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 | The Piccadilly Circus tube stop. London, UK April 5, 2006 |
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« December 2005 | Main | February 2006 » January 31, 2006Training: Day 5 Of 6Today concluded Day Five of a six-day internal training session on SharePoint. One of my key projects right now consists of designing, developing and delivering a new-n'-improved version of the Planning Web site. The Office Product Planning core produces a steady stream of original research, analysis, and insight, and we (obviously) need to get that information to different groups inside Microsoft. Given that Microsoft employs 60,000 people - roughly the same number that live in the city of Bellingham, Washington - the project feels, in many ways, like a return to the commercial Web development work I did before b-school: making a small organization's information relevant to a large outside audience. It's actually a lot of fun. SharePoint is a complex product (and a complex set of technologies), that fundamentally allows for groups of people - workgroups, teams, departments - to publish stuff created in Microsoft Office to the Web for later viewing and editing. So if you've got a PowerPoint deck, a handful of Word files, and some Excel spreadsheets that you need to post in a public place, well, SharePoint's a good tool. And naturally, it's the one we use internally. (As an aside, SharePoint does lots of other stuff, too, which is mostly what these training sessions are about.) Coming from a non-Microsoft Web development background (I'm all Apache/PHP/Java/Solaris/MySQL/Mac OS X), I've been on a pretty steep learning curve with terminology, architecture, concepts and inter-relationships between frameworks and whatnot. I've ridden this kind of curve before, back when I was evaluating (and deploying) a content-management server last year. But after five days straight of sitting on my butt in a training center, eyes on a computer screen, listening to lecture, drinking coffee and breathing my own CO2 emissions - well, my brain's like tapioca. Runny tapioca. The good news, though, is that the product will do what I want it to do. SharePoint can handle 90% of my design, right out of the box. Which means I'll be spending a healthy chunk of my next few weeks actually building (and customizing) said design … but that's just fine with me. It's actually very cool to get a fresh take on something you know well - like translating a favorite novel into a foreign language. It's back in to the breach tomorrow ... but tonight, I'm gonna unwind. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 31, 2006 7:44 PM. January 29, 20062008: Road Trip!My father is a motorcycle nut, and has been for many, many years. He owned bikes for a good chunk of my early childhood, and used to take me tooling around Seattle with him when I was three or four. (I even had this cute little yellow helmet. It'd melt your heart.) Flash forward 30 years. Dad's had this urge to ride the "four corners" of the United States on his motorcycle. Effectively, this means you start in Seattle (or, in his case, Spokane) and, in one consecutive ride, you hit Blaine, Washington, San Diego, California, Key West, Florida and Madawaska, Maine - the four extremities of the continental US. The trip totals out to roughly 11,000 miles. As you might imagine, this is not a light undertaking. Rather, it's a five-to-six week Tour de United States, with all manner of logistical and planning issues. My dad's been lobbying my stepmom for a few years now to let him go on this thing, and she finally acquiesced last year. He then asked me if I wanted to go. And, of course, I said yes. Look, I know I don't own a motorcycle (yet). But this is clearly the opportunity of a lifetime: see the country, spend time with dad, camp, stop in greasy diners, snap lots of pictures, meet people. Live out of your saddle bags for six weeks or so. It's gonna be really cool. So without boring you with some of the planning issues (e.g., finding a time to go when the weather is good, making sure I've saved up enough vacation at work, being permitted to take off a huge chunk of time, etc. etc. etc.), the plan is to depart on Saturday, August 23, 2008 and return on Wednesday, October 1, 2008. (Incidentally, August 22, 2008 will be my three-year anniversary with Microsoft, so the trip's a nice anniversary marker.) I spent a chunk of today playing with Streets and Trips 2006 to plan out routes and make sure that the necessary landmarks are in the system. Dad is focused on finding routes that are scenic and winding: we're not big fans of riding on the interstate, so you'll find us on winding country roads and two-lane state highways. For my part, I was plugging in the can't-miss stuff, like the other four corners (where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado all touch), Mount Rushmore, the Grand Canyon ... and the theme parks we're going to hit on the way. (Did I say theme parks? Oh, yeah.) This is an incredible opportunity for a coaster fanatic like me. We're going to be riding through a lot of country that I've never seen before, and, well, that country's got a lot of coasters. Dad's agreed to indulge my enthusiasm (or, if ya like, enable my habit), and I've agreed not to pull us too far off track to ride some small county-fair woodie. We're going to ride clockwise around the country, so the list of theme parks is, in order:
Unbelievable. The ride is two-plus years out, and I'm already bouncing up and down with excitement. (Now I just have to buy a motorcycle...) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 29, 2006 6:53 PM. January 27, 2006"Hurt"I might be the Last Guy On The Internet to catch this, but have you heard Johnny Cash's cover of the Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt"? It's awesome - slow, subtle, moving, haunting - just fantastic. It takes the slow, whispery, heroin-flavored original and infuses it with the regrets of an older man looking back on his life. Yeah, I so bought it on iTunes this morning. The fact that Johnny Cash recorded it in 2002 - and it was his last hit before his death in 2003 - makes it even more poignant (it's very much like watching "The Crow" and knowing that Brandon Lee died during the filming). (Big, big thanks to my friend Anne, who showed me the video last night.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 27, 2006 1:54 PM. "The Trader Joe's Adventure"I've just finished a really interesting book on hip urban retailer Trader Joe's: "The Trader Joe's Adventure Now, I'm a fan of Trader Joe's - I love their selection of quirky products, and I dig their eclectic (and generally inexpensive) wine collection. What I didn't know, however, was anything about the history of the business or its general strategy. Short version: California entrepreneur Joe Coulombe started the business as a chain of convenience stores in the '60s. When 7-11 started getting popular, he changed his strategy in order to differentiate himself. He started buying and stocking "affordable gourmet" foods from obscure vendors, and quickly gained a cult consumer following from people who wanted quality, hard-to-find luxuries at low prices. In the late 1970s, Coulombe sold his business to German retailer Aldi. (Coulombe now blogs about his main passion, wine, at www.winejoe.com.) Today, Trader Joe's is a privately-held grocery store that flaunts most industry conventions. Their stores are small. They stock only a handful of products relative to a generic Safeway or QFC. Where most grocers push national brands, some 80% of Trader Joe's products are private-label, designed exclusively for the store, and completely unique. TJ's is also different in its real estate strategy, hiring/retention policies, marketing, and approach to growth. The book is good, but does suffer from two things. First, it's a bit booster-ish - the author, Len Lewis, is an industry insider, and clearly loves Trader Joe's. This hurts his objectivity a bit. Second, both Aldi and Trader Joe's don't talk much to the press. Lewis was therefore unable to secure interviews with Trader Joe's management, and the book is rife with statements like, "Jane Smith, Trader Joe's CFO, was once quoted as saying..." Lewis was able to interview a lot of people who work with Trader Joe's (real estate professionals, other grocery analysts, and so on), but statements from the business itself are conspicuously absent. That said, at 200 pages, it's a good, quick read. Recommended. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 27, 2006 9:20 AM. January 26, 2006The High Price Of Higher EdIt's "application season" for business schools, which means a lot of folks are evaluating and applying to different MBA programs across the country. As such, I've received a number of e-mails recently from folks that are considering the UW, and are looking for more information about it. So as I was browsing the Seattle PI this morning, an article headline caught my eye ("Huge college loans eating up salaries") that's all about how taking on too much student debt can screw up your life: This combination of forces has the potential to create a new class of working poor -- those who have fallen behind before they've had a chance to get ahead. These are secret strugglers. They aren't counted anywhere, and no one is sure how large their ranks are, although anecdotal evidence would suggest they are increasing. They don't necessarily look, act or identify themselves as financially challenged. They are rich in education, but they've leveraged their futures for the privilege. I've written before about how expensive MBA educations can be, and, for those of you who are applying right now, I would advise you to be conservative with your financial projections. Yes, having an MBA can help you get a higher-paying job. But the MBA is not a guarantee of a swank job and corner office, and, indeed, many people get MBAs to do something that's more enriching to their soul or intellect than their bank account. The more you owe in loans, the less flexibility you have when it comes to choosing your job, company, or part of the country you want to live in. Incidentally, and this PI article is part of a larger series they're running on the working poor here in King County. I'd missed a lot of it the first time 'round - it's fascinating (and depressing). Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 26, 2006 12:47 PM. January 25, 2006January 24 ConfabLast night's session of "Confab" was an awful lot of fun - we had a full house and a great time. We also had three first-time guests: Patrick, Kevin and Leslie. After some great listener feedback, we've decided to keep the shows to under an hour. Last night's clocked in at 58 minutes - and you can get it here (38.5 MB MP3). Enjoy! Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 25, 2006 6:32 AM. January 23, 2006Another Childhood Memory Bites The DustLike all boys born before 1980, I loved the TV show Star Blazers as a kid. Star Blazers, if you don't know, was a Japanese cartoon set in the year 2199. Earth is being hit with deadly, radioactive planet bombs, sent by the evil Gamilons, rendering the surface of the planet uninhabitable. To reverse the damage, a group of humans ("The Star Force") goes to space aboard a converted World War II battleship, the Argo, in order to retrieve the "Cosmo DNA" from Queen Starsha of Iscandar. The Star Force has one year to get to Iscandar and back. (Look, I know how unbelievably dorky this looks when written out on a Web page, but ya gotta believe me - as third-graders, we'd practically come to fights out on the playground about who'd get to be Derek Wildstar. And, as a valentine to all my fellow geeks out there, you can get an MP3 of the theme song here. Sing along. You know you want to.) Season 1, "The Quest For Iscandar", totally captivated all of my childhood friends. It was followed in short order by a second season, "The Comet Empire," which also, to my eight-year-old brain, kicked enormous ass. I freely admit that the shows were somewhat formulaic, following this rough structure:
I had the ability to catch Season 1 on DVD a few years back, and it aged OK. It wasn't going to win any awards for writing, directing, special effects, or whatever, but the show was just as I remembered it, and I suddenly found myself back in my parents' house, 7:30 AM on a Saturday morning, eagerly waiting for the latest installment with a bowl of Trix on my lap. So imagine my surprise and delight to learn that there was a third, unaired (in the US) season of Star Blazers, called "The Bolar Wars." And imagine my further delight to see that NetFlix stocks the DVDs. (Score!) Well, the first disc (episodes 1 - 5) arrived last week, and I had chance to watch it this weekend. Hoo, boy: It's bad. Like, threaten-all-your-warm-fuzzy-memories bad. Like, make-you-question-your-love-of-the-original bad (see also: Matrix Reloaded, Matrix Revolutions). First of all, the show seems to have been done on the cheap. The opening theme is sung in Japanese, and Japanese subtitles appear throughout the show. That's kinda bad, but forgivable ... until the American actors start opening their mouths, and you realize that any magic, any magic at all from the original two seasons has been flushed down the toilet by a bad plot, worse writing, and - wait for it - the ultimate insult: new voices for all the characters. I didn't even finish the DVD ... I had to turn it off, lest the last remaining fondness for my childhood be consumed by this thing. (sigh) You never can go home again. (But at least you can shop there.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 23, 2006 11:22 PM. January 22, 2006Prediction: XP Is The "New Classic" Under 10.5Since the unveiling of the Intel Macs, the Mac blogosphere has been all atwitter about the possibility that the new iMac and MacBookPro (it's two weeks later, and I still hate that name) will run Windows. Most of the conversations are focusing on the technical details of such a move, looking at whether or not Windows supports Apple's new EFI BIOS (XP does not, but Vista will), and how hacks might conceivably allow one to get around any technical challenges. But the envisioned scenario - installing some kind of shim to dual-boot between Windows and OS X - requires a fabulous level of geek knowledge in order to work. While the Alpha Nerds among us will certainly make this happen (just as they've managed to poke and prod OS X for Intel so it runs on, say, a Dell), Ma and Pa Mac User will certainly never go to these lengths in their day-to-day lives. Most of these conversations, I think, are missing the point. There is absolutely no doubt that the new Macs will run Windows. In fact, I predict that Apple is working on a system to make this happen, and it will ship with the next iteration of Mac OS X - 10.5, or "Leopard". (Quick disclaimer: Yes, I work for Microsoft. But, no, I don't know anything about any of this from my job. This is just a best guess, based on my having watched the Mac market for a long, long time.) Apple's decision to select Intel processors for its machines has three big benefits. Of these, Apple has only talked about one of them. They are: Benefit #1: Performance Per Watt. Yes, Steve got up at WWDC in June and waxed rhapsodic about Intel's "performance per watt" - for each X of juice the chip takes in, it pumps out Y amount of performance. The thinking here is that the Intel iron allows Apple to provide G5-class performance with substantially less energy (and, thus, heat) than the G5 itself. Theoretically, this will allow Macs to be smaller, offer better battery life, and sport more innovative designs (big, chunky heat sinks tend to be a design constraint, you know?). I expect some new, kick-ass designs from Apple later this year. Benefit #2: Reduced Point Of Difference With The PC World. A secondary, but little-discussed benefit of going to Intel is that Apple no longer has to shoulder the burden of proof that the PowerPC is a good processor. Apple has spent hundreds of millions of marketing dollars working to convince people that the PowerPC chip gave Macs a performance edge. This was, ultimately, a losing battle. Consumers only have so much attention to give any one company, so every precious moment Apple used to defend the PowerPC was one less moment it had to talk about what makes the Mac experience better. By and large, people don't care about processors - they care about buying something that works as advertised. And for a lot of people, something that's too different - namely, a different processor plus a different operating system - feels risky, which then makes them averse to buying your stuff. Most people feel safe in numbers, so they tend to go with what "the crowd" goes with (e.g., Dell). It's the "When Harry Met Sally" principle of computer buying: "I'll have what she's