The Jester's words

Security and the AND/OR question

2011-02-24T13:12:00.002-05:00

I'm back, and it's as if I never left. Mainly because I have exactly 0 readers :P.

Today's little rant is about something I will forever go back and forth on, security versus convenience. To understand why I am so vacillatory on the subject you need to know two things about me. First, I am lazy, the more I can do with as little effort as possible the happier I generally am. Second, I am paranoid, while I'm not likely to go out and buy an old bank vault to live in, I tend to assume that not only is just about everyone out to get me, but they are significantly more clever, knowledgeable, and determined than they appear to be.

So, these points, combined with my love of security has led me to the question that most people have about security. How miserable do I have to be to feel secure?

The tradeoff is most often seen in the debates about the TSA lately. On the one hand, nobody wants the policy to be "colonoscopies for everybody" while on the other one news story about a guy with a pipe bomb in his rectum would send the public into frenzied rioting. Thankfully we've calmed down a bit since 9/11, and are beginning to understand that security is IMPERFECT. However, inconvenience versus security is just as prominent as ever.

I want to talk about a specific example of this, the AND/OR problem. What is the AND/OR problem? It's the phenomenon wherein adding an additional security check that is required increases security and inconvenience, whereas adding an additional security check as an ALTERNATIVE lowers security and inconvenience.

a quick example of this. Your front door most likely opens with a key (specifically a pin and tumble key, likely with five pins, even more specifically it's likely a Schlage or Kwikset). Imagine, for a moment, that we also installed an RFID reader in the door, and hitched it to the lock. If either the RFID or the key unlock the lock, then it's convenient. you could just swipe your RFID in your pocket, and not have to put down your groceries, or if you forget your wallet just use the key. If BOTH are needed, it is more secure, because even if someone copies your key or can pick the lock they need the RFID, or even if they bypass the RFID they need the key.

Now, the advancement doesn't always balance out, you can accomplish a net gain. For instance, if you build the RFID into the key, you have made things more secure, but not much more inconvenient (I say much more because, among other things, if the power goes out, your RFID reader won't work). You've still made things more secure, because someone trying to get in now needs to bypass TWO mechanisms, but haven't changed your daily routine at all. however, this makes stealing the key just as effective as it was before.

The reason I decided to talk about this today was I was looking at an article on home automation. Home automation is basically webenabling devices in your home so you can automate them, or control them from anywhere with net access. These things can be anything from opening your garage door, to turning on lights or controlling the temperature in your house. In general I find home automation bland as I can't use it to make my kitchen prepare dinner for me, or have my desk read and summarize my homework for the night. Turning on lights is well and good, but I can get a timer for $4 to do that for me. However, the few uses i can come up with for it is things like, your neighbor asks to borrow a snow shovel, so you open your garage so they can go in and get it (probably better with security cameras), and then close it behind them. Aren't you a good neighbor. Anyway, the next interesting use is, say you leave the house, do the daily grind thing, then get home, only to realize your keys are in your OTHER pants... well crabcakes. With an internet enabled lock, you can call your friend, tell them to log into your house's site, and open the front door for you. You then immediately change the password of course, but you've saved yourself a good amount of headache.

Do you see where the AND/OR problem comes up? By adding the internet lock as an OR you've basically just allowed anyone with a laptop and some basic hacking skillz to walk right in your front door. Of course, if you added it as an AND you'd have to log in through your smart phone (if you don't have a smartphone and are doing home automation... well, you're doing it wrong) as well as use your key. Secure, but a bit of a pain, especially if you phone just died...

Now, this leads me to the clear conclusion that I don't want to go near home automation yet, but does bring up the question of how you FIX the AND/OR problem. Namely, how can you combine home automation convenience, with the security of not having the internet be able to set your toaster to "kill" without your knowledge.

It's not as easy as integrating the RFID with the key, but I'm sure there is a creative and simple answer out there, so what do you think?

Solution to the "everybody's good at everything" problem

2010-07-22T09:41:00.002-04:00

So. When running Role Playing sessions, sometimes you come across odd problems. All of your players have created characters that are superior generalists. They can all bypass an alarm system, hijack a car, are good in Hand to Hand, and can shoot a 2 inch spread from 400 yards. They're just good at everything. Why is this a problem? Well the typical designer believes his players will likely behave like every "super team" show or movie, and each character will hyper specialize in one thing. One guy will be so good with electronics he can hit the side of a fusebox and only knockout the security system... One guy will be able to beat a tank in HtH combat... and of course, stealthy McNinjaboy is so trained in the art of invisibility that he can garrote someone in the middle of a feast and no one notices. So when designing, you plan for these things, you say "the best security system in the world" and you make a specific stealth course, and you have "the Russian" (punisher reference) for the HtH guy. They each have their roles, they each are important, they each get their moment of glory. They know no one else can do it and they get to say "my character is bad ASS".

So when you have generalists, people that create somewhat human characters, it can be hard to make sure they don't feel unneeded. I wrestle with this problem from time to time, usually in the middle of a campaign I didn't think through well enough. But I was watching the new Medal of Honor trailers and something one of the consultants said struck me. "When certain things show up on the table and certain things need to get done, 100% of the guys that you work with can look at that and say 'I am the answer to that problem'". That got me thinking. If everyone is good at everything that means you break things down by mission tasks, not by specific person tasks. It requires a bit more camaraderie and team spirit than the other technique of specifically tailoring events for characters, but seems to solve the problem. You lay out so many tasks that need to get done, and you let the players look at it and say "I can only do one thing, but I can do any of the things, what is my task" and realize that that task is necessary for the mission to be accomplished. It should, once the mission is done, provide a sense of "we did X" rather than "I did x, joe did y, and bill did z" (see? Your parents are right, capitals DO matter).

I kinda can't wait to try this.

Mass effect

2009-12-06T02:31:00.000-05:00

I... don't know if i can do mass effect justice.

aside from the few laggy bits, and the occassional annoyance with choosing a dialogue option and having Shepard (the main character) say something drastically different, this game is flawless. It is one of the most magnificent works in the industry I have every been exposed to.

The game actually got me emotionally invested... I was planning on going to bed 3 hours ago, but something that happened to a member of my crew left me feeling so... wronged, so cheated, that I continued to push for more and more plot.

They've done so much right, and I can't wait for the sequel (or to finish the first tomorrow!).

I only hope the sequel improves upon the first. then maybe I could stop playing games, having played the pinnacle of them.

face tracking touch screen multitouch video game mash up?

2009-10-13T12:51:00.000-04:00

As technology improves, actions and activities we have never before imagined become not just possible, but common. In order for this to happen though, people need to think up those weird combinations and applications for existing and emerging technologies. So, I was struck with the thought, of a fully interactive world, that just used the world we already have to create itself.

baby steps though. So the first step is finding a high quality touch screen display, with multitouch capabilities, and capturing large amounts of video with things like 360 cameras. when you take the video, have software along the vein of face tracking software map the parts of the body, and identify things that can be interacted with (such as light switches). Map a generic rig (the virtual bones and ligatures that make animation move) onto the image using the analysis of the face tracking software. If you have enough video captured you can interact with the people in the video.

