Brandonshire

Some thoughts on GMing

So for a bit under a year now (I can't remember exactly when I started but about a year ago I was gearing up to start) I've been GMing a game of 4th Edition D&D.  It's my first time "on the other side of the screen" for any game and I must say I'm enjoying it quite a bit.  It's been a learning experience but I'm feeling a little more comfortable with it every session we do.  4th Edition has been great for a beginning GM, it makes a lot of things fairly easy for the GM, I'm not sure I'd have been able to jump in the way I did if we were still playing an earlier edition of D&D.
Anyway, I thought I'd write here about a few things I've learned and a few things I need to work on.  Fellow GM's and players out there please comment or give feedback if you want to!

A few things I've learned so far:

• If there's a question about a rule and it can't be looked up in less than a few minutes, then it's usually best to make a ruling to keep the action moving and look it up later for the future.
  
• Always remember the first rule of improvisation: say "Yes, and..." Try your best not to shoot down your players ideas!
• Be sure to read/think through all your monsters and room features carefully.
• Related to the above, try to run a few scenarios for a scene through in your head before sitting down at the table to anticipate questions or situations that might come up.  Highlight things if you need to!
• Make notes while playing, notes about things the players seemed to enjoy or didn't, names of NPC's places etc.
• Pre-rolling initiative for your monsters can really speed things up.
  
• Generally try to keep things moving, though don't rush the players.

There are also a number of things I need to work on and improve (including those things above):

• If I make a ruling and plan to look up a rule for later, I really need to be sure to stop and make a note of it so you can actually do that.
• There are a few rules and things that I really need to look up and read over and over till they sink in to speed things up at the table.
• I need to work on not talking so much about the meta-aspects of the game. It's ok to occasionally note that the players did something unexpected, but it's probably best not to discuss the things they could have done or what might have happened as much as I have.  It destroys some of the magic of the story, and I need to just let things happen as they do and work with it.  On a related note...
  
• I need to work on making the story a bit more organic and based more on the players actions.  I've gotten better about this, but I still sometimes feel like I'm railroading things a little bit here and there just because I'm not quite sure how to deal with things the players are doing.
• I need to work on not rushing things.  There have been times when the players have a little bit of downtime and while I of course want to keep things moving; in retrospect there have been a few times I've probably rushed through things more than I should have.
• I need to work on how I run skill challenges, so they feel a little more organic and less mechanical.  I also need to work on really trying to include everyone in them.
• I'd like to work on encouraging the players to really describe what they're doing in combat and in skill situations rather than just saying "I use x power."  They've actually been pretty good about this sort of thing, but I'd love to see more of it.  The first step in this is of course leading by example, so this is something for me to really remember to do.  At the same time I also need to remember that everyone enjoys different aspects of the game, so if some players really just don't want to do that sort of thing, that's ok too, as long as everyone is having fun!
  
• I'd also like to work on my improvisation/acting skills to really bring some of the NPC's to life.  I've had a few times where I've felt pretty good about this (the old man with a Main accent for one), but on the whole I feel like my characterization of the NPC's has been pretty flat and I've fallen back on the same phrases an quirks a bit too much.  Really taking some time to think about who these people are and what they're interested in should help with this.

And finally, there are a few things I'd like to try and/or am looking forward to experimenting with more:

• Music!  I've only just started to really think about using music to set the mood, and have tried playing a little bit of music while the game is going on but I'd really like to do more of this.  I've got some interesting ideas for using music, but I'm still trying to work out some technical aspects of both playing and controlling the music.
• Player generated world and story elements.  This is largely inspired by a section of the 4th Edition DMG 2 in which an example of a "shared world" is given with the DM letting players come up with a lot more of the details of the world than I think is normal.  I'm trying to leave a lot of details open so that when/if we have to deal with them I can leave a lot of the details up to the players.  I don't feel like I've done this enough so far but I'm working on it (and got some great ideas from the character backgrounds the players recently wrote) and I think the next sections of the adventure we're running should have some more opportunities for this.  For example, two of the characters are from the city we're in now, so I plan to let those players come up with a lot of the details of what the city is like and how it works.  From city government to some of the factions within the city to even some of the layout, I want this to be "their" city.  Some of it I'll of course also be coming up with on my own, but I want this to feel like a place they're familiar with and really want to get an idea of what they're interested in and how I can work their ideas into mine.
  

I'm sure there are a lot of things here I'm not thinking of, so there may be a follow up post or two on this but these are my thoughts right now.  What do you think?  What lessons have you learned?  Have you used music in your games? How much player input have you taken as a GM?  Do you have any ideas or tips for how to increase this sort of interaction?

Cross posted on LiveJournal, and Buzz!

Amnesiac RPG Characters

I was listening to a This American Life podcast from a bit ago, part of which discussed amnesia.  The story was interesting, though wasn't really about amnesia per se. But it got me thinking about it in role playing game terms (I'm working up to GMing my first adventure soon, so I'm thinking of just about everything in terms of gaming possibilities).

It occurred to me that amnesia is used in all kinds of fiction, sometimes to comedic effect, sometimes to more dramatic effect, but that I hadn't ever thought about using it in a role playing game.  It seems like potentially a pretty good and fun trope to use in a game, either with a character who forgets who they are for some time, or with NPC's or any number of other ways.  This would probably work particularly well in a pulp themed game, where these sort of outrageous ideas make perfect sense.

I've also been reading Gnome Stew (a great GMing blog) a lot lately, and as I was thinking about this I also read this article, in which the author talks about the fun of having secrets from the other players, and generally cutting down on meta-game thinking at the table. These two things started to churn in my head and I got the following ideas...

I also started to think about the idea for PC's with amnesia.  Role playing it could be interesting but difficult for a player if their PC is supposed to have lost their memory partway through the game, or if they've written a background for the character, that they then have to "re-discover."  This could be a lot of fun, but might be difficult to role play properly for the player, since they'd know what the background really was. 

It might also unfairly focus attention on the one character if they were the only one with amnesia (again this isn't necessarily a problem, depending on the player and the groups, but is a potential problem).  Of course this could be solved by having everyone start with amnesia, and have to slowly learn about/try to remember their backgrounds and histories.  But again, you still have the problem of a PC who knows the real background, but has to pretend that they don't for the purposes of role playing.

One solution would be for the GM could write up a background for a character, or all the characters, and start the game with that characters, or the characters with amnesia, and they could slowly learn who they were as the game went on.  This could be a lot of fun, and might work really well with the right group.  But might lead to some players feeling like they don't have enough real investment in their character, or that they are being railroaded some.

Then an interesting idea popped into my head.  What if all the players wrote a background for another player's character?  This could lead to all the players really feeling like they had some investment in the game, but would also leave them not knowing what their own background was.  The players could either write the backgrounds specifically for one other players character, or they could all write a background in secret and turn them in to the GM who would then assign them to different players and make any adjustments to make them all fit together.  The GM would get tons of plot hooks, and would be able to really involve the players ideas in the game and center it around the characters, while still haveing the freedom to determine quite a bit (like how they got amnesia, and why they are together etc.).  The players would get to start the game with a clean slate, and then have the fun of figuring out who they were and how they got to where they are.

I think this is a pretty fun idea for an interesting game.  I'm not planning on using it for my upcomign adventure, as I'm not sure I feel like I'm quite experienced enough as a GM to run something like that (at least not yet), but I think it sounds like a pretty fun game for the players and for the GM (though probably a lot of work for the GM).

So what do you think?  Would you consider running a game like this, or playing in one?  Do you have any fun ideas for how to us amnesia in a game?

Cross posted on my LJ

Keeping in Sync, Part 2

Yesterday I talked (in far too much detail and at far too much length) about how I keep my calendar's in sync and available to whenever I need them.

Today I'm going to talk a little (hopefully only a little...) about my current system for keeping my contacts in sync.  Luckily it's pretty simple.

I basically use a feature that's built into OS X (well since 10.5.3), that lets any mac that's had an iPhone or iPod Touch connected to it at some point to sync contacts between address book and Google contacts.  (Why you have to have connected an iPhone or iPod Touch is beyond me, and luckily with a little comandline-fu one can get around that).  The same option exists for yahoo contacts (and I think that's there no matter what, so even if you don't have an iPhone or iPod Touch it's an option).

