- The App store looks really cool. The games look as good as the stuff on the Nintendo DS and Ebay / social networking stuff looks spot on.
- The new instant messaging system looks great.
- The battery life looks much better than my Razr.
- It’s good to go for international travel.

The Bad:

- The cost would go up another $30 a month for me if I opted for the unlimited internet plan. I hope there are varied tiers of data plans otherwise I’ll have to stick to Wi-fi hotspots.
- The App Store stuff is expensive.
- The picture quality of the camera still sucks and still no front facing camera.
- I’d probably have to install iTunes, something I’ve been glad to be rid of with my Zune.
- I have to wait a bit over a month; I want a new phone now.

So I’m undecided. I can pay less for a Blackberry right now, but not by much. Decisions, decisions.

Anyone who reads this blog knows I ramble on about Lost or consistently tune into The Office each week.  I really don’t spent lots of time on TV besides a few choice series, but there are two shows that snatched my attention in their freshman season this year before the strike.

-    Pushing Daisies:  My absolute favorite new show of the season.  It’s about a pie-maker that has an odd ability to bring the dead back to life with a single touch, but only for 60 seconds and only once.  He teams up with a private investigator to solve cases, but the true narrative involves the pie-maker’s love for his childhood sweetheart that he revives & refuses to touch again to return her to death.  They both love each other, but can never touch again due to his ability.  The acting is fantastic, the writing is witty, the characters are quirky and the artistic design of the show is very Tim Burton-esqe.

-    Reaper: Ridiculous premise, but the supporting characters sell the show.  Basically, a 21 year old guy finds out his parents sold his soul to the Devil when he was a baby.  The devil forces him into a life of bounty hunting souls that escaped from Hell.  It’s very much like Smallville’s format, but with believable acting, competent writers and an evolving storyline.  It’s a light comedy that takes itself just seriously enough to be extremely entertaining.

There were a few highly touted freshman shows I tried to watch, but failed miserably.  Mad Men comes to mind, the show about the sexual exploits and social mores of a 1960’s advertising agency.  Despite recommendations from friends, I found the lack of plot to be incredibly boring most of the time.  Another AMC show, Breaking Bad, killed my interest in a couple episodes.  It was a novel idea, but the B-List actors got on my nerves.  I tried NBC’s Chuck as well, but found it to be a poor man’s Jake 2.0.  Eli Stone had my interest peaked, but the story moved along far too slowly and it got bogged down in political messages.

I’m looking forward to a couple new pilots in the fall, My Own Worst Enemy with Christian Slater sounding the most interesting.  It’s about a guy with a split personality, one half being a mild-mannered, middle-class family man and the other being a Jason Bourne type character that works for the military.  The premise sounds promising and I’d like to see poor Christian Slater finally get a hit.  I’m also looking forward to The Cleveland Show, the spin-off from the Family Guy character.

As I was sitting in the San Diego airport this week, I was anxiously downloading the finale of Thursday’s Lost to my laptop before the battery died. Fortunately, my battery lasted the length of the flight and I found that my previous predictions held up. I do believe that Lost may have lost (no pun intended) some viewers with their foray into the possibility of time travel. But they probably gained as many sci-fi nerds.

The Desmond / Penny reunion felt a bit flat compared to their hopeful phone call in The Constant (which was one of the best scenes in Lost history). But the important part was Desmond lived. Jin is a question mark right now, but I can’t imagine the show going without him next year. It also fits in well with Sun’s motivation to work with Widmore.

Michael’s death was justified and felt like a bit of redemption for him killing Ana Lucia and Hurley’s girl. He did his best to save Jin and pass the torch of fatherhood to him. It’s strange that Walt didn’t get to say goodbye to dear ole dad, but I’d imagine Walt will be chatting with the ghost of Michael eventually.

Keamy’s death was satisfying to say the least. And let me just say Sayid gave us a friendly reminder why he’s an official badass. The fight scene versus Keamy was ridiculously visceral. The whole radio transmitter ploy was fairly stupid, but it worked well for the majority of the audience that doesn’t give a flip about the science. Ben got his revenge and gave Keamy a painful death.