If I am not explaining this well, I apologize, but I really think it has potential. It's the start of a way to make highly realistic, reactive computer programs. almost like the holodeck on star trek. Captures could include a fairly limited suite of positions and expressions. Taking angry, sad, happy, shocked, conflicted, honest, lying, and maybe exasperated, and you would have all the emotion you needed. Have postures that match, plus a few like, falling, running, jogging, depending on the nature of the features being used you could also include a few gymnastic positions (splits, back bends, high kicks, rolls, flips), and maybe some wire work (think wushu flying kung fu stuff). With that suite postures and expressions in place, you could put them in a virtual environment, and have them react and interact.

What would be left, essentially, would be collision detection, lighting, and some basic scripting. These are all things we already have the capabilities for already(though I in no way wish to downplay their difficulty or importance).

Dear god why

2009-04-13T21:14:00.004-04:00

I just found a number so big that it hurts me to try to think about thinking about it.

it is the third number in Kurskal's TREE sequence. to give you a rough idea of how large this is, there is the following paragraph:

the difference between it and friedman's n(4) is apparently inconcievable, and the difference between friedman's n(4) and Graham's number is also inconcievable, and Graham's number is inconcievably larger than a Googolplex, which is a POWER of 10^98 large than a Googol, and a googol is so large that it cannot be written down as the paper it was written on would take up more space than there is in the KNOWN UNIVERSE, which is said to be so inconcievably la

Image via Wikipedia

rge that it would drive someone insane to be able to see all of it at once. lets see, that is 3X10^80 cubic meters, which is kind of unimaginably more than the milky way galaxy which is (9.5X10^20) X (9.5X10^18) cubic meters, which in turn is unimaginably more than our solar system, which is about 10,100,000,000,000 Meters in Radius (if we include dwarf planets in the Oort cloud), which is, in turn, really hard to think of compared to earth, which, at the equator, has a radius of only 6,378,100 meters. which is now in the realm where it is a BIT easier to understand, as 6.4 million meters is 6,400 kilometers, which is about 4000 miles, which is a little less than how far away britain is, which is a 14 hour flight at 4-6 hundred miles an hour, or abou

Image via Wikipedia

t 22 times the width of massachusetts, which is 183 miles which is about the size of 7 marathons, or 33 mount everests, which is in turn about the size of 351 of the worlds TALLEST building (the Burj Dubai), which is half a mile tall, which is probably about the length of a walk it takes to get bored.

I can't even explain how big the numbers needed to understand how big the equations used to get the numbers needed to explain how big the number is that is needed to explain how big the number arrived at by the equation used to find the third number in the TREE sequence is.

excellence

2009-03-23T15:27:00.001-04:00

http://kotaku.com/5175355/is-there-half+life-in-the-box

two good concepts

2009-03-04T18:16:00.003-05:00

So, I am an avid lifehacker reader, and enjoy a lot of the ideas they put forth. I have been collecting information in my brain for a long time. I still haven't figured out the best way to organize it all, maybe something involving google reader, gmail, delicious, yahoo pipes, and a mind brain interface? anyway, a topic for another day.

Today I have two fun ideas. ones I am looking forward to trying and will hopefully review again after trying them.

The first will be action cards. maybe just buying cards, but I think one could probably extend it to other things.

The idea is you write out a number of questions you have to answer before you purchase anything, print it on an index card, and keep it in your wallet, or take it shopping with you, or tape it next to your computer for when you use amazon. Hell, print up a bunch of cards.

These are just reminders of questions you should be asking yourself already. Things like:

1.) is this really the cheapest price you can get for this? have you looked? amazon, craigslist, google, your local retailers?

2.) do you really need this? is the function necessary to your continued quality of life (note this CAN include the big screen tv if you destress with things like that)?

3.) do you have something that does this already? do you have something that functions just as well you could use?

4.) do you have something lined up to pay for this? does this require debt?

and obviously they are guidelines, not rules, but I think it would help to have a checklist every time I looked at things. Amazingly enough I wouldn't find it very hindering either.

Next is the idea of big, medium, and small things. Kind of a way of prioritizing tasks that don't have a set amount of time to them. This is actually because I have a lot of trouble focusing on things, and can be combined with naps, break time systems, tangent lists, and the like.

so, if you have a big thing, like the apartment hunting that I have coming up (and the job search, oi), give a week to it, and every day of that week, when you have time, you work on the big task. you give yourself the week as a deadline, and to measure your progress. admittedly it will take time for people to get back to you and the like, but you can get a LOT of work done in a week.

medium items you give a day to, things like a report, you just figure you will give all the free time you have that day to getting it done, if you get it done, then you are all set.

small items are things you can do in less than an hour (like make dinner), and combined with prioritizing, this way I can set clear, simply goals.

idk, something to try.

theories

2008-11-18T01:58:00.002-05:00

I have discovered i do not write down my theories enough.

This is merely the spark for discussion.

So, there is always this idea of balance in the universe, some kind of supernatural fairness. And, being the pattern seekers that we are, we are always trying to ascribe some system of balances that fits the universe well. The craftiest one I know of so far is the concept of karma, because we cannot know what we did in a previous life.

Anyway, the theory I posit is this, what if suffering and such is bestowed, not just upon those that have earned it, but those that can withstand it. Not so much to forge them into greater people, build character, or the like, but simply because life requires that certain amount of suffering and thus it must be deposited somewhere, and since some people seem able to withstand more of it than others they are given more of it than others.

*shrug* just a thought, there is more to it, but I have to be doing other things, just wanted to get it in writing.

today in review

2008-07-30T23:37:00.002-04:00

to the librarians in the audience
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/30/1310235&from=rss

to the paranoid folks that don't want to be seen
http://gizmodo.com/5030958/face+swapping-tech-keeps-your-privacy-online-by-making-you-look-horrifying

and finally, to people that like to have pants in their pants
http://gizmodo.com/366779/pants-in-a-pinch-change-of-clothes-in-your-pocket

Today in review

2008-07-29T23:26:00.001-04:00

First, for all those collectors with books that need some touching up
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~preserve/repair/repairindex.htm

Now, for those posters of many flickr albums, a great way to get your friends to see every last detail in all your photos.
http://lifehacker.com/399338/blow-up-shows-off-flickr-photos-full+screen

finally, something more for me to remember than anything else, but for the tech savvy, DNS.
http://www.webmonkey.com/tutorial/Set_Up_OpenDNS/

once a... moon?

