2/28/2009 - Steve Jobs demos Apple Macintosh, 1984

It's really too bad that Steve Jobs has had to take leave from running Apple day-to-day because of his mysterious illness. Everybody hopes he'll make his scheduled comeback this summer (maybe except Steve Ballmer). The innovation of the original Macintosh cannot be understated. The computer you're reading this blog on is not much different in terms of the GUI from the 1984 Mac. It's hard to imagine what kind of a seismic wave was produced when the Mac was introduced, but it was probably quite substantial. What everybody was working on before were computers with ugly screens and text-based input. Remember how big the hype was when the iPhone was introduced? I would argue that the iPhone wasn't as much of a revolutionary product than the Mac was. After all, there were smartphones with GUIs prior to the iPhone. The Mac was really something different. You may have to be over 40 to appreciate this video introduction of the Mac, or you may just have to be a computer enthusiast:

2/26/2009 - Vince with Slap Chop

I'm an infomercial addict and it's been a while since I've seen a really good one. I think the last good one I've seen until recently was the Ronco knives. Even though they were a direct copy of the Ginzu knives, Ron Popeil can still sell them as if they were his own product. Ever since that last infomercial by Ron, all we have seen are "mini-infomercials" (ones that don't go for a whole half hour) that mostly feature Billy Mays, a loud-mouth third-rate salesman in my opinion.

Then came Vince with the ShamWow. Even though it's still a mini-infomercial, and absorbent shammies aren't new, Vince is what makes it a great infomercial. He speaks with such speed, he sounds like an auctioneer. And it sounds like he isn't going from a script: a lot of it sounds ad-libbed. Take for example, "It's made in Germany... you know the Germans make good stuff." I also love his little dig at Ron Popeil when he says near the end "we can't do this all day". Ron is famous for giving an initially large price for the product only to lower the price five or six times to its final cost.

It was Vince's first infomercial and already he seemed like a natural. His instant popularity would seen lead to selling another product: the Slap Chop. He has the same delivery style and the same unnecessary headset microphone. This product is also nothing new, but the infomercial is already one of my favorites:



Reasons why I love this infomercial:

1) "I love pizza too, but once in a while get the veggies in."
2) "Stop having a boring tuna, stop having a boring life."
3) The sparkle effects.
4) The perfect backwards toss into the sink.
5) "Life's hard as it is, you don't want to cry anymore."
6) The unnecessary arrow pointing to the onion skin.
7) "Fettuccine, linguine, martini, bikini."
8) The "Beware of imitators" disclaimer when the Slap Chop itself is an imitator.

and of course

9) "You're gonna love my nuts."

2/24/2009 - Diane Sawyer Drunk

Alcohol is another thing that has little logical appeal for me. Yes, I see it as some kind of relaxant for social inhibitions, and bars that serve alcohol are places of adult congregation, but for something that has so many negative consequences for health and for safety, it's a phenomenon that can only be explained by man's imperfections. Plus, I just think it tastes bad.

Being drunk, however, is a sensation that under controlled conditions I wouldn't mind experiencing. And when I say "under controlled conditions", that means no video cameras. Otherwise I'd look like this clearly toasted Diane Sawyer:

2/17/2009 - Electronic Cigarettes

I don't get the appeal of cigarettes. I think my grandfather let me take a puff once and I nearly puked. If nicotine is the drug that is the addictive agent, what makes smoking a cigarette the ideal delivery method for the drug? Gums and patches just don't do the job for some people and so they fall back to the carcinogenic smoking. But like everything else, there may be an electronic solution. There is now something called "electronic cigarettes" or e-Cigarettes, which look like the real thing and you can actually "smoke" the cigarette that releases a nicotine-laced vapor that you inhale to get your fix. They have these in Europe apparently and you are allowed to use them in the workplace! Will it take off as a true smoking alternative? I don't know, but I think it's a very creative solution. Here's video of e-Cigarettes in action:

2/5/2009 - EVO moment 2k7

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 may not be the most balanced fighting game out there, but it may be the most fun fighting game, with only the Super Smash Bros. series being a possible exception. I mean, I'm a Marvel fan and a Capcom fan, so this game was tailor-made for someone like me. Imagine playing with characters like the Hulk, Spider-Man, and Wolverine against Ryu, Chun-Li, and Guile... all with that Capcom polish. To top it all off, you create tag-teams of three with 56 characters to choose from!

With so many characters and so many possibilities of team match-ups, I found it hard to believe that Marvel vs. Capcom 2 could be used in competition, especially for the formal Evolution tournament. Well, I'm glad they included it because it gave us one of the best comebacks put on tape that wasn't performed by Daigo. In fact, it's none other than Justin Wong, who you may know from the Evo Moment #37 video as being the victim of the greatest clutch performance by Daigo. Justin could have been known solely for that video if it wasn't for this one:



Being down 2 characters in a 3 on 3 match must seem like a hopeless situation... but as the video says, NEVER GIVE UP.

2/3/2009 - Youtube Street Fighter

YouTube has grown so much after it was taken over by Google. Not just in terms of viewers, members, and storage capacity, but in technology as well. YouTube can handle widescreen video now, HD video, and embeddable annotations. The last feature allows you to embed comments within the video as speech bubbles and even hyperlinks pointing you to a website or even another video. The most creative use of that feature would have to be the interactive Street Fighter game. Yes, you can play Street Fighter within a YouTube video:



It's like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book, but with Street Fighter action figures in a stop motion video. Seriously, this must have taken ages to create. You can see that each successive video in the series is just a branch in the tree hierarchy with all the possible moves planned out. I'm not sure if embedding this will allow you to play the game, so here is the direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPQ1XrllZmA

2/1/2009 - Zelda Ocarina of Time on Halo Custom Edition

Even though they are fun and can be very well done, I feel that first-person shooters are overdone in today's gaming landscape. It's even worse than it was in the 90's when fighting games were overdone. Almost every other game on the XBox 360 is an FPS, and that's probably not an exaggeration! I suppose what makes them popular now is because they lend themselves so well to online play. Gamers who are hungry for violence let out their frustrations by "killing" others live on the internet. I keep waiting for the next big genre to break through, but I fear that the FPS will stay for quite some time. It's gotten so bad that people are converting games of other genres into first-person shooters. You wouldn't think that the Nintendo 64 classic The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time could be modded into an FPS, but if there's a will, there's a way: