"Technologies and Toys"

This is gonna be a quick post, I just saw the TV ad for electronic monopoly - it's basically monopoly with NO BILLS, but instead a little machine/calculator type of thing which AUTOMATICALLY calculate the differences of your monopoly money before and after you buy something and record it on a card.

Now it's not so bad that we keep up with technology and utilize them to our advantage, but it's totally another thing when people try to apply them onto products, and it can totally go both ways. Take this one for example, to me monopoly has this implied learning of basic math and planning your finance and learning to invest (well to a very limited extent for the last two). Now with a credit card like player card and a "calculator" that does the calculation for you, to me it kinda lost half the purpose to play the game. Sure it would be lots more convenient, but it took away lots of fun as well in terms of the money transaction .... and being in a world where credit cards basically IS cash doesn't necessarily mean cash does not work anymore.

In fact, it's gonna be a lot more awkward for us to play the game with the updated technology because we have no banks anymore. I am pretty sure that there are a lot of fun to be had in becoming the banker in the game, the "commanding" and "middle-man" position of that player has to learn to be a fair, accurate, and rule-binding individual. With a self-calculating calculator went the chance to implicitly teach the player how to abide and enforce the rules of the game, play the role of a mediator, and to learn how "the banker" works - i'm pretty sure that will all be lost when the calculator is used in the game.

I can understand the update, but I think to keep it as it was before was better .... what do you think?

Day 1 of MY new year - my NEW toy

Yep, I am now 12 hours into my new year ~~ well it's been quite uneventful so far ..... i have to say thank you for my lovely GF that got me an ipod touch at this time (I had been telling her about it for the longest time, but thought at this kind of time I shouldn't get one, I am really thankful to her for it), and now that I am taking a break from studying materials, I am looking up for materials to mess with it a little bit. None the less, with all the greetings on FB and else where , I would like to say to people - THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR REMEMBERING ME !!

anyways, back to the ipod. It's been a whole five years since I owned my last ipod, and its battery died on me and that was the end of that one, and then a cheap mp3 player popped up and I got to use it for a little bit. So to my surprise, I did not find any user manual type of publication in the package. Although I do applaud Apple to have the resort and the guts to not include any kinds of publication for various reasons, it still hurt a little when I don't have something to read to get started with (weird huh?) ... so I started going online and look for tips/tricks/guide what not ..... it amazes me that how much you can do with a mp3 player that has wifi capability ... the price (she) paid was well worth it because other than listing to mp3/ watching videos, there are lots more uses for this little music player that is like a phone ...... it's amazing that Apple opened its platform so that most of us can develop apps for them ... whether for hobby or for commercial use ... i'm getting tempted now to get a mac book - IF I don't find ANY virtualization solution to my windows xp that can also run a mac on (I doubt I can) - and if that's the case, that's master marketing move from Apple , where I don't mind because i'm sure i'm getting my bang for the buck easily ... compared to all these PCs out there.

Going to Fry's always makes me think of what I want next as a present or as a little treat to myself - a digital drum set .... crap ..... our material needs is always a black hole ~~