Apple announced their iPad yesterday, a tablet-sized version of the iPhone. Other than the unfortunate name, it is an amazing little device. Considering how quickly we all got over the Nintendo Revolution becoming the “Wii”, I think we’ll forgive Apple soon enough.

If you remember my post Friday, I laid out some of the ways Apple could screw up such a product. I’d like to visit some of those points again and compare how they did.

• I mentioned I was worried they’d try and use parts from the MacBook Air (system board, screen, chassis, battery). Thankfully they didn’t even try. The battery life is supposed to be able to play video for up to 10 hours, and standby is rated to last a month. To be sure, the thing was probably in airplane mode (with all radios turned off) and screen brightness was way down, but it’s still better than the 4 hours I get on my laptop.

I hate clowns.  The creep me out in ways I can’t quite describe.  There’s just something about them that brings out a true primal fear in me.  People used to laugh at me, but I’m evidently not the only one to have this fear.  It even has an official sounding name (though I don’t think mine is bad enough to be called a phobia).

Scary clowns can be funny though, it seems.  A friend showed me the new Wal-Mart clown ad and I just about peed myself laughing.  So, below are some of the best clown ads I can find!

E-Trade Superbowl Ad

USPS Flat-Rate Ad

Newest Wal-Mart ad

Furthering my belief that tomorrow’s Mass Effect 2 is actually an interactive movie . . . here’s an interview with the stars.  And there are a lot of them!

Mass Effect 2 launches tomorrow.  I’m excited in ways you can’t even understand.  The first Mass Effect was one of those games that came onto the scene and really changed the way you played the RPG genre.  BioWare took what work they had done on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and just blew everything out of the water with it.

Ideally, I’d show you the launch video for the original game, but since the only one I can find has it disabled, I’ll just link it instead.

Of course, the game also had it’s share of controversy; some whacko at Fox News made claims in the media that the game was actually “An Alien Rape Simulator”.  Despite the fact that every person who ever played the game could attest that it was not and numerous experts in the field all tried to correct Fox, they have yet to retract their statements.  It didn’t keep the game from being awesome, though.

On January 27th, 2010, Apple Inc is poised to introduce to the world the new iSlate which will change the computing world. Or it might be the iTouch. Or iTablet. Or iCostsomuchyouwanttopuke. We really don’t know. Of course, they were also “going” to do this last year too. The fact is, we don’t know what we’re getting, when we’re getting it, what it’ll do, what it’ll cost, or what it’ll be called. If it is a tablet (and most every market analyst is falling over themselves to say it is), it’s going to be big.

Head on over to Gizmodo’s collection of Apple Tablet Rumors to get a feel for whats being talked about.

My only worry is that Apple might make some of the same mistakes Microsoft made when moving to the tablet. I also worry they might try to hang to some of their existing hardware. Below is my list of ways Apple could possibly screw this up:

A while back I wrote a review for Ghostbusters, the video game.  I was playing a PC copy on my system and was really disappointed by how badly coded everything was.  If you don’t remember my review of it, I invite you to read it again before moving on with this entry.

All done?  OK.

Since writing that entry, I’ve had the chance to play the game again, only this time on an Xbox 360.  I’m very impressed with the game overall now, and would like to revisit some of the points I made earlier.

The other day I was putting gas in the car at the station.  Ahead of me was a guy who couldn’t be more than an hour past 19 years old with his stereo blaring, truck still running, and yelling and laughing with his friends.

While this child was being a public nuisance (yes, I know I sound old here, but give it a second), he’s also trying to light a cigarette.  Normally that’s a stupid thing to do at a gas pump.  This time it was especially stupid.  Wanna see why?

See, in older trucks like his the fuel door isn’t down around your thigh.  It’s up at chest height, aimed at your face.  Thanks to the fact he has his engine running while doing this, there’s a lot of gas fumes coming back out of the tank and up towards him trying to light one up to impress his friend.  Thankfully (for me, anyway), the right ratio of gas to air never seemed to be reached and we didn’t all die.

I was able to burn through a couple of my recorded shows last night, which is always a treat.  One of them was a “Premier Event” (whatever that means) of a new show on Fox, Human Target.  Based on the little-know comic book of the same name, it piqued my interest when I saw a commercial for it.  I told my system to record as many of them as were scheduled, and here we are.  The premier will have an encore showing tonight after American Idol, and the pilot (which is actually a different episode) will air Wednesday in the same time slot.  If you can’t watch it tonight, schedule your TiVo.  If you can’t do that, then I suggest you watch it here.  Long and short of it is, YOU REALLY NEED TO CHECK THIS SERIES OUT!!!

What in the hell is wrong with you?  Are you striving to drive your network into the ground?!

Yes, I’m a big fan of Conan O’Brien.  No, this entry is not just about him.

You all remember when NBC decided that it’d be a great idea to cash in on our childhood memories with Knight Rider?  If you do, you’d also remember that it sucked horribly.  It stunk so badly they didn’t air more than four episodes despite the fact they paid for a whole season.  Because Knight Rider had a car as it’s central figure, some genius at NBC figured that people must not like cars and shows about cars.  With that logic in mind, NBC decided to drop Top Gear America without even showing the pilot.  For those of you who aren’t in the know, Top Gear is a BBC program in the UK that is one of the most widely distributed shows in the world.  It has been spun off into Top Gear: Germany, Top Gear: Russia, and Top Gear: Australia.  We were inches from joining the rest of the civilized world in getting Top Gear: America!  I guess people just don’t like car shows enough to watch them on TV (we do, however download Top Gear UK so much that it is the most BitTorrent’s show in the world).

The host that Stolen Droids sits on has recently done some migration work on their servers. Basically, they’ve moved from one server to another. This can get kinda tricky when a single account (like this one) actually has MANY websites and subdomains under it.

For whatever reason, every site that is on this account has been shuffled off this internet coil except Stolen Droids.  While I greatly appreciate the fact that our most visited (and technically complex) site has not been deleted, it doesn’t really help me bring back any of the other sites that just suddenly don’t exist anymore.  The account is actually under fellow SD member Schmidty, who graciously allows us space and pays for the monthly bill.

I’ve done many migrations before myself, and I know that they can be a real pain in the rear if you don’t plan accordingly for the project at hand.  The best way to avoid this kind of issue is to . . . well, PLAN for the project at hand.