After doing that, my address book and Google contacts are in sync, and because of my MobileMe subscription, my phone is updated automatically as well (changes made there also migrate back to my computer and from there to Google).

This works mostly pretty well.  There have been some issues though.  Gmail adds anyone you e-mail or have been e-mailed by to your contacts.  Luckily it don't put all those "suggested" contacts into your "my contacts" section without you telling it to.  Unfortunately, at least for the moment, using this feature in OSX doesn't distinguish between "My Contacts" and the suggested contacts.  So after I did this i had to go through and really spend a long time cleaning up my contacts, getting rid of people I didn't know or didn't want to have in my contacts on my phone.  I also had to go through and merge multiple versions of the same people, and make sure I had the most current e-mail address(s) and phone numbers.  But once this was cleaned up it's pretty good, at least for a while.  Unfortunately I have to keep going through every so often and cleaning everything up again, because Google keeps adding contacts (so when my Mom or my Aunt sends me a mass e-mail suddenly all the other people on there are in my contacts).  They really need to fix this. Let me decide which contacts I want to sync.

The other problem is that Google's contacts info doesn't have all the same fields as Address Book, so some things didn't or don't quite sync up properly or simply don't sync.  Mostly it works pretty well but I have had to slowly go through and clean up mailing addresses and such here and there that got mangled in the transition one way or the other.

I also had a weird problem for a while where I kept ending up with multiple versions of myself in my contacts list.  I'd have my main entry, with all my e-mail addresses, and phone numbers etc, and then a new one would keep popping up that just had my primary e-mail address.  It was weird and I had to delete the extra one and add my main e-mail address back to my main entry a few times. It seems to have stopped happening though, so... I'll just chalk it up as a fluke or edge case.

Anyway, yesterday Dave posted about Google's new calendar and contacts sync services, and mentioned some issues he's had with it.  I don't have solutions for most of them, but the set up I have above might be a fix for the issue of not syncing one's address book on the Mac with the phone anymore.  Besides the obvious solution Dave suggested of just turning off over the air contacts syncing, you might be able to use the solution I have above, and still have over the air syncing of your contacts with your iPhone.

I don't know for sure that you can do both at the same time, but it seems like you could have your Mac syncing it's address book with gmail's and then have gmail syncing it's address book (which is not the same (more or less) as the address book on your Mac) with your phone.  The nice thing about this is if you're out somewhere and you add someone to your address book on your phone ("Hey, I haven't seen you in ages, we need to hang out more, let me get your number.") it'd automatically be migrated to your address book at home and to your Gmail contacts.

Keeping in Sync

So I've been meaning to write this up for a bit now, and Google's recent switching on of over the air syncing (via licensed from MS active sync tech), and my friend Dave's recent entry about the issues he's run into there, has finally given me the motivation I need to just go ahead and write this up.

For around a month or so now, in an effort to get better organized, I've been working on keeping my calendars and contacts in sync between Google, (more on contacts later) my iPhone and my two computers.  So far it's working ok, I'm probably only a little bit more organized, but that's mostly because I need to put a bit more effort and discipline into keeping up with everything and adding it to my calendars, but I've got the tech situation pretty well set up to make that as easy as possible.

Let's start with what I wanted for calendars: I wanted a way to use Google calendar (we'll refer to as gCal from here on out) which I'd been using for a while to try to organize myself with mixed sucess, on my iPhone.  Seems pretty simple. But getting the ideal set up wasn't as easy as I'd have liked.

For reasons I can't really fathom when you visit Google's mobile site for gCal, you can view events, but you can't add them.  It's nice to be able to see what you have to do, but if I can't add events as I think of them, it's more or less worthless to me, since the key to keeping myself organized is not giving myself an excuse to forget to add something to my calendar, no matter where I am.  Besides even if that worked I don't always have cell coverage or a good data connection when I need to add something.

I considered trying to just switch to iCal, as that'd let me add and edit events on my phone, and would have my phone actually buzz or beep to remind me of things.  I did this a few times, but I was already using gCal and it seemed like it'd be tough or impossible to reproduce all of that again on my iPhone (especially a few shared calendars).  Besides, I didn't want to always have to use my phone to add events.  As much as I love my iPhone it's going to be faster and easier to use a full sized keyboard and screen to add things when that's an option.

