A test

So Chinese naval vessels surrounded and harassed a U.S. sub-hunting vessel operating near China but in international waters.

Funny how this sort of thing always happens shortly after a new president takes office.

The funniest thing I read all week

Was this piece from Cracked.com. I was literally in tears during lunch today.

It’s funny how when I was growing up, Cracked was the lame, wanna-be Mad Magazine. But now it’s successfully reinvented itself as an irreverent online humor site on par with The Onion.

Missing the point

Here’s another piece by someone slamming the Kindle because it turns out that a cheap netbook computer can act as an e-reader, too!

Happily, the assertion is fully refuted by the accompanying photo. Why, yes! Tilting a laptop sideways to read a book is a perfectly natural and attractive thing to do!

Hey, know what? I can listen to my music collection on my laptop, too. But you don’t see me wandering around town with headphones on and my laptop tucked under my arm.

The Kindle is useful because it does for books what the iPod did for music. It creates a stylish (well, the Kindle 2 does, anyway) and convenient way to read your books or listen to your music.

Why is this so hard for some people to understand?

Kindle math

I am sorely tempted to get the new Kindle. I really liked all the features of the first version but, truth be told, it was just too damn fugly. Thankfully, Amazon not only gave the second iterationof its ground-breaking e-book a badly-need facelift, it seems they also fixed several shortcomings while improving the features that did work.

As part of my ongoing internal deliberations, I decided to run the math on my book purchases and see where the Kindle would net out.

James Martin at PC Worlddid this a couple days ago, but I have some issues with his calcuations. First, he says this:

For the sake of argument, let’s say I’m an avid reader who buys two paperbacks per month from Amazon. The average price of a book on Amazon’s top 10 nonfiction paperback bestseller list is $16.19 (based on my calculations). If I bought 24 paperbacks a year, that’s $32.38 per month or $388.56 a year.

I’m not sure where he’s getting those prices. I couldn’t find a “Amazon’s non-fiction paperback bestseller list”, though I did find a New York Times non-fiction paperback bestseller list. The prices on those books ranged from about $9 to $12, not the $16 Martin found.

Martin’s bottom line?

Still, my number crunching reveals that even a loyal reader of paperbacks would only have saved $58.82 by the end of the second year of Kindle 2 ownership.

My instincts told me that while the Kindle wouldn’t realize massive savings for typical readers, it would offer a bit more than $59 a year. So I looked at some real-world numbers, namely, my own actual purchasing history from the past year.

In the last 12 months, I bought 24 books from Amazon costing a total of $311.03 before tax. Sixteen of those are available in Kindle editions that would have cost a total of $150.61. Those 16 books cost $200.45, so switching to the Kindle would have saved $50. If all 24 of my purchases were available in Kindle editions, they would have cost $233, saving me about $78.

Yet there’s another wrinkle. I pay $70 a year for Amazon Prime, which gives me default 2-day shipping on all my stuff. Of course I ordered everything from CDs to a GPS device on Amazon last year, but books probably made up half of my orders. CDs probably made up another 1/4 to 1/3. But I’ve recently switched largely to ordering MP3s straight from Amazon’s digital store, obviating the need for CDs. If I bought a Kindle, I’d probably have justification to drop out of the Prime program. There would probably still be some things I’d have to pay shipping on, so let’s conservatively say I’d save half of the cost of Prime — $35.

That brings my annual savings up to $113. That’s about double Martin’s estimated savings. Of course, the Kindle costs close to $400 with tax, so it would still take nearly four years to recoup the cost.

The catch is that a device like the Kindle isn’t just about straight savings is it? It’s about . It’s about new functionality, like searching your library for that great quote or factoid. It’s about having an entire library at your fingertips. Financial savings is part of the equation, and helps justify the purchase, but it’s not necessarily the most important factor.

Fonts

Sorry about the varying font sizes here. This appears to be the default font for this template. Some past entries appear larger because I composed them in Word first and pasted them over.

To get everything looking the same, I think I’d have to go into each post individually and reformat the text. Frankly, that’s too much hassle. I would, however, like to settle on a standard font and text size. Anybody have any preferences?

