Once upon a time, gas stations always had bottle openers on the pumps. I never really thought about a reason for removing them other than the fact that twist caps took over. Meanwhile, most pocket knives have something that works as a bottle opener in a pinch. I seem to use the ersatz bottle opener more than any other tool on my Leatherman Micra, these days.

I dunno, that Journey game looks kinda fun!

I meant something between the current Mini and the current Pro, of course. Obviously every new Mini is going to be better than the last. What I meant, though, is I really wish they made a small sub-tower type system (ideally with multiple accessible hard drives) and the choice of both a high-end quad i7 AND a decent GPU. On the minis, you can get EITHER a quad i7 OR a discrete GPU, but not both (with a discrete GPU your best choice is the dual i7, which is what I ended up getting). Basically, I wish they'd provide something with the specs of the iMac, but without the built-in screen. They have a great low-end desktop (mini) and a great high-end desktop (pro) but in the middle all they have is this goofy all-in-one.

Personally, I just replaced the MacBook pro in my studio with a mini, because I needed an upgrade and wanted to drive two external monitors (and no, the 15" screen in the MacBook wasn't cutting it) I'm pretty happy with it, although the pokey hard drive is definitely a problem. I just wish Apple had something between the Mini and Pro which isn't an iMac. A common complaint.

Wow, you have to put up with that for a whole month? And I thought it was pretty broken in San Francisco.

Huh! If I still had my Korg 01/W I'd have to ask if that was supported, and if so, buy one. But I no longer have my Korg 01/W, so I'm thinking that if that is supported I'd have to buy another one of those and one of these, so it's probably better that I not know.

Android phones as of 2.3 Gingerbread have a TV Tube effect when their screens turn off. At first I thought it would be cute exactly once, but it's actually quite grown on me and doesn't actually annoy me as much as I thought it would. So now it's just cute.

I don't actually like any of the magazine covers. The Light & Healthy cookbook cover was just so good because it had such a simple, elegant presentation of delicious-looking food that I couldn't look past all the cluttered, badly-composed, unattractive magazines. If I had to choose one I'd go for the Food & Wine one though, because it's well-composed and balanced and relatively simple and the text doesn't interfere with the visual subject too much.

Of course, as long as there's multiple ways that people can identify themselves that conflict and lead to identity fragmentation, and no good way to migrate that identity between services, then there will always be problems. The fact that there's so many equally-valid ways that I can authenticate to TypePad just to post a comment (TypeKey, Facebook, Twitter, and a dozen or so different OpenID brokers who all want to be my one true OpenID broker) makes it pretty hard for me to keep control over my identity. I could either keep commenting with my TypeKey profile to maintain the continuity there, or I could try migrating everything to one particular OpenID key (which is using an OpenID server that I control), or I could use one of my other services' identities. It's great that Dreamwidth is making it easy for people to join in on Dreamwidth by just using their LiveJournal OpenIDs, but when LJ shuts down or starts charging for OpenID authentication or whatever, then all the trust networks and comment histories they've built up there are ruined. Also, OpenID as implemented most places is kind of cumbersome and is really just a substitute for a password but still ends up creating yet another account everywhere, and one that's pretty much fixed to a single OpenID URL (and I really hate how that URL is what LJ/DW/etc. show as your username and link to as the profile page, but that's an implementation detail). At least with a traditional account tied to an email address you can generally change email addresses.

Dang, VST/Windows-only? I was hoping for an OSX AudioUnit. Oh well. Guess I'll have to stick to making do with Logic's various bleepy softsynths, and occasionally use my SIDstation.

I love that old candlestick phones are so iconic that we still recognize them as being phones. I wonder whether that image will outlast the AT&T rotary phone.

Why didn't that show up as a reply to matthowie? yay typepad...

True, and really I didn't care so much about video on the nano either - it's just interesting that several people have asked how well the video will work on it without realizing that the answer is essentially "mu."

One thing that people seem to have not noticed is that the new Nano doesn't do video at all. It's "all about the music," according to Apple. No apps, no games, just music. So, step forward on UI, step back on functionality.

It's not JUST the current generation of consoles that are rediscovering this. The PS2 had the EyeToy, and to a much more limited extent, the GameBoy had the GameBoy Camera. And of course don't forget the Amiga and its Video Toaster.

Kate, It looks like Amazon has a Kindle edition. Kindle books are also readable on a wide variety of other devices, such as iPhones, PCs, Macs, and Android phones - no Kindle required. Of course, I'm biased towards recommending this, as I worked on large parts of the Topaz conversion process which is probably what made this possible to begin with. :)

£1200?! £1200?!?!?!?!

Heh, I once owned a home which had a den that was set up in that way. The TV was old and horrible and not even cool-looking but I couldn't bring myself to get rid of it. When I sold the home, the built-in TV was still there.

The only device I can ever remember having with an N cell were some mid-90s liquid-crystal shutter glasses for 3D viewing on a PC. In that case it was clearly using the N cell for the size requirements. It was still pretty horrible though, and I ended up only using them about twice because the glasses weren't very, you know, good. I'm glad that this new generation of shutter glasses just uses built-in rechargeable batteries.

There's always the clip-on keypad for the Playstation 3 gamepad. It's a standard HID keyboard+mouse (the mouse is done as a capacitive touch surface that extends over th ekeyboard surface - pretty neat!) but it does have a slightly nonstandard scancode mapping which might be a problem.

Yes, but is it bigger inside than out?

Thank you for coming here to correct me two years later by saying nothing that actually conflicted with anything I said, but phrasing it as me being incorrect when really I just didn't go into a great amount of detail. Also, that method that makes the CRT project onto the screen is this amazing device known as a "lens."

I used to have a module which would turn any metal-bodied lamp into a touch lamp just by plugging it in through that. I'm sure it worked by doing some scary grounding tricks. It worked okay, but like all touch lamps, it had issues with always cycling every time there was a power fluctuation (which, in the city I lived in at the time, was pretty frequent).

My favorite iPod/iPhone holder cost me... well, nothing. Basically I took a large paperclip and bent it and put a little bit of wire insulation at the end. Like this. Just keep some paper clips in your travel bag and you can amaze your neighbor by making one in real time! (For an iPad it would take a really big paperclip, though.)

Have you tried Hulu? Right now you can only (legally) watch it on a computer, but that includes a laptop hooked up to your TV, but there are other means of getting it onto a TV such as PlayOn (if you have an XBox or PS3), and I'm sure there will be more official means eventually.