The Grand Moffat just tweeted the news:
Sherlock returns, Sunday,Jan 1st, 8.10pm, BBC1. First the woman, then the Hound and then, of course, the fall…
The reference to “the woman” is the classic Holmes story involving Irene Adler, A Scandal in Belgravia. Sherlockology has a spoiler-free review of Scandal that will whet your appetite!
The fall, I assume, is a reference to Reichenbach.
I think the best way to honor Steve Jobs’ legacy as a visionary is to refuse to be content.
Why was the Mac such a success? Because of user discontent with computers at that time – and the existence of Macs is why Windows 95 was such a revelation to me, and why I love Windows 7. The same applies to music players, to handheld PDAs, to phones, to tablets. I love my Blackberry Bold Touch and I lust after a Kindle Fire, but they wouldn’t be worth lusting after if not for the iPhone and the iPad.
Discontent drives innovation, and stagnation creates opportunity.
I think that Steve Jobs understood this more deeply than many of the users of his devices. He created user experiences from start to finish – but he was always pushing the envelope. The intensity of Apple users’ fandom is testament to the value of those experiences, but it also in a sense created the same stagnation that afflicted the technologies obsoleted by Apple. It was Jobs’ genius that he refused to be content, even though his products created contentment.
Jobs created the iPad out of nothing, but suppose he hadn’t? Apple aficionados would still be happily using iPods, iPhones, and MacBooks. If some other manufacturer had created the tablet, Apple’s users would have dismissed, pointing out the many advantages of their elegant Apple products over such ungainly eyesores. Apple users have always been content with what they were given. Steve Jobs, alone, pushed the envelope, innovating not out of discontent by Apple users but by the discontent of everyone outside Apple’s fold.
That was a mighty burden and a challenge for Jobs, surely – one that I suspect he needed to maintain his creative output. After all, he could have easily milked the supply of loyal Apple fans endlessly without any real innovation at all. But it was his eye on the rest of us, still using Windows and Blackberries and Android, that pushed him onwards. It was our discontent with Windows 95, with our StarTacs, our Handsprings, even our mice and our monitors, that were the inspiration for his innovation and it was the stagnation of Microsoft, Logitech, Motorola, Samsung, etc that gave him the opportunity.
I think that without Steve Jobs, Apple risks that same stagnation. It’s already happened, in a sense, to the MacBook line and the iPod. And that’s ok, because Apple raised the bar, and could easily continue on autopilot on its existing product line and customer loyalty. It would then fall to another company to exploit that stagnation, and keep the engine of innovation moving forward. That’s Steve Jobs’ true legacy.
Are you content with your iPad? I’m not, even though I love it. And I think that there’s already signs that the next round of innovation is upon us. What better way to honor Steve’s legacy than to stay hungry for the next better thing, rather than the next same thing?
this is … amazing.
（ ゜-゜）> ┬───┬ (゜-゜ )
（ ゜-゜） ┬───┬ <(゜-゜ ) （ ゜-゜）> ┬───┬ (゜-゜ )
（ ゜-゜） ┬───┬ <(゜-゜ ) （ ゜-゜）> ┬───┬ (゜-゜ )
（ ゜-゜） ┬───┬ (゜‿゜ )
（ ã‚œ.゜） ┬───┬ <(^‿^ ) ( ಠ_ಠ) ┬───┬ (^‿^ ) ( ಠ_ಠ) ┬───┬ ¯_(ツ)_/¯ （╯°益°）╯︵ â”»â”â”» (°□°╬)
It’s from the comment thread at Shamus’ latest autobiographical post. I have serious issues with that post, but that’s not really any of my business, so I’m just going to gape in awe at the ASCII art instead.
BoingBoing has an early review of Reamde up and it has seriously whet my appetite. Gold farming is the hook but apparently Stephenson is also a bit of a gun nut. Who knew? Exciting!
I’ve pre-ordered my copy from Amazon in save-a-tree format. I actually don’t even own a Kindle but it’s still the best way to read a book, especially one by the Neal. This thing is a thousand pages long.
It’s out on September 20. So basically next Tuesday is a wash for me.
Man, I cannot wait for this to get started. I’ve also caught up on Torchwood: Miracle Day, and Doctor Who is rolling along as well, and Warehouse 13. This may well be the golden age.
Also discovered the site Sherlockology which is definitely going to be handy 🙂
I’m throwing in the towel on getting my hackintoshed Dell Mini to work. It’s just too hard to get things going on it.
All I want to do is run the development environment, so if anyone out there has a Mac Mini they are looking to closet in favor of the new hotness, please let me know. Much appreciated…
/defeated
UPDATE: It occurs to me that the AppleTV boxes are only $100. Do they run OSX under the hood? Is it posible to hack these to install the development environment?
Here’s the list – I’ve read 51 of these. And the #1 and #2 slots are exactly what I’d have picked.
I am glad to see Neil and Neal on the list (though NPR spelled Neal’s name wrongly in one entry). Especially love the fact that The Princess Bride made it on the list!
Inexplicably, A.C. Doyle is missing, which boggles my mind. Not as surprising is the absence of any of the Big B’s (Bear, Baxter, Benford, and Brin) of which the omission of Greg Bear is the most egregious.
