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Logitech 680 Universal Remote -- all is forgiven. I finally got the thing to upgrade its firmware last night, and after that, the configuration process was a dream. I answered a few questions about my AV setup -- including the crucial question of what component controls the volume -- and within fifteen minutes, the entire system was working seamlessly. The best feature: three buttons at the very top with icons that represent watching movies, watching television, and listening to music. Hit the movie button and the remote turns on the LCD screen, the receiver, and the DVD player, and automatically configures the remote to control the DVD player (except for the volume buttons, which control the receiver volume.) Hit the TV button, and the LCD, receiver, and cable box switch on, etc. It's the first remote control I've had in years that I could explain to a babysitter in sixty seconds. Sweet.

Universal Remotes Are Universally Useless

Continuing my thread about the absurdly complex state of home theater technology... So I buy this fancy Marantz receiver that comes with its own universal remote that theoretically should allow us to consolidate the five remotes we currently have (for the LCD screen, the DVD player, the cable box, etc) into one single remote. The remote itself is a classic case of feature bloat -- you can do just about anything with it, except the things you actually need to do. They have a whole system for programming macros, where you can string together a series of commands that can be triggered by a single button push, for instance. But they seem to have paid almost no attention to the admittedly very rare activity of TURNING THE VOLUME UP AND DOWN. I've spent about three hours investigating this, and as far as I can tell, it's almost impossible to set the remote up so that hitting the volume button reliably alters the volume on the Marantz box. If I've switched over into TV mode, for instance, to change the channel or turn the LCD on, the remote tries to turn up the volume on the LCD screen's speakers, which I don't use at all. Have these people ever watched someone actually USE a home theater system? Do they not realize that 99% have one central unit -- usually the amp/receiver -- that controls volume? And that people find it incredibly annoying when they go to turn the volume down and realize that they're talking to a completely different piece of technology?

I did ultimately figure out a way around the problem. Once you've entered in the various components of your system to the Marantz remote, you can then re-program by hand specific functions for each component. I did this for the TV setting for instance: I set it to turn on the LCD screen, but then every other button basically controls the cable box. To do this, however, you have to sit there pointing the cable box remote at the Marantz remote so it can learn the commands one by one, which of course is time-consuming and annoying. But if I want to map the receiver volume up/down commands onto the TV setting on the remote (so that changing the volume is always directed towards the receiver) I can't do it, because I can't point the Marantz remote at itself. So the only solution I have come up with is to teach another universal remote the codes for volume up/down and then point that remote at the Marantz remote, in order to teach it something that it knows already! But I have thus far refused to do this, because I'm just so incredibly irritated at the stupidity of these interfaces.

Because of all that irritation, I ordered a Logitech Harmony universal remote (the 680) I think -- mostly because I saw that Chris Anderson was using it. It sounded cool -- you plug it into your computer for the setup process, and the software walks you through all your media consumption habits and equipment, and configures the remote for you. So I get it from Amazon yesterday, and start going through the installation process. Early into it, the software tells me I need a firmware upgrade for the remote, which I download and install. And then, halfway through the installation, the remote appears to crash, and it's now completely unresponsive.

Let me just repeat this for the six of you who are still reading: I buy a new remote control to simplify my media experiences, and it crashes during a firmware upgrade! And then stops working altogether! I suppose that's one way of simplifying your media experience -- use a remote that literally does nothing. At this point, I think it's preferable to the alternative.

The video for the BumpTop 3D Desktop Prototype sure is fun to watch, and I imagine it'd be even more fun to actually play around with, and I'm certainly all in favor of experimental interface design. But I have to say: building a whole new file management model to recreate the fuzzy, half-ordered clutter of piles of paper on a real-world desktop doesn't exactly float my boat. I have dozens of piles of real paper in my house right now, and they drive me crazy. What I love about my computer is that it doesn't let me create piles. (Hat tip to Jason for the original link.)

Where I've Been

Wow -- it's been quite a stretch since I last blogged. Sorry for the long silence. A snapshot of my last fourteen days: my 97-year-old-grandmother's funeral; an early-delivery-scare that sent my wife to the hospital for five hours; a quick trip to Banff in Canada for a speech, during which we had another early delivery scare that had me racing home half a day early; my brother's wedding in Connecticut, and then a quick family vacation to Martha's Vineyard, with my wife at home for the last two events, and me on the road with the two boys. It was mostly fun, but man, I'm glad to be home again with no travel plans until the new kid is born.