As for the reveal on the coffin, I had a feeling it was Locke as soon as Ben popped up in the room. I also think that Locke’s death means one of two things: Locke is officially dead, but returning him to the island will bring him back to life or that wasn’t Locke at all. Does anyone remember the video with the two rabbits? What if moving the island caused a doppelganger of Locke to be created a.k.a. Jeremy Bentham? It’s not probable, but it is possible.

Other random tidbits:

- Looks like Saywer and Juliet are going to hook up after polishing off that rum.

- Miles snarky outlook is growing on me. Charlotte got a whole lot more interesting.

- If Jin is alive and got moved with the island, it’s safe to assume that Daniel as moved as well.

- I think Sawyer told Kate something about his daughter.

- I love that Hurley was played chess with Mr. Eko’s ghost.

- Finally, I believe Ben is heading back to the island by hitching a ride with the Oceanic 6.

I love stories like this: Link

To sum it up, a Yelp user wrote a negative review for a Mexican restaurant in Saint Louis and the restaurant owner threatened her with a lawsuit if she didn’t remove it. For those that don’t know, Yelp is a social networking site for people that like to eat out. You can sign up to write reviews of your favorite restaurants and browse other opinions via a city breakdown.

Getting back to the story, she received a threat of a $100,000 lawsuit if she didn’t remove the review from the site. Being the social networking butterfly, she responded by using Twitter to pose a question to the collective internet about what she should do. It spread to Digg and the restaurant’s Yelp page is now being bombarded with bad reviews.

So instead of watching the negative review slip away among the positive ones (assuming the food & service was consistently decent), the restaurant owner effectively destroyed his restaurant’s rating in the online world. Not only is the Yelp rating getting trashed, but internet users are spreading the word to any publication that mentions the place; St. Louis blogs, newspapers, forums , etc… I wouldn’t be surprised to see local news coverage eventually.

In yesterday’s snail mail, I received a friendly reminder from AT&T that I can upgrade my phone since my two year contract is running out. I knew those bastards enjoyed my $50 for letting me talk a few minutes and send a couple texts a month. My trusty, but woefully dusty, Razr was a wonderful upgrade for me a couple years ago. I had been carrying around a gray monstrosity from the late nineties that was as thick as a computer mouse, so the super thin Razr was an obvious choice for me. Unfortunately, the poor battery life and painfully directional earpiece has annoyed me from the start. So I’m in the market for a new phone.

I’ve been browsing the blackberries, but haven’t seen anything I’d like to pull the trigger on. I’d love to have an iPhone, but the cheapest model on sells for an absolutely ridiculous $400; that’s with the two year contract discount. So as much as I salivate over the coolness, the price is an extreme deal breaker. But wait, what’s this I hear about a 3G iPhone?!

I’ve gleefully stumbled into a fantastic time to be in the market for an iPhone. On June 9th, Apple is rumored to announce a 3G version of the iPhone at their developer’s conference. I had no idea what this meant until I started reading about what the 3G iPhone will offer. Here’s what I dug up:

• Cheaper Price: AT&T is rumored to trim the price to $199 with a two year contract. They would have the ability to cut the price due to the nature of 3G. Apple would continue to sell the unlocked version of the iPhone in their stores, but service providers would finally be able to offer discounts. $200 is just about my limit for spending money on a new phone, especially one as cool at the iPhone.

• Better Specs: Namely a higher quality camera and built-in GPS caught my eye. The 3G hardware supports up to a 5 megapixel camera and video chat, so one would assume that Apple would upgrade the pitiful 2 MP camera in the original iPhone. It could be a dual camera system if video is enabled. I’ve also read rumblings about a FM transmitter to send those iTunes songs wirelessly to your car radio, voice dialing, increased storage, flash support, and a slightly thinner build.

• Close Release Date: AT&T employees have been issued a memo that they will be denied any vacation time during the period of June 15th to July 12th. The reason? “An exciting product launch”. The original iPhone launched on June 29th, so a late June / Early July launch is feasible for the 3G iPhone. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it out on June 15th or the day of the announcement considering that iPhones have been in development for a year.