What I needed was full two way editing and syncing between my iPhone and gCal.

I had read a few times about programs like Busysync and Spanning Sync, and they both seemed to do something close to what I wanted (namely sync calendars both ways between iCal and gCal).  But I hadn't really researched them too closely and I'd still only get the calendars to sync when I synced my phone with my computer at the end of the day at home.  This might have been "good enough" but it wasn't ideal, and I just hadn't really looked closely enough at either to know if they'd really be worth the money.

A little while back I went ahead and signed up for MobileMe, mostly because it'd offer some web hosting for our wedding website that'd be especially easy to set up (since we were just planning to use iWeb to make a simple site without much hassle, and it's very easy to publish to MobileMe through iWeb). I figured it was probably only a little bit more expensive than other web hosting options, very easy to use for our purposes, and I'd get a chance to try out the other features.  I set it up to sync my address book and iCal calendars between my two computers and my iPhone.  This was nice but didn't really do that much for me since I never really used iCal (though it was certainly nice to keep my address book synced between my phone and two computers, and to have changes sync over the air).

When Google announced they were supporting CalDAV I was briefly exciting thinking that that could be the answer I was looking for.  I'd sync my google calendars down to iCal, which would then sync them to my iPhone over the air or when I synced it up with my Mac at home.  But it turned out that you don't really get full two way syncing, especially from the phone, so that wasn't really what I was looking for.

However, at some point I saw a post by John Gruber (of Daring Fireball) in which he talked about the upcoming BusyCal by BusyMac (the same people behind BusySync).  He had also recommended BusySync a number of times, so I checked out BusyCal a bit (one could describe it as iCal Pro) and it sounded pretty sweet.  I then looked into it further and realized that BusySync would probably do exactly what I was looking for as far as syncing my calendars, and with Mobile Me set up I'd even get over the air syncing between my phone and my calendars!

I downloaded it, and set it up, which was very easy, and was pretty much instantly able to see and edit my gCal calendars on my phone vis versa! I finally had full two way editing and syncing between my phone and gCal! I was pretty excited. 

BusySync even lets you decide how you want it to handle alerts.  It'll translate alerts between iCal and gCal, so you can get alerts in both places, or just one, and you can even determine what type of alert to get (e-mail, pop up, sms) or how to handle different alerts. What it boils down to for me is that if I add an event in gCal (7pm Dungeons and Dragons) and add an reminder to myself 30 minutes beforehand, I'll get whatever alert I set up in gCal (email, pop-up or sms) and I'll also have my phone buzz and have iCal pop up a reminder on my computer at home. (Actually because of MobileMe syncing my computers as well as my phone I'll get that pop up on both of my computers).

BusySync also offers a fair number of other options for sharing iCal calendars within a home or office network, and other things that I probably won't really use, but they could be nice for some families or small businesses.

From what I've read Spanning Sync is similarly easy to use, but works slightly differently. It's a bit more streamlined in what it does as far as calendars go.  Rather than syncing all your different calendars on iCal and gCal separately, it's really set up so you can merge them.  This'd be particularly good if you had been using both iCal and gCal a lot and wanted to merge two of your calendars into one.  I hadn't really ever used iCal so it didn't really matter that the calendars in iCal would be treated as separate calendars (in fact I'll probably stop even bothering to sync the calendars that were already in iCal, since I only use the ones I had been using in gCal), but for some people Spanning Sync might be a better option, (it also syncs your contacts between gmail and address book) but I've never used it so I can't really speak to it in much detail.  They seem to be two overlapping but slightly different products.

Now of course a week or two after I finally went ahead and paid for BusySync (I used it for about 3 weeks of the free trial before paying for it), google announced they were offering free over the air syncing.  I have to admit, that if they'd started this before I paid for BusySync I might have thought twice about paying for it. Though at the moment I'm still glad I did. 

The Google solution might have been close to perfect for me since I didn't really have anything in iCal, and so syncing events from gCal straight to my phone would probably have been enough.  But, it does appear that there are some limitations with the current implementation, like not being able to sync more than 5 calendars (I don't have that many I use yet, but I am starting to use shared gCal calendars more and more so I might have more than 5 soon), it also doesn't seem to handle alarms very well (and alarms are pretty crucial for me since without them I'll more than likely just forget to look at my calendar and miss appointments and things). 

