Hey you kids! Get off my Internet!

Kat and I have some disagreements about technology. She's an artist and a student of the human body, I work in IT. You can see where this is leading, right? Yup, she's an early adopter and I generally dislike technology until you can prove to me that it is better. Happily for me, Kathleen puts up with my Luddite ways; she recently wanted to buy some music by Lamb, and rather than buy it from iTunes (which is what she would normally do) she humoured me and ordered the CD from Amazon instead.

Kathleen loves iTunes. She has bought episodes of Family Guy, Chuck and a few movies. I generally dislike iTunes, I can't explain how much I hate the fact that iTunes tries to restrict what I can do with the media that we legally bought. Cartoons to the rescue! (Also, click on the image above to see a clearer version of my point.)

Kat would sit on the couch and laugh while watching episodes of Chuck so I figured that I wouldn't mind watching them. She bought them on iTunes and downloaded them to her computer so I can't just say "Give me your laptop, I want to watch the shows you bought.". I'd rather watch the shows on the projector in the living room. She also has been running out of space on her machine due to the amount of data she has on it.

Let's pretend that we owned the shows on DVD, how hard would that be? Hmmm ... I'd pick up the DVD case, go in to the living room, put it in the Mini and watch the show. That's easy!

Now let's deal with iTunes.

- We'll just export the shows from iTunes on to some fast media like an external drive and import it to the Mini! Nope.

- We'll just burn it to a DVD! Nope.

- We'll sync it to the iPod and then sync it to the Mini? Nope. The mini will insist on wiping the iPod if it is going to look at it.

Argh!

Yay! iTunes has allowed home sharing. Time to go read some FAQs on how to use it. It works! I copy over the Charlie's Angels movies (it takes all night). A couple nights later I go back to continue the job, I can see her iTunes library on the network ... but it won't let me copy the contents this time. WTF? Two days later I've uncovered the issue and start to copy the T.V. episodes over via the wireless network. So. Very. Slow. Wireless network issues and bandwidth raise their ugly heads days and days later I have the first season of Chuck copied over *whew*, it's been two weeks of on and off suffering for one season of Chuck. I haven't bothered to copy over the other files yet. So painful.

Kat also likes her Kindle (which we've written about before). There are many things about the Kindle that are good, but let me explain what *isn't* good about it. While Kat was in Ottawa a while back she bought a book by Ian C. Esslemont. She went to go read it when she realized she had bought the second book in the series. By the time she gets home she realizes no worries, I'll just buy the first book on my Kindle, woo for new technology! She reads the first book on the Kindle then the second paper copy. 

Let's pretend we own the paper copy. I get it off the shelf and start to read it.

Instead I grab the Kindle (how exciting, new technology!). Wait .. Kat wants the Kindle back because she is reading the Twilight series. So when can I get the Kindle to read the book that she isn't using? Soon? Kinda soon? Maybe? (Note from Kat: Pft. I'm a speed reader. It took me very little time to finish the Twilight series, you big baby.)

We bought a paper copy of the book. I can see why publishers like those things. Could we give the copy of the book to a friend? No. Can we sell it to a used bookstore? No. Did it cost any less? Not really. (Yes it did.)

That is enough of that.

I'm back playing soccer again, which is good fun. During the first game, however, another guy on the team messed up his knee and now we are a guy short again. Dangerous fun.

I've discovered a new web comic, I think it has been around for quite some time but I have only just started going through the backlog. Odd, math-based sense of humour. Very entertaining.