So it’s time to wait and see. I’ll live with my Razr for another month and hope ole Steve Jobs gives me enough of a reason to upgrade.

As I watched last night’s Lost episode (Part 1 of the finale), I felt that tons of groundwork was being laid for the Oceanic Six’s return to the island over the next season. But I do have some predictions for the final episode in a couple weeks based on what’s currently happening on the island.

1. Jin & Desmond live. I’m absolutely sure the freighter is going to go boom before the episode is over as it’s a great way to kill those extras that Daniel ferried over already, but Jin & Desmond will escape the blast. A Desmond / Penny reunion has to happen before the end of the series and Jin is too good of a character to kill off. However, I believe Sun will be convinced that Jin dies; either by Keamy’s hand or Locke’s action at the Orchid. (more on that in a minute)

2. Michael dies. I can see Michael sacrificing himself to save Jin / Desmond, but failing to escape the blast. The island will have no use for him anymore and allow the death. This also lends credence to the theory that Abbadon is a future version of Walt; searching for answers to what happened to his Dad on the island.

3. Keamy will die by Ben’s hand before the end of the episode, the rest of Keamy’s men by an Other ambush. It’s going to be a sweet revenge kill for taking the life of Alex. This sets up an empty chopper for the Oceanic Six to ride off the island before Locke gets down to business in the Orchid.

4. The Orchid doesn’t physically “move” the island, it moves the entrance. By shifting the electromagnetic field around the island, time is also altered as well. Unless someone searching for the island knows the exact entrance, they would spend years upon years looking for it.

5. Paik Industries is involved with Widmore / Dharma. It would be the most obvious reason why Sun would purchase a controlling interest in the company. It also offers a peek at how the Oceanic Six will be able to return to the island. I have a feeling Ben is in cahoots with Sun, similar to Sayid, and they will work together to defend the island from Widmore.

The more I think about Locke’s journey on last night’s episode of Lost, the more impressed I become with the writer’s sly incorporation of themes like Buddhism. The first time the young boy version of Locke meets Richard, picking out items that belonged to him is taken from the Buddhist test of finding the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. Young John picked the vial of sand, the compass, and the rudimentary hunting knife.

Visibly upset, it’s clear that Richard wanted Locke to pick either the book of law or the ‘Mystery Island’ comic book; perhaps designed to represent rules and imagination respectively. But Locke picked the items that truly belonged to him. This fit in the theme later in the story when Locke rejected the idea of science camp (another attempt by Richard to alter John’s path) to choose his own destiny.

Later in the story, we see Abbadon manipulating John into getting on that Oceanic Six flight for his Australian walkabout. Rather than becoming upset at John’s choices, he encourages them. If Richard is supposed to represent destiny, then Abbadon clearly represents free will. Abbadon’s intentions are less clear though and he obviously remains oblivious to the island’s location after the Oceanic Six are rescued.

I believe Locke is a combination of both destiny & free will, but neither side realizes this yet. The only person that finally understands is Ben. What Ben saw as a manipulation of Hurley’s destiny under the guise of free will, Locke offered actual free will to Hurley.

Moving the Island

There are two distinct possibilities on this one. Physically moving the island is out of the question, so the island will have to be moved through time via the Orchid station or the pathway into the island will have to be moved. I’m leaning toward the time theory, although both are possible. The time theory would certainly explain the Black Rock ship sitting in the middle of the island. If the island jumped to a different time, any ship on the open seas in that area would suddenly be sitting on land rather sailing around. On the other hand, moving the entrance would fit with Widmore’s inability to find the island after the Oceanic Six get rescued. Plus it would be easier for a mass television audience to swallow than a time traveling island.

- My Favorite Moment: Hurley sharing his candy bar with Ben. It was sweet and a nice sidebar to the tension of the moment.

I completed the single player campaign over the weekend and took some time to reflect today. The plight of Niko Bellic was very much a series of well constructed moments, designed to bring out the inner sociopath or benevolent soul in you. There are brief, flourishing cinematic points that sparked delight in me, Packie’s Three Leaf Clover being the most notable (Heat anyone?). But beyond those moments, beyond the hype, beyond the rushed reviews, there are negative aspects that keep GTA IV from perfection in my mind; 7 to be exact.

