blakerson.com

Wired figures that the tablet is part of a unique pattern that comes with being Steve Jobs: find an old, stodgy business model, update the model, and profit obscenely. It worked with music (the iPod and iTunes), desktop computers ("at a time when consumer portables were the future" came the iMac), cell phones (notice how much phones don't suck anymore thanks to iPhone competition), and retail stores (brick-and-mortar is dying, remember? Hence the Apple Store..?).

The mag does get a little dramatic. The author's also convinced that this amazing device would be Jobs' swan song (on account of his health), which isn't necessarily the case. But the ingredients for the next Jobsian breakthrough are all there: print media are the next endangered species and Jobs is stepping in to save them, save journalism, save their business model and skim a hefty sum off the top from serving it all up through a sexy Apple product.

I still suspect that everyone's missing something, some kind of great R&D breakthrough. The iPhone had an unbelievably sexy touchscreen that most consumers didn't think possible. The iMac very quickly gave everyone high-quality LCD monitors for their desktops. The iPod was a unique application of laptop hard drives. 

I spent 30 minutes writing out educated predictions, but they were all totally bland and easily replicated (and probably already written by big gadget blogs or somesuch). Stuff like a ubiquitous network connection and putting everything (I mean everything) in the cloud. But that's too easy. Microsoft, Mozilla and Ubuntu are already working on that publicly. That lets you exclude hard drives, which are expensive components, but there's already flash memory for that. 

There has to be some part of the equation that we pedestrians just can't see. I'd sign an NDA to find out what it is.

a) out-of-state tuition

b) little funding from UCSD

I'm going to start working ASAP to remedy this situation, or else I'll be repaying loans until I'm 36. Expect Blake to be very very busy sometime soon.

Still, that won't be all that bad. I signed up for this gig partially to be busy. Life as a writer in Texas was too slow to be sustainable. And now that I'm here, I've eased into having less of a life. Upon my arrival, going out three nights a week was the norm. Now, some four months later, I got back from hitching a ride across town for the sake of a free Chipotle burrito. I really don't feel that bad about the decline in activity, which makes it OK for me to marginally become a little bit more of a loser by working anywhere between 5-20 hours a week.

These days, I get my gaming once a week via CO-OP. It's the only game-related show I watch religiously, and that's saying a lot. It's six guys getting really deep about the games they review, and they're consistent about it. They'll cover everything, from AAA releases during release week to indie games and iPhone stuff. And there's some little sketches and banter, too, which keeps you from being overwhelmed with Gaming Information and lets you 'get to know the guys' in the same sense that Top Gear fans know about the hosts of that show. Give it a whirl; it's better than the rest of Youtube's Top-Gear-Wannabe gaming flotsam, and a thousand times more interesting than hearing pro bloggers mouth-breathe into a Skype call for an hour. (Unless you're Robert Ashley - if you're him, you can talk in your awesome stoner voice all day.)

So here I am in sunny San Diego,

Thinkin' 'bout when I'll be on that payroll

And here every other car's a Ferrari

It makes you start thinkin' that money's so godly

And you'd be forgiven to think

That life's just bling and bitches and weed

So please don't shoot me ('cause your gangstas are hard)

But your coast's own hip-hop is really sub-par.

By about Monday night, I was already deciding this was a bad idea. Taking away bread, tortillas and pasta removed almost my entire repertoire from my kitchen and left things like sandwich meat to go bad as I looked at it longingly while eating yet another bowl of rice and veggies. Worse still, it might not end up being all that healthy, as anyone with half a brain noticed when the Atkins diet just moved a lot of people a few bunless burgers closer to heart disease.

Then things got really bad, and not in a dietary way. I went to the doctor on a Wednesday morning for a routine appointment, and I ended up in the office in horrendous pain. I was moved straight down to Urgent Care (essentially a low-rent ER) and after a couple of hours of agony, I was given some painkillers and so much IV fluid that my face swelled up. I was diagnosed with dehydration and a kidney stone.

Yeah. I turn 25 in a couple months. Kidney stone. What.

I took the rest of the week off of school and spent it at home stuffing myself with Advil and water. By Friday I felt good enough to go back on campus for a couple small things and started to wonder if I hadn't been misdiagnosed.

Then, things took a worse turn on Saturday and I felt bad again, and I started to wonder if I wouldn't need to go to the real-deal hospital. Then, a couple extra Advil later, out popped a kidney stone, completely painlessly. 

Strange.

I've been back at school for a week, and I seem to be doing OK. I can't drink much coffee or alcohol (dehydration still hurts), but I'm able to go to school again.

And I'm not in debilitating pain.

We're taking a short break from dieting so I can get my life in order. I have a new theory for something to try, but that's a story for another post.

It was called "Google's experiment with gaming" when it launched an abortive Second Life clone and shut it down a few weeks later. Not only was that a horrendous misnomer - that nonsense wasn't a game in the slightest - but the press sounded as if they permanently shut a door on Google's entry into an ever-growing market. Google stuck its toes in the water, the water was filled with piranhas, Google will never go near the water again. In truth, the Goog ignored the possibilities entirely, and its lack of gaming projects has left them excluded from a marketing sector.

And thankfully, someone is bringing it back. Bungie integrated basic online stats lookups in Halo 2, and really unleashed its potential with Halo 3. Players are getting a kick out of following their numbers (like accuracy, favorite weapons, best-performing maps, most likely areas to die) as much as simple stuff like Achievements. A few strategy-game makers are following suit, and Blizzard is sure to make a big feature out of it in StarCraft II. Valve also keeps detailed stats on its games for balancing and anti-cheating purposes, but its keeps all its data to itself.