2008-07-29T00:16:00.000-04:00

It's scary how hard I find blogging every day...
oh well, here's today's.

http://kotaku.com/5029827/mercenary-group-to-airdrop-360s-guitar-hero-to-us-troops

http://gizmodo.com/377955/the-future-of-broadband-were-totally-screwed

http://lifehacker.com/399403/gallery-of-nature+themed-desktop-wallpaper

http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/07/28/automated-friendship-bracelet-maker-made-of-legos/

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/07/new-riaa-lawsui.html

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/07/a-group-of-demo.html

Today in review

2008-07-24T08:41:00.001-04:00

Google takes on wiki? this is interesting

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/knol-is-open-to-everyone.html

Today in review.

2008-07-23T08:56:00.004-04:00

First, a note on the "new" economy. http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/22/are-facebook-ads-going-to-zero-lookery-lowers-its-gaurantee-to-75-cent-cpms/

It's interesting that we are approaching the information economy, and it is already fluctuating, if not floundering. I suppose on the one hand, it isn't so strange. The dollar is a dollar. If you give the US Government a one dollar bill they will give you one dollar, probably in the form of a one dollar bill. Money is abstract, it has meaning because we give it meaning. So why shouldn't the product be as well? Information, ads, software, when you think about them all, they are all things we pay for, and many GET paid for, but they don't REALLY exist. They are not tangible things. An ad is simply information. A picture or text you put on your web site that someone pays you for. To them they view it as more business (and thus more money) for them, but really, they are paying you to do, in essence, nothing. Information has become it's own market too. Not just in the sense of the news, but with the explosion of the Blogosphere. These days you are just as likely to get your information from someone's blog than anywhere else. And then there is software itself. Were it not for DRM (which complicates everything) the product of software, once the "design" phase is complete, is just a matter of hitting copy, paste, eject. They have machines that can copy cd's at a rate of hundreds an hour, then there are upgrades and maintenance. Now, I am not trying to make light of anyone's job, hell, I work in this industry, but it does, in a way, mean we pay abstract currency for things with abstract value. I feel like I should take Econ, just to get a better view of this phenomenon.

While we're on the subject of money:
http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/07/23/with-the-number-of-landline-telephones-decreasing-telecos-scramble-to-replace-lost-revenue/

You'd think telephone companies would have been expecting this for years now wouldn't you? I figured they had their plan all worked out. Honestly, I figured that being able to charge for each phone on a plan would have more than made up for losing one line per household...

Now, a small glimpse of the future
http://www.nanotechproject.org/

Yes nanotech, I went there. But it's true, we are heading there too. Soon, and sites like this are important, because we really will need to pay attention to setting policy. When a technology that promises to grow as quickly, and permeate as much of our society, as nanotechnology does, we CAN'T ignore it and call ourselves responsible people. This is looking like it may be what the 1980's were for computers, only with 25 years of Moore's law going for it. Probably not the singularity, but certainly not something to let slip by unnoticed.

How about a nice view of the here and now

Is what productivity studies telling you bullshit? maybe multitasking isn't so bad.
http://lifehacker.com/399078/what-productivity-studies-really-show

and to wrap things up, a couple neat DIY's.

http://www.gmilburn.ca/2008/07/21/the-ultimate-home-laser-show/

http://www.instructables.com/id/Swiss-Army-Keys-Key-and-Leatherman-Mod/

My links of the day

2008-07-21T12:27:00.002-04:00

Just some links to keep things interesting, trying to redo this blog thing a bit.

http://gizmodo.com/5024550/zing-laser-brings-laser-cutting-goodness-to-the-average-guy

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=all-wet-astronomers-claim

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/15/genius-junk-food-6-snacks_n_112903.html

http://gizmodo.com/5027238/invisible-near+weightless-nanotubes-could-support-humans-buildings-space-elevators

sometimes you just can't eat it all

2008-06-12T21:46:00.002-04:00

The next time someone reminds you that there are starving children in place X when you don't clean your plate, Show them THIS site and tell them to get off your back ans start writing letters if it is such a big deal to them.

Ah, military research

2008-05-15T15:37:00.000-04:00

Terminator armor, here I come!

The price of panic

2008-03-31T22:53:00.001-04:00

RICK ROLLED!!!!!!

For those of you that don't know what rickrolling is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickrolling

a couple videos you all should see.

2008-03-28T08:46:00.002-04:00

First, When NASA gets bored:

Second, academics and scientists are always loopy:

For those of you that think the matrix is silly sci fi.

2008-03-19T10:43:00.003-04:00

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS!?

It defies my ability to use the english language, it is... stupifying...

This thing walks better than PEOPLE I know....

on ice, sand, snow, steep slopes, you can KICK the thing and it just stumbles, I just pray we don't give it a way to fight back...

life

2008-01-25T09:08:00.000-05:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/24/AR2008012402203.html?hpid=sec-health

Yes, just that close to creating artificial life... so, when will we get animals tailor made for being food, built from scratch from the DNA up? when will we get to gatacca our children? when will we begin creating organic robots?

Uh.... what?

2007-11-20T02:56:00.000-05:00

Not entirely sure what to make of this...

Is it really a revolution? will it win? and if so, is that a good thing?

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000FI73MA/ref=pd_sl_aw_manual-1_kindle1_40650458_1

I just don't know what to say. I don't know nearly enough about the product, it is in its first generation and it is supposed to be released in 9 days. The iPod has made a tremendous amount of progress in 5 generations, so I know it can be hard to judge things by the first gen model. But the iPod wasn't trying to replace one of my favorite things in the world, books.

one concern I have is, verifiability. We tend to verify through coherentism, and I know how easy that is too fake. Yes I know I am waxing philosophic, but I feel the further automation of the way we get our information simply facilitates the changing of what that information is. We have already seen how twisted the government can make the news, and how wonderfully deceptive the media can be. While it would be nice for newspapers to be able to fix corrections as they are noticed, rather than print retractions the next day, there is something distinctly unsettling about the idea of reading a news story, and not knowing if it is going to say the same thing the next time you glance at it.

My cog psych studies have shown me how possible it is for them to edit the material you are reading while you are reading it.

you think I am kidding. if you read a paragraph and they change words randomly in the paragraph while you read, unless you are staring STRAIGHT at a word, and paying attention to the word, not just the sentence, you are not likely to notice the change. In fact, the super human limit is something like a word 5 words away from your current focus.

This, unsettles me, but I have the feeling I will not just come to accept it, but come to enjoy it in the future, and I only hope that at that point, I will look back at this, and remember how dangerous it can be.

for those who miss TV-links

2007-11-13T02:13:00.000-05:00

http://tvteddy.blogspot.com/2007/10/tv-links-replacements.html

I tend to use alluc, http://stage6.divx.com, www.veoh.com and www.joox.net. but this seems to be a much more comprehensive list.

Enjoy you guys.

