This of course has me searching for books on learning ASP.NET, a programming language is like a foreign film to me. I can figure out what’s going on, and know who the main character is, and more or less what they’re trying to accomplish. But I can’t tell if he’s whispering sweet nothings to his lover, or asking his sister to bring over some 10W-30 for a quick oil change. In a nutshell, I get it, but not really.

Luckily, I found an eBook on Amazon for sale which describes in just under 40 pages what the big deal is about ASP.NET, how it’s different, and why I should care.

However, herein lies the dilemma: I don’t like slowly working my way through a PDF on my laptop in bed, and I sure am not bringing it into the bathroom with me. So, I turn to my favorite eBook reader as the best solution at hand … my iPhone.

I’ve read books on my iPhone before, but a PDF… this is new territory. So I googled my way to a few solutions to see how the people who write about things get on reading other things when they’re PDFs, on an iPhone.

Jailbreak/SSH/install PDFViewer app
Too much work. I’m looking for an easy solution and the inherent problem with jailbreaking your phone is that every time you upgrade the firmware, you have to reinstall ALL of your apps. Lame. And I don’t want to have to use SSH to zip files to my phone. I want to just have the damn thing be available, and not lose EVERYTHING just because a firmware update came out. Which leads us to our next solution…

E-mail myself the PDF in an attachment
This seems like it would be easy-cheesy-1-2-threesy, but now my PDF’s only available in portrait mode. Great if you want to swipe left-to-right, up-and-down, and work your index finger harder then that day in 6th grade when you thought nobody was looking and you just wanted to breather a little easier. NEXT.

Google Documents
I can’t believe I didn’t come up with this one right out of the gate. Upload your file to Google documents, and view it in glorious landscape mode in Safari. Done and done. It’s free, and you can even e-mail Google Docs the PDF/DOC/RTF/XLS/whatever if someone sends it to you. Oh, exuberance. Oh, exquisite WIN.

I’m off to read my ASP to ASP.NET pdf now, instead of just writing about how I’m going to read it. Hopefully, this will keep my nerdy appetite sated until my Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 with C# book arrives on Friday.

Sometimes this art form is embraced and great things happen, like Apple, Nike, IBM, and countless others who have created memorable, eye catching, brand perpetuating logos. You could see a rat trying to gnaw through drywall, and if there was a swoosh, you’d know it was Nike.

But I digress. I’m writing to call attention to some of the worst logos ever created. Here’s a hint: have a teenaged-minded 30-year-old who drinks too much scotch look at your ideas before you put them on a banner.

The first entry is the logo for the Arlington Pediatric Center, which has since changed, but eluded to the possibility of employing Priests as doctors:

Next is the logo that spawned this post when a friend sent it: the logo for the UK’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC). They’ve actually come up with a good looking logo–until you look at it rotated 90 degrees clockwise:

Good stuff. Lets keep rolling on to the logo for the Instituto de Estudos Orientais (Institute for Oriental Studies). This little guy, well, took me a second to see it as anything other than a backdoor entry (it’s a Japanese-looking building with a sun behind it (they claim)):

And finally, my favorite cultural faux pas, assuming that everyone speaks your language in signage:

Note to self: don’t swap a heart for the letter “O” without running it past some international pals first.

Until now. And by now I mean sometime this spring.

Coming out soon for download on XBOX Live and the Playstation 3 Network is “Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball.” But oh no, it doesn’t stop there. There’s a robot team and a zombie team too. JOY!

Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball trailer, care of kotaku.com:

Flip on any video on YouTube. Turn up the volume. Note that YouTube’s volume slider isn’t numeric.

The BBC’s is. And their amps go to eleven. Check out Robin Williams taking over a BBC America chat show when they were having technical difficulties, and turn the volume up. To eleven. Sweet sweet eleven.

Well, they’ve gone ahead and done something that’s shockingly good for the consumer. Remember way back a few weeks ago when HD-DVD had a chance? Once Blu-ray became the clear winner and Toshiba backed off HD-DVD development once and for all, Best Buy and Circuit City made their move:

• Best Buy is giving $50 gift cards to people who bought HD-DVD players before 2/28
• Circuit City is accepting returns of HD-DVD players 90 days after the date of purchase

Granted Blu-ray players are still in the $400-500 range, so just go buy a PS3 that has one and play me online get more for your money. Or wait 6 months and buy ‘em cheaper. If I were Sony (and surprisingly, I’m not) I’d keep the prices up just a little bit longer, partially to gloat, but mostly because of the bath they took on PS3 sales.

For those of us who occasionally have to zip things between Flash, Photoshop and Illustrator, this could be the bee’s knees. Well, what do you know, I happen to have two images just sitting on my desktop… so, hey, lets test the motherfucker!

On Medium:

On High:

All in all, I’m impressed. Trying to detect edges and retrace in illustrator is been the bane of a lot of designers’ existances. I know I really could have used this a few years ago for something that took 2 days to trace with Illustrator. Live and learn.

I think next I’m going to run some Sinfest strips through it to blow up and print out