GeekApproach

Seems like almost one year ago I was writing about the merits of Intel’s Light Peak technology, a promised fiber-optic based interconnect that enable fast connectivity to a variety of bus interconnects.

Finally, Light Peak is here, however it has been rebranded as Apple’s Thunderbolt technology and the current infrastructure in the launch is still…copper. , yeah big frownie face. Essentially what they’ve done is rebrand their Mini-Displayport interface port as a an all-in-one Thunderbolt interface. Good news is this means that existing cables and accessories that use this port can continue to be used, and in theory more bits can be pushed down that port. The bad news is…well…there aren’t any devices yet to take advantage of this port and its boost in speeds.

I’m also thinking that this could be a big boon to new, incredibly fast serialized devices that push standards forward. Apple helped pioneer the FireWire port back in the late 90′s– I’m hoping they can do something about how long it takes me to dump 250 gigs of data to my external hard drive.

And yes…I’m a wee bit jealous about those new fast 17″ MacBook Pro’s.

One area that I didn’t touch on in my last post was the increased bandwidth available for audio applications such as Pro Tools or Logic. Most of this stuff comes in FireWire now, and while I haven’t really seen anyone complain about a bandwidth crunch on the bus while doing recording, I’m sure having more lanes to cram more bits down can’t really hurt.

Photo: DJMag.com

Finally, Intel also reports that Apple has a one-year head start on using the technology. I’m assuming that means that Apple will have one year of exclusivity before the technology starts being available for use in other competing devices. I’m not sure what that gets Apple considering there aren’t any peripherals currently that can really take advantage of this. If I were to hazard a guess, you’ll start seeing manufacturers support the port during CES 2012.

For those who don’t know, I’ve been sent to Barcelona to help out Google at Mobile World Congress this year. I’m helping to deliver CEO Eric Schmidt’s keynote on Tuesday night, which should be streamed live.

Well, after 24 hours in Barcelona I can definitely say the city is growing on me. I spent most of the day walking around and trying to get myself acquainted with the map of the city and my surroundings in general. It probably doesn’t help that I’m staying just off of “La Rambla”, a sort of main promenade here in Barcelona. Apparently it is famous for getting folks lost with its narrow winding alleys.

My hotel is tiny and neat. El Jardi Hotel is located in the Barri Gotic district, and I’m literally looking out of my terrace on the Eglesia de Santa Maria del Pi. I apparently missed my opportunity to visit it this morning because I didn’t understand its closure in the afternoon.

I had to find my way to a pharmacia to get some meeds for my head– I was up most of the night with a fever, and suffering from a bit of sleep deprivation due to the time change. In broken spanish I gestured to my runny nose and bleary eyes and she gave me something called Stop Cold which sounded just perfect for what I’ve got. I’m feeling generally ok right now…my eyes are still watering but my nose is no longer a leaky faucet.

I wandered down to Port Vell and the marina to finally see the Mediterranean. Check off another major body of water on my list. The main footbridge that takes you across to the port’s shopping mall, restaurants, and aquarium swings open to allow boats and other yachts through. At 10 AM sharp it opened for 15 minutes and half of the marina emptied, full of tourists going out on water tours.

The aquarium was awesome: Its centerpiece was a 360 degree wraparound shark tank that had a moving floor to keep everyone circulating through. Very cool.

I wandered East for a bit, saw a few parks and incredibly, a Chinese movie being made at one of the landmarks. Headed back West, I decided to see how long the trek was to Fira de Barcelona, the tradegrounds were Mobile World Congress is being held this year. It was a bit of a hike, and it’s more than that getting back to the hotel. Methinks I spring for a cab the day I’m suited and booted.

And now I’m back. I’m going to try a bar tonight and see what kind of tapas I can find tonight. I haven’t been very hungry lately, and aside from a light breakfast this morning and a Clif bar, I haven’t eaten. I am trying to keep up on my water intake to help my body flush whatever awful sickness this is.

Tomorrow starts a busier day, client meetings, and a dress rehearsal. Hopefully everything goes well.