I think a top 100 list is less than useful though, what would be better would be a top 20 author list. So, let’s make one! In (first-name) alphabetical order, because a ranking will take more thought:
Well, ok that’s only 19. Some of these are for an entire series, others for a single book, but all of them wrote something that really grabbed me, more so than usual.
I’m sure others’ lists would differ – and certainly would be helpful, so leave yours in comments!
And a special mention for writers who I think are odious people personally, though they certainly write well: Dan Simmons and Orson Scott Card.
And I really need to add The Stand to my reading to-do list.
It occurs to me a much harder list would be of short-story authors. A good start woudl be compiling everyone who has ever appeared in the Asimov’s Best Science Fiction series. That’s something for another day…
Good grief.
“After painstaking consideration, we have had to make the difficult business decision to not order a season six of Eureka. But Eureka is not over yet. There is a new holiday episode this December and 12 stellar episodes set to debut next year, marking its fifth season and six memorable years on Syfy. The 2012 episodes are some of the best we’ve seen, and will bring this great series to a satisfying end. We are very grateful to Bruce Miller and Jaime Paglia, their team of incredible writers, and an amazing cast and crew who have consistently delivered a series we continue to be very proud of. We thank the fans for their support of this show and know they will enjoy its final season in 2012.“
The marginal good news in this is that I’ve never sat down and done a full watch of the series in order, so this gives me a chance to catch up. But still, what the hell, SyFy?
This makes me really nervous about Warehouse 13. It’s easily the best show on SyFy and rivals BSG in my opinion.
At some point SyFy will have no science fiction left and the only game in town will be the BBC. Perhaps any television industry where profit margin comes first is doomed to sacrifice plot and regress? Actually that kind of explains the anime industry too, come to think of it…
UPDATE here’s SyFy executive Craig Engler’s tweets about Eureka on August 5th, just 4 days ago:
So, in celebration of getting to 80, I went ahead and Explored the world 🙂
Now here’s my dilemma. I’ve been working my way through Northrend, and hit 80 while finishing off Grizzly Hills. Now, do I continue the questlines in nrend or do i just go straight to the new cata zones?
I looked around and here’s pre-cata advice for finishing Northrend after 80:
If you’ve done the run to 80 before you shouldn’t do every quest in the zone; only the ones that will help you later.
Do Howling Fjord first, do the initial zone quests up to the ones that unlock the Utgarde Keep dungeon quests. Then do the Ka’luak quests in full.
Do Borean Tundra. Do Coldarra in its entirety to unlock the Nexus dungeon quests. Do Ka’luak quests until you get to Revered (or close to it, there’s easier ones in Dragonblight), and do the quests that lead up to and include finishing Temple City of Enkil’ah.
Run Utgarde Keep and Nexus at least once WITH the dungeon quests.
Do the majority of Dragonblight. The Goblin quests in the north area are optional, but nearly all the quests are important for something (Kirin Tor, Wyrmrest Accord, Ka’luak, Wrathgate).
By the time you do all those you should be Honored with Kirin Tor and Wyrmrest Accord, and Revered with Ka’luak. When you hit Lv.76 go to the Ka’luak vendor and buy a blue chest, and go back to the vendors for all three when you hit Lv. 78.
After that I recommend skipping Grizzly Hills and Sholozar Basin and hit Zul’drak for the Argent Crusade and Ebon Blade rep, both of which are in the lower areas. You could optionally unlock the Drak’Theron keep quests in Grizzly Hills, and probably a good idea to do the same for the flight point in Sholozar. If you intend to do Frenzyheart or Oracles, then stop by in Sholozar.
Once you hit Lv.77 go directly to Icecrown and do the quests to unlock Crusader Pinnacle and Shadow Vault, and start up the Argent Tournament quests. Then if you think you need shoulder enchants later go to Storm Peaks and do the entire Sons of Hodir questline, but only that. By then you should have enough dailies unlocked to not have to worry about anything else.
However, as the level cap is 85 these wont be as much of a gold bonanza – instead i could go straight to Hyjal, finish the zone, and then go do Firelands dailies for epic gear and better flying mounts. And then I can always return to northrend to finish off the Lich King.
What’s the better strategy here? I don’t even know all the pros and cons of each, so help educate me…
UPDATE – I just went to Hyjal, did three quests and got a sword that doubled my DPS. 0_o
UPDATE:
Level 10 – 5/14/09
Level 20 – 6/22/09
Level 30 – 8/7/09
Level 40 – 10/20/09
Level 50 – 12/12/09
Level 60 – 2/20/10
Level 70 – 6/24/10
Level 80 – 7/25/11
So, over two years. Note that it took over a year just to go from 70 to 80, so I’ve been in Northrend for a loooong time. Here are the dates of my Northrend questing achievements:
DEHTA’s little PITA: 7/14/10
Nothing Boring about Borean: 2/2/11
I’ve Toured the Fjord: 2/28/11
Might of Dragonblight: 5/21/11
This shows I’ve spent most of my time in the Borean Tundra (almost 6 months). That’s about how long I spent in Outland (from level 50-70).
At one time I had decided I was going to do all the quests in Outland, and was making some headway, but eventually gave up when I finally bought WotLK. I’ll reserve Outland achievements for my other alts.
I just noticed that there are quest achievements for the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor that I should have had credit for , but don’t – I assume they must have been added afterwards. Thats annoying 😛