Pounders blogger has personal experience with the oldest profession, in South Korea
By Marquis D. Sade
It’s a March Friday and I have been pacing for an hour in the cold night outside a nondescript stairwell between two empty buildings in South Korea. Twin red-white-and-blue barber poles spin furiously just outside the black corridor between the buildings. I have circled this block ten times now, still lacking the courage to walk down those stairs.
What if it’s just a barbershop? Nonsense. Barbershops aren’t open at 12:30 A.M.
Pictures
What if it’s expensive? — What if they don’t cater to foreigners? — Finally, I’ve never done this before. Round and round the barber pole in my mind spins, only to end up again at What if it’s just a barbershop?
I circle the block once more killing another ten minutes.
The stairwell again. My heart is a rib-ramming fist. Inside: a pungent cocktail of terror, teen-ish intrigue and curiosity. Outside: two barber poles and a taunting stairwell.
I’m inching my way sideways down the stairs now—my back to the wall and my palms soaked. My heart is an earthquake. I crane my neck to see the bottom of the stairwell. A glass shop door stands completely opaqued by a pink vinyl decal save for a five-by-eight inch rectangle. I knock softly with a trembling hand. At first, nothing. Then, like a magic-eight-ball , a woman’s ghostly face floats through the inky black to the small pane. She examines me with a polite smile before letting me in.
In the dim parlor I see her murky apparition. She is frosty pale with hair just blacker than the rambling catacombs of the brothel.
* Visage (‘vizij) » noun [usu. in sing. ] poetic/literary »
a person’s face, with reference to the form or proportions of the features.
She is maybe 38, but her visage* seems older. Painted toenails in cheap flip-flops join two frosty white legs that disappear under a pair of pink silk shorts ringed with black lace.
† Camisole (‘kameh-sole) » noun » a woman’s loose-fitting undergarment for the upper body, typically held up by shoulder straps and having decorative trimming.
Above a matching camisole† hovers her face, punctured by two completely black, mascara encrusted eyes.
Almost apologetically she motions to the slippers by the door and then disappears behind a curtain to a nearby room. Two low whispers carry through the womb-like brothel. In a television’s flickering blue light I can make out a large space filled with random furniture covered in bed sheets.
“Zing!” the curtain slides back revealing the whore in pink leaning over a sofa talking with an obese woman in a huge T-shirt. The fat woman glances over her shoulder to size me up, mutters something to the whore and then returns to watching her soap opera at a near-mute volume.
“W60,000,” ‡‡ $60 USD the soft-spoken prostitute informs me on her return. She counts the bills and then hands them to the sow behind the curtain.
“Do you want a massage or — (crude palm fist gesture indicating sex)?”
I mimic the palm and fist gesture.
“This way.” She motions.
A chilling thought enters as I follow her through labyrinthine underground brothel: Is that woman her pimp?
We pass two dark, curtained rooms with doctors’ tables and hand showers. The rooms appear completely water-proof with drains in the floor. How large is this place? I wonder. I trail her, adolescently gawking at her trashy shorts shifting in the dark. My cock is hard with fear and lust when she stops. There, at the end of a shadowy and narrow hallway is a small ten-by-ten foot room with a weak red incandescent bulb and a short curtain door.
She utters something in Korean and motions for me to undress. How much do I undress? Is this where we have sex? But before I can ask she has already disappeared again. Lying naked and paralyzed on a cotton floor mat, I gaze at the office-like drop ceiling in the pale red glow. In another room, I can hear her rummaging through cabinets and boxes. A sink runs then stops. I can’t help but be reminded of that awkward wait between assistant and dentist.
She closes the draw curtains behind her and kneels into the room. This time she brings with her a couple of plastic tubs similar to the ones in the shower rooms. Two steaming white towels accompany a condom and two plastic bottles. Frozen, I listen to her alien chit-chat.
“‘I like Americans — they are kind to women.’ The comment’s irony isn’t lost on me.”
Squatting near me, she begins to scrub my cock with the hot wet towels. For me it’s an awkward elephant in the room; for her, an occupational hazard. Next, she removes her flimsy dime store lingerie with an almost masculine crudity—unabashedly exposing her brown anus as she bends over to step out of her pantyless shorts.
I endure a joyless blowjob, while examining her soft body — soft from a life of lying in a cot and waiting to be bought.
§ Warren » noun (also rabbit warren) » a network of interconnecting rabbit burrows.
• a densely populated or labyrinthine building or district : a warren of narrow gas-lit streets.
• Brit., historical an enclosed piece of land set aside for breeding game, esp. rabbits.
A ceaseless existence, spent here, in this warren §, sleeping and being slept with. A condom package snatches me from my daydream.
Now underneath me, she spreads her limp legs revealing a hairless cunt. Her breasts slide limply over her bony ribcage. My mind drifts to an old lover who had a rather loose yet shallow pussy. The whore’s pink eraser nipples are rubbing my chest. Before long, I am filling her with jets of semen.
We attempt some limited small talk while dressing. In a dreamy opiate haze, she tells me she wants to see America someday. I tell her she should do it — but somehow we both know it’s fantasy. But who is the trick to call the whore deluded?
Back at my shoes she compliments me on my penis-size. “I like Americans — they are kind to women.” The comment’s irony isn’t lost on me.
At a different stair, she pats me on the rear and tells me to come again. I exit the plain metal door at the top and step outside to find myself in a completely different building on the street above—nothing to suggest that I just emerged from a brothel.
We count the number of dick references in recent article in Variety
Here’s how it works: when we find a cheesy metaphor to cock in the explanation of this industry, it will be highlighted in italic type with a number to its corresponding sidenote — like this one — where a colorful explanation of things awaits. The original article is entitled, “Hard times ahead as porn goes soft?”Cocky Variety columnist Peter Bart writes about the economy’s effect on pornography sales, and my friends, does this prick stiffly nail it with the double entendres, painting the industry’s downturn with penetrating metaphorical visuals of the male member, thus creating a fun game for all of us to find and critique each one. Let’s probe this article and find just how many times can a writer use the same gag? (Note: sorry IE users, you’ll have to sit this one out.)
1, 2 & 3: It’s a one-two-three punch right out of the gate, folks, as this column launches with two great puns before lift-off. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s certainly ‘hard times’ indeed equating financial uncertainty of an industry with a good old fashioned erect penis — fleshy, at attention, and ready to impale, this pun aims to please. And not six words later do we see — BOOM! — the right hook as this editor, or his staff!, has tons of fun with this headline as the industry’s push for softcore porn is described with the wrinkled winky of an apologetic virgin. Surely, these writers have blown their load already in just the first few words! Not true, theirs more pearls of thick, white comedy ahead.
Hard (1) times ahead as porn goes soft? (2)
Apatow, Segel look below the belt (3) for laughs
by Peter (4) 4: Do we count this one? Judges say ‘No’ as this is clearly not an intended pun, but rather a horrible, horrible choice by a mother who is clearly unaware of the cruelty of schoolyard children. Still funny. Bart
Economists are citing some dire portents of a recession these days, but they’ve missed one indicator I find especially disturbing: The porn business has suddenly gone flaccid (5).
5: Folks this goes to show these guys not are playing hardball here. It’s out there, unabashed and in-your-face. You can’t help but smell the smegma on this stinker.