WORMS

2007-10-26T21:19:00.001-04:00

Ladies and gentlemen, now upcoming, for the Wii entertainment system

WORMS!

http://www.thq-games.com/uk/game/show/2556?per_page=&platform=7

write a novel

2007-10-24T11:40:00.000-04:00

Alright, we are approaching november, which, as some of the more litararily inclined of you (IE the people that want to beat me over the head for this sentence and it's vocabulary) already know, is nation write a novel month. That is one month to write 50,000 pages. That's a little over two single spaced pages a day. Seems easy right? Well, I certainly have trouble with it.
Now I am too busy to make a solid effort really. Which is kind of unfortunate. I still wish to try though. The real problem is that I am never sure who I am ripping off these days. More and more I feel my ideas aren't original, but rather stolen from some of the amazing things I have seen. I suppose the first artist may have felt like he was ripping off the natural beauty around ... neuter gender word here. But I feel like it is a little different when you have had conversations with the entities responsible for some of the work that seems to creep into your own.

My newest item which I feel like I am going to end up stealing (too good an idea not to, and even if I stopped myself absolutely it would sneak in later. Perhaps I can find a way to insert some form of homage), is Girl Genius. It is a wonderful "gaslamp fantasy" that seems to blend clockworkz, steampunk, scifi, historical fiction, and some amusing allusions to classic horror.

I mean, most of what I want to do is different enough that I am probably actually ripping it off from somewhere else that I didn't even know existed, but I know where the idea got in, and I am having trouble distinguishing between inspiration and iteration.

such IDEAS they drift through my mind, and in the end, I know, nothing I have ever done is really original. Hell, I still want to put the rabbit strider things from the dark crystal in half the things I write. oh well, at least some of my thievery is well enough disguised as to make proving my fraudulence difficult.

Note to self, dwarven rhythm. Elf run forges versus the resistance. need mechanism for slower production, is "from scratch" enough?

2007-10-05T00:53:00.000-04:00

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/generic/9b02/

you don't need to get it, but if you don't, you so aren't cool.

It's been a while

2007-10-03T11:17:00.000-04:00

I know I know, I am lazy and really shouldn't expect an audience at all. But at least I am getting slowly back into the swing of putting things on here.

so, Shift happens, ya know?

In my HCI class we watched a number of videos that got me thinking. I am going to put some up here, and see if that gets you thinking as well

here is the updated version (look at how the stats for Myspace change, and imagine how it will change in the future)

and because I want you to at least get a FEEL for how accessible this information is becoming

Yes it is a 1 year old using an iPhone. Yes he is only using the picture features, yes that is basic. BUT, tell me the last time you thought "oh I remember that picture, it is on my hard drive somewhere" and just flipped through things quickly and found it to send to a friend. Unless you have Picasa, or a system like the iPhone you probably took a while to find it. I know I do.

This means, by the time I spawn (and what creatures they will be), then my children will probably be using devices and playing with information, that I learned in my college career, by the time they are 3 or so. They will probably have a better grasp and understanding of the internet, and the nature of technology than I by the time they are 12. By the time they are my age (22) they will no longer have to rely on internal memory, or operate with a real understanding of the "basics" this is not to say the basics will be unimportant, or not taught, merely that the more technology advances the more I find that the basics aren't the emphasis anymore. thought is becoming much more abstract and advanced.

the world will be a very different place for my children than it was for me.

you may want to turn your speakers down

2007-06-17T15:07:00.000-04:00

Prostitution

2007-05-09T02:31:00.001-04:00

Prostitution is currently legal in virtually all developed nations, though often surrounded by restrictions and regulations. It is illegal everywhere in the United States except Nevada and, by a legal quirk, in Rhode Island if all transactions are conducted in a private residence.

Is this true?
Can someone check on this for me?
Is it just Rhody that has this weird loop hole?

http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/001203.html

old school

2007-05-01T02:12:00.000-04:00

hey, this is a pretty interesting game if any of you still read this.

2007-04-14T12:40:00.001-04:00

You scored as Angel of Guidance. You were the Angel of Guidance! Before you were sent down to Earth to be tested and be a human, you used to guide people in the right direction when they faced a problem or a seemingly hopeless situation. You looked out for humans using the stars as your eyes during the night when it was dark. Even today as a human, your friends and family often ask you for advice and always trust you because you know what is right and lead everyone in the right direction.

Angel of Guidance

79%

Guardian Angel

75%

Angel of Good Fortune

71%

Angel of Hope

61%

Angel of Death

57%

Angel of Prayer

18%

What kind of an Angel were you before your life on Earth? (kool anime pics)
created with QuizFarm.com

451

2007-02-21T16:48:00.000-05:00

sometimes technology is just a little scary. Yes I know this looks pretty cool. Yes I know that combined with some of the other stuff out there right now this could be AMAZING in the near future. But really, this is just a wee bit unsettling right?

The future is now

2007-02-13T02:50:00.000-05:00

So, I try to keep my thumb on the pulse of technology but there is a lot of it so I do not always keep up as well as I would like. Well here is some neat stuff for you guys, that I think might start changing things pretty soon.

First, you all know about the Wii, it really has changed how we play the game, and with the new interface we see the world changing. Sounds like I am trying to give the Wii props, I am not, I am just saying how innovation like the interface is changing how we see the world. If you think that interface is cool, check out this one

Next we have something I knew about last spring but is finally being implemented. Wireless power. Yes you heard me, power that doesn't require things be plugged in. It is still in it's formative stage but this is very cool in a society that is rapidly going wireless. Imagine wireless cyber bars with these things built into the counter so you could just set your laptop down and use it all day. Imagine having something like this set into the table by the door so when you put your purse down with your cell phone, camera, and palm pilot down, they all recharge.

very cool.

http://www.splashpower.com/

alright, that was windows, now lets see mac.

2007-02-08T23:18:00.000-05:00

and you thought the silly mac commercials with the stuffy windows guy now were silly, but look, mac has a point.

For those of you that like horror movies.

2007-02-08T14:21:00.000-05:00

Alright, if you don't think you can make it through the movie, TRY to at least watch the second half (about 6 minutes in) and understand my horrific pain.

Jesus Christ (and dragons)

2007-02-02T00:03:00.000-05:00

The messiah has come. (again for all you christians)

check this baby out (hehe, I am funny).

yep, a real melding of religion going on here. dragons and immaculate conceptions.

Man v. stupid

2007-02-01T23:59:00.000-05:00

here is a quick recap.

yes, this actually happened, yes people actually thought they were bombs, yes it makes me laugh that the officials in power are so out of touch with today's youth that they tried to shut down a city over something any teenager would have pointed to and laughed at.

Oi, people are... idk... hilarious? pathetic? I mean seriously, legal action? five years in prison? what is this BS?

Looking for something.

