My own domain

Moved to my own domain, here

To whoever bothers to read me

For experimentation purposes and an excuse to kickstart my long dormant blog, I've decided to move it to Wordpress.

Creative?

I must admit that when I first saw the Zen Vision:M, I thought, wow, finally Creative makes a pretty player without resorting to nasty plastic laminates.

True, the Creative player's packed to the brim with features that iPod users like me would envy. Unlike the iPod, the Zen plays more commonly used video formats. It also has an FM tuner and voice recorder.

Then I got over my crush.

You see, other than those extra features, the Zen is mostly a rip-off of Apple's player. 30GB, 2.5 inch screen, video playability, photos. Then the awkward name "Creative Zen Vision:M" Why the M? Well, because there was of course a Creative Zen Vision, which was a portable video/music player with a huge VGA screen. Costs more than 700 bucks. Bigger than the Sony PSP. I've yet to see anyone sport one, no surprise. Then right after apple came up with the new video iPod's, the executives at creative realized they had been looking at the wrong formula. So they came up with the "Zen Vision:M", which really isn't quite a work of genius. Squeezing in a few extra features wouldn't amount to any creative genius.

Of course, the average user would not care for all these. If a product is good, it is. So if you're reading this and thinking why the hell should I care, truth is, you shouldn't.

But what you might care about, is how you are going to scroll from A to Z on your artist list, with one hand on your player and the other hand grabbing on to a handgrip on a train. Good news: you can work out your thumb, especially if big thumbs are sexy to you.

What you might want to care about is having to pay 50 dollars more for the extra bulk and weight. But the good news: you get an extra hour of video from the Zen's battery.

What you should care about is having to drag and drop your music to your player, not counting the possibility of doing it twice, having duplicate files, forgetting if you have copied them, deleting them by accident.

All I have to do is just plug my iPod to my computer, click on iTunes. And everything is done.

Podcasts: synchronized automatically for iPod. An essential to me.

iTunes: no such software for Creative. If you're going to copy, might as well copy all the way? creative badly needs good hardware/software integration. C'mon creative, if you can't be creative, at least be smart!

I'm sorry, I love my iPod to bits. It started with iTunes. Apple just have the best UI, to date. Same reasons why I find it so hard to depart from Nokia. Sometimes it just isn't really about the features.

All this said, I must still reiterate that I do not think the Zen is a bad player. It is a brilliant player. But I would not credit the designers creativity for a device as such.

Furthermore, from a business/strategy point of view, Apple has reasons not to support Windows video formats, especially when they own a proprietary

Perhaps an analogy used by Popagandhi would best
describe this. Which do you prefer? Hot or good in bed?

Christmas was made for happy people, not for people to be happy. Christmas was made for people in love, not for people out of love.

First day of my life

This is the first day of my life
I swear I was born right in the doorway
I went out in the rain suddenly everything changed
They're spreading blankets on the beach

Yours is the first face that I saw
I think I was blind before I met you
Now I don’t know where I am
I don’t know where I’ve been
But I know where I want to go

And so I thought I’d let you know
That these things take forever
I especially am slow
But I realize that I need you
And I wondered if I could come home

Remember the time you drove all night
Just to meet me in the morning
And I thought it was strange you said everything changed
You felt as if you had just woke up
And you said “this is the first day of my life
I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you
But now I don’t care I could go anywhere with you
And I’d probably be happy”

So if you want to be with me
With these things there’s no telling
We just have to wait and see
But I’d rather be working for a paycheck
Than waiting to win the lottery
Besides maybe this time is different
I mean I really think you like me

My Dear

If you're reading this and feeling angry, don't.