having." Apple no longer has to fight this fight. Instead, its message can be 100% focused on what makes the Mac a better computer. The debate is now about features, benefits, and ease-of-use. I think Apple is well-suited to fight that battle. Benefit #3: Binary Compatibility With Windows. This third point is at the heart of this post. By going to Intel (as opposed to the Sparc, or the Cell, or any one of a billion other chip designs Apple could have selected), Apple now has binary compatibility with Windows, and, by extension, the entire family of Windows applications that exist in the world. This is the centerpiece of Apple's strategy for the next 5 years. Leopard's going to exploit this benefit like nobody's business. Look, it's been possible to run Windows on the Mac for at least the last decade. Programs like Virtual PC have allowed you to install and run Windows as a Macintosh application. The big drawbacks of the Virtual PC approach were performance and experience. Performance-wise, since Windows is compiled for the Intel processor, Virtual PC had to translate the Intel instruction into a PowerPC instruction (much as Apple's Rosetta technology does, but in the reverse direction). This translation process takes time, and makes applications feel sluggish. And on the experience side, all your Windows programs run inside your single Virtual PC window, which means you have to drag-and-drop your files and whatnot between your "real" Mac and your "virtual" Windows machine. This is not optimal for lots of reasons, but the Virtual PC team did an amazing job of making it as seamless as possible. Today, all that's out the window. With binary compatibility, we don't need to worry about emulation any more - it's Intel all the way down. Thus, a Windows application running on an Intel Mac will be as fast as it would be running on the same-speed machine from Dell. And on the experience side, well, I suspect that Apple is working to make that pretty seamless. And the only way they can do that is to build compatibility for Windows software right in to the operating system directly. As it happens, Apple has a lot of experience doing this - namely, with Classic and with X Windows. In both cases, Apple made it possible for programs written for other operating systems and environments to work natively, and seamlessly, on Mac OS X. "But why?" you ask. "Why would Apple want to embed Windows compatibility into Leopard? Isn't that just sleeping with the enemy and helping Microsoft?" First, as far as "sleeping with the enemy," let's be clear. Apple and Microsoft have a deep and complex relationship. Microsoft develops some great software for the Mac, and Apple cross-licenses patents with Microsoft. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have known each other for decades, and built this industry together. Yes, Apple and Microsoft compete in a lot of areas, such as operating systems, digital music, and video standards, but the technology business is one where everything's in a shade of gray, rather than black-and-white. So if Steve's strategy to grow the Mac business makes Bill a few million in new Windows licenses, well, Steve'll do it. No question. But as to "why?" - Apple wants to build binary compatibility into the operating system because it's necessary. Getting consumers to switch to a Mac is much, much harder than anyone at Apple originally thought it would be. The "Switch" campaign of a few years ago is regarded as a failure not because the message was wrong, or the ideas were bad - "Switch" failed because nobody at Apple really understood what they were asking consumers to do. Your PC is a crazy thing, a thicket of programs and data files that you rely on to get your work done. And, generally, every program that exits for Windows exists for the Macintosh. But while "generally" existing is good enough to keep the platform viable, it's not enough to get people to jump ship. People get used to one specific thing, and the "general" replacement just doesn't cut it. Here's an example. Let's say your grandmother is sick of spyware and all the cruft of her PC. So you say, "Hey, Grandma, let's get you a Mac." She does e-mail, of course, writes the occasional letter, balances her checkbook and browses the Web - should be no problem. The Mac does all that stuff. But as you get in to talking with her, you then find out that she also uses her computer to play solitaire, and has developed a real love of Sudoku puzzles. And furthermore, she loves the programs she's using to play these games on her PC today. Suddenly, your "simple" migration to the Mac is now a hairy pain in the ass - your grandma doesn't want the Mac if she has to give up her favorite solitaire game. And so, after much hemming and hawing and thinking about it, you buy her a new HP laptop and double up on your antivirus subscription. No switch for you. Trust me: this scenario has played out millions of times over the past few years. There's always that one damn application that the potential switcher loves, or cannot live without. And that's what's been killing Apple's potential for growing the Mac base in any significant numbers. By including Windows compatibility in Leopard - making it, in effect, the "new Classic" - Apple can now sell a machine to your grandmother. She'll use Safari for the Web, Mail.app for her e-mail, and will run Windows (as a process) for her Solitaire game ... until she finds a new, better Solitaire game for the Mac, and then kicks the old Windows one to the curb. (And, I should point out, that Windows on a state-of-the-art Mac will feel smokin' next to a couple-year-old PC.) Apple's gonna migrate Windows users to Mac OS X the exact same way they migrated Mac OS 9 users to Mac OS X: through embrace and extend. Take the old OS, run it as a process, make it seamless. Then sell users on the beauty and power of native Mac applications. Legally, I predict that Apple will get Windows on the Mac the same way Connectix did with Virtual PC - they'll just license Windows from Microsoft. This has the advantage of providing a higher-quality Windows experience, and also ensures that Microsoft is making more money (and, hey, we like to make money) on the Mac. In terms of migration, Apple will probably offer something like their migration assistant to make it dead-bang-easy for people to move their files from a PC to the Mac. I envision some kind of bootable CD that turns your old PC into a big USB Mass Storage device. From there, you'll simply run a USB 2.0 cable between your Mac and PC; the Mac'll suck over the entire drive, creating a disk image in the process. The disk image will be a freeze-dried copy of your PC data, files, and whatnot; this prevents any kind of nasty commingling of files in the Mac OS X file system, and also prevents disk formatting problems. If Apple's really sharp, they'll take this migration one step farther, ala Move2Mac, and import your IE favorites, convert your Outlook Express mail to Mail.app, and even set up users on your Mac that are similar to those on your PC. (They might even be able to move your Windows license, too, which could save you some money.) So yes, Virginia, you'll be able to run Windows on the Mac. And soon, I'd wager - Leopard is due in "early 2007" (which sounds like a MacWorld keynote to me). And from there, I predict that Apple will see their market share double in about two years. The barriers to switching will be, for all intents and purposes, gone. Interestingly, the new Intel macs are the first Mac OS X machines not to run Classic. In its place, Apple is going to introduce the "new Classic" - Windows XP. It's funny how things work out. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 22, 2006 4:52 PM. January 21, 2006Meet And GreetThe Microsoft Visio Conference was a smash success. This was the first time in several years that Microsoft had thrown a Visio conference, and there was clearly a lot of pent-up demand on the part of the attendees. We had customers (folks who actually use Visio), partners (folks that build software that depends on Visio), the Microsoft product and marketing teams, and Microsoft salespeople from around the world. The language diversity was pretty amazing - Sweden, the Netherlands, UK, France, Japan, you name it. In fact, one of the presenters did his talk in Japanese, which meant we used a live translator. Everyone had one of those wireless earpieces that you see at the UN. Crazy. The show centered on the new data features coming out in Visio 12, and what you can build with them (if you want a big discussion of those, check out Eric Rockey's blog). The audience "oooh"-d and "aaah"-d a lot, and a number of the demos got rounds of applause. (That's a pretty good sign.) For my part, I spent a lot of time talking with customers and partners to see what they're doing with Visio, and learning about their industries and problems. The sheer volume and variety of stuff I saw reminded me how incredibly valuable it is to get out of the office and into the field - there's a lot of innovation out there, and you oftentimes miss things if you depend on the Web to tell you everything. So I'm pretty exhausted, but smiling. It's good to be home on a Saturday morning, you know? Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 21, 2006 12:51 PM. January 19, 2006Visio ConferenceThe Microsoft Visio Conference kicked off in downtown Seattle last night, and it runs through Friday. I'm attending (natch), so blog entries will likely continue to be light this week. (And, if you're planning to be there for some reason, look me up!) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 19, 2006 6:42 AM. January 18, 2006"Expedition: Everest" Ride VideosWow! Ricky Brigante (host of noted DisneyWorld podcast Inside the Magic) has secured not one, but two different ride videos of the soon-to-open "Expedition: Everest" at Disney's Animal Kingdom. The quality's shockingly good for what it is - which is basically a guy with a camcorder sitting in the back, trying to capture the ride and enjoy it at the same time. (Did I mention the coaster goes backwards? It. Goes. Backwards.) The first video is here (36.7 MB, QuickTime), and the second is here (33.1 MB, QuickTime). (I can't believe I missed the window to ride that puppy by only a few weeks. Dammit!) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 18, 2006 11:38 AM. January 14, 2006"Murderball"Last night, I watched a facinating, engrossing and uplifiting documentary called "Murderball" about the sport of Quadriplegic Wheelchair Rugby. It spends time with the official US Paralympic Team, and focuses on their intense rivalry with the Canadians as they prepare for the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens. First, a clarification - "quadriplegic" is not synonomous with "paralyzed." "Quadriplegic" means you're impaired in all four limbs, but obviously the level of impairment can change depending on the reason you're in that condition. Some of these guys were in motorcycle or car accidents, some are vets, some had polio as kids. Whatever the cause, each athlete gets a "point" (1.0, 1.5, 2.0, and so on) assigned to them, with higher points correlating to greater function. Any given team gets a total of 8 points on the court at any one time. The really fabulous thing about "Murderball" - aside from the fact that it's interesting, well-made, and full of people you come to know and like - is the unblinking, unsympathetic look at the lives of people with these disabilities. Mark Zupan, for example, is a regular guy who was injured about ten years ago. He went through rehab and now is a heavily-tattooed, highly-competitive athlete with a shaved head and a goatee, getting out on the court and trash-talking the guys he's up against. The fact that he's in a wheelchair is kind of beside the point - and that's the point of the movie. These guys are as raunchy and ribald as you'd expect, and they do address almost every aspect of their lives (including "The Sex Question" - the answers are "yes" and "as often as possible"). One other thing that comes shining through is the importance of sports like Wheelchair Rugby to the newly-injured. If you're an Iraq vet who just lost a leg or has nerve damage, you're probably in a lonely place, wondering what the rest of your life is going to hold. Murderball, the sport, gives you a way to see yourself succeeding, with a social outlet and the pride that comes with athletic accomplishment. It's an amazing movie. Don't miss it. UPDATE, May 13, 2006: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 14, 2006 11:12 AM. January 12, 2006Why I'm Not Buying A MacBook ProSo MacWorld was on Tuesday, and His Steveness dropped the (much-rumored-in-advance) bomb: Intel Macs are now shipping. This is, by most accounts, a good six months ahead of schedule. Last June, Steve stood up at WWDC and announced that the company would be shipping Intel machines "by this time next year." In the chronically-late-to-market computer industry, that's usually code for "by this time next year, we will have announced specific products that use Intel processors, which may or may not be available for sale at the moment we tell you about them." So to get actual for-sale, get-'em-while-they're-hot Intel-based Macs (or "IBM" - funny, huh?) here in January is, well, remarkable. So what'd we get? Well, we've got an iMac and a PowerBo- excuse me, a MacBook Pro (potentially the most artless name in the history of Apple Computer, and certainly one whose artlessness is competing with "Snakes on a Plane" in that department). I've watched the keynote, of course, and, as you might imagine, the machines look damn good when they're up on stage, being bathed in the soft glow of the Reality Distortion Field. (Speed gains of 4 to 5x on the MacBook? Holy crap!) And yet, despite my enthusiasm ... I'm not going to buy 'em. Richard thinks I'm crazy (like, craaaaayyyyyy-zeeeeee) for taking this position (oh, if you're interested in his old 17" PowerBook - for a good price - contact me), but my thinking is pretty straightforward. It goes like this. First, my current, one-year-old G4 PowerBook is a pretty damn good machine. So I don't need to buy anything. Buying now is all about want (which, when you think about it, is still enough to keep me in new iPods, but it's going to give pause when I'm thinking of dropping a few grand.) Second, these new machines are brand new: Apple has never shipped a machine with Intel processors before. And, as one who has bought more than his share of Macs over the years, I'm here to tell you that the First Rule Of Fight Club is: you do not buy the first generation of Apple hardware. Ever. There's something in Apple's v1 product that isn't quite right, or seemed like a good idea in the lab. It'll be fixed in v2, guaranteed. In the meantime, save your money and let someone else get the kinks out. Third, the speed gains on these new machines comes with an asterisk: thou shalt be running Intel-native applications in order to receive the increase. Yes, Tiger is now Intel-native, as is the iLife suite and a number of other day-to-day apps (BBEdit, for example). But the vast majority of apps (Photoshop, Office, Firefox, etc.) are still PowerPC binaries, which means that they'll be running under Rosetta for the forseeable future. This blunts the appeal of the machines a bit, because you have to pay a performance penalty for the emulation. Fourth, these machines have a lot of unknowns. How long does the battery in the MacBook last? Can you install Windows on the drive and dual-boot between Mac OS X and XP (or, for that matter, Linux)? (The guys over at Unsanity have a long post about what's being lost in the MacBook.) And so on. Yes, some of this will be addressed when the reviews come out in MacWorld, but see Point #1, above, about buying v1 Apple hardware. Fifth - and finally - I'm not buying because I suspect these machines aren't really that important. Oh, I don't mean "historically important" or anything - these computers will be known as The First Intel-based Macs forever more. Instead, what I'm talking about is a bit more subtle. When Steve announced the Intel transition, he talked a lot about "performance per watt" as the key performance metric of the Intel iron - that is, the Intel chips use less electricity to produce X amount of CPU power than the PowerPC does. Steve also talked about how this was going to allow Apple to "build the machines we want to build." And then, when we take the wraps off, we get ... two current machines with Intel processors. No, really. It's the same damn iMac that you could buy a week ago, but with an Intel chip. And the MacBook Pro, aside from the crappy name, is the same styling and finish as the current PowerBook, albeit with a built-in video camera and an Intel chip. These are the "machines we want to build?" Really? It sounds very "meet the new boss, same as the old