In the meantime, I meant to mention that I'm giving the keynote at the excellent Games for Change Conference next week in New York. If you're around in the city, come by and check it out...

One Last Colbert Item

I forgot to mention that Colbert did a hilarious bit during our conversation, where he professed to be a big fan of first-person-shooter games: "In fact, that's the way I see the world all the time." And then they switched to a Stephen's-eye-view shot of me, mocked up to look like something out of Quake or Doom. Needless to say, the crowd loved this, and I managed to mumble something about it being the highlight of my career.

But the funny thing was that they very nearly forgot to tell me that they were going to do it at all; right as I was coming out of makeup, the producer said, "Oh, by the way, I think they might have some kind of thing where they superimpose your head into a shooter game." It was a good thing she mentioned it, because you don't actually look at the monitors when you're doing these interviews, and without looking at the monitors there was no way to tell that they were superimposing something on the shot of me. I would have just been sitting there like an idiot, saying: "Why is everyone suddenly laughing?"

Colbert, The Morning After

So I had my six minutes in the ring with Stephen Colbert last night. Those television interviews are always slightly surreal -- the conversation feels like it lasts about thirty seconds as you're in the middle of it, and of course you have to surrender any hope of actually getting to make a coherent presentation of your argument. But it’s even more surreal when the person you're talking to is actually in character, pretending to be a "professional idiot" (as Colbert himself described his onscreen persona during our one minute chat before the show.)

But in the end, he wasn’t too over-the-top with his O'Reilly imitation in our chat last night. He played it a bit straighter than I had expected, which made the conversation a little easier. The interesting twist was that he chose not to do the "you're destroying the youth of America" rant that you might have expected him to do; in fact, his major in character joke was that he agreed with my "argument" that books are a waste of time. (By the way, if you’re just coming to the site for the first time, that’s not my argument at all, of course.) Just the like Jon Stewart appearance, I managed to get a couple of laughs on my own, which is of course immensely satisfying, and also got to put in a good word for Civilization IV and Spore. So all in all, a fun night.

I'm traveling most of today, so won't be able to track down links to torrents or YouTube versions of the interview, but if any of you happen to find one, maybe you could post a link in the comment threads here. It'll air again today a few times, including at 7:30 I think -- on the east coast at least.

Updated, Saturday June 10: Thanks for all the email and posts; glad to hear people enjoyed the appearance. Just one clarification: I am well aware that the average gamer is now 30 years old -- I mention that fact in the book, and have said it in interviews a thousand times. My references to "what the twelve-year-olds" are up to was in specific response to Colbert's initial comment about how he keeps hearing that "kids are dumb." So while it's true that games are no longer exclusively played by kids; it's also true -- and more relevant to the context of that interview -- that kids are still heavily into games, and playing remarkably complicated titles. Hence the focus on twelve-year-olds.

In Which I "Debate" Popular Culture With Stephen Colbert

Exactly one year ago today, I made my appearance on The Daily Show. Apparently, I am in some weird sort of seasonal cycle with Comedy Central, because tomorrow night (Thursday, June 8) I will be the guest on The Colbert Report, speaking truthiness to power, no doubt. It will be surreal, but also fun I hope. Tune in.

Happy Birthday

It's my birthday today -- 38 years. But I should probably let you all in on the more important birth-related news in our household. My wife and I expecting our THIRD boy later this summer. You can post your condolences in the threads below.

Good overview of the digital book controversy, elevated to the sublime by this quote at the end:

That history gives great comfort to writers like Vikram Chandra, whose 1,000-page novel, "Sacred Games," will be published in January. Mr. Chandra, a former computer programmer who already reads e-books downloaded to his pocket personal computer, said he saw no point in resisting technology. "I think circling the wagons and defending the fortress metaphors are a little misplaced," he said. "The barbarians at the gate are usually willing to negotiate a little, and the guys in the fort usually end up yelling that 'we are the only good things in the world and you guys don't understand it,' at which point the barbarians shrug, knock down your walls with their amazingly powerful weapons, and put a parking lot over your sacred grounds. "If they are in a really good mood," he added, "they put up a pyramid of skulls."

Nice to see the Wall Street Journal taking the Everything Bad position on games:

With the next generation of high-powered consoles on the market or soon to appear, gamers will have even richer, more complex virtual environments, many of them nonlinear, to explore. Working through these worlds alone, with friends or--in the ever more popular "massively multiplayer online role-playing games," or MMOs--with thousands of strangers is far from a "colossal waste of time." Video games are popular culture at its best. Critics would do better to drop the hysterical laments and pick up a joystick.