Category: neck deep in the zeitgeist

The latest issue of Wired has an extensive how-to section, with tips on everything from mastering Guitar Hero to taking better photos. I’m intrigued by their suggestion that if I am able to get to the back of my car stereo, I may be able to attach an RCA cable and plug my iPod into the other end. After examining “what I thought were” all the different, complicated, expensive and ultimately unsatisfying ways to do that, this is a pretty compelling idea. It sounds like a weekend project with at least a 50 percent chance of ending in a Monday morning drive to the Mazda dealer with my dashboard on my lap.

You have to admire Wired’s chutzpah for including tips on how to jump off a building and how to maximize your MPG by getting behind a truck and turning off your engine.

I’m now carrying two mobile phones around with me; one from work and my own. Those of you who know about my obsession with phones and other shiny objects might think I’d enjoy this, but it’s actually kind of annoying, and might just push me over the man bag threshold.

One of them is on Verizon, which has a news section in its mobile web browser. To fit in the limited real estate of the mobile screen they have even fewer words to play with than a newspaper editor, so the headlines are terse, often to the point of incomprehensibility. And they can only fit two on the screen at a time. Here are my favorite recent juxtapositions:

Congress Returns
Mice Overrun Lake Area

Space Shuttle Leaves Dock
Taliban Occupies Area

Heatwave Continues
Pre-teen Sisters Accused

Jerry sent me this cheery little greeting this morning, but the thing I enjoyed most about it was the message that accompanied it in the email:

A loved one, friend, admirer, or other computer user has sent you a card from someecards.com!

That pretty much covers the full spectrum of anyone who could have possibly sent me a card. At first I thought it ruled out 500 monkeys with 500 typewriters, but on second read, it does not.

Abe and Kathleen got married Saturday night in a lovely ceremony that included the best first dance I’ve ever seen. It was a full-on hip hop extravaganza complete with rump shaking, set to a tune that everyone younger than me no doubt has playing on their iPhone at this very moment. We asked Abe how much time they had worked on it. "Not much," he replied. "We worked with a choreographer and rehearsed three or four times for a couple of hours and then practiced about ten hours at home." Now that’s a dedication to the audience that you don’t often see at a wedding. So step up, people. From now on I don’t just want to be fed and boozed, I want a floor show.

Oh, and another thing. Abe and Kathleen had a tomato bar, with fresh local tomatoes, cucumber salad, pesto, olives and fresh mozzarella. I would also like this to be mandatory at all summer events, not just weddings. Why isn’t there a tomato bar on every corner instead of a Starbucks?

So here’s my next attempt at getting back into the tech swing of things: moblogging. I am composing this on my mobile. First impressions of moblogging: smaller, more annoying, less interesting but with more colons. Also, the predictive text feature doesn’t know the word moblogging. It wants to call it noblogigog, which is only just a bit sillier.