The drop in porn rentals and sales is worrisome on several fronts: Till now, porn has been a recession-proof business. Further, with the country already in a dispirited mood (6),
6: Oh! He’ll lose points on this one, guys, as this was clearly an opportunity for a nice ‘have a headache’ joke, here.
the fact that porn has gone limp (7)
7: Checking the scoreboard now. He’s got a respectable six, folks, and we’re not talking inches. (This is counting the ‘dispirited mood’ lame-o-riffic reference, though we really shouldn’t.)
may indicate a true plunge in consumer confidence.
DVD porn is down between 10% and 30%, depending on which nook and cranny of the business you scrutinize. Joy King, executive vice president of Wicked Pictures, and a smart analyst of the business, says the smallest dropoff is in “couples-friendly porn” — films that embrace something of a storyline. Women account for roughly half of this audience, making their purchases in lingerie boutiques and toy stores (no, not kiddie toys).
By contrast, that sector called the “gonzo” side of the business is in serious need of fiscal Viagra. (8)
8: Boom!, and there it is folks. Viagra pops out its purple, ugly head surprisingly late in the story. No stranger to comedy, everyone, Viagra is a force to be reckoned; a gift that just keeps on giving and giving and giving in the comedy world.
Guys with an appetite for “gonzo” are going unrequited, which may help account for the closing of many DVD emporiums like the Movie Galleries in the Midwest.
One beneficiary of these trends is online porn — a business that’s lofty in traffic but shriveled (9)
9: Like a scared turtle — Jerry Seinfeld taught us that — this nice metaphor makes money easy to understand: Less money = a tiny winky. Makes me want to be an economist!
in terms of revenue. With sales declining across the landscape, employees at big corporations have a lot more time to check out the three-minute porn clips flashing across their computers. To the serious porn players, some of these clips are beyond hardcore — they’re, well, mega-gonzo.
Porn proprietors are doing what they can to meet their business challenges. Wicked Pictures, for example, is recycling its biggest hits, so customers can acquire “Space Nuts,” “Manhunters” and “Flashpoint” in one svelte — well — package (10).
10: I prefer the term ‘one svelte basket.’
At the same time, other producers are cutting production costs and special effects. Since these films already are made on skimpy budgets of $50,000 to $75,000, these cuts are not welcomed by the porn filmmakers. At the same time, some of their actors won’t mind completing their tasks in one take, rather than *wrestling (11)
11: Not counting it. Nope. No-siree.
Still, veterans of the porn trade are edgy about the downturn. A generation ago, they recall, when authorities cracked down on “Deep Throat” and closed many of the porn palaces, the country promptly fell into a serious recession. Economists attributed this setback to the ups and downs (12) 12: Did Peter slip one in while we were sleeping? We’re cautiously calling this one a ‘No.’
of energy prices, but porn analysts insist other sorts of fluctuations play a more urgent role in consumer confidence.
13: This dead horse keeps on getting beaten. Is there no mercy for the joke that wears thin — thin like tender, sensative skin?
Members-only (13) club?
There’s a certain dark irony in the fact that, amidst the squeeze (14)
14: Oh no he didn’t! He’s back in the game, folks! Gone are the jokes about erection status, here come the wanker jokes. Bring them on, I say. Bring. Them. On.
in porn, Judd Apatow appears to be on a crusade to defy the code by making the full-frontal phallus an important co-star of all his films. In “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” the latest release from the Apatow comedic assembly line, there are not only abundant dick jokes but also abundant dicks.
Until recently, the unofficial policy of the MPAA code was that the presence of a penis meant an automatic NC-17 rating. But Apatow, who has scored with films like “Knocked Up,” “Walk Hard,” “Talladega Nights” and “Superbad,” seems increasingly dependent on below-the-belt humor. “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” opens with a fairly tight shot of Jason Segel’s member and, as if to push the joke, it closes with yet another one. Apparently Segel doesn’t mind — he wrote the script as well as starred (Segel clearly is plugged into Apatow humor, as a graduate of “Freaks and Geeks”).
15: It says that the country is saying, ‘Enough, already!’ to the same joke repeatedly pounding and pounding over and over again at the soft pink tissue of their brains. All right, everyone, that is it, as they say. And what’s the final total for number of double entendres in an article about pornography?: — Drum roll please… — TWELVE! Twelve hilarious dick jokes et al. for one article about pornography.
Is Apatow merely trying to be naughty? Evidence suggests that the shrewd young comedy writer-director has been successful in attracting the dating crowd — yes, both girls and boys — to his raunchy escapades. Further, testing shows that young women usually laugh at the sight of a pathetic penis.
So that news will send the purveyors of porn into yet another panic. At a time when “gonzo” is fading, “limp” is in. What does that say about the mood of the country? (15)
With an explosion of visitors, we want to say, ‘Yookoso’
Welcoming new members
Business is booming at the blog. Readership is growing at a geometric rate. This blog will soon become self-aware, destroying humanity. But until then, the new web design is up and mesmerizing, surely sending epileptics into seizures of pleasure. So, all this means we have plenty of people here just now joining the group, so let’s take the time to both introduce, and clean the apartment for our newly arrived guests.
What the heck is this thing?
Good question you just asked. (Now sit your ass down, Daddy’s talking now, sweetheart.) The Pounders Blog is the online extension of the lives of four very special people who form a tight-knight club, informally and internally referred to as the Asian Pussy Pounders. Each of us independently have acquired and exploited — or exploiting — the sweet, nubile flesh of Asian pussy, meaning, we all have Asian girlfriends. [11. In the case of Chestnut Nest, multiple girlfriends.] See our list of “Why Date Asian, Instead.” The phenomenon of white dudes and Asian ladies is one that is exploding; Japanese and Koreans are en vogue. They submit in bed, never get fat, and, like wild horses to Robert Redford, are easily broken [22. You know, in a good way.]. (More on why men date Asian women in an upcoming series of posts.)
Your pounding members [pun intended]:
3. Why Mr. 19 ? At the time of this blog’s founding, nineteen was the tally of the black wiry mohawk of Asian pubic hair to which he’s stabbed his flesh javelin. I guess that tally could well be into the thirties, now.
Tironius — dare I say, the leader, and site organizer. I post the most. I shall strive to post more quality, using humor (pee pee jokes) and cartoons. I live in San Francisco and lust after the 30% Asian population.
Chestnut Nest — the most in quantity of pussy pounding, Chestnut (AKA “Kurippi”, AKA “Mr. 19” [3] Chestnut is now in Korea serving as an English teacher, living like a king. He’ll tell us his adventures of riding across Korea on his motorcycle, leaving a wake of half-and-halfs. Fluent in Japanese, he’ll soon be fluent in pounding Korean pussy.
Q Pounder — Q loves both Chinese, Japanese, and look at these. A writer and business man, my boy Q speaks Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, the Queen’s English, and Caveman. He’s the extreme of two worlds: proper and diplomatic in the business world, and primal and lustful in matters of nubile Asian flesh. He’s got great stories of China and communist pussy.
Mr. Patch — A musician and lecturer in the midwest, Patch loves to pound the J-crew anywhere he can.
Cleaning things up
I’m taking the time after I post this to clean out the deadwood, posts of linked articles that aren’t funny or weren’t original. What will be left — mostly — is the original articles that we have written. At the very least, linked articles with pithy commentary.
This site isn’t just about sex and relationships with Asian women — far from. We put up all kinds of things, like funny stories of city-living, tutorials on using your Mac, videos, hentai recommendations, and commentary about the blogosphere.
Sit back, relax, and fucking enjoy one of the funniest blogs you’ll come across. To get things started click The Pounders Original Articles to the top right near the nameplate. Welcome, or yookoso, [44. Yookoso — means welcome in the Japanese language.] you’re now at The Pounders Blog.