boss," donchathink? ("Behold! We transitioned to Intel so we could produce machines identical to ones we were producing with PowerPC processors!") Yeah, right. Trust me: this is dipping the proverbial toe in the water. A little history: back in the late 1990s, as the PowerPC 601/603/604 architecture was getting long in the tooth, Apple had a popular 603-based PowerBook, the 3400. When the G3 processor came out, it offered substantial performance advantages over the 60x-series architecture, and Apple engineers promptly crammed it into the 3400 chassis, christening it the "PowerBook G3." It ran hot, but it ran, and for power-hungry early adopters, it was a wicked-fast laptop. Not much later, Apple introduced radically-redesigned G3-based laptops, code-named "WallStreet" that blew away the industry with their industrial design and performance. The v1 G3 PowerBook, for all the hoo-ha on introduction, was just a placeholder. And so, too, I suspect, are these new machines. (Interestingly, some parts of the blogosphere agree with me.) The true purpose of these machines is to goad the Apple developer community. "Look," Apple is saying, "We're not kidding about this Intel thing. Get on the stick and convert your application to something that works natively on Intel. We're moving fast, and you better keep up." Now that Apple has real, live, paying Intel-based customers, the folks over at Adobe et. al are far more incented to get their conversion groove on. And that's what Tuesday was all about. Mark my words: the next act is the really good one. We're going to get something different and special. And that's a show I'll buy a ticket to see. UPDATE, August 5, 2007: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 12, 2006 9:50 PM. January 11, 2006January 10 ConfabHot on the heels of my crazy Disney vacation, last night was the latest session of Confab. Despite my fatigue (flying takes it out of me every damn time), the show was a lot of fun to do. There were just 5 of us, and the conversation rambled from Pat Robertson's insanity to the futility of political protest today. The show is 1 hour, 21 minutes, and you can get it here. Enjoy! Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 11, 2006 9:24 PM. The Unofficial Microsoft Marketing Guy Uniform (tm)I get asked a lot about "dress code" at work, usually along the lines of, "What do people wear at Microsoft?" My answer, as usual, is "it depends." Microsoft has a "dress casually and comfortably" policy, which basically means you can wear whatever you want when you come to work. The ostensible reason for this policy is that it allows people to focus more on their projects, and less on trivial things like, you know, the appropriateness of the slogan on their t-shirt. As you might imagine, some abuse does occur. No, it's not as bad as the Dilbert cartoon ("Casual Day Has Gone Too Far It's really pretty funny. On the other end of the spectrum, you've got those of us who work in, or around, the black Satanic art of marketing. In the marketing discipline, it's important to look good (you never know when you'll have a customer come through, or a surprise interview loop), but nobody is really crazy about wearing anything too formal (especially - God forbid - a suit). The culture seems to have evolved a logical compromise in the following:
This outfit gives the marketing dude (or dudette) something casual (jeans!) while also being a step above a "No, I will not fix your computer" or "Snakes on a plane" t-shirt. What's funny, though, is that virtually everyone seems to have deduced this logical clothing compromise on their own. This results in a kind of dress code - the Unofficial Microsoft Marketing Guy Uniform. Get a group of marketing guys and gals together in one room, and hoo, boy - it's like a Banana Republic ad. (Underscoring this point, we Planners have a Wall Of Shame, featuring a series of photos where two (or more!) Planners happened to come to work one day dressed exactly the same way. Everyone on the team - including yours truly - is represented. ) Repeat after me: "you are all individuals!" Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 11, 2006 9:13 PM. January 9, 2006Back In PSTI'm home. The flight was uneventful (long, though - six hours on your butt is a bit too long, if you ask me) and I'm all caught up on my magazines and movies. I'm tired - travel takes it out of me. Damn, it's good to be back. I always love the smell of Seattle when I get off the plane - the clean, cold, refreshing smell of rain and the Pacific Northwest. I'm up early for work tomorrow, so I gotta run. Did I mention I had a lot of fun? (I had a lot of fun.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 9, 2006 11:59 PM. Stuck In OrlandoAugh! We're stuck in the Orlando airport. Our 5:50 flight has been delayed until 8 PM, and this place is a madhouse. People looking tired and stressed, unhappy kids, and the usual travel grumps are grousing more loudly. The one good thing is that they've got free (but slow as hell) WiFi here in the concourse. (sigh) Not exactly the ending I'd hoped for today, but as long as I get back in one piece, right? At least I can (finally) check my e-mail... Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 9, 2006 2:45 PM. January 8, 2006Day Six: Segways Rock!
We headed off to Epcot (Got the Soarin' FastPass? ... check!) for lunch at the UK, and then strolled around Innoventions for a bit. Innoventions is a series of exhibits and interactive games that help people "visualize the future" - but, since the future has this bad habit of actually happening, the exhibits tend to be three to 10 years out of date. When we were here last, some of the Innoventions stuff was laughable ("One day, people may use their computers to listen to music!" ... at which point I walked off the ride and spun up my iPod), and a lot of the exhibits seem driven more by what product a given corporate sponsor (e.g., IBM) wants to push, and less about engaging the imagination or educating people about new trends and tech. This time, though, we both saw something that really blew us away - the Segway. Look, I know the Segway is old news. Gob drives one on Arrested Development partly as a way of mocking them. I've read the book about its creation So it turns out that Disney offers Segway rentals. And it further turns out that they have two options - an inexpensive, hour-long classroom thing, and a more-expensive, two-hour long thing where you get to drive the Segway around Epcot's World Showcase before the park opens. We quickly hit the Guest Relations booth, only to be told that they were all booked up for the morning of Monday, the 9th. Phooey. Gregg's Greenlake Cycle allegedly rents Segways, though, and now we're all hot to try them. Richard gets pretty excited with shiny new tech, and I swear to God that if they took AmEx at the Innoventions booth, we'd be shipping one home by now. He practically drooled on the floor model. So we strolled. Strolled over to Norway and rode "Maelstrom." Strolled to France and watched the French film about French things that was clearly made in the 80s. We then hit Soarin' (yes!), and caught the boat over to MGM to ride Rock n' Roller Coaster one ... last ... time ... before the park closed (made it by 5 minutes, too!). For our final act, we thought we'd pop over to the Magic Kingdom and ride a few classics. The park formally closed at 8, but folks staying on Disney property (that's us) can take advantage of "Extra Magic Hours" - basically, the park stays open an extra three hours for resort guests. What they don't tell you about Extra Magic Hours is that they only operate a subset of the park's attractions. Richard wanted to do the Jungle Cruise - but it wasn't open. "it's a small world" was running, but a good chunk of the other rides were shuttered. So we did Small World, a final run through in Space Mountain, and called it a day. Our flight leaves tomorrow at 5:50 PM, but hotel checkout's at 11. (Travel days suck for trying to squeeze in that one extra thing anyhow, so that's likely for the better.) That means the vacation's over. Six days seems like the perfect number for relaxing, partying, and riding a good buncha stuff. (Heck, my Flickr photostream is sporting 329 shots!) I've had a blast, but I'm excited to get back. (Frankly, I feel like I've been gone a month or so!) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 8, 2006 2:41 PM. January 7, 2006Day Five: Minigolf Smackdown!
