Here’s pictures of Baby Yoda from this weekend. There will probably be more tonight.

A full web browser will be the new platform for all mobile devices. WAP is dead. Why would a company develop a full separate application for the web and one for mobile devices? The future is an always connected mobile web browser, not some hacky, crippled mobile specific application. Mobile specific applications and hardware have their place(for instance what the UPS and FedEx delivery guys carry), but they won’t be right for the consumer.

iPhone sales are exceeding most expectations. I will probably jump on the bandwagon with either an iPhone or an iPod Touch. Why do I want one? It’s integration and feature sets are nice, but there’s really one thing that sells it: A full, usable web browser on a nice screen. Consider all the applications that have to be rewritten for mobile devices, consider how long it has taken us to get to the current state of mediocre mobile applications, consider the poor support for WAP and mobile browser incompatibilities. The iPhone is the new iPlatform.

The iPhone will surely generate competition, but with its excellent integration and branding it has a clear head start that will be very difficult to overcome. The best potential competitor is the Gphone vaporware.

I find this article on immigration to be pretty compelling. It’s easy to get caught up in xenophobia and say that immigrants are stealing our jobs/services/money, but as with most interesting economics questions it’s really not that simple. I also like the argument of immigration being much better than direct foreign aid.

Valve’s Portal is amazing. I’ve just finished it, and even though it’s short(I finished it in about 10 hours), it’s well worth the $20 it would cost to buy it standalone(I bought the whole Orange Box).

The developer commentary is interesting to anyone who has ever had an interest in designing a game, puzzle, or 3d animation. It gives insight into why they design things the way they do.

There are also a few nice additions to give it some replay value. There are bonus maps or you can do challenges where you replay levels but try to minimize the number of portals, number of steps, or amount of time taken.

Overall I’m very pleased with the game. Give it a 9/10.

Today I had Columbus day off so Tracy and I decided to hang out together. We dropped Lucas off at day care for the day. It was nice because it was the first day that I can remember when we got to do something just the two of us. It wasn’t really exciting or anything. Just nice and relaxing.

We had lunch at the Elephant Bar and then and went to a movie, The Bourne Ultimatum. Ironically, the last time we saw a movie in the theater might have been when we saw the Bourne Supremacy. The movie was good, it’s shot in a very distinctive style that can be jarring or distracting, but makes it feel real. I think it’s the way they chose angles for shots and the constant camera movement.

Today someone randomly knocked on our door and tried to sell us some frozen steaks. More surprising than getting a sales pitch is that they got me to buy them. Usually I’m pretty resistant to sales pitches, but I was kind of hungry. So we spent a couple hundred dollars, but now we have beef for months from Prime Selection. Mmm.. beef.