Finally! Best games of 2008 (Part 5)

Biggest Gaping Hole in My Library: LittleBigPlanet

It was hard for the hype to be any bigger for Media Molecule’s impossibly cute platformer. Although the adventures of the game’s knitted hero, Sackboy, didn’t get Sony back in the console race, LittleBigPlanet was unquestionably one of the most original — did I mention cute? — titles in 2008.

LittleBigPlanet’s hyper-realistic environments differed from other A-list titles in one dramatic fashion: instead of lush forests or gritty urban landscapes, the game is set among structures built from every day materials such as cardboard, cloth and paper. Resembling nothing so much as a grade-school art project, the game nonetheless sported sophisticated level design that challenges and rewards.

I almost can’t believe I haven’t picked this one up yet. It’s simply because I still (still!) haven’t finished games like Fallout 3 or Dead Space, so how can I justify dropping another $60 on this? I did see, however, that Amazon had LBP on sale for about $46. A great bargain for consumers, but probably a blow to Sony’s expectations that they could maintain premium pricing for longer.

Best Game That I Will Almost Certainly Never Finish: Grand Theft Auto IV

I have a problem finishing games. Most games I will top out at about 20 hours before moving on to other diversions. Games like Halo 3, Gears of War, Fable 2, Call of Duty 4 and Mirror’s Edge all fall comfortably within that range. I prefer quality over quantity. Give me 10 amazing hours and I will consider my money better spent than if you give me 30 or 40 good hours. The biggest exception to this rule was Oblivion, which I played for more than 40 hours and still didn’t finish.

So right away, the sheer size of Grand Theft Auto IV, which is said to take about 40 hours to complete the main storyline, stacks the odds against me ever completing the game. But apart from that, GTA IV has one flaw that is crippling for modestly talented gamers like me. That flaw is the lack of a mid-mission save system.

You see, some of the missions in GTA IV are quite long, requiring significant set up and travel before you get to the action parts. If you’re not completely prepared, pretty skilled, and a bit lucky, you will die. And when you die, you start that mission all over again. I’ve recently picked up the game again and completed a couple missions that had vexed me months ago, but if I was bent on completing it, I wouldn’t play anything else for months.

Best Game of 2008

And here it is. The moment you’ve been waiting two months for. What was the best game of 2008? Was it Fallout 3, with its deep character-building system infused with a Road Warrior vibe? Was it Fable 2, with its open-armed world that combined an expansive fantasy world with the charming social nuances of The Sims? Was it LittleBigPlanet, with all its cuteness and inventiveness and creative tools for users? All of these are worthy titles, to be sure. But one game stood above everything else, wowing everyone with its breathtaking detail, sparkling writing and sheer variety. That game, of course, was Grand Theft Auto IV.

Despite its flaws, and there are several, Grand Theft Auto IV represented the best of gaming. The stunning visuals took the soul of New York and reincarnated it in the body of Liberty City. Even now, almost a year later, one of my favorite things to do in the game is stop and watch the sun set. In keeping with its noir inspiration, the character of Niko Bellic at once fascinates and repulses. We revel in his aptitude for violence while sympathizing with his desire to find more in life. You see this in a hundred little moments and contrasts throughout the game. One moment you’ll be making shy chit-chat with a potential girlfriend or e-mailing mom back in the old country, the next you’ll be pushing some poor guy off a ledge or helping a junkie score her next hit.

Here was what I wrote about the game when it launched last April:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Video gamers geared up on Monday for the midnight launch of “Grand Theft Auto 4,” as early reviews hailed the criminal action title as a brutal and satirical “masterpiece” equal to films like “The Godfather.”

For a time, Grand Theft Auto IV was the only game to score a perfect 100 on Metacritic. Even today, it boasts an incredible 98, the highest-rated game since The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time came out in 1998 and received a 99.

The GTA series has of course been the target of serious controversy. But audiences have longed lived the criminal life vicariously through movies like novels like The Godfather, movies like The Killing, and now games like GTA. As I read somewhere recently, books let us imagine the impossible, movies let us see the impossible, games let us do the impossible. Few of can imagine doing the dirty deeds committed by Niko and his associates. The success of the GTA series has hinged on letting people break the rules. You can’t believe this game is letting you get away with this stuff! GTA IV took that simple idea and slathered on a rich layer of storytelling, wit, and social commentary. It’s an artistic achievement that was unrivaled in the industry last year, and it’s why Grand Theft Auto IV was game of the year.