Of course, "sleeping in" in Orlando isn't quite the same as "sleeping in" in Seattle; with the three-hour time shift, getting up at 11 AM here means we're really getting up at 8 AM back home. So while 11 AM feels luxurious and indulgent at first blush ... it's not so much. Ah, well. The fourth (and final) Disney park on our list was Animal Kingdom. Animal Kingdom is the newest, smallest, and - frankly - weakest park among the four; its attractions are pretty lightweight, and the place lacks a "killer ride", ala "Rock n' Roller Coaster" to get people through the turnstiles. On the plus side, Animal Kingdom does have a lot of animals (natch) for you to look at, so it appeals as a zoo. It's a half-day park, tops. Thus, we hit a few rides, had some lunch, visited the petting zoo and called it an afternoon. (One distinct bummer about timing: Animal Kingdom is about to open their killer ride, called "Expedition Everest", in a few weeks' time. It's rumored to be the biggest and best roller coaster on the property. Cast members are currently able to participate in test rides, but it's not open to park guests at all. Which, for a coaster guy like me, really sucks.) During our time at Animal Kingdom, Richard and I ha d begun arguing about who was the better minigolfer - aka the 'ol "Don't Make Me Kick Your Ass On The Putting Green And Embarrass You In Front Of Everyone" conversation. I mean, I'd won the first round handily at Winter Summerland, and then he'd gone and had a good day at Fantasia Gardens two days later. But now we were stuck - Richard's mouth was clearly on a trajectory to get the rest of him in trouble, so we had to take our action back to the green and get this matter settled. We returned to Winter Summerland, loaded up with putters, two cans of Foster's, and a scorecard, and hit the "winter" half of the course. The game was close. I was ahead for the first few shots, but Huff pulled away after I had a disastrous Hole 8. Two of my famed holes-in-one put us within one point of one another, but then I got shafted with two bad short-game putts in a row on #16 and #17. In the end, he took me by four points. Bastard. As you might imagine, it's going to be a looooooooong flight home. And I swear, if I have to hear "boo-yah!" one more time, I'm going to murder somebody. Our evening entertainment was the Adventurer's Club (again) - we wanted to be able to spend a few hours soaking in the environment, participating in games in the Mask Room and the Treasure Room, as well as the final evening sing-a-long. Two funny notes. First, Richard purchased a maroon sweatshirt at the Epcot Canada pavilion a few days ago. It says "ROOTS" across the front, and has a small Canadian flag at the bottom. Ever since he bought it, people have been stopping him to ask a) for directions and b) if he's Canadian. It's very funny. So we get to the Adventurer's Club and Richard is randomly picked by one of the actors for harassment. He's hauled to his feet and asked if he's Canadian ... and he elects to play along. He tells them he's from Vancouver, and then proceeds to answer all kinds of questions about Grouse Mountain, Stanley Park, you name it. And then they make him (and another guy) do this dance in the club. Now, I have this dance captured in a crappy video format on my mobile phone. It's, um, hysterical. And no, I'm not sharing it. But you know, if someone decides to mouth off a bit too much about the minigolf thing ... well, payback's a bitch, huh? Second, I apparently look like Zach Braff. I'm sitting in the Treasure Room and one of the actors is doing his spiel. Suddenly, he stops, puts his hand on my shoulder, leans in, and says, "I love you on Scrubs." Huge laugh. (I've heard this before from other friends, but candidly - I don't see it. Do I really look like Zach Braff???) We partied late, crashed hard. I don't even remember when we got back to the room. The Flickr photostream is now up to 304 images! Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 7, 2006 2:09 PM. January 6, 2006Day Four: Rock n' Roller Coaster (At Last)
Like Space Mountain, Rock n' Roller Coaster is a steel coaster inside a darkened building. Unlike Space Mountain, Rock n' Roller Coaster has a zero-to-sixty launch time of 2.8 seconds, loops, corkscrews, hard turns, and a kick-ass soundtrack provided by Aerosmith. It's fast, fun, intense, and something I can ride over and over and over and over and over again. So today, we hit Disney-MGM, and I got on this sucker twice. Wahoo! MGM is different from the other Disney Parks in its tight focus on staged entertainment. MGM has stunt shows, musicals, and other performances that the audience can sit back and watch. It's not so big on rides. That said, aside from the aforementioned Rock n' Roller, it's also home to a fantastic drop ride - "The Twilight Zone Tower Of Terror". Like Rock n' Roller, I can ride Tower of Terror all day long. Unlike Rock n' Roller, however, Richard has steadfastly refused to step foot on the thing. Ever. He wasn't having and part of it when we were here in 2002, and he wasn't having any part of the one they built at California Adventure when we were there in November. The ride's fun, and it's harmless. You do, you know, drop 13 stories and all, and it's creepy-fun with the whole Twilight Zone thing, but it's not queasy-inducing or dangerous or anything. In fact, it's much less scary than those straight-drop rides you see at most Six Flags parks. And so, with much arm-twisting and cajoling ... I got him to go. He didn't exactly rave about the experience, but he certainly grumbles less about it. Which is something, right? Our final event at MGM was a staged show called "Lights, Motors, Action!" which is an import from Disneyland Paris. It's a 30-minute stunt show with cars, motorcycles, jumps, fireballs, jetskis and guys falling off buildings. Pretty astoundingly cool, and very entertaining. A definite thumbs-up. After having such a blast at Winter Summerland minigolf on Wednesday, we thought it might be fun to hit Fantasia Gardens and do a round there. The route from MGM to Fantasia Gardens is quite walkable (it's about 2 miles), so we elected to hoof it. The golf round was a lot of fun. Fantasia Gardens is a harder, more elaborate course than Winter Summerland - more gimmicks (water spouts, trick shots, and so on), steeper banking, more skill. We worked our way around the 18 holes, each scoring a couple holes-in-one. Richard took this round by a narrow, 2-point margin. With our evening in front of us, we thought it might be fun to hit Epcot and do some of the stuff we didn't get to last time. We continued along the path from MGM (it runs to the Boardwalk, and, ultimately, Epcot, popping out right next to France and the UK in World Showcase). We caught "Journey Into Imagination" (which sucks, by the way, unless you have reeeeeeeally small children), found out that "Soarin'" was all sold out for the evening (dammit!), but managed to slip on to "Mission: SPACE" again. And then, one of the guests in our car barfed during the ride. (They provide barf bags, just like an airline, so I assume this happens a lot.) Actually, the popularity of Mission: SPACE is something of a hot topic between the two of us. Richard loves the ride, the same way I love Soarin' or Rock n' Roller Coaster. The lines for Space aren't too bad, though - usually, they're 20 or 30 minutes, as opposed to Soarin's perpetual 80-minute-wait-and-all-the-FastPasses-are-gone scenario. Some of this can be explained by the fact that Soarin' is just newer, but I think it goes beyond that. I think people are actually scared of Mission: SPACE; its intensity puts people off. Interestingly, we did some research on this, and it turns out that Rock n' Roller coaster pulls far more G-forces than Space does. But still, nobody has died after going on Rock n' Roller Coaster. (And hopefully, it'll stay that way.) We rounded off our Epcot evening with dinner and a run on "Test Track". All in all, an excellent day. (The Flickr photostream is now up to 245 images.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 6, 2006 2:05 PM. January 5, 2006Day Three: Mine Trains, Parasailing & Hathaway Browne
