WordPress for iPhone

This WordPress for iPhone app looks very nice. I’ve been able to log in through the regular admin tools and post on the road, but this makes it so much easier! Taking the laptop on vacation is becoming less and less of a necessity…

The Movie Distraction Test

I’d rented two Blu-ray movies for the weekend but didn’t have a chance to watch them, so instead of just returning them I decided to play them in the background while working on the webpage. A great way to judge a movie’s appeal, really: if the movie good, your attention will be drawn to it against your will. If the movie is bad, it’s easy to ignore. Based on this test:

• Spiderwick Chronicles is good.
• 10,000 BC sucks. Bigtime.

10,000 BC sucking isn’t a big surprise, of course. I figured it might be fun for its pretty pictures, or be entertaining in a dumb way, like Stargate. But it’s just a boring, unengaging mess in which I don’t care for any of the characters. Extra negative points for opening the movie with the same mountain ranges as The Two Towers! I thought I was in the wrong movie…

Spiderwick Chronicles is a pleasant surprise. Well told, well executed, great family movie that adults can enjoy as well. Much recommended!

Happy 4th of July!

Technology is pretty damn cool. I’m driving back towards Tiburon on a boat after watching the fireworks, and I can update my blog on the iPhone. So I figured I’d wish everybody in America a happy Independence Day! Enjoy the long weekend

If You’re Not Watching the Jace Hall Show…

You should be. Fun mixture of video games and celebrities from a guy who actually knows a lot about the industry (he ran Monolith for many, many years). Well produced and entertaining.

New Chrono game!

Update: Uhm, looks like it’s just a port of the Playstation version, which was a port of the Super Famicon version with terrible Dragonball Z characters thrown in (sorry, I just can’t stand that style). Boo! Doesn’t make the game any worse, of course, but I don’t need to buy a new DS port just to replay that game again…

Original Post: Be still my heart!

Square needs to add a lot more content and less tease to that page, though

Stupid CA Cellphone Law

Am I the only one who remembers various studies that proved that there’s no difference between hands-on and hands-free cellphone use while driving? Both are equally distracting:

Many studies have shown that using hand-held cellphones while driving can constitute a hazardous distraction. However, the theory that hands-free sets are safer has been challenged by the findings of several studies. A study from researchers at the University of Utah, published in the summer 2006 issue of Human Factors, the quarterly journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, concludes that talking on a cellphone while driving is as dangerous as driving drunk, even if the phone is a hands-free model. An earlier study by researchers at the university found that motorists who talked on hands-free cellphones were 18 percent slower in braking and took 17 percent longer to regain the speed they lost when they braked.

So how is this new California law that banishes hands-on cellphones, but still allows dialing, texting and headsets, more than activism? Yesterday a coworker almost got run into by a woman who was talking on her speaker phone. This morning, I saw a woman driving way under the speed limit on hway 101 while talking exitedly on her headset. But all of the sudden we’re forbidden from normal cellphone use because that is too dangerous?