In a Pounders EXCLUSIVE, your roving technology reporter — having dug through dumpster bins for weeks on end [1] — has obtained confidential editor’s notes regarding a recent posting by Mac-centric blogger John Gruber [right] to his website Daring Fireball in which he defends his beleaguered position made last year criticizing a company selling Macintosh software bundled at discount prices. His position is that this company scams “independent” developers by not offering a fair share of profits. To clear the air about the rediculous guesswork and shoddy estimations of dollar amounts changing hands contained in those original criticisms by Gruber, the company maintaining the bundle — both the bundle and company named “MacHeist” — and a developer participating in the discount, speak to audiences on Mac-centric podcast MacBreak Weekly.
Up top is Gruber’s original draft of the response to the podcast which The Pounders has obtained, not to mention secret notes from his editor written in the margins — exciting stuff!
Tironius posted this story Saturday, October 27, 2007
Major ‘bug’ found in Mac app Acquisition
An open letter to Acquisition developer David Watanabe about advertising in paid products
My purchased application for accessing the Gnutella peer-to-peer network, blatantly called Acquisition, presented to me today—peculiarly—an advertisement within it for Apple’s new operating system. I say peculiarly because I don’t expect purchased products, i.e. things I fucking paid for, to contain within them advertisements à la shareware for my viewing. So, I reported the bug to the software’s developer, David Watanabe:
Dear David Watanabe:
Purchased Acquisition now advertises to you.
Acquisition is a terrific program with revolutionary ease of use for users, making it the best program for peer to peer on any platform. No other application comes close to the Mac experience like yours due to your attention to detail. These factors led me to pay for Acquisition with no regrets.
But, I recently opened my application to find a major bug. There was a picture and writing on their that seemed to indicate an advertisement, which—I know—seems ridiculous due to the previously mentioned purchasing of the product. Having given you my money for the program, presumably for private, unfettered use with no nags or advertisements (a kind of standard agreement one expects for purchased products), I wondered why on earth I would see an advertisement in the application I own. These two contradictory notions—a purchased program with no ads, and Acquisition with an ad in it hocking Leopard—lead me to believe that this must be a bug. Otherwise, it screams of being money-grubby and sleazy, which I’m sure is not you.
Please remove it. Thank you. Sincerely, Tironius Complex
Two black thugs create mayhem on a New York subway train, stealing a young hippie’s iPod and roughing him up. An old Negro gentleman sitting with his grandson protests to the youths, and they smack him around. The two thugs look—and laugh at disbelief—as they see a lone, small white woman at the back of the train-car (Jodie Foster) giving a steely glare of loathing contempt, echoing society’s stare of contempt for the black criminal underclass.
Sidebar:
A change of pace
The movie is a nice departure from the current daily hippie bullshit here in Franny, California. The right-leaning movie is an NRA must-see, as it is, in my interpretation, very pro-gun. [Following contains spoilers…] And, refreshingly, there was no “guns are never the answer” moral realization you see in other pussy movies. The opposite happened to my surprise, where she realizes she can never go back to who she was. A gun saved her, both literally and figuratively. Literally, as she fought a madman in a convenience shop, and figuratively, as the gun helped her regain her freedom to be outdoors and to take control over her life and society. Moreover, the police officer who’s job it was to find this vigilante, sympathized with her own law enforcement undertaking because of his own frustrations of not being able to do what’s right.
In reality, the good people of this world should be armed. Black commentator Walter E. Williams agrees: "Liberals and their political allies say the problem is the easy accessibility of guns and greater gun control is the solution. That has to be nonsense. Guns do not commit crimes; people do."
The movie’s message could be: The police being hindered by liberal politics means the good citizens of this nation must take upon themselves the burden to defend self and city. Nothing about the movie states otherwise.
They approach the woman, taunting her, threatening her. She continues her cold, icy stare, with not a flinch or movement to betray her emotionless disconnect. The disgusting criminal gets in her face and asks, “You evah gotten fucked by a knife?”
KABLAAAHM!!—NIGGA GETS HIS FACE BLOWN AWAY! BLAAHM!—NIGGA’S FRIEND TAKES ONE IN THE SKULL!
She wasn’t pretending! She’s a woman on fire! She pulled out a 9-millimeter semi-automatic and again tasted the satisfaction of dealing out immediate justice that only a bullet to the brain can, again wrongly making right (by making dead) a member of society’s ills. It’s vigilante-justice at its absolute best as Jodie Foster settles the score in this thrilling, exhilarating movie, The Brave One.
Foster’s performance was fantastic as a woman who’s had enough after her fiancé gets a pipe to his face by a miserable Mexican thug, and who herself was beaten to a pulp and left to die, all the while these vicious thugs videotaping their rabid behavior. Flushing away pills and booze to which any weaker person would have turned, Jodie decides to live her life sans fear, fully armed.
The amount of criminal mayhem she comes upon once she puts herself into the role of vigilante is more than what would be real, but the film feels realistic which makes it more satisfying when she sends a bullet through the eyeballs of criminals. Its like I, the audience member, get to do it myself, after having fantasizing about it for so, so long. This movie allows all of our, the viewers’, anxious frustrations of the perception that our society is falling into chaos—being led there by black criminals—to be released. It’s as if I finally get to do something about it, whatever it is. Fun.
Verdict: This movie literally made my heart pound and is a can’t-miss for people who need to let loose their revenge fantasies.
Tironius posted this story Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Trying my hand at Corel Painter Essentials, the free application that came with my Wacom tablet. This is Chinatsu, my wonderfully racist Nipponese friend here in Franny.
Tironius posted this story Friday, August 10, 2007
I find the source for Derren Brown’s tools of magic here in San Francisco
1. Since our chat was brief, I couldn’t get specifics like his name or whether he owned the shop. I assume he does.
I‘ve made a huge discovery today: Mental magician Derren Brown’s magical supplier seems[1] to operate a shop of magic here in San Francisco. I learned this as I briefly chatted it up with the worker inside this shop called Misdirections Magic Shop:
“Derren Brown gets all his stuff from me,” the Chinese worker—who's demeanor and knowledge make his story plausible—said as I asked about Derren Brown products, “We’re friends.” Holy shit!
From what I gather, this shop must be a somewhat hardcore supplier of top magicians if Derren gets his goods from here. I could only talk briefly as there was, in fact, either an amateur or a professional magician who started talking serious shop with the man after our first interlude.
2. I can’t remember exactly. These names are made up, but sound like what I saw. They were definitely jargon that a magician in-the-know would recognize.
The shop is very small, just a narrow walk-in area with a large display case on the right side. In it, various magical and novelty products are on display, from beginner to advanced. I say advanced, because there were various decks of cards with hardcore jargon attached to each. “Snake eyes technique,” or “Deuce technique.”[2] There were also plenty of gag gifts and novelty items, like electrocuting cameras and computer mice. Behind the case on shelves against the wall were many books and DVDs containing the secrets to magic. I noticed one was by that one magician I see on cable.
3. NYTimes writer Neil Strauss went from loser to master pick-up artist in his book The GameAmazon, wherein he talked about the concept demonstrating value to the psychology of the opposite sex. Magic is one way to do this. His mastery arose from the tutelage of master pick-up artist Mystery, who himself has a new show about the life on VH1 iTunes.
4. Derren sells how-tos to magicians on his website, but not to outsiders. Luckily, there is no ‘outside’ on the Internet
“He has two DVDs out, but he’s very advanced,” the man responds when I asked if he had Derren Brown how-tos. The short conversation turned to his TV shows when he informed me I would have to order from the U.K. I informed him of Derren’s new place in iTunes, about which I have written here.
