Wrathskellar

For those who might have missed it the first time around, The Boston Babydolls are ringing back their highly acclaimed show, The Wrathskellar.  You’ve been warned.  Clear your schedule.  Start lining up for tickets now.  Don’t believe me? Go ask your friends who saw the show.  They’ll tell you.  Performances the whole last week of October, at the Cambridge YMCA Theater (Central Square).  Actually, even for those who did catch it the first time, come see it again.  The show is seeing some new material and elements, and a refresh overall, and will hold something for you who saw the first run.

Now, I know there are those on my friend’s list of a theatrical bent. For you, there is something extra.  Next weekend they are auditioning a select number of people for roles in the show.  There are some openings for main performers, and a few for what might be better descrived as ‘ambience’ roles.  See http://bostonbabydolls.net/auditions.cfm for full details.

Gone to VA

Tomorrow morning Amanda and I will be heading to VA for a week long family vacation with my parents and my brother. (Thanks Jess for the lift to the airport!)  We’ll be hitting Historic Williamsburg, Jamestown, Busch Gardens, and whatever else strikes out fancy.  I expect to have internet there, but if not, I’ll be effectively off grid for the week.

While we’re gone, my office is moving to a new location in the same building.  I’d have liked to be there for that, but oh well.  At least I won the fight I had some weeks ago, and we’re moving spaces based on my suggested plan.

Congratulations to all the class of 2010 who graduated last weekend or are graduation this weekend.  A special nod to those at my own alma.  I’d have enjoyed being there for that too, in part because Paul Simon is singing at it.

The house hunting continues, but that, I think, may get its own post.

Alright, back to packing I go.

App Store Uproar

I’ve not said anything on the Apple Store policy change restricting developers to certain toolsets. To be honest, it doesn’t affect me directly. I don’t own an iPhone or iPod touch or iPad. I’m not a Developer. I don’t use Adobe tools much. But I am following it out of intellectual curiosity. I can see both sides, and see the merits of arguments on both sides. I like the idea of Adobe making it easier for developers to create great applications. Or even just making it easier for someone to become a developer. I like the idea that Apple is setting standards for apps, and that I can expect some measurable level of quality by not having ported apps.

To quote John Gruber of Daring Fireball,

“That’s exactly what’s going on. Apple is testing whether a tightly controlled and managed app console platform will succeed or fail based on its own merits, as determined by customers. There are different levels of competition. Apple has made its choice about how it wants to compete, and there’s nothing Adobe can do about it — other than proving Apple wrong by shipping compelling excellent software for Android.” (http://daringfireball.net/2010/05/nack_control)

Except that this isn’t testing. We’ve seen this before. Tons of times. On almost every game platform out there. 20 years ago games had to be up to snuff to get a Nintendo Seal of Quality. And games were developed using official developer toolsets. That were produced by Nintendo. And that’s not to say that a Developer couldn’t try to create a game some other way, but I’d be willing to guess that road didn’t work so well. Sony did the same thing with games on its consoles. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised of Atari worked that way. And we’ve all seen complaints about games that are poorly ported from one console to another – cases where the graphics and sound don’t take advantage of the capabilities of the platform, or where a game simply dumps some portion of content because the discs don’t hold the same quantity, or some platforms have a built in hard drive and others don’t, etc.

So a large part of the conflict comes from the perception of the iPhone. A lot of people, developers especially, are viewing it as a mini-computer. And from their perspective, it kind of is. It runs a modified OS X Darwin system, it uses fairly standard Objective-C, and it is a fairly accessible system to developers, and it lends itself to a wide range of unique applications. Game consoles tend to, well, run games, and not much more. Now, if you start thinking of the iPhone as a console, it works better. Limited channels of production and distribution, which, to be honest, is still more than cell phones of yore (where everything came -only- from the manufacturer), restricted access to hardware (funny how no one really complains about protected memory in the modern OS), and capabilities that vary from device to device. And as Gruber points out, if you want a platform that behaves very much like a computer platform, there’s always Android – which has an even wilder future in front of it if the hardware platforms keep forking the way they’ve been doing lately.