2007-01-27T02:41:00.000-05:00

For those looking for a skill:

For those looking for a laugh:

For those looking for compassion:

I've found a few things, but I'm still looking for love, happiness, friendship, understanding, contentment, joy, darkness, light, entertainment, the strange, the unique, and a few others. If you have any suggestions I would love them. Leave a comment.

Waking walk

2007-01-16T02:30:00.000-05:00

in broken tower,
in misty manse,
in red corridors,
in dark expanse.

The boots they march,
with even thrum,
the walls shake softly,
to deep bass drum.

In eerie still,
we hear them stride,
with broken skin,
pale eyed.

And in primordial dread formed the broken corpsemen that haunt the nights of our darkest dreams, and walk in mindless drile through the shutter streets of towns of old. Armies on the march and dead men walk, lands a flame and lands to salt, the war cries "MORE" and blood falls again to the ground. Ground plant and trodden pup, children cowering in ruined sheds, mothers covering there children. The night men walk and prowl and wait for the one small child to be before them that they may take her, and free their dreams. in waking nightmare and sleeping terror she knows they come and fears them not, for to her they are friends long lost, and soon to be, they are part of her, and definition.

The night men walk,
and onward creep,
to plague your dreams,
and drink your sleep.

demons and princes

2007-01-07T02:51:00.000-05:00

The fire still burns
but now red as blood,
our wings are all clipped
boots covered in mud.

On we all walk,
the straps bound up tight,
forever grounded,
forever without flight.

In four hundred years,
the walls will all stand,
changed by their time,
but still ever so grand.

when I am ended,
perhaps then I will know,
why forever forsaken,
with no place to go.

While I clasp my spear tightly,
and peirce my friends' flesh,
some with sharp daggers,
with blood that's still fresh.

But who holds a weapon,
and simply cares,
who wants my blood,
and who holds me in prayers.

I know not for certain,
my place or my pride,
but I know now for reason
I care, and I've tried.

2007-01-02T00:20:00.000-05:00

hey, I may have discovered a fun new game

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/googlebombing-failure.html

innovation with meaning.

2006-12-09T17:30:00.000-05:00

I respect this man, even though I have not met him. This is almost exactly what I want to do with my life. He invented something that improved the lives of many many people. he tinkered and fiddled until he got something so simple it was bound to work. Check out the link and check out this mans refridgerator.

http://www.rolexawards.com/special-feature/inventions/abba.html

Just like disposable contact lenses

2006-12-06T16:14:00.000-05:00

Hello everybody,

I have good news. As you may know the government and corporations are always looking out for us and guess what? They may have found somewhere to move us when we use up this planet.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/podcasting/jpl-mgs-20061206.html

2006-12-05T16:31:00.000-05:00

I haven't been able to get this actually MP3 yet but I have been listening to it on pandora.

I suggest you guys check it out if you get the chance.

Hummingbirds by Venus Hum

Bookworm adventure

2006-12-04T00:56:00.000-05:00

For those of you that read Penny Arcade you probably already know about this.

For those of you that don't read the news posts or just don't go to PA at all check out this game. It is called bookworm adventures. It is a phenomenal game and is based on the earlier bookworm (also a good game). Basically it is for you wordy types out there. But I suggest it even if you aren't because it is a lot of fun.

http://www.popcap.com/launchpage.php?theGame=bwa

quick back pointer

2006-12-04T00:55:00.000-05:00

in case any of you missed it, go into the archives and find october 19th. click on happy kitty's picture and see the pictures. in case you didn't miss it, go anyway, there are more.

2006-11-28T10:30:00.000-05:00

This legitimately upsets me.

http://www.bbspot.com/News/2006/11/home-theater-regulations.html

Apparently, we are supposed to buy one DVD per person watching a movie, and the MPAA would like it to be mandatory that we have little chips installed that tell them how many people we are having over so we can pay them money. Please read this and tell me what you think.

2006-11-27T21:04:00.000-05:00

I know I know. It has been a while. I have been stressing a lot, but I think I have a treat for you guys today. (I hope). I recently found out about a hilarious game made for sega genesis. Since it is a dead system I will provide you with some links to use an emulator.

here is the emulator http://gens.consolemul.com/downloads/wgens200.zip

and here is the Rom http://www.freeroms.com/download.php3?game_id=344&system=Genesis

try it out, it is micheal jacksons Moonwalker.

countries, truth, and a subtle clever little pun.

2006-11-13T11:58:00.000-05:00

Alright,
I know this weeks post is a little late, but I have been working on being happy (and yes it worked) so I haven't found much of great interest around the web. Nor have I come across any great topics to talk on. This morning in calculus I was trying to define what equals really meant, but I can't imagine that my ramblings on that would be very entertaining.

I will tell you of a little online game I play every once in a while. It was shown to me by my roommate (a geek of similar caliber but in a different arena). It is a geography game. Yes the stuff your parents remember hating in grammar school and most of us never had to learn because other nations aren't really important anymore (ever wonder where that happened?). Anyway, here is the URL.

One thing I can talk about for a while is that I am not sure where lying and truth should play into things. I suppose this is part of growing up and learning and all that, but it took me forever to believe that lying ever had merit. I still believe that honesty is generally the best policy (although sometime it takes great effort to convince me this). Just staying quiet is great too but that is something I need to work on as well. I watch people that keep things to themselves and never tell people anything and I watch them struggle with it. I watch myself just say everything and be open and honest to a foolish degree and I watch myself put my foot in my mouth over and over again. I watch people put up facades, and lie to protect them, and become entirely different people than who they are. I can't even imagine living like that. In the end I guess it comes back to my struggle with individual situational vs. categorical and generalized. A debate I am not sure I will ever finish.

Oh, pun for last night. first the back story. I was working with a number of people on a program called Pipe for UNIX, basically it lets you string programs together (horrible oversimplification but it will do). I have also recently gained an interest in long stem meerschaum pipes. so I found myself saying "I wanna Finnish pipe" and laughing quietly to myself. Of course I meant it as "I wanna finish pipe" but either is a valid statement.

2006-11-05T23:41:00.000-05:00

I seem to slowly be falling into a weekly habit.

Perhaps I will have to set an update day and put it in my calendar.

Anyway, this episodes treat for you all is a man named Ron Mueck.

Credit for this little gem goes to val

here are a series of photos online.

and here are a few examples.

I think art is interesting. I mean anything that can get hundreds of people to look at a hairy naked man sitting on a table and see something else, or something more, or even just that when none of it is real is.... something else I guess.

alrighty, time to put away the cheese and write a bit in my other blog.

2006-10-31T02:29:00.000-05:00

Oh man, do I have a treat for you guys today.

I know I know, most of the stuff I give you I didn't make, and I just found somewhere, but hey, for now think of me as a place to visit and find fun and interesting new things. Eventually I will probably start making some stuff of my own and throwing you links to that too. probably start with flash, but right now I have enough stuff in my life to work out so I am giving you this instead.

first is a fun little page that will tell you a bit about what you are listening to
it is called LivePlasma

it is a nifty little site where you type in an artist and it gives you graphical representation of that band and the bands that are similar and have certain relationships. A theusaurus for music, most excellent.