When I looked up at his ceiling, I was flabbergasted. On it were the autographed pictures of famous magicians, but for which only one I cared. When I first asked to take a picture of the autographed head shot of Mr. Brown, the guy politely told me he doesn’t allow photography.
“OK,” I said, “I’m just such a big fan.” “All right, you can,” he said. Yay.
After the visit, I now have a renewed interest in watching the how-to videos Derren produced [4] and learning a few tricks, because, according to Neil Strauss in his book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists[3], magic is a great way to capture women’s interest and pick up phone numbers, and nothing is more magical than pounding sweet Asian pussy.
Tironius posted this story Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Master mental magician Derren Brown hits iTunes
Derren Brown, the king of mind tricks, who has in the past shocked and awed U.K. audiences, comes to America with a television series called Mind Control, featured in the iTunes television store.
1. Stooge, n: a person who is employed to assume a particular role while keeping their true identity hidden
2. Stage magic
3. Showmanship is in essence, lying, but not lying. It’s giving the impression you are doing something one way for the effect, but the audience is smart enough to know something might be deceptive, which is fine. It’s a relationship between performer and audience, where the audience suspends disbelief. I’m paraphrasing from his book, Tricks of the MindAmazon, which I own.
Brown rocked the U.K. with such sensational stunts including playing Russian Roulette on live TV, conducted a live seance, hypnotically converting atheists into “believers,” and his normal bag of tricks.
I like Brown because he makes absolutely no claims that he uses real magic, but he does claim—and I believe him—to not use actors or stooges [1]. He professes nothing more than someone using a combination of magic [2], psychology, misdirection, and showmanship [3]. He employs principles of NLP [4] to embed commands into his unwitting victims, and, other times he has you believe he’s using such hypnotic techniques. The fun is not knowing which is taking place.
Cheesy and cheeky, Mr. Brown specializes not in illusion as much as the art of disillusionment. He may seem like a tonic to Americans disenchanted with the elaborate artifices of the so-called reality genre.
Mr. Brown is a charlatan, but at least he admits it.
Mac-fan Tironius sets reporter straight, gives this tutorial on pre-viewing pictures
ROCKVILLE, MD. — After exhaustive analyses and data collection, scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) revealed at a press conference here today that successful CNET blogger, podcaster and editor Molly Wood is a complete and total cunt.
“We checked and double checked,” said Dr. Mark Steinburg in a prepared statement, “but it’s conclusive. She is, indeed, a douchie, wretched, soulless cunt.”
As an official card-carrying Mac-loving Apple fanatic, I have a responsibility to knee-jerkedly respond with truthiness when I hear so-called objective journalists speaking inaccurate nonsense about my preferred computing platform, yo.
On Sunday, July 29, in episode 107 of This Week in Tech(1), a technology podcast in a round-table format, CNET “Section Editor” Molly Wood, a self-proclaimed “unashamed Mac-basher,” scorned her Macintosh computer for two rediculous reasons: because of iPhoto’s inability to “cherry pick” photos off a camera’s memory card (instead of its normal all-or-nothing photo importing), and Finder’s lack of a Windows-style “Film strip” mode for easily viewing photos. Unknown to technology writer Wood, Mac OS X does both of these things.
I’m the last unashamed Mac-basher.
—Molly Wood on TWIT
I’ll show you how.
False: iPhoto can’t selectively import photos off of a camera
This wonderful tip comes from Derrick Story (website) on episode fourteen of iLifeZone (iTunes).
Using iPhoto 6, and you do need version six, with your camera connected hit Return twice to be taken into iPhoto’s special photo selecting mode where you can select one, two or all of the photos located on the camera.
So, holy shit you can indeed “cherry pick” photos in iPhoto. Hot damn. But, if you wish to skip iPhoto, there is yet another way to select photos from your camera, and that way is by using an application called Image Capture.
Clicking Download Some… takes you here:
Simply select your photos and click Download.
False: You must open pictures in Preview in order to see them
Jesus Christ knows that a technology writer at a major technology magazine should know—or simply right click to discover—that Mac OS X has many ways to preview pictures from within the Finder.
Previewing pictures #1, icon previews: Mac OS X’s Finder has the ability to display pictures on your hard drive as icons of those files by simply altering a few settings. In any Finder window, click View in the menu above, and select Show View Options. Pressing Command-J does the same thing: up pops the view options inspector.
Simply check Show icon preview and there you go. Picture previews without having to open them. Furthermore, if you have a certain folder that contains pictures, check This window only at the top of that inspector, slide the Icon size slider all the way to the right, and watch as those icon previews become nice and big easy to view.
Previewing pictures #2, slideshow: As it turns out, Apple built into its operating system a method of beautifully previewing pictures in a full screen extravaganza. In any Finder window, select one or more pictures, and right-click or Control-click what you’ve selected and simply select Slideshow.
Clicking the middle button while in the slideshow gives you an index of all photos:
All methods mentioned require applications and operating systems that Molly Woodgobbler owns, based on information taken from her CNET bio and the mentioned podcast. In that, she stated she owns a MacBook Pro, which would include iLife ‘06 (needed for selecting photos in iPhoto) and Mac OS X “Tiger” (needed for the slideshow).
This beats Windows “Film strip” any fucking day. You can directly import a photo from here into iPhoto by clicking the button second from the right. In iPhoto, of course, you can edit, crop, color-correct and rotate.
Note, similar slideshows exist in both iPhoto and Preview.
Previewing pictures #3, column view: Mac OS X’s Finder has a “view” that has been in the operating system since it was first created and released, called “column view.” Select the view button (as shown below) in the Finder and—holy shit—yet another method to preview photos and yet another way to chip away at the credibility of a certain CNET cunt-reporter.
Tironius posted this story Wednesday, July 25, 2007
I am using Gruber’s Markdown to write this post.
I frequently, yet masochistically read the blog of Apple-fanaticism known as Daring Fireball Daring Fireball: Twice I have caught his typos yet thanked once. where in the author poops on the missed release date of the application Pixelmator, an upcoming consumer-level Photoshop competitor. To Mr. Gruber, any announced and unreleased product is thought of and labeled as vaporware (because he likes to redefine neologistic words). His post:
1. He links to his post quoted below.Pixelmator: Still Vaporware
Note to everyone who complained about my skepticism that they’d ship in July: Told you so[1].
Pixelmator is an application to which I’m looking forward, a for the rest of us graphics app that is the cooler, hipper little brother to Photoshop. Its dashboard-style inspectors are dark and translucent, which nicely recede from attention when working on a composition.
I wondered why someone would write “I told you so” to his readers about the development of this promising app, and generally be a total caustic fuck to an independent Mac development team. His first post about the product (and where I learned of it):
Pixelmator
Vaporware image-editing app with HUD-crazy UI, based on the image manipulating mojo of Mac OS X’s Core Image APIs. Supposedly available in “late July” for $59.
Update: I don’t want to read too much into it, but it’s amusing that Pixelmator’s downloadable “press images” were created using Photoshop CS3.
Catty! Ree-ooww! Fissss! Fissss!
Mr. Gruber states that he doesn’t want to read too much into it, but then continues by reading the fuck into it, insinuating the apparent dubiousness of how a team working on an unfinished product is not using that unfinished product for the screenshots of how said unfinished product will look in the future. It would also seem to be that I, an average dim-witted reader, am to believe that the Pixelmator’s press images are, indeed, not press images at all, but rather something rather suspicious, or so the quotation marks tell me. Why, I never!
