So its been a little while since I posted...internet connection was acting up regularly, and it seemed like every time I wanted to come on and start writing something, the slow ass speed would get me into a really bad mood, and since I'd already posted a rant on my crappy interwebz, I'd just end up not writing anything.
Today though, the connection's been fairly good so far (keeping fingers n toes crossed right now) and even if it starts being shitty, I'm gonna power through, and write some positive stuff.
Firstly, for anyone who didnt see the post on my facebook page, just LOOK at this girl. That is quite certainly the BEST Voltron costume I've ever seen. Here's another picture of it, with the helmet on. In fact, its probably the best robot costume i've ever seen.
What I love about it more than that though, is the fact that that girl almost certainly didnt see the Voltron cartoon on TV...its been off the air for probably the last two decades or so. Which means that her awesomely crazy, anime loving asian parents , probably introduced her to it on dvd, got her hooked on its awesomeness, and then went and built her the most amazing costume. I'd like to think that it was basically her dad, making up for the fact that HE never got to fulfill his voltron costume dreams as a kid. Its certainly something I would do :-D
In fact, I think that without a doubt, the best reason for having kids would simply be getting to play with their toys, and building cool costumes and things. And unlike children's tv shows (which seem to have progressively got worse and worse from the cool shows we had when WE were young), toys on the other hand, have constantly got better and more incredible. Cant wait to have a legit excuse to buy lego mindstorm systems, and those robotic toys, and indoor remote control helicopters....actually, who am I kidding, I'd happily walk into a toy store and buy any of those today. In fact, I really do mean to buy the chopper :-D
Something else that I'd meant to blog about was Sachin's unbelievable double hundred in that second ODI against SA. Would have called the post Two-ton Tendulkar, and waxed lyrical about it, but since its sorta old news now, I'll just link you to two of the best pieces written about it. One here from Harsha Bhogle, and the other on Cricinfo's own blog.
It was also quite interesting following some of the twitter feeds related to the match while it was on live. Even had Shane Warne himself commenting on it, and apparently during those last few historic moments of the innings, 3/10 of the trending topics on Twitter were about Tendulkar, which is something that even Apple didnt manage to achieve with all the hype around its iPad launch.
And speaking of Apple, their forthcoming lawsuit of HTC caught my attention, mainly because it seems that more than HTC, Apple's aiming squarely at Android. A full breakdown of the various patents that were supposedly infringed is available here, but its a fairly long read, so u'll have to be really interested in the details to bother.
What bothers me, is that these patents range from some granted in '95 or '96, all the way to one that was granted early last month, so if there was really a lot of infringement going on, why wasnt this taken up earlier? Equally, after reading through some of the patents, its amazing how broad the wording is...one of them is for 'unlocking a device by performing gestures on an unlocking image', while another is called 'system and method for managing power conditions within a digital camera device'.
Two things to take away from this. Firstly, the US patent office needs a kick in the head for granting some of these patents in their current form, which are so obscure and generically worded that they stifle the creativity and development of other firm's products, and waste millions in meaningless legal battles that draw on for years. And secondly, Apple is coming off as being hugely petty, using this lawsuit in a proxy war against Google and Android. Hope that the creative community, which can appreciate the issues of patents, copyrights and IP in general, will be just a little more reluctant to hop onto the Apple bandwagon now. (Once again, fingers and toes crossed ;-)
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