The next is something I am currently enjoying a LOT. It is called Pandora Dynamic Internet Radio, or Pandora for short. While perhaps not living up to its namesake, it is certainly a lot of fun. It is similar to live plasma, except it creates a radio station based on the artist you input. It adds songs of similar artists to the play list, and you can rate them as closer or farther from what you were looking for.

you can find that here: PANDORA!

And here is my first, and so far favorite, radio station creation on Pandora, in case you were interested.

Hungry Lucy Station

2006-10-31T01:13:00.000-05:00

I have discovered I am not capable of being witty all the time.

This has been a most disappointing discovery, but one I am going to try to cope with.

I know I haven't been updating very often, but I guess I just don't feel passionately on a lot of issues.

I have begun to see why people believe indifference to be the greatest of evils, for indifference seems to be what allows evil to exist. That may just be me being optimistic though.

Even so, I take privacy very seriously, I know the government watches me, northeastern monitors me, and google probably shuffles through everythign of mine on their servers, but at least I try to make it harder, and stick with people that are less likely to go through my things.

of late I have been in deep thought over one of the few things I am truly passionate about. for the longest time I believed I would lay down my life for a friend (friend used in this sense as someone I really care about deeply, not just a co-worker I get along with etc.). I still believe this is true, but I am beginning to wonder if I need to be a more seperate entity.

all in all I am not sure what is worth being passionate about, I am even skeptical of the saying "it doesn't matter what you are passionate about as long as you are passionate about something". I am beginning to wonder why, and why not. It is hard wondering about BOTH sides of an argument.

oh well, more thoughts to come.

2006-10-27T00:59:00.000-04:00

Because sometimes we all need a pick-me-up.

2006-10-20T01:09:00.000-04:00

One of my readers sent me an interesting article I think might be worth checking out (I have read it, it is a bit long winded and this guy comes of a bit academia heavy (bodies are simply transportation for our heads, kind of thing) but it is good and has some good points). Just got me thinking that Reading is really important to my life, and I really do need a place to go. I mean I read here in the room, but I am talking on IM, updating my blog (yes yes I know), websurfing, writing, snacking, and ben is playing his music, and we occasionally talk about some point or another, and distractions abound. so it isn't really the same.

one thing I have found though is that I will always love reading in the bathroom. First, they have them just about everywhere, second they often give you somewhere reasonably quiet and secluded to read, third they take care of at least one basic need so the amount of interruptions are cut down :-P.

But really folks, I Love reading (capital for a reason) and will never give it up. It comforts me, calms me down, and helps me think. It cheers me up and makes me feel alive and entertains me. Terry Pratchett (hey I quoted him earlier) wrote a book (series really) where the Dwarves consider all written text holy. They believe that by writing something you bring it into being. An interesting concept but I have to say I kind of feel words have some power. Not any particular words, but words in general.

anyway, enough of me blathering on, here is the article

Article

2006-10-19T14:13:00.000-04:00

Look it's Choo-choo bear. Click the pic for laughs and adorable pictures.

Many thanks to nodwick for being so damned funny.

2006-10-19T13:46:00.000-04:00

jive machine

This is not for the faint of heart, but you know what? I wish I had the balls to do this.

Sometimes I think we get caught up on trying as hard as possible not to look like morons. I don't know, I think there is something almost endearing in being klumsy, bumbling, goofy, or just plain making an ass of yoruself sometimes. too much is bad true, but the stigma is so great against it I think we ought remind ourselves from time to time that running through the streets in your underwear, hiding in a plant display with fake plant peices held in front of your face, or sitting 20 feet up in a tree throwing candy to passers by can be a lot of fun, therapeutic, and an oddly effective way to break the ice.

2006-10-18T19:07:00.000-04:00

It could not be happening because this sort of thing did not happen. Any contradictory evidence could be safely ignored.: Terry Pratchett, Jingo

Ever wonder how often you think that way? or some similar way? Anything outside of the immediate seems to be so easy to dismiss.

little security bit

2006-10-18T13:40:00.000-04:00

http://www.kiplinger.com/personalfinance/magazine/archives/2006/11/mystory.html

I am guessing all the CJ majors out there will be saying "well DUH!" to this but I thought it was interesting that there are much fewer pickpockets in the US based on ENFORCEMENT. Generally when I talk about things like this prevention is the accepted way to go.

Absurd useless gadgets and gadgets that might be absurdly useful

2006-10-11T15:09:00.000-04:00

Hello ladies and gentlemen, and welcome.

I found some interesting things upon waking up. The first was this little beauty

This is not a joke, here is the hyperlink for where you can buy one http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/tools/8b97/?cpg=38H

I have to imagine that most of you find this at least somewhat absurd. This thing weighs almost 3 lbs, and is 8.75 inches wide. I think that renders ALL the tools in it essentially useless. It has grow so large and awkward it is almost unusable. As a programmer I understand this problem (my god is Ross talking about business principles?), you want to make a program that does EVERYTHING because it would be SOOOOOO COOL. However, you put that much functionality into a program and you will be the only one using it, and even you will probably stop after a while (I suspect this happened with the "English system").

I told you about that to tell you about this (well actually I just thought it was funny, and then I related it to what I REALLY wanted to talk about (YAY fun writing fact)). Google, creepy yet wonderful entity that it is, has done one better, again. Google has a lot of fun toys, and I have spent days sorting through them and going "ooooo that one and that one and that one", and this morning, when checking the google blog (which uses Google's atom feed to post summaries on my google personalized homepage) I found what I have been waiting a LONG time for (years I think). Google documents. *angels sing*. This little wonder is something that I think has a TREMENDOUS amount of potential. Basically, it is a simple text editor, with a folder on a server somewhere, that acts just like Word (or pico for those Unix users out there) online, and lets you store the documents you make online.
Ross, that's silly, what does that do that is so wonderful? Well, I am not entirely sure, but it is definitely somewhat useful. For instance, you can collaborate on documents, that means that two (or more) different people can access and edit it. This is without having to send the file to different people, working at your own computers, or even working at the Internet cafe down the street from your hotel while you are visiting friends in Rome. Having the document reside online is useful to a pretty neat degree, you can choose to share it with the public so that they can only read it, or share it with all your friends and choose who can read and who can write. You can make a club journal the officers can write in and the members can read. It is flexible.
In addition, there are a lot of other google products with similar principles. google spreadsheets, Gmail, Google personalize home page, blogger (hey!), Google groups, picasa. All of these things reside ONLINE and have the same flexibility, accessibility, and convenience. The only thing left is hosting things like Photoshop, or Maple online. As a friend pointed out "at that point it is possible to treat every computer with an Internet connection as a terminal". Everything you need is at a location you can access remotely, you can choose permission writes and share with all your friends.
This is interesting, in, oh I don't remember, '98? people were proving the power of the Internet by proving that they could live, at home, without contact to the outside world other than the Internet, for a year (or something like that). Basically, I can LIVE on the Internet, make money, get food, have fun, meet people, buy funny looking lamps, whatever, ALL on the Internet. And I acknowledge that point, my counterpoint however is, "why would you want to?". I think it is interesting that this is, in a way, a reversal of that. It is providing us access to our computers, our funny little data centers, everywhere else. Now we don't have to stay at home, haul our laptops around, or even worry about E-mailing someone documents or spreadsheets. FREEDOM! FREEDOM I SAY!

