Tag: technology

Black Mirror is the best show I’ve seen in a while

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Recently, I just finished watching all episodes of Black Mirror on Netflix.  It still seems weird to say it, but I think it’s the best television series I’ve watched in a long time, because it’s one of those series that this opinion didn’t really formulate until I had some time to think about and process the episodes, and then I realize that I’m spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about the show and coming to a slower realization that it really a god damn good show.

I think the best way to describe the show, other than the fact that every episode is pretty self-contained and nobody has to watch them in any particular order, but the stories told, the concepts used, and the twists in the plot, they stick with you.  Seriously, the last time a show stuck with me so hard was Parks & Rec, which is a hilarious comparison to make, given the fact that Black Mirror is pretty much the polar opposite of Parks & Rec in almost every conceivable way.  Yet I favor both shows tremendously, in spite of their dramatically differing places on the spectrum.

Black Mirror should come with a trigger warning however, because they certainly seem to hit notes on a regular basis that, at least for me, that manages to trigger a fear, anxiety or line of thinking that is part revelation, part discovery, and part oh shit.  Regardless of that, I think that’s what makes the show such a unique program, in the fact that they so regularly manage to accomplish those kinds of emotional responses, which I think is ultimately what show creators should aspire to be getting.

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Impending misery

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When I unplugged, packed up and moved my PC, I didn’t think much of it.  I have two other laptops that I use that satiate standard needs that there was no real rush to getting my system back up and running in any timely fashion.  So, for the better part of the last month, my PC had been sitting dormant, a black box surrounded by wound up cords and monitors.

So naturally, the moment I needed to retrieve something important off of my PC, it would be at this moment that I’d discover that the hard drive inside of it seems to have died.  Now I’ve dealt with hard drive failures in the past, and it’s never particularly pleasant, but the timing of this one combined with the fact that this wasn’t a hand-me-down machine like several of those before this one, but one I purchased myself with hopes that I could ride it for a good bit, which I did, has made this particular hard drive failure a particularly hard pill to swallow.

Not to mention that pretty much everything important to me, from photography, sensitive documents, websites, writing and all of my work samples and professional information were on it.  Not just from the last six years that I’ve had this PC, but from many more years before it, all transferred and preserved throughout my time of owning computers in general.

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TLC Go: my prayers have been answered

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I remember having a conversation with some friends about the progression of the television industry, and how television today is going down the route of individual network apps with trying to give people the long-awaited ability to pick and choose the things they want to watch, a la carte.  Somewhere along the conversation came the question that if we could only have one network to watch, what would it be?

Unconsciously, I said TLC.  Didn’t even hesitate to say it.  And I guess because it’s true, that if I had to be limited to watching a single network, the endless train car of train wreck shows would have to be it, since wrestling and sports do eventually get repetitive, nature shows have too much overlap and recycling and David Attenborough isn’t going to live forever to narrate them all, and if I had to pick between trash-fiction and trash-reality, I’m going with TLC.

Well, in a rare wish come true, I recently discovered that TLC actually does have their own network app now: TLC Go.  Granted, it’s only available on platforms such as Roku or AppleTV, or via Android or iOS, which kind of inhibits the ability to watch on XBOX or PissNetwork, but I have the capability of still being able to take advantage of its existence.

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Love it but hate it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Nintendo reveals Switch, the gaming console that allows you to play games handheld as well as on television

The technology behind this is truly game breaking.  I’m very much in awe at Nintendo’s ambitions and forward thinking when it comes to the gaming industry.  Microsoft and Sony aren’t even remotely in the same stratosphere when it comes to competing with Nintendo visions, because they’re too busy fighting each other, churning out products that require a hundred updates a week with a video game occasionally playable.

I’d love to read or hear about the creative concepting behind Switch; and the moments when they realized that it wasn’t impossible to feasibly create something that could be played on televisions as well as through handheld capacity.  On top of that, it’s designed to be a very social gaming system, that allows for lots of multiplayers, as long as controllers are available.  It probably was something really inspirational to be a part of.

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Korea Stories: Random Observations

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The following is more or less going to be a list of random observations I made while in Korea that didn’t really fit into the mold of any one chunk of posts.  That being said, it’s also indicative that I’m pretty much at the end of the rope when it comes to writing about my experiences in Korea.

Internet is as good as you’ve probably heard: When you use the internet in Korea, coming back to America and using my Comcast “high-speed” service that I pay a premium penny for on a monthly basis feels like going from a jet to a Ford Festiva.  Wi-fi, at a public hotel, with many users concurrently connected, was still pulling 60 down and 60 up, speeds that rival my own private connection, hard-wired.  And it was like that everywhere I went; I know, because out of curiosity, I was running the SpeedTest app just to see how good Korean internet speeds were.

Cabs are dirt cheap.  I was often doing math in my head while in Korea in regards to trying to find the USD equivalent of everything I was spending.  It’s easiest to round up or down, to where it’s a 1 to 1,000 when converting a dollar to Korean Won, so basically chopping off the last three digits was the easiest to rationalize the dollar amount of things.  I rode in a lot of cabs, because after the amount I was walking, sometimes I just didn’t want to hoof it for more miles to get to the nearest train station.  But whereas in the States, a cab ride for just a few blocks easily ticks its way to $10 and up, I was baffled to see how often times a cab ride for a considerable distance, often started at roughly $3, and only once did I spend more than $10 on a cab ride, and that was a good distance.

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Diffusing an iBomb

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I take a modicum of pride in the fact that I have a paid off phone, free and clear.  I purchased my iPhone 5 back in 2013, making the switch from Android, and have not had any regrets.  I find iOS to be way more stable and easier to use, and the tiniest things that bothered me like a lag in swipes or keying in characters that plagued Android, were mostly not the case in iOS.

When the iPhone 6 and 6S emerged, it was a transitional time for the entire smartphone industry, in the fact that the old model of selling phones at a massive discount, but under two-year contracts were phased out, and that a new process of leasing phones, and basically paying for the entire cost of a phone over a span of time became the norm.

A lot of people were cool with this, because they simply loved the idea that there were no contracts, and that new phones could be acquired in a more timely fashion than those who lasted 20 months with a phone, grew impatient and anxious, and couldn’t not count down the days until the contract ended and they could get a new phone.

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HP’s new logo is stupid

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Short story shorter: Hewlett-Packard introduces new logo which will start being on display with HP’s Spectre laptop series.

Here’s the thing, once you know that it’s by HP, it’s easier to visually identify the H and the P, because your brain is basically filling in the gaps for you.  But if you didn’t know that this was HP for Hewlett-Packard, then who’s to say that it’s an H and a P?  It could be a lower-case B, followed by a P, or even a lower-case B, followed by a lower-case R?

Or who says they’re even letters at all?  It’s almost like a hand-symbol like the shocker.  Or maybe it’s claw marks or something, for a company that takes its namesake from a ferocious animal?

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