I’m back in Liberty City, so where’s my Double Clef FM?

There’s just something inherently classy about mass murder when listening to “O mio babbino caro” while behind the wheel mowing down pedestrians. I miss Morgan Merryweather’s pompous attitude and continual spouting of untrue facts about classical music. Over all the 18 radio stations within GTA IV, I don’t understand why Rockstar didn’t immediately jump on the chance to recreate the classical one. Not only that, they didn’t create a way to load user tracks onto the radio. I suppose I’ll just have to settle for Jazz Nation Radio and the smooth style of Roy Haynes.

Worthless green paper in my wallet

Money has become completely devalued in this version of GTA for a couple reasons. You don’t lose any weaponry at death and there’s a ridiculous amount of ammo found on each mission. While health care costs can bleed a player dry in the very early stages of the game, money has no worthwhile use for the majority of the game. I ended the single player game with about $950,000 in the bank, but it might as well have been $950 for what I needed it for.

Liberty City’s Most Wanted

OK, I’ve just killed 58 beat cops, 32 SWAT guys and 4 chopper pilots. I have a five star wanted rating and I’m racing from the scene in a stolen police cruiser. What’s the best way to lose the cops? Take a nap. Yep, the police will call off the manhunt if you find the nearest safe house and take a 6 hour nap. This should have been an automatic arrest for the police, but apparently dingy apartments are too confusing for the police to enter. (I realize this is a flaw of the overall series, but Rockstar should have fixed it by now.)

Should I wear a suit or a suit or a suit?

There are 3 unique clothing stores in the game. That’s right; a digital version of New York City only has three types of clothing stores. Obviously Rockstar kept it simple to work hand in hand with the girlfriend system, but it’s an extreme step down from the amount of clothing / customization options in Vice City & San Andreas. Additionally the clothing options are far too similar and the interface, while visually improved, is still slow.

Love the internet, hate the browser.

The brilliant, snarky humor on the in-game internet, and the television programs for that matter, is classic Rockstar and deserves praise, but the asshole that designed the browser should be fired. Why? There’s no way to bookmark a site. Every time you return to the PC, it’s back to the keyboard to type an insanely long web address or, even worse, one letter at a time on the controller. Accessing the site (whattheydonotwantyoutoknow.com) that holds the maps for hidden items such as armor, health, stunt jumps, etc. is a ridiculous pain in the butt and likely sends droves of players to the real internet for map screenshots.

Rocky Marciano, I’m not.

From the start of the game to the finish, there was rarely a time without some firearm in Niko’s hand. I choose that route because the hit detection system in hand to hand combat absolutely stinks. Character movement doesn’t work fast enough with the targeting system to accurately land punches and the combos are nearly worthless. It only took a few minutes of boxing my shadow before I permanently glued the semi-automatic machine gun to Niko’s right hand.

Easy Peasy, Lemon Squeezy

With the exception of a handful of missions, the game difficulty is really quite low for the experienced video game crowd. Without a slider to increase difficulty, popping off head shots is pure simplicity; even with auto-aim off. Over the entire 30 hour campaign, I was never busted by the cops and died less than 10 times. The rare, occasionally challenging mission was easily completed after tooling up with body armor and plenty of ammo. Besides giving the game a rushed feeling, the real shame is that many missions offer alternate dialogue between main characters upon reloading. Unless you play through the entire game again, you won’t get a chance to hear all the stories and comedic banter.

Digsby added Facebook Chat as a supported client last week, frankly shocking considering Facebook Chat only went live for the entire Facebook community a week previous. I’ve been evaluating the service for a week and have grown to prefer it over the Facebook in-browser chat screen. Using the Digsby interface is easier on the eyes and messages pop up instantly. I often miss messages from the in-browser screen due to lack of attention. It also seems to update friend status faster than the Facebook Chat window in addition to providing notification windows.

Digsby’s blog indicates they will eventually add the ability to move FB Chat users into groups as well as syncing IM status to FB status. Very cool moves for the IM / Social Network power users. Digsby just keeps getting better.