...

...

AHEM!...

Anyway, I was just wondering what this means for the future, especially if I can (and I hope to) implement all of this neat technology together. I certainly know I will use it in Role playing games, when I design games, when I am working on things (imagine doing your finances with your spouse from wherever either or both of you are). I feel so... CONNECTED. What do you guys think? What will you use it for? Will you use it? Why? Why not?

oh, and also, why is left blue and right red? (I mean clearly there is the right and red both begin with R thing, but it seems pretty universal.)

Knowledge and google

2006-10-09T17:40:00.000-04:00

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome,

     I got to thinking today. When a friend asks me to define a word, or what something is, I tend to suggest that they wiki it or look to google. This has led to a number of thoughts.
     First, the reason that I tell people to look to the internet is because I feel it is more likely to give a better and more accurate explination for it. But that also means that I fall out of the practice of explaining things. I understand the importance of delegation in today's society but I think that the fact that I keep directing people to the net rather than explaining myself is literally handicapping myself. I feel that even if I have mastered something (and lets face it I haven't mastered anything so I could be wrong) without practice that skill with wither away and disappear. So doing so is almost harmful to myself.
     Second, the first reason I tend to point to google or wiki is that I feel they are more likely to produce a more easily understood example. This is based on the assumption that given such a large pool of explinations as the internet, one is more likely to find an explination that will make it clear given one's own personal understanding of things. This makes sense but has more flaws than I orginially realized. The first is that one cannot really ask questions of the internet in order to clarify points. It is possible, but often inefficient. One could post to forums, pay money to ask researchers (nifty little google feature that is), or E-mail someone that knows with the question. That, however, requires time, sometiems money, and usually a lot more effort than people are willing to put in. Also, and more importantly, the explination online may be misleading. I find that even if a definition is sound, without the ability to clarify points it can be interpreted VERY differently.
     Third, the second reason I tend to point to the net is that I feel the definitions will be more accurate as they will inevitably be the most common and agreed upon definition. Most of you already see the problem, since when has the most agreed upon answer been the right one? I know, I know, but I still felt it worked because the majority and the average would be the definitions you were most likely to come across. Even better, this extends even to rarer and more esoteric knowledge as the net is large enough to find an average with that as well. And then, all comfortable in my little bubble, I thought, "yeah, but that doesn't mean that is what I think it is". I realized that half the time people ask me these questions they don't want to know what the world thinks, they want to know what I think.
     In the end I guess that I am just going to have to try to explain the best i can and save google and wiki for backup. If someone doesn't like my definition I can send them there, or if I feel in doubt I can tell them they might want to check with other sources first. But I think that I have to start explaining things myself, even if it is that grass is pushed up out of the ground by trolls.

Goodnight.

Dreams

2006-10-09T02:46:00.000-04:00

Some people will tell you not to dream, to set reachable goals and strive for things you can do. Don't listen, do what you want, break it down and make every step a step toward your dreams. I have heard it said that dreams aren't dreams if they are reachable. I disagree, I think reaching your dreams is a wonderful thing, and I think when you get there you should give yourself a pat on the back and take a little break and start dreaming again.
What I DON'T quite understand is when dreams seem to be things I have no real desire to do. In the end I just want to help my friends. Yes just that, and no it is no more selfish than anything else. I really just want to be there for all of them, I want to be able to offer shelter and comfort, and someone to talk to when they are down. I want to give 'em a good kick in the rump when they are wallowing and hold them when they hurt. In the end that is the only thing I have ever really had the motive to do through and through. I am going to be a psych major now, maybe that will help. I don't know though, I am told you are not supposed to be friends with your patients or let your friends be patients, but I feel like we are all each others therapists in the end, to the best of our ability.

Is it worth it? Still don't know, there are a lot of things I don't know, but maybe, for once, I should follow my own advice and make every step a step toward that goal.

2006-10-05T14:21:00.000-04:00

Just a quick post before I get to writing the main one.

Thought you might find this interesting.

PLANETS!

Which one is real?

2006-10-03T01:47:00.000-04:00

I thought today we could play a little game. Which one of these photos is the real one?

A.)

B.)

C.)

Today is learning day

2006-10-01T20:55:00.000-04:00

Hello ladies and gentlemen, and welcome.

Today I shant batter you with mad rants about the war, complaints about the system, or the frustration that I feel towards the human condition. No, TODAY will be about learning. Not learning anything in particular, or learning how to learn (which is a term I both loath and agree with), but rather learning something.

I watch Ze Frank all the time; as frequently as possible in fact. Why? Well, I suppose it is because he entertains me. Yet, I feel I get more out of it than simply something to giggle to myself about and kill 3 minutes with. I think I feel this way because he says something that sticks with me, on just about every show. Ze is intelligent, I will not defend that but I do believe it, and more than that he has a way with words. He probably spends some absurd amount of time editing and writing and carefully making each episode, so it is very likely that we are being given some view of him that only exists through the window of the internet. Still, that doesn't make his points less profound, his wording any less sharp and penetrating, and his humor any more memorable and entertaining. To quote Joshua Foer, the reigning U.S.A. memory champion, "As it turns out the two things evolution has programmed us to find most interesting are jokes and sex". I cannot know Ze's motives, or even if he has any behind his video blog, but I do know that what he does works. Putting humor together with things will help anyone remember them.

This is important. In 1835, hell probably in 1935, the idea of educating someone was to give them some manner of information (more often then not a table) and tell them to memorize it. This way when they needed to use it in the future, it would be there, permanently ground into their brain. Problem is memorizing is so painfully boring it is easier to cram for a test, until you are practically suffocating on memorized terms, and then regurgitate them onto the test. After you have thoroughly purged your system of the information you can forget it until the next test that may or may not contain it. This is more than just a problem in high school. For a long time I thought, "college will be different, they understand how education works better, they will let me do things that are interesting, they will involve me." Alright, I concede it is better, but it isn't much different. There is the same old memorization, same old, "I am saying this... as slowly as possible... because it is something...you need to write down... word for word...and read until you say it in your sleep". It's all still there. Some of the more successful approaches I have seen students take to this is to add their own humor. My roommate, to this day, remembers "avocado's number" (for those non-chemists in the room it is a reference to the mole constant and its inventor Count Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro di Quaregna e Cerreto). Yes, it is lame, yes, it probably doesn't have you in stitches right now, but at the time, it was pretty funny, and it sure as hell helped us remember it, to this day.