We were up and out the door fairly early to head over to the Magic Kingdom. While we'd hit some rides on our first night here, there were a handful of other attractions, like Splash Mountain and Pirates of the Caribbean that needed our attention. So off we went, doing Pirates, Big Thunder, Splash Mountain and the Carousel of Progress. Sadly, "it's a small world" was too painful a ride for Richard to bear, so we skipped it. (sigh) I get asked a lot by people who have never been to Disney World if it's "like Disneyland." The answer is a qualified yes - many of the same attractions exist in both places, along with other theme park-y things like $5 bottled water and tacky t-shirts. But the thing about Florida is that it has space. Disney took 28,000 acres of swampland and terraformed it, engineering lakes and beaches along with the hotels, parks, rides, roads, and the rest. All of this is a long-winded way of saying that, after lunch, we strolled over to the watersports section of the Contemporary Resort to go parasailing. No, really. The Magic Kingdom is on the north shore of a large body of water called the Seven Seas Lagoon. The lagoon feeds in to another, larger body of water - Bay Lake - just to the east of it. The Contemporary resort straddles the two bodies of water; they have boat rental services, among other things. And if you're so inclined, you can go parasailing over Bay Lake for 10 minutes or so. It was fabulous. Florida's pretty damn flat, so when you're 450 feet in the air you can see - well, not forever, exactly, but you can certainly survey the park. It's easy to pick out landmarks (Epcot! Tower of Terror!), and you also get a sense of just how huge Disney World really is. Both Richard and I went up in the air - and I have to say, I think he enjoyed it more than he expected to. If you're so inclined, you can see a video of Richard's return to the boat (115 MB, AVI format); notice the huge smile on his face. Freshly pumped up on adrenaline, we caught the monorail to Epcot (hmmm, a monorail as a way of getting around ... I wonder if something like that would work for Seattle...), and promptly shot over to get FastPasses for Soarin'. It was only 3 PM, but the ride was dispensing passes for 8 PM. With 5 hours to kill, we elected to go wait in line for Mission: SPACE. And, hoo, boy - does that ride blast your hair back. "SPACE" is an astronaut flight simulator. You're on a manned mission to Mars, going through the process of Earth liftoff, negotiating a lunar slingshot, and finally finagling a Martian landing. The ride is incredible - it uses a centrifuge to provide some extraordinary G-forces. (The liftoff, in particular, has to be experienced to be believed.) And yes, barf bags are included. This is easily Richard's favorite ride on the property, and with good reason. I've never done anything quite like it. The next few hours were spent walking around World Showcase, checking out the CircleVision movies in the China and Canada pavilions, shopping, eating, and mostly hanging out. We rode Soarin' at 8 (it's a direct clone of the ride from California Adventure), and then caught the bus over to Downtown Disney and Pleasure Island. Pleasure Island is a "grownup" section of Disney World, composed of dance and comedy clubs. The audience is decidedly younger, sort of a Spring Break crowd on the make. Depending on your tastes, you can dance to 70s and 80s, listen to jazz, or watch improv comedy. But we both came for the Adventurer's Club. The Adventurer's Club is an improv comedy club done in the style of a 30s country club. The host, Hathaway Browne, is a blowhard who has traveled the world and brought back all manner of artifacts to decorate the place. He is accompanied by other members of the club, each of whom walks around and interacts with each of the (increasingly) drunk members of the audience. The jokes are pretty ribald, with more double entendres than a Bond film. The last performance of the evening pulls everyone into the library for a hysterical song-and-dance number. We got to the club too late to hang out as long as we'd like, so we'll be going back later this week. (The Flickr photostream is now up to 182 images.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 5, 2006 11:55 PM. January 4, 2006Day Two: Blizzard Beach Birthday
(Oh, and happy birthday to me - 33 years on the planet!) Blizzard Beach is one of two themed (natch) water parks here in the World (the other is Typhoon Lagoon). I'd never been to Blizzard Beach; the last few times I'd come to the World, it had been closed for refurbishment. But this time 'round, Typhoon was the one being renovated. Score. The Blizzard Beach gimmick story is that Florida was hit by a freak snowstorm a while back, and a ski resort was built to take advantage of it. Then the sun came out, and now the whole thing is sitting here, melting in the snow. The park has a working chairlift (!) and loads of long-run, high-speed slides, including the "Summit Plummet" which shoots you out at 55 mph(!). Richard and I had a blast. Blizzard Beach has a bunch 'o competitive rides, like toboggans and timed-innertube races, so we wound up trash talkin' and doing a whole lotta racing against one another - laughing and being obnoxious the entire time. (Oh, and generally Richard got spanked.) After a few hours in the sun, we hoofed it out of the park and over to the Winter Summerland minigolf course. I'm a minigolf freak - if there's a dancing hippo and a putting green within about two miles, I'm generally able to sniff it out. So we spent an hour or so maneuvering the ball around Santa and his elves. And, as the cherry on top, it was an under-par game for the both of us. Quick trip to the hotel, change of clothes, and off to Downtown Disney to see the resident Cirque du Soleil show - "La Nouba". The Cirque folks have a permanent installation in the "Westside" section, so the plan was to get dinner at the Bongos Cuban restaurant at 7, and then head over to the show ... until Bongos lost our reservation and was totally unhelpful about doing anything about it. (Fortunately, the day was saved by the World's Best Waiter at Wolfgang Puck, who got us in and out in 30 minutes flat.) If you've never seen Cirque du Soleil, go. Seriously. I can't recommend it enough. It's kind of a strange thing to explain - I'm forever telling people what it's not ("OK, so it's like a circus, but they don't use animals, right? And they have clowns, but they're not, like, creepy or skanky or anything. And they use acrobats, too, and other kinds of physical artists, but it's not all Barnum and Bailey or anything..."), but that's because it's such a unique experience that there's no good baseline for comparison. So let me just say this: Cirque du Soleil is one of those experiences that gives you a renewed appreciation for the human body, training, art, and music. It's incredible. Now, I'd seen "La Nouba" back in 2002 (Richard hadn't caught that show, being that he was prepping for the marathon at the time), and was so impressed that I'd gone on to see "O" and "Mystere" in Las Vegas later that year. I've also seen the traveling shows that come to Seattle now and again (e.g., "Dralion"). So I can say with authority that "La Nouba" is the best of the lot. Astounding, astounding stuff. (My Flickr photostream is up to 74 images.