So, I wondered all of this until I found his picture on the Internets. John Gruber, file photo:
Enjoy candid photography and documents from the hard drives of others through Gnutella
It’s interesting what people put on the peer-to-peer networks and not realize. See, when installing certain Gnutella-network peer-to-peer applications such as Limewire or Bearshare, the user is given options to make certain folders shared. 1. But I have no way of knowing; I can only assume that they fully know and comprehend their actions in publishing their pictures and documents to the network. I imagine that certain common folders such as “My Documents” are shared by hapless idiots, not knowing that they are publishing their lives to the world [1]. Thusly, files like Word documents, pictures, useless .dll files, and countless more are available for others to download.
My Gnutella client of choice is Acquisition for the Mac. Unlike Limewire, it’s Mac-like interface is not based on Java, so it’s quicker and less quirky, and makes for finding hentai manga fun and easy.
Their unwitting exhibitionism provides for wonderfully creepy adventures. For the more voyeuristic of our readers, much fun can be had by peaking into the lives of others by seeing their private photographs and documents. All it takes for such ethically-dubious behavior is to know what to type into your search field.
For instance, type in the word resume (i.e. résumé), and find what people don’t know they have included in their shared folders: their entire life’s history. I was able to get some résumé-writing tips simply by reading a real-world example. It’s amazing how many people use Word templates.
But résumés are somewhat boring; what else can one find?
The real fun: Pictures
Type in the letters “DSC,” a common naming-scheme for several cameras, and eureka!, a wonderful cornucopia of breached privacy.
Random pictures include:
An elderly couple at Kansas City Chiefs football game
A Hindu family at get-together (possibly wedding)
Bridal shower
Cyclists in Germany readying for start of race
A black flashing is idiocy through hand gestures
Hideous English woman on all fours wearing a Playboy bunny suit
This guy:
The real fun can come after, because applications like Acquisition and Limewire allow a person to browse through all files made available on that person’s hard drive. So if the first picture of ugly dog isn’t enough, you can see the other pictures on the roll.
Tironius posted this story Wednesday, July 18, 2007
iWeb bests Photoshop in making simple graphics for the web
For those who find Photoshop intimidating or bloated, let Tironius be your guide to creating lickable buttons with li’l ol’ iWeb for web or print
Bloggers and amateur web site creators who don’t find Apple’s aqua look passé will cheer in ecstasy when realized how easy it is to create those style of buttons using Apple’s oft-overlooked little trooper, iWeb. Now, I’ve already shown you how you can create print-quality flyers and posters in my iWeb for print hack.
(There’s not much this little program can’t do.) In that, I explain how iWeb creates stunning flyers just like InDesign or Apple’s iWork.
Today, however, I will concentrate how easy you can create simple buttons simply by creating them in iWeb using shapes, and either using them for your iWeb site, or copying them to any other program. So let’s get started.
How to create an aqua-style button
First, let’s see an example of what we’re up against:
Not too shabby. Photoshop would give me a little more finesse, but creating this for your own website will make yours better than ninety per cent of the rest.
Open iWeb and create a new page
Open the page you want to place your new delicious button; or, open a new page if you plan to export this button for some other use (say) in another web page. Select New Page in the File menu. Up pops the template dialogue sheet, and to the left side select White for your template family, and Blank for the actual template. This will give us a clean workspace.
Select a shape
To create our pill-shaped button, we will select one of the shapes in the Shapes button located in the lower left of the main workspace. It is the rounded corner rectangle, fifth from the top of the pop-up menu.
You should see a shape similar to this one (though, size and color might be different if you’re on a different template):
This is our building block.
Adjust the size, color and shape
It’s a nice looking box, but it doesn’t much look like our end product. Let’s fix that by altering its shape. If it isn’t already, select the rectangular box you just created. When an object is selected, that object’s bounding box will appear. A total of eight little squares appear in the corners and on the sides. Dragging these will reshape the object. Drag the top center one downward so that your rectangle becomes a pill shape.
If the shape is still too rectangular (that is to say, if the corners are too sharp), then iWeb allows you to adjust the radius of those corners. That is the little circle in the top left of our shape (under the cursor in the above picture). Use this to adjust the shape into more of a pill:
Part of what gives the button its glassy look is the gradient you see underneath the glare. In this instance, the pill gradates from a dark blue to a brilliant blue. Let’s do this now.
It’s time to use the inspector. In the lower right corner of the program, there is a blue letter “i.” Click it and up pops the inspector, a pane that allows you to control all aspects of the site, including colors, size, and links. In this lesson, we’ll mostly use the color options located in object inspector. Click the tab shown in the above picture, fifth tab from the left.
The object pane should look like this:
Let’s fill our shape a different color. But, instead of just filling it with one color, we will fill it with two, whereby one subtly changes to the other. That’s a gradient fill.
Click the pop-up menu in the inspector where it says Color Fill, and select Gradient Fill.
Now, instead of one color swatch, you see two. Click the top swatch, and up pops the color inspector. Mac OS X’s color inspector is the best. I find it to be superior to Adobe’s in ease of use. It’s time select our base color; for this, I chose a classic aqua blue. Any color works, but blue is classy.
For now, we want both colors to be the same. You’re able to drag swatches around, so to make the other color the same, simply drag the first color on top of the second:
Now, select the top one again, and using the slider in the color inspector, make the blue just a hair darker. Don’t go crazy; subtlety is the way to go:
Note, if you accidentally make the bottom color the darker color, no worries: just click that little double arrow right by the swatches. That switches them. Also, if you choose to have a stroke (an outer line) like mine, make the color the same as your darker blue. You can select the stroke using the pop-up menu. Select Line, and just drag the darker blue swatch right onto the swatch of the stroke below. Final note: already this is a great button and looks more like “Web 2.0” style now than the final.
Create the button’s text
So what is the purpose of this button? Are you sending your reader to a picture page? Or your blog? It’s time to tell them where to go with text. In the lower left corner of the work space, click the Text button. This will plop a brand spankin’ new text box right in the center of your work space. Type your words. To make sure the words align exactly to the button, we want to center the text both horizontally and vertically.
We’ll now switch over to the text inspector. It’s the big “T” tab right in the middle as shown. In the Color & Alignment section, select the center alignment button, and center vertically button. If it isn’t already, select white as the text’s color. To give the text a teensy bit of contrast from the background, we will apply a very subtle drop shadow. Go back to the object inspector (fifth tab from the left), and tick the Shadow checkbox.
The following separates the pros from the amateurs. A real design snob will scoff at the use of a drop shadow. They seem to be accepted and prevalent in package design, however. I can always spot the Photoshop lover by his use of the default drop shadow settings (which by the way is 75% opacity). These are much too dark and gaudy! In our design we will tone it down to an acceptable level. Use my settings as shown in the picture. No need to type “pt” in the settings fields.
You may need to adjust the size and font face of your text. This is done in a separate inspector called the font inspector. (This is one part of OS X that needs an overhaul.) Myriad Pro is the font of choice for Apple.Click the “A” button, the Fonts button, in the lower right corner. Up pops the font inspector. With your text box selected, find the Myriad Pro font family in the inspector. You can search for Myriad Pro using the Search field at the bottom of the inspector, or simply browse for it. Select Semibold if you have it. Another good choice is Helvetica (but rather boring). Keep it classy: simple is better.
My size for text is 32, but your button size might be different. It’s an arbitrary decision; whatever size text fits well in the button is what you should use.