So, to the professors, the teachers, the tutors, the parents, the adults, the neighbors, the guardians, the TA's, student teachers, volunteers, gurus, mentors, friends, and families, that are in any way responsible for someone's education, please, PLEASE, make it interesting. Add some humor. It doesn't even have to be terribly good humor (I leave that distinctions to your own standards), just something to help your students remember what the hell you were talking about twenty minutes ago. I know a lot of teachers that crack jokes in class solely to keep themselves awake. Here is a secret, it keeps the students awake too. My calculus class has both an entertaining professor and what would once have contemptuously been referred to as "class clowns". Alright, they aren't perfect and they really disrupt the class sometimes, but out of every calculus class I have been in (and trust me I have been in a number of them) I have never seen the students so awake. I have not once seen someone in that class fall asleep.

So, quick summary, memorization is necessary sometimes, but where it isn't (or if you are clever enough even where it is), using humor helps with EVERYTHING. It will keep the professor and the students awake in class (you think I am kidding about how many college kids I see asleep in their chairs? I swear it is the fluorescent lights), it will help the students remember all the information they need to more easily and for a longer period, and it will help people find the class interesting, and probably cut down on the amount of kids cutting class. NO not every professor is likely to agree to this, some of them may get stuffy and call me a fool who knows nothing about education, some of them may just say that it is both disrespectful to the professor and to the discipline. Not all kids will be swayed by this, some kids just think college is about parties, sports, drinking, promiscuity, getting away from home, etc. and I honestly don't know how to reach them (these things are not necessarily bad, they are just divergent from the point of an educational institute, that being education.). Some professors can reach them, they are greater men and women than I. Still, it will make a difference.

Alrighty, so, education needs to change, I think we all agree. A joke now and then won't hurt, but before you get the idea that I think that is a cure all (even given my few cautionary statements) I will point out a few other things that might bear some scrutiny.

First, what is intelligence? This whole piece is done MUCH better by Sir Ken Robinson

HERE:

But I am still going to write about it (hopefully quickly) so that I can put my opinion out there. Intelligence has been slowly distilled into math ability. How this happened or even why is beyond me (at the moment, I am sure motive and method are there if the research is done, I am just lazy). I think it is pretty silly though. The arts and sciences colleges seem to be shrinking while tech schools and things like the college of mathy math math (also known as Computer Science) seem HUGE. But is someone that can describe, in words that evoke the feeling, a sunset on the beach with a loved one, or a rainy day spent playing games with someone that is no longer around, any less intelligent than someone that can program a funny little box with the square root algorithm that will help you pass your calc test (because NOBODY has the square root algorithm memorized)? I am dead serious, because the man that can make you remember things that hurt and things that were beautiful, and made you feel better than you had ever felt before, in this day and age, isn't likely to get a job, or a degree people will care about, but the guy with the little box has a job and a degree people will oo and ahh. In fact, we are doing a good job of finding kids with some amazing talents and scooping them up young, stamping "ADHD" or "DYSLEXIC" on their forehead, feeding them pills and throwing them in a room with a teacher who will insist they don't know what they say they know.

Alright, COUNTER-POINT. Blah blah blah survival of the fittest. Blah blah blah medication valid in some cases. Blah blah blah some disabilities resulting in "lack of intelligence" really do succeed in inhibiting intelligence. In some cases I will admit that the administration of medication to "fix" a problem helps. These cases are generally the cases in which I feel it hasn't inhibited the other talents of the individual. Would rain man be rain man if they had just "fixed" him? Suddenly I feel like I am alluding to one flew over the cuckoo's nest. In some cases it is true, people do have actual inhibitions to learning, not just different styles of learning. A lot of the time we like to say that there is something wrong with a person if said person does not conform adequately to the "norm" (YAY normalcy *kerplow*). And finally, I will concede that some people are just stupid, actually (I know I am being an optimist here) I am going to say foolish. I have plenty of people about me that seem to truly HATE learning. They go out of their way to avoid learning anything. I personally cannot understand this.

*Whew* I just don't shut up do I?

Alright now on to what I THOUGHT I was going to be writing about in this entry. NEW TECH! Everyone loves new technology (alright not the luddites but they are nearly extinct and we don't care about them today). I mean it is all smooth, and shiny, and comes in a fun wrapper with starbursts and lots of exclamation marks and all kinds of things that should excite us like a dog about to be given half a smoked ham. Alright, I suppose I sound a little hostile there, but I guess I just like to dismiss covers entirely if I can (especially when it comes to books or anything that can be bought in bestbuy, staples, target, wal mart, etc). Still, this is a good thing. Technology makes our lives easier, ever seen a chimp try to open a bottle of wine? Today's little techno gadget is VIDEO! YAY VIDEO! Wait, what? That isn't new, you lied to me you bas.. HEY! Let me finish. Google video (still not terribly new) is doing a very google thing and compiling a bunch of videos (YAY wait...). One section of videos they are compiling seem to be educational videos. No not abs of steel, nor Martha Stewart's guide to stuff with painted macaroni on it. No, I mean videos of actual college courses. Given my current occupation (not what I am doing right this moment but rather the job I have) I would say that they were originally distance learning videos, but now, they are online, AND FREE!

Yes, dare I say it but there is a chance, that something resembling free education, is now out in the world. No it is in no way certified, and thus does no damage to higher education businesses, er.. I mean institutions. But it will provide me with INFORMATION with LEARNING with education on various things that I might be interested in, without charging me some obscene amount of money per class.

I advise you at least look at the videos

HERE:
http://video.google.com/ucberkeley.html

And here are the rest of the TED videos where I got that Sir Ken video from.

http://video.google.com/ted.html

that is all for today.

September 10, 1985

2006-09-08T18:40:00.000-04:00

Day 1,

I am still grasping the mechanics of this think called "speech". I am currently imbibing lots of sugar, while debating what to do with the weekend between already made plans. Filling that time between things has been difficult for me of late as my brain, in protest to the horrible treatment I have been giving it lately, has refused to provide much entertainment in these interum periods.

So, current plans include (but are not limited to):
Fixing my entire academic career in a few easy steps
Buying alcohol for the mixing of various drinks
Buying $90 worth of leather hide
Playing the games of my youth
Cleaning and organizing (yay OCD!)
Seeking psychological help (hopefully they won't give me anything that will conflict with the wit (or lack thereof) contained herein)
Choosing from a long list of seemingly random possible activities

As this is my first posting I feel no need to impress and will simply say

goodnight.