That being said, if they iron those issues out and I decide at the end of a year that I don't want to stick with MobileMe (we'll see, but it does have a fair number of features I wouldn't mind keeping), I might switch to that for my over the air syncing, at which point unless I've started actually using iCal or BusyCal (assuming I decide to upgrade to that when it comes out) I might also stop using BusySync/Cal, since all the calendars I use are on gCal.  But for now I'm pretty happy with my set up, and it does pretty much exactly what I want it to.

If you DO use iCal and want over the air syncing with your iPhone without MobileMe, then a combination of gCal and BusySync might be perfect for you (The developers of BusySync even wrote a blog entry to tell you about it!).

I was also going to talk about syncing my contacts (I promise not as verbosely as above) here, but this has already gotten far too long, so I'm going to make that a separate entry.

Animal Crossing!

ANIMAL CROSSING: City Folk

So Sarah and I got the new Animal Crossing game for the Wii.  Anyone else got it?  Or going to get it?  If so, let's visit each-others towns! My Friend code for the game is 0474-1450-2128.  What's yours?

KK Slider

Dungeons and Dragons

I've been thinking a lot about Dungeons and Dragons lately.  My last post which was a general life update I mentioned that I'm still playing fairly regularly in a Dungeons and Dragons game which I've been enjoying a lot.  We're playing 3.5, and it's been a lot of fun for the past several years, even if in the past few months we've slowed a bit due to scheduling problems, still we're playing on Sunday and I'm pretty excited about it.  We stopped the last session mid-battle and we're soon going to begin infiltrating the frozen fortress of an undead evil dragon in order to keep a powerful artifact out of the hands of an evil cult.  What could be more D&D?

Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide: Roleplaying Game Core Rules, 4th Edition

Wizards RPG Team

But! What's gotten me extra excited about "D's" lately though is the impending release of 4th Edition, which comes out tomorrow.  I was originally planning to pick up the Players Handbook tomorrow night, but now I may wait until Saturday as I'm probably heading over to Falls Church anyway to mow my Mom's lawn while she's out of town, so I figure I'll head

Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook: Roleplaying Game Core Rules, 4th Edition

Wizards RPG Team

to my old nerd store.  Which I still feel nostalgic about, even if none of the people I used to see regularly still work there (come back Timus!), and others have had some rather negative experiences there lately.  They still have one of the best bookshelves of role playing game books in the area (and they aren't shrink-wrapped for no reason so you can flip through them before you buy 'em).  Hopefully demand won't be so great that they'll be sold out by Saturday.

Some people have been worried about 4th Edition, and there is certainly some worry with any new release like this.  But most of what I've seen so far about the game makes me very hopeful that it'll be even more streamlined and fun than 3/3.5 was.  There are some pretty big changes and I know some of my friends would probably prefer it to be even more simplified and more like True 20, but as even my friend Ben (who really likes the True 20 idea) pointed out, for Dungeons and Dragons you should keep a certain level of defined classes and other iconic elements, otherwise it's just not quite D&D.

Some people are also worried it'll be too much like an MMO, because they seem to have taken a few ideas from things like WoW.  I think that's a pretty silly concern for a couple of reasons.  First of all if an idea is good and it makes things more fun, I don't really care where it comes from, and second, a table top role playing game with good friends and a good game master will never really be much like an MMO, unless that's the way the group wants it.

I have no idea when I'll get to play a bit with 4th Edition, as my current game is 3.5 and I don't see us translating this game into 4th Edition (it'd be a lot of work, and my character would be nearly impossible to translate without some serious house-ruling, since he has two levels of Psion, and Psionics aren't out for 4th edition yet, hopefully it won't be a multi-year wait for that).  Though I'd love to try out a short one or two session adventure with some people, just to see how the game works.