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 4, 2006 11:47 PM. Day One: My Tomorrowland Can Beat Up Your Tomorrowland
We got to the park 'round 8:30, with a parade going full-blast down Main Street. Fireworks were scheduled for 9; the park closed at 10. We looked at one another and said, "Tomorrowland." And thus began the fun task of threading through throngs of slow-moving tourists, each of whom had a 50% chance of stopping, pointing, and going, "ooooh, look!" as some parade float went by. At which point they'd stop. Grr. We made it through in one piece. Tomorrowland was busy, but not packed; the parade n' fireworks were siphoning off large numbers of people. So we hit Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, Space Mountain, and the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. And then, with just minutes to spare before closing, we slid in under the wire at The Haunted Mansion. With my recent Disneyland trips so fresh in memory, I was struck by a lot of the differences between the Magic Kingdom's Tomorrowland and the Real Thing back in Anaheim. Without being too blunt, lemme just say: Anaheim is better. Period, full stop, end of argument. The California version of Buzz Lightyear, for example, is a markedly better ride. The ray guns you use are on flexible tubes, letting you point them every which way; in Orlando, they're firmly welded to the dashboard of your vehicle (making for a semi-frustrating experience). In Orlando, when you shoot a bad guy, the target doesn't light up to let you know you've scored. When you leave Orlando's version, you're not even given a freebie, e-mail-able photo of yourself and your friend, with your score embedded. Instead, you have to buy a score-free old-school picture. Bleh. (And the ride is dirtier, grungier - that sounds like a nit, but it's not.) And then there's Space Mountain. The Anaheim Space Mountain is a brand-spanking-new, modern coaster with kick-ass effects and music that's synchronized to the ride. The Orlando Space Mountain is a 35-year-old roller coaster in the dark. There's no comparison between the two. At all. Anaheim makes Orlando look old n' busted. Disney really ought to rebuild the Orlando version as soon as possible. We're talking potential brand damage, here, people. One thing for Orlando, though, is the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. The Disneyland version, the PeopleMover, was discontinued back in the '90s and replaced, eventually, with the RocketRods, which broke down too often and were themselves shuttered. As a result, Orlando has a cool, five-minute arial tour of Tomorrowland (and you get to go through Space Mountain, which rocks); Anaheim has, uh, defunct track. Yeah. Point goes to Orlando. So we're here, and we're in one piece, and we're having a ball. But don't let anybody fool you: the Tomorrowland you want is the Tomorrowland in California. Seriously. (Oh, and my Flickr photostream can be found here.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 4, 2006 3:25 PM. January 3, 2006Off To OrlandoVACATION! Richard and I are off to Walt Disney World for the next week. We'll be riding the "Rock n' Roller Coaster", catching Cirque du Soleil, and chilling out in the Adventurer's Club. I also got Richard a gift certificate to go parasailing on Bay Lake, so I assume one of the two of us will be a good 450 feet in the air at some point. I've no idea if I get in-room Internet (we're staying at "Disney's Screaming Children Resort"), but if so, I'll try to upload my photostream as we go. I'm off to catch transit to the airport. Have a great week, everybody! Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 3, 2006 5:23 AM. January 2, 2006"Power Steer"I went vegetarian in 1997 as part of a get-healthy program. I needed to lose weight (and did), so changing out my diet seemed to be a great way to kickstart the process. Vegetables, generally, are much less calorically dense than meat products - you can eat (and feel full) but only take in 200 calories instead of 400. (Note that this assumes you're not adopting the "Doritos aren't meat, so they're a staple vegetarian food" program.) Over the past few years, I've begun relaxing my standards (sushi was the "gateway meat") until reverting last year to full-on omnivore status. But recent conversations with friends of mine, coupled with articles about PCB's in fish and books and movies like "Fast Food Nation After last week's Confab, Brian shot me an article from the New York Times, ("Power Steer") about a guy who bought a calf and then followed its life as it was raised, fattened, and slaughtered. It's fascinating: "American regulators permit hormone implants on the grounds that no risk to human health has been proved, even though measurable hormone residues do turn up in the meat we eat. These contribute to the buildup of estrogenic compounds in the environment, which some scientists believe may explain falling sperm counts and premature maturation in girls. Recent studies have also found elevated levels of synthetic growth hormones in feedlot wastes; these persistent chemicals eventually wind up in the waterways downstream of feedlots, where scientists have found fish exhibiting abnormal sex characteristics." So, anyway ... I'm back off meat for 2006. Boca burgers, anyone? Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 2, 2006 1:10 PM. January 1, 2006Happy New YearHappy new year, everyone! May your 2006 be full of life, love, and surprise. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 1, 2006 10:18 AM. |
" I'd seen a recent mention of it in a magazine, and managed to snag it from the 
We're leaving tomorrow, so today was the get-it-done-before-you-go day, handling the few things we thought might be fun to do (once), and a few others we wanted to do again. (But no rush.)
Today was a sleep-in day.
When it comes to rides at Disney World, there's only one that's really worth talking about. I'm speaking, of course, of the 
Today was a long day.
For our second day here at Disney World, we decided to go play at a water park.
Richard and I arrived in Orlando around 5, and, after much fooling around with shuttles, buses, and the lines, lines, lines to get checked in to the hotel, we dropped our crap on the floor of the room and hoofed it over to