Create the highlight
This is the component that makes the glass button glassy. And, iWeb makes it so easy to create. In Photoshop, one must muck with layer masks or the gradient tool, but in iWeb, its all about the color inspector, baby! Easy as pie.
First, we must copy our pill shape, because it will become the highlight. I simply held down the Option key before dragging the shape upward, thus creating a second pill.
We must then change its color and size. For now, we can change its color to white (for both swatches, since it is a gradient). By clicking and dragging the second shape’s bounding box (on the top center or bottom), I can squish the shape a bit. Do the same for the sides: grab either the left or the right handle, and move it in. Hold the Option key while you do this will do both sides at the same time.
Align the new shape above the other; iWeb will help you keep it center. Use the picture as a guide to how things should look:
Now, the fun part. What makes the second shape look like glare on a glassy surface is its transparency. iWeb does this beautifully. With the white pill shape selected, in the object inspector, select the top swatch for its gradient. Now, in the color inspector, there is a horizontal slider near the bottom pane that controls the opacity of a color. We’re doing the top color, so set the opacity at 80% (by sliding or typing in the value).
Select the shapes second gradient swatch, and set it to just 10%. We’re on the last leg of the race! See how good your button looks now?
All that’s left is to set a drop shadow and export!
Complete and export
You know how to do the next part. Click your original blue button, and apply and adjust its drop shadow using similar settings as your text. You can maybe go a little darker, but don’t over-do it.
Exporting is easy. Simply select all and copy. To copy, hold the Command key and hit C. Or, in the Edit menu, select Copy. I can paste directly into iWork, Skitch, ImageWell, Photoshop, or Preview (by selecting New From Clipboard in the File menu). Pasting into Skitch, ImageWell and Photoshop retains transparency of the drop shadow. Preview annoyingly applied a white background. Apple’s Pages has a wonderful relationship with iWeb; pasting into Pages retains every single object as a separate entity. Text fields remain text fields, etc.
That’s a wrap
Hope you had fun. Who needs Photoshop when you can make such beautiful graphics for simple needs with little old iWeb, Apple’s best kept secret.
1980s childhood blossoms into explosive on-screen orgasm
Optimus Prime returns to theaters after twenty-one long years in Michael Bay’s did-it-up-right movie Transformers, which changed—nay, transformed— my dull weekend into an enterainment-sensory mind-nuke, leaving me absolutely wowed. Leading the charged onslaught to my eyes and mind is the spectacle of special effects, bringing to live action giant transforming robot aliens.
The absolute key to Transformers working so well is the CG. They looked and moved with satisfying realism because of the new design of characters; the believable animation of large metal monsters acting, thinking, and emoting; and the abandonment of staying 100 percent true to the 1985 originals.
The new Prime and gang look badass, and their new complicatedly fluid design makes for cooler transformations. In the third act of the movie, Megatron* Megatron is played by—surprising to me—Hugo Weaving: Matrix’s Mr. Smith. is running amock and the arrival of Optimus Prime, rolling up fashionably late in 18-wheel style, gives us the ultimate transformation money-shot, with the camera circling from around and underneath. We get to see gorgeously complicated metal reconfiguration unlike what we saw in the 80s. In that, Prime just shimmies his arms into his torso and folds his legs backward. The Autobots and Decepticons’ new bodies, much like the Alternator toys, bring the two teams into the modern era: Prime transforms into a mordern 18-wheeler, instead of the old 70s Freightliner; Starscream rockets through the sky in a stealthy Lockheed F-22 Raptor, instead of the F-15 Tomcat; and most striking of all, Rachet is no longer an oddly shaped, out-of-place Japanese ambulance, but rather a new Hummer. The badass-est Transformer was Barricade, the Saleen Mustang police cruiser cum Decepticon. Second favorite: Blackout, a Sikorsky MH53 Pave Low helicopter. While on the subject, it is good that Bumblebee is no longer his iconic Volkswagon Beatle. The first half of the movie would be too much like Herbie the Love Bug.
Animation, too, was killer. In the slapstick scene where a multitude of Autobots destroy the Witwickys’ yard, humor comes from the action of the giants. In one moment, Optimus Prime pinches the bridge of his nose in thoughtful frustration. Michael Bay takes the shit too far, in a scene where Bumblebee pees on John Turtorro’s Agent Simmons And another, Bumblebee shushes and guestures to the other Autobots while Sam Witwicky stalls his father. On second viewing, my fellow Pounders, take note of this.
By contrast, the people in the movie were much more the cartoons than the Autobots, save Poor Jazz: Why is it always the Transformer brothas that bite it in the movies? Jazz, who single-handedly set the black Transformer minority back by ten years. I was praying that at some point the porn star high-schooler with the skin of a 25-year-old would either bite it, or bite it.
The predictability of Sam getting with her was only outweighed by the inprobability. If we saw her in the original cartoons, we’d be saying she’s a little over the top. Equally, John Turtorro as goofball Sector-7 agent Simmons was a little too hand-drawn. Other characters had no real purpose. The fat black hacker had no real role that couldn’t have been performed by the blonde woman. (Or, just have him be the film’s analyst role.) Similarly, the two hippies accompanying hot blondie, Fatty and Skinny. Did we need them? Shia Lebouf was fine, though, as the boy who befreinds the Autobots, having great comedic acting.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention how cool it was for the filmmakers to use the original cartoon's transformation sound. Choo-chah-chee-chee!
Derren Brown taps the king of ambigrams for the secret to his show ‘Trick or Treat’
Up is down, black is white with the master of psychological illusion
Watching my boy Derren Brown got ambigrams in my noggin. The topic arose in conversation with internationally renowned calligrapher Claude Dieterich A. and I, and Claude turned my attention to the top man in the field, John Langdon. I visit the man’s website and, lo and behold, there’s D.B. all up in my grill (er, on the front page) with his Trick or Treat cards, designed by John Langdon.
Derren's book, Tricks of the Mind, is a fantastic look at skepticism, agnosticism, and memory recall. It teaches all the ways people scam other people.
An ambigram is a word or letterform that, when flipped or reversed, reads the same (or new) word.
Derren offers contestants on his magical/mentalism U.K. telly programme the choice of two cards that say either “Trick” or “Treat” as the basis for their either good or bad fate. Unbeknownst to the contestant is that the decision is arbitrary as the card will say whatever Derren want’s it to say.
It’s something nice or something nasty in Derren Brown’s newest show of mental trickery, giving viewers a real treat
My boy Derren Brown, master of psychology, illusion, and showmanship, is back in full force with his new show, Trick or Treat. Contestants each week choose a card: “trick” or “treat.” After his or her choice in the coming weeks will either receive something pleasent, a treat, or something rather horrible, the trick. They won’t know which they chose, what the stunt will be or when their experience will take place. And, in each instance, Derren has full control.
The tricks and treats are the most fun parts of the show because these hidden-camera stunts are so much more elaborate and cunning to be pulled on hapless fool. Think of these stunts as being from The Jamie Kennedy Experiment, if Jamie Kennedy were Jason Vorhees on acid. If none of this makes sense, here is a quick rundown of the first episode (of six) in the season: Derren at midnight breaks in a flat to tell the subject he has been chosen for the show, and that he must choose from the two trick or treat cards. He does, and Derren reveals to the audience that he has chosen “trick.” (More on the secret to this later.)
What was the trick played on the man? Derren, using his powers over the human mind, forces his subject to fall asleep in a rigged photo booth the man was using to take passport photos. While asleep, Derren flies the man from London to Morocco, where he then is awakened in the same booth. From the subject’s perspectives the time is instantaneous. He nods off, and wakes in a different country. The confusion on his face was priceless and completely real.