I've also been thinking about what sort of character I want to play next.  I've generally always played rogues, and I still love them as characters (I still don't know how other character classes handle having so few skill points), but I think in my next game I'm ready to try out something different (It's been fun adding a few levels of Psion to my current character, has given me a taste of more spellcasting-type classes).  I'm sort of tempted to play a pure Psion next, and I think that'd be pretty interesting, Sorcerers also seem pretty fun to me.  But I think I'd really like to try out a martial class of some sort.  I've always thought that playing a Monk would be an interesting role-playing opportunity, and I like the simplicity of fighters, and the idea of having lots and lots of feats, I also like psionics a lot so a psychic warrior might be fun too, but I think ultimately I might want to try out a Barbarian or something like it for my next game (but who knows what I'll want to try by the time that happens).  I love the idea of playing a "noble savage" sort of archetype, especially one modeled after some of my favorite parts of Conan.  That is, someone who's main strength is brute-force martial combat, but who isn't afraid to use some sneaking and rogue-like tactics to accomplish his goals when the need arises.

Anyway,  I've got a lot of other thoughts on  D&D and role playing in general but I'll end this now, and end with a few questions for you dear readers.

So are you excited about 4th Edition?  Have you been playing any interesting games lately?  Been looking at anything interesting?  Any other nerd-gaming thoughts?

Music Game Question

So now that I have a bit more steady income, I think at some point soon I may go ahead and try to get one of those new-fangled rock-music games.  I won't be getting it in the next week or so, but once I've built up my bank account a bit more again, I'll get getting one of them.
Initially, since I don't know where I'd put the drums and other such things, and don't want to spend 170 on Rock Band, I figured I'd just get Guitar Hero III for the 360, and that'd be it.  But I recently realized it'd probably be cheaper to buy a used guitar hero II (or II for that matter) and a used copy of the game.  This of course made me think a bit more and I realized I could do the same thing but get a copy of Rock Band instead. 

So my question to all of you out there is which should I get? 

Since I probably won't be getting a set of drums anytime soon, and will probably mostly play single player for a while at least, is Rock Band as fun as Guitar Hero with just a guitar? 

Or is Guitar Hero the way to go for a more solitary experience?

Which one has more and better music (I'm counting down-loadable stuff here)?

Does one have more original artist recordings than the other?

Would I be better off getting Rock Band, with the idea that eventually I might get a microphone, and someone might bring over a drum set and or extra guitar (which I might eventually get anyway regardless of which game I get, so I can play with someone else).?

Any thoughts on either game would be much appreciated!

Nerds everywhere are in mourning.

RIP Gary Gygax.

A Return?

I haven't been a regular blogger for some time now, at least a year or two (I haven't gone back through my archives to see when the last time I was updating with any regularity was but it was certainly a while ago), but I may try to start doing it a bit more again. 
What better place to start than with my thoughts on the products and such announced at this years MacWorld?

On the whole, it seemed like a good steve keynote.  Nothing incredible or too terribly unexpected was announced, but a large number of solid products and services were announced, an some goodies were released within minutes and hours of the keynote.

The most immediately exciting thing for me was the iPhone 1.1.3 update.  The ability to reorganize the icons on my home page, and the ability to add links and such seems nice and will be really important come February when third parties get the ability to make apps for the iPhone (i'm really really excited about this).  Really though the feature that I'm most excited about and impressed with are the new features in Google Maps. 

When the iPhone was first announced and demo'd it was unclear if there was GPS in the thing.  When Steve showed us the ability to find starbucks' around the expo center it appeared that the iPhone already knew where he was. It didn't.  There was no gps in it, and you had to manually enter your starting address to do things like that.  It was mildly disappointing but not a huge surprise and not that big a deal either, as it's not that hard to just enter your current location.  Having google maps on my phone was still useful, especially when Sarah and I went on vacation and could get directions to various places with ease.  But it still seemed like it'd be a lot better with some sort of GPS style function built in.
1.1.3 gives us something approximating that.  By triangulating your position relative to cell phone towers or known Wi-Fi hotpsots the iPhone now gives you a pretty good approximation of where you are, and you can use that as the starting address (or presumably the ending one) for directions.  They also added the ability to move the "pin's" that show up in the map when you put in an address, which is good because sometimes G-Maps gets addresses slightly wrong (for example it's always been convinced that I live on the other end of my street.  Not a huge deal but indicative of potential problems with other addresses and such).  This feature is really quite impressive, and a very smart way to add a feature people want without having to upgrade the hardware.  (As best I know this feature doesn't replace GPS though, it can't follow you as you move around and tell you directions as you're moving, but it's still useful, especially if you're somewhere unfamiliar and want to find a restaurant or something.)

