Strange consumer machines

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Just a quick test.  I’ve been pondering the development of “consumer” (and “user”/participant, of course) technology. 

I’m getting a great deal of useful enjoyment out of this relatively “low end” (by the standards of dang rich people who can afford to rush out and buy the latest thing every six months) Android phone.  I named it “Imp” (any Terry Pratchett fans reading this?).  I’m not sure whether to be pleased or disturbed at just how quickly I’ve gotten used to having a reasonably powerful computer with nigh-unto-ubiquitous Internet access at virtually any time I’m conscious.  Fortunately, mostly the former.

And speaking of “consumer” technology, anybody like pie?  Yes, that’s a VENDING MACHINE in that picture, and those ARE full-sized pecan pies in the bottom of it.  At least, that’s what you should see if this WordPress application for Android is actually working.

Making the great leap out of the 1990’s…

I have a shiny new Android-based phone. I’d still rather have a MeeGo/Maemo one, but I got tired of waiting for something besides the expensive (though desirable) Nokia N900 to become available.

More to follow relatively soon, but I wanted to try out the beta-test version of the Android WordPress blog-thingie.

If you see this post, it works (at least well enough to get a basic post up-I still need to figure out how to do raw HTML from this thing…)

Eggs suck.

Don’t misunderstand – I like all kinds of foods made with eggs. Eggs are tasty. They’re handy. They’re nutritious, too. Their protein is so good they are the standard against which nutritionists have historically compared other food proteins. As a bonus, a medium-sized egg contains only one-eighth the cholesterol in a single ounce of human brain (and is much less likely to give you kuru).

However, could it be possible to come up with a more inconvenient packaging scheme? This thing was obviously designed by someone that hates us. “Let’s see, we’ll make it tasty and very nutritious. But just so people don’t think we like them, we’ll make it the consistency of snot, and package it by sealing it inside a specially-made, inedible brittle container so that you have to literally smash the thing open to get at the food, ensuring that the consumer* gets nasty goo all over his or her hands, or gets shards of the container mixed in with the food, or both. That’ll show the little jerks. And if that’s not enough, we’ll also have that container extruded out of a chicken’s butt.” (For some odd reason, as I write this, I’m picturing an Evil Santa Claus giving a presentation to the Evil Elves who are about to go off and implement this idea…”Sneezy, Drippy, and Runny – you three will head up the design committee…”)

They’re not screw flies or anything, but perhaps eggs can still count as an example of “irreducible grotesqueness”. (The picture, in case it isn’t obvious, is an egg separator. The image is linked to the site where you can buy them.)

This short rant has been brought to you by I’m-Making-Too-Many-Egg-Based-Meals-Lately Industries. That, and a second test to make sure I’ve got the DNS issues that I initially had resolved now. Can you all see this? I’d be thankful if everyone who was seeing this would post a quick “yeah, I see it” in the comments so that I can get on with the real posts again.

* Am I the only one who finds it insulting to be called a “consumer”, as though I were nothing more than a gaping mouth with a wallet? Am I sitting here mouth agape like a baby bird, waiting for a “supplier” to stroll by, grab some money out of my wallet, and cough up some “product” for me to “consume”? (I contend that I am not a “consumer” but a active participant in this economy, dagnabbit!)