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Post them here (and before the keynote starts) if you want to take credit for them.

I don't have any predictions myself ((I've been happier to adopt a low-expecation-and-thus-I-am-never-let-down approach to Stevenotes.)), but I will say this: if there's a thin MacBook of some kind at about $1500 to $1700, I may just buy two (especially given Screen Sharing in Leopard). I have a 20% developer discount but it'd only apply to one. I need to replace the 12" PowerBook. We only use the 12" here for word processing, web surfing, email. I occasionally use it to grab photos from CF cards when I'm on the road, so the ability to run Photoshop would be a welcome feature.

Thinking of having essentially "interchangeable" computers in the house makes me wonder why in the hell .Mac is still required to do things like synchronize accounts. Macs set up with the same logins should sync via local network using built-in software. Sure, if they did that, one of the only two reasons I still use .Mac would be gone ((Email is the other. I like it, but probably not $100 worth.)), but so what?

P.S. For those stuck at home like me, here and here as well as Twitter and AIM will have to suffice.

Descent³ + Call of Duty 4 = Gaming Goodness.

I can't remember why I'm thinking about Descent today, but man that game was fun. Basically, an updated version of Descent built for online play would be awesome.

The Penguins finally lost a game. It took a pretty silly goal and a shootout victory (by Mark Recchi of all people - if he played like he's been playing he wouldn't have been released by Pittsburgh) to do it, but their streak doesn't quite reach ten in a row. The streak dates back to before the Winter Classic. The Pens now have one of the five best records in hockey and are two points back in the Atlantic Division.

But even this early, one wonders if any team will be able to stop Detroit in the post-season.

You know, I still haven't quite adjusted to calling them MacBooks. Though I despise the name less now than before, I still wish the "PowerBook" name lived on and I think "Air" is a pretty hippie-sounding name for a computer, real or imaginary.

With Adium logs showing the product it seems like an even bigger certainty now. Is this the only "big" thing coming next Tuesday? iTunes going entirely DRM-free would be bigger news to me.

This comment on the iPhone sums up a lot of things rather nicely:

iPhone is the first device that actually makes me feel as if I'm living in the 21st century. We don't need flying cars: just well thought out devices.

From "gambit-7" here.

Every time I pick up Call of Duty 4 I thank the stars I've never had to go to war. This game, largely due to its realistic guns, scares the crap out of me. Though I know that training, the survival instinct, and all manner of other things come into play, sometimes I wonder how everyone in real-life gunfights manages not to crap themselves and curl into the fetal position. It's scary shit.

That's not to say I don't love sniping someone in the face - I do. It's just that in those times when I ask myself "what if this was not a game" I get very, very scared. I mean, can you imagine? And yet people do this every day. Wow.

P.S. This isn't an anti-war post or anything of the sort.

It must be.

I have a hard time believing Apple wouldn't have at least put out an update that would add a "2008" album to the built-in smart albums by now if it wasn't. Right? 😛

This is a follow-up to the ongoing story I first wrote about here.

Time-Warner officials paid me a visit today. I won't elaborate on how I got to this point, but I will say that I felt I deserved an answer and that I was polite in taking the steps I've taken. Time-Warner's response has been polite, expedient, and overall impressive.

Three types of Time-Warner engineers came to my house today. I won't give their names or job titles, but I will say that they seemed to represent every level above the technicians that normally come to your house as well as the "PM" tech level.

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A lot of photographers commit to a sort of "365 Project" every new year wherein they take (and post) one photo every day of the year. It's designed to get photographers off their duffs and creating imagery every day, whether they feel like it or not.

That sort of thing never quite appealed to me, but towards the end of last year I had an idea that would make such a "365" project a bit more fun. I got busy over the holidays and didn't even have a chance to blog about the idea, as I'm doing now, and was somewhat bummed. Then I realized: 365 projects (or derivatives) don't have to start on January 1. So now I'm pursuing this again…

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Several (most?) of the trees in our yard have now been taped up. The majority got orange tape, meaning "cut it down." A few got pink tape - which means "ask us" (which usually itself means "trim it").

In the spring, we're having a guy take out all the rocks and walkways and mulch and seed the area. We'll put some small hedges along the back two edges of our yard (where it slopes off dramatically).

All of this will allow us to put a swingset and/or play house in the back yard, hopefully with enough room left over that I can practice some short pitch and chip shots.

For the purposes of this question, a few things that aren't "online" include LANs, web-based games, and single-player games.

Post a comment with your thoughts if you'd like as well.

The Pensblog cracks me up.

Including the Winter Classic, the Penguins have been on a bit of a roll. They've won five in a row and six of their last seven. The third-string goalie is 6-0 and has started several games in a row.

Barry Melrose talked last night about Sidney Crosby through 200 games. Gretzky had something like 412 points through his first 200 games. Lemieux was next with 320-ish, IIRC. Crosby has something like 210-ish (again, bad memory here, but something like that). The goalies in the 80s were smaller, less athletic, and had smaller pads. The game was more about skill and less about grinding it out in the corners.

P.S. Conk block. Heh.

Post in the comments with your 2008 predictions for the wild and woolly world of technology. Check back in a year to see how many of your predictions hold up.

Mine are, in no particular order and heavy on the Apple stuff, as follows:

1. Apple will introduce no new hardware - just updates to current products (including any subnotebooks, which will still be "MacBook-like;" a tablet would count as "new," though).
2. AAPL will wander north of $250.
3. Apple will reach their goal of selling 10M iPhones.
4. "Swanni" is wrong - AppleTV will be updated and will begin to sell even more.
5. Apple will sign another major label to sell DRM-free music.
6. One of the last bottlenecks in computing - the rotating platter hard disk - will start to die. We'll begin seeing flash memory disks in computers.
7. Nintendo will get its act together and ship enough Wiis, but not for many, many months.
8. There won't be a winner in the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war, and the possibility of a third "joint" format will begin to take hold.
9. Consumer apathy regarding CDs and DVDs will reach an all-time high. The RIAA will continue to piss people off and the DVD format wars will alienate consumers and studios.
10. The Kindle will still exist, but won't be seen as a success.

Post your predictions in the comments.

The first two minutes of this video are lame, but the energy contained in the sequence of shootout attempts is electric.

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As I did last year, here are the results of my 2007 blogging.

                 2007  2006   2005   2004   2003   2002
                 ----  ----   ----   ----   ----   ----
Posts             493   560    940    993   1335     68
Comments         2961  2832   4956   7104   5491      9
Ratio            6.01  5.06   5.27   7.15   4.11   0.13

Comments         2961  2832   4956   7104   5491      9
My Comments       362   459    545    749    639      0
Ratio            0.12  0.16   0.11   0.11   0.12   0.00

Avg. Length       994   925    824   1023   1195   1836

So, I blogged and commented less frequently in 2007 than in 2006, but I wrote more per post and received more comments. In general, that could mean I posted more thoughtful content. Or maybe the switch to WordPress late last year made it easier for people to comment.