iTunes video rentals seems like a decent idea, most movies you only want to watch once or twice, and the rest you're likely to want to buy, so having a low priced option to rent them seems like a decent idea, but in the era of netflix, $3 seems a bit steep (and $4 for an HD one seems steep too) for something that I have to finish watching within 24 hours of starting (for a good explanation of why that's a problem see this post from Daring Fireball about why that's just too short, and honestly kind of strange.).  It could be good for an impulse buy/rent like "oh I want to see X right now" but for close to the same price I could go to a video store and rent something on DVD, with more features and less restrictions on how I use it.  I could also keep it for several days to a week and watch it at my leisure during that time.
If they lowered the price by about a dollar I might start considering something like this.  Assuming I were to get an Apple TV that is, which brings us to...

...the Apple TV.  Seems like they've finally added a number of features that people have wanted from the begining (like being able to buy/rent movies and music directly from the AppleTV rather than having to get them on your mac and then sync/stream them to the Apple TV.  It's also evidently got an upgraded interface and that's the only place you can rent HD content (probably because the studios are stupid and REALLY worried about piracy).  It's also cheaper than it used to be, and the old ones can be upgraded via a software update.  All in all it makes the AppleTV a bit more compelling but still not something I'm really excited about buying, especially since most of it's features can be duplicated by either my Tivo or my Xbox 360, with a small amount of work on my computer.  I was hoping Apple would introduce their own line of HDTV's with the features of the AppleTV built in.  Thinking about this a while ago I got really excited about the possibilities (I may write about that some later).

There was also the announcmeent of the "Time Capsule" which is an Airport Extreme BaseStation with a hard drive (500gig or 1 terrabyte) built in, for use as a backup volume for Macs on your network using Time Machine.  I believe it can also be used as a general network storage device too. It's cool but it's a feature that the old base station was supposed to have if you attached a USB hard drive to it, but they pulled the feature at the last minute, presumably because they couldn't get it working properly.  From what I understand the feature doesn't work well at all, even outside of using it for Time Machine.  I do hope apple steps up and fixes this problem (it is listed as a bug) soon, or it's going to look like the pulled the feature just to sell another product.  Hopefully that fix'll be coming soon as I can't really see any reason why having the hard drive built in would make it all that much easier for the feature to work than having it attached by USB.  If they fix that problem I might consider buying on of the base stations and hooking up my own hard drive to it.

The "big" news out of this keynote was the MacBook Air.  I'm not personally too excited about it because it's not really targeted at me.  It is pretty cool looking, and is impressively thin, but it's kind of expensive and lacks a lot of features I'd want in any laptop I got.  If I were some sort of road warrior and weight and size were a big issue for me, and things like a decent graphics card, and the ability to run really powerful apps weren't important to me I'd be pretty interested.  But I'm not, so it isn't all that exciting for me besides just looking cool.  I do like the "remote disk" feature is pretty cool and I could actually see it being useful in a lot of situations.  Basically because the Air doesn't have a disk drive of any kind, if you want to install software on it you can "borrow" the disk drive of a mac or PC in the area that has some software installed on it.  It's a pretty slick idea.  I don't know how much of  market there is for this sort of thing, this could be another Cube, ie something really cool that doesn't really have much of a market, or it could be a hit among certain people. Or more likely it'll be somewhere in between.

I'm excited to find out more details on all of these products as reviewers get a chance to use them hands on, and as more info comes out from Apple.  I'm also excited to find out about all the other smaller stuff that gets introduced by other companies at MacWorld.  All in all a solid if slightly less than thrilling Macworld so far.

New Years Eve?

2008

Sarah and I have realized that New Years Eve is nearly upon us, and we have no plans.  We have also found very few people who seem to have plans.  So our question is, does anyone have any plans?  Can we come?

Does anyone want to make plans?

Post here or e-mail me with any ideas?

Uncorked