Recently I had some time to enjoy the latest demo from People Can Fly, titled Bulletstorm. It’s an apt title as gameplay centers roughly on a score-based mechanic of how “creatively” you kill the other guy.  Numerous environmental traps are available for the assist such as impaling spikes, large drop-offs, and the occasional exploding container or barrel.  You’ll also have access to an electrical grapple or “hookshot” (to steal from Zelda parlance) to grab enemies and bring them to you and release them in slo-mo– thereby increasing your fun and the amount of creative ways you can think of to destroy them.  Gameplay looks kinda ripped from the Black playbook, a game that ranked you with points based upon how creative your kills were while you ran through levels.  A more recent comparison would be to Sega’s rather under-rated The Club which had a squad-based approach, but the same type of scoring mechanics.  Apparently folks didn’t like shooting up other folks for creativities sake, or they just didn’t like the full package of either of those games.  Who knows…

Visually the game looks purty.  Utilizing and being published by Epic Games has something to do with it–The latest version of the Unreal Engine is in full “bloom” so to speak with such graphical improvements like “god beams”, and accurate lighting penumbrae.  Audio is good too–punchy shotguns and machine guns felt real and the amount of audio feedback was quite nice for warnings about ends of clips or incoming grenades.  Both of these things I would expect as they are right out of the Gears of War playbook.

However, what is not or maybe sorta not is the raw amount of testosterone this game is meant to convey.  Example: The word “dick-tits”.  I think during the end of the demo in its closing video the main character make some comment about not sitting around like a “dick-tits”.  I actually had no idea what this word meant, and the amount of new vernacular thrown at you during the course of a 10 minute demo was kind of ridiculous.

I’m not sure how effective it is because the last time I saw this much ridiculous masculinity was in Army of Two and I don’t think that did to successfully.  I mean, how many of you had to think of just what the hell Army of Two even was after you read that? Exactly.

To jog your memories, I’ve embeded this handy YouTube video showing some of its finer moments below:

In the end, I had a decent time with it.  It feels like a brighter, less depressing or apocalyptic Gears of War.  Time will tell if it can be set apart, but the month of February sure looks pretty empty for video games in general.  It might just provide the boost they need to get this thing off of shelves.  So what are you waiting for “dick-tits”?

EDIT: 7:42 AM 02_06_11: Here’s some more videos on “creative killins” in Bulletstorm:

This new trailer for Deus Ex: Human Revolution (courtesy of Kotaku) is pretty bad-ass.  I loved the previous Deus Ex games, at least I recall playing them both.  Concluding them is another story…  The trailer below highlights some of the new “digital shininess” that seems to be permeating SciFi/Action/Adventure titles these days post-Mass Effect 2.  I’m not unhappy about it all; on the contrary, I think this is a good thing for games.

I just hope that Square-Enix doesn’t screw it up too much.

Apparently ATT has decided to see (some) of the light when it comes to user accessibility and has upped the cap from 2 GB of transfer of month in the DataPro plan, to 4 gigs.  As an iPhone 3GS user on ATT, with both the DataPro plan and tethering enabled, I’m very happy about this. I spend about $45/month on the “data” portion of my plan which is complete BS.   While it is capped, I don’t nearly use enough of that bandwidth– I think my lifetime stats over two years is something like 3 gigs total.

I use my tethering mainly when I’m out of town– when we head to the beach for a weekend to veg out, or when I’m traveling globally for work it comes in very handy.  Lately I haven’t done either of those things so I’m definitely not getting my money’s worth on that use.  However, in reading some of the forums at Engadget you’d think these people were looking for an unlimited cap or something….I don’t get it.  The speed is definitely nowhere near fast enough to do what I want– downloading videos, transcoding, uploading of digital assets, and having enough speed available to be pumping a lot of data down the pipe.  Why one would attempt to push all that down a 3G pipe rather than say, a speedy home Comcast pipe…I don’t get it.

Finally, ATT also seems to be readying WiFi tethering which sounds great.

Hopefully coming soon?

This is a feature many other mobile devices have had for years, and I understand ATT’s reluctance to offer it– they’ve been forced to play ball with Verizon because the playing field is about to get much more level.  With two huge telcos offering the same device, and in theory operating the same technologies for “4G” the only thing left to differentiate the two is network features.  Oh, and can I make a bet here and now?  The iPhone 5 will have a slight edge on ATT, because they’ll pay for a timed exclusive.  After all, Verizon is just now nabbing the iPhone 4 or 4.5.  In 6 months I fully expect to be holding a new iPhone 5, and I doubt that Verizon customers will be excited to see a new device coming their way ater plunking down for that shiny 4.

With WiFi tethering comes an interesting loss on the iPad side.  Previously while you could tether your iPhone over Bluetooth to a device, the iPad was not one of them.  ATT instead opted to sell you their selective data plan over 3G which made the top end iPad very expensive. I’m hoping with the launch of WiFi tethering that I could put out a network to get my iPad some connectivity as well.  THAT is what would keep me as a happy ATT customer.

Anyway…I guess I should be out there using my phone more!