Out of body finale
His finale was even more impressive. Jules, a young psychologist, agreed to do the show. What she didn’t know—after she had picked her “trick” card—was that Derren had placed a hidden camera in her car. After observing her “hands-free approach to driving,” it was clear his plan: He would create for her, using his masterful powers of hypnosis, a scenario where she is witness to her own car crash in an out-of-body experience. She would literally see herself lying limp in the driver’s seat of her crashed car as paramedics carry her corpse away, as if she was a ghost witnessing the aftermath.
To do this, the production employed a bit of Hollywood magic. To be believable that this woman is seeing herself, not only would the show need a convincing body double, but also create some kind of mask so that the actress looked exactly like Jules, the subject. Movies do this all the time: a special-effects make-up artist creates a “life cast” of an actor using alginate and plaster—creating a negative impression—and creates a positive mask from that. The catch here, however, is that the show needs an original life cast without the subject’s awareness. So, a few weeks after the initial meeting with Derren, the subject receives a free spa treatment, unaware that it has anything to do with Derren Brown. Under the guise of a facial mask, a successful mold is created and a mask is made.
Months later (the production observed the subject to make sure she was psychologically robust enough to endure such a stunt), everything was ready to begin her trick. Derren phone calls Jules telling her she is needed for a photo shoot for the upcoming show and to wear an exact set of clothes. As she drives out to the country, she receives a call from Derren. Derren performs my favorite and most intriguing tricks of all by using his words and sounds to completely incapacitate a person on the other end of the line, making them fall completely unconscious. It is a sight to behold and I will strive to learn its secret. To put it another way: She picks up the phone while driving, he asks her to pull over, and a few seconds later, she is completely asleep. Now Derren and his elaborate team can put the pieces together for an astounding stunt.
The subject is under trance. The setting is a remote country road with no one else around. Television cameras are hidden among the trees of the surrounding forrest area. Another car is brought in and beaten to look like a car accident. The two cars are placed together on the intersection, as well as a fake broken stop light (with accompanying signs that warn of its malfunction). While still unconscious, Derren places the girl on her feet to one corner of the intersection. He employs yet another astounding verbal hypnotic trick where he makes her feet stick to the ground, unable to move. Soon, she must only stand and watch.
She wakes. She sees her car smashed into the side of another. “Oh god,” she says to herself. She tries to move but is confused by her legs refusal to work. She’s stuck. She sees a man exit the vehicle, distraught at what has apparently happened. She sees and hears him call the police with a quivery voice. He says he’s fine, but the other person isn’t moving. By now, she sees something horrible. In her car sits the driver—it’s her. Same clothes, same hair, same face. The ambulance arrives. Police arrives. No one acknowledges the woman standing at the scene. She shouts “Hello?” in vein. They pull the body out of her car. She touches herself to reassure she isn’t a ghost. She’s freaking out. Gurney’d into the ambulance, the corpse is whisked away. The police take the man away, talking about how these things happen. They all drive off with her still there, still unable to move. And there she stands, looking at two wrecked cars in the middle of nowhere. Alone.
After a few minutes, her cell phone rings as it still rests in her car seat. She walks to pick it up. The sound must be the hypnotic release of her immobility. She picks up the line. “It’s Derren” can be heard. She sits down and again she falls asleep.
She awakens in her car, pulled to the side of the road, completely fine. No one else around. She starts her car and leaves.
Secret of ‘Tricks’ and ‘Treats’
In episode five Derren actually gives away the secret of the show (though I had solved the mystery before that—so there).
What the contestants believe is that their choice of card will ultimately how the course of events will go. In reality, however, Derren has already chosen their fate before they even choose; their choice in cards is arbitrary. The secret to this are the cards: each card reads both the word “TRICK” and the word “TREAT.” All is needed is which way to flip:
(The second image is the same image flipped.)
I’ve had to make one of these in a graphic design class, and I forget what the concept is names. How wonderfully clever.
Sometimes, I like to re-watch the Macworld keynote address Steve Jobs orated to the Apple flock in January. I know, I'm sick. In it, the J-o-b (s) specified upcoming products, much like dropping iBombs on your world, which were Apple TV and iPhone. And in it, Stevie-J said a few words that I missed before, yet blew me away when I heard them this time.
He said this during the introduction of Apple TV, the company's new physical iTunes media extender with internal hard drive and Wi-Fi capabilities for watching your tunes and movies on widescreens in the living room. And, he said the following off-handedly so I understand it why no one has picked up on it:
It's got a forty-gigabyte hard drive inside it, so it will store up to fifty hours of video, which comes in handy for something I'm about to show you. [Crowd chuckles.]
Woah. I encourage all the experts and pundits to revisit the video at precisely this interval in time. See, it didn't make sense at the time of the speech because the audience didn't know, not really, just what would be unveiled next. Comes in handy for what? What he would unveil next in the keynote was iPhone, turning the above phase into: "It's got a forty-gigabyte hard drive...which comes in handy for your iPhone." Looking at it now, knowing of what he was speaking, gives a new enlightenment as to what he meant by this handy hard drive. So what did he mean?
Well, Apple TV has 802.11 Wi-Fi, and, gee, iPhone has 802.11 Wi-Fi meaning these two citizens know how to talk to each other. To say that Apple TV's hard drive — a repository of 50 hours of video, or 9,000 tunes — is "handy" for iPhone speaks volumes for the interoperability of these two once-seemingly separate products. What it says is that iPhone will directly or indirectly (through the computer) connect with Apple TV, and use its 40-gigger storage space as a media library. iPhone's sophisticated Leopard OS can easily handle Apple TV.
It needs to do this because iPhone can't handle the load, having only a four- or eight-gigabyte storage solution. Disney's Glory Road is a two-hour movie weighing in at 1.35 gigabytes. The smaller-spaced iPhone will only hold about three Glory Roads. This means always syncing to the computer via its dock or to Apple TV through Wi-Fi. Or, connecting iPhone's dock directly to Apple TV's USB port, though Apple says that port is just for maintenance.
The above phrase then becomes: "It's got a forty-gigabyte hard drive...which comes in handy to pull content directly to your iPhone."
It means that, like chess, these separate pieces will work in concert to form a greater whole in the Apple user experience. Up to now, we've only seen the pieces: Apple TV with Wi-Fi draft N. Airport Extreme with draft N. Airport curiously stackable to the Mac mini, along with Apple TV. Airport Extreme's ability to attach a hard drive. Leopard. Time Machine. My herpes. 720p output for Apple TV.
What does all of this mean? No fucking clue. But these will all come together in some way we hadn't anticipated, and I bet the release of the next OS at the World Wide Developer's conference in July will tell us all.
Out on a limb predictions
I hereby predict that Apple's new iPhone will at least speak to, if not be able to completely control, Apple TV, making Apple TV one of iPhone's storage solutions
I predict Apple will tout a new media server solution that involves these components: Airport Extreme with the new 802.11n capabilities, connected hard drive, & Leopard (the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5); the Airport Wi-Fi base station with its connected large-capacity hard drive will provide Apple TV and any computer on the network with a central repository for all media files (not to mention back up capabilities inherent to Leopard). The speed of the new draft N makes this happen
Moreover, Apple will announce its own branded external hard drive with the same form factor as both the Airport and Apple TV, making it the perfect companion for either. For Airport, a connected hard drive provides the perfect place for Leopard's new built-in back up functions called "Time Machine"; for Apple TV, obviously, it will provide a boost in storage to house all those iTunes movie purchases. iPhone (and its touchscreen iPod brother) will connect to the hard drive no matter which it's connected to.
Master of psychology and subliminal persuasion is back
England’s incomparable master of magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship (using a varied mixture of those techniques) will have a new series on Channel 4 in the U.K., according to the website of Objective Productions, the company that produces Derren’s shows. It says:
“The controversial award-winning psychological illusionist Derren Brown stars in his brand new series, Trick or Treat. In each episode a member of the public must choose between a Trick or a Treat and, as ever with Derren, anything could happen.” From [Objective Productions Company Website][2]
Excellent. I have become recently a huge fan of Mr. Brown and his tricks of the mind. To the pounders unfamiliar, Derren Brown has had several shows on U.K.’s Channel 4. It started with his series of specials, “Mind Control,” and later included his series “Trick of the Mind” running for three seasons. (I know because I downloaded them.) His most complained about show in the U.K. was called “Seance,” where he indeed conducted one. (Most of the complaints happened before the show aired by religious nuts.) His most controversial special was named “Derren Brown: Russian Roulette,” even making [CNN news][3]. In that, he whittled thousands of volunteers down to just one, selected to place a single bullet in the chamber of a revolver gun, afterward Derren plays Russian Roulette. Derren’s job: to stay alive.
But, to me his most amazingly spectacular special was one called “Derren Brown: The Heist.” Good god, the man used cult-like techniques of hypnotic persuasion to convince members a Derren Brown seminar (so they thought) to rob an armed guard at a bank. These are not actors, but rather normal people like you and me, normal people who ventured into felonious robbery without Brown ever telling them what they should do or how to do it.
Luckily, he uses his powers for good (TV) and not evil.
He has also written a book. I bought Derren Brown’s book Tricks of the Mind, and it is a great read on the basics of some what he does. Some of it I had already read from sources like Digg, for instance the eye ‘tells,’ or the way a person’s eye moves when they, say, lie. But his chapter on memory retention is genius, and I plan to fully employ the techniques therein.
In it, in the first part of that chapter on memory, he gave a list of twenty random nouns and told me, the reader, to memorize them. I of course could only get three. Then, using a visualization technique where you link the list of items together into pairs, I was able to memorize all of them:
Telephone
Sausage
Monkey
Button
Book
Cabbage
Glass
Mouse
Stomach
Cardboard
Ferry
Christmas
Athlete
Key
Wigwam
Baby
Kiwi
Bed
Paintbrush
Walnut
I assure you all of these are correct, and that I just now typed them without looking in the book. And, I read that chapter two weeks ago. Amazing. Other chapters delve into why people are duped by psychics, religion, and other ferry tales, and I love to see more and more atheists coming forward as public figures. (He talks about his own de-conversion from Christianity quite candidly in the book.)
I plan to use his techniques to start stacking life in my favor. Mr. 19 is also experimenting with them, and we’ll both keep our Pounder brethren in the light as to our success. Nineteen had an interesting bit of magic in a bar, so I hope he tells the story here.
Chris Maupin posted this story Sunday, February 25, 2007
I reveal a play from my play book.
This one is not my original invention though (none of them are) it has history going back to the dawn of language and perhaps even further. It is devilishly simple and yields wonderful results. It has failed to work only once, and only then because circumstances surrounding this woman (see my later post “played by a master”) were just too daunting.
Suddenly, and without warning, you disappear for a day or two. …Make plans and break them. Frustrate her and confuse her.
Consider the following example. In 2002, back home, a new radio station appeared on the air. It was all music- all the good music you never heard on the radio — and get this — NO COMMERCIALS! I mean, it was like God himself had opened an FM station. No top-40, just a constant flow of unique songs with no commercials. It wasn’t long before I (and everyone else) were switching to this station and enjoying the lavish seemingly free music. That went on for weeks, then one day, the game had changed. Some of the music was still there, but now there were commercials everywhere! And the top-40 were on the endless cycle. We had been hoodwinked- yet still we held out hope. We kept tuning in, thinking our original impression would somehow return (it never did.) We kept it on our radios even though we knew it would never be the same. The bait and swith had been pulled. We now associated KSHIT with good music even though that was not the case anymore. We were hooked.
This works with women too (and for girls, it works REALLY well on guys!) Here is how to execute it, step my step.
1. Pick your mark.
Find the woman you want to dedicate the time and energy to conquer. She needs to not be the alpha-female. Find someone who isn’t used to being showered with attention- maybe even a girl who needs that.
2. The Sudden Infatuation.
Suddenly, you are struck with a heart-felt, deep infatuation for this woman. You daydream about her like some sap from the movies. You always say her name. Here is the key: ONLY talk about it to her friends. Be totally funny and light-hearted about it. Be candid and say things like this: “Man, she is just so cute- I have to marry her!” or “When is my sweetheart coming back?” and laugh with them. It is crucial that you saturate her friends, and that you charm them with the ambiguity of it being a joke / playful.
3. The “Confession.”
After you have charmed her friends with your ‘love’ for her and your ‘hopeless crush,’ you move on to her. Remember this is all a “joke.” When she comes by and you are with her friends, you play the part (dramatically and humorously) of the fool in love. The goofier the better. The key is to make this a habit and a routine and to do it many times. Make sure she thinks it is cute and funny.
4. A Joke…Or Is It?
You keep teasing her about liking her and being helplessly in love. Sooner or later, she will begin to wonder if you aren’t serious. Now the hook is in. When she or her friends question your sincerity always be ambiguous. Say “yeah, I really do like her so much,” and then make a joke- so you keep it 50/50
5. The Switch.
Credit here goes to the Great Madame Renee Lenclose of 18th Century France. Suddenly, and without warning, you disappear for a day or two. Don’t be in places you would normally be. Don’t run into her. Fail to appear with her friends. Make plans and break them. Frustrate her and confuse her.
6. The Heartfelt Talk.
Now you reappear. Have your heartfelt talk with her and disclose to her that you really do like her so much and that you were worried that she didn’t feel the same way- so you kind of ducked out for a while. Make sure you wait long enough to frustrate and confuse her. Make her MISS your attention, praise and affection. Then you offer her a chance to lock in that affection with a relationship.
Tironius posted this story Saturday, February 24, 2007
Mr. 19 and I have a new interest in the power of hypnotism, or neuro-linguistic programming, having seen Derren Brown achieve free money using hidden commands. He is an expert at psychology, misdirection, hypnotism and showmanship.
This is not Mr. Brown, but watch this Japanese girl writhe in ecstasy from the hand of another woman while in hypnosis. It starts with just a hand shake, creating intense pleasure in the subject's pussy. She then has multiple orgasms by simply watching another girl eat a donut. I can only imagine the hypnotist convinced her that the donut was her sweet labia.
Watch her hips twitch and flutter when the other girl eats the donut. It's really hot.
Instantly get whatever you want, any time you want. Really.
So, holy shit you can indeed “cherry pick” photos in iPhoto. Hot damn. But, if you wish to skip iPhoto, there is yet another way to select photos from your camera, and that way is by using an application called Image Capture.
Thusly, files like Word documents, pictures, useless .dll files, and countless more are available for others to download.
Derren offers contestants on his magical/mentalism U.K. telly programme the choice of two cards that say either “Trick” or “Treat” as the basis for their either good or bad fate. Unbeknownst to the contestant is that the decision is arbitrary as the card will say whatever Derren want’s it to say.
