TechgnosisWeb Prime

Well, folks, it’s finally happened: I have a Mac. I won’t go into the details of how and where, but suffice it to say that there was blood, sweat, and tears involved. The main point of acquiring a Mac, of course, is for my Significant Other: she’s planning and plotting to go into Graphic Design, and as everyone knows, that’s a world dominated by Macs. I’d been planning to get her one for a while now, but the price tag on a new Mac was pretty much out of my immediate reach. Then, one of those once-in-a-blue-moon opportunities showed up to snag a used iMac, one of the cute lamp-y shaped ones, and I jumped on it.

So, of course, as often happens with tech-toys that I acquire for the SO, I’m the one that’s been mostly playing with it. I upgraded the operating system, installed a few handy apps, and I’ve been happily playing with the new toy all weekend long. I’ll give my girl a chance to play with it tomorrow.

How’s my Mac experience been so far? Interesting, to say the least. First hurdle was where to put the machine. There simply wasn’t any room in the computer room for it, so we decided, since it’s a pretty compact machine, to set it up in the bedroom. However, there was a general concensus that we didn’t want any ugly Ethernet cables running from the computer room to the bedroom, so that meant acquiring a wireless adapter. Now, the lamp-shady iMacs are cute and all, but their unique shape doesn’t leave much room for expansion: regular wireless cards were out of the question. So I tripped on over to CompUSA and took a look at their Mac section. Note to Apple: your AirPort products are way too fucking expensive. After some hunting, I found a Belkin Wireless USB adapter, for a little under $40. Doable. The box said it was Windows-only, but I had a hunch. I knew the employees were gonna be useless (I asked one of them earlier about a Firewire cable and he just looked at me funny), so I found a place in the store with decent celphone reception, hooked up Glitch to the KatsuPhone’s EDGE network, and did some quick googling: turns out Belkin has Mac OS X drivers for that adapter. Neat. One quick purchase later, and I’m at home, plugging the thing in. I download and install the driver, plug everything in, and wait. Nothing. Cute.

One call to Belkin Tech Support later, and I’m well and truly pissed. Turns out they do make Mac drivers, but not for the latest version of the OS, only for 10.3. And no, they don’t know when or even if they’ll make drivers for 10.4. Sigh. Still, I don’t give up easy, and the Mac crowd can be quite resourceful. Google is my friend. A couple of queries later, ad I find a guy who claims that the adapter I bought actually uses a fairly generic chipset, and points me to where I can download the OS X 10.4 drivers for that chipset. I download, install… and voila! We’ve got a wireless connection! And here I thought my days of having to find weird, hacky solutions to hardware and software problems were over now that I’d moved to the Land of Apple.

Other than that, my experience has been pretty great. I like OS X, it’s pretty, it’s interesting, and it’s got lots and lots of little things to discover that make you go ‘Oooh!’. Coming from a mostly Windows/Linux background, it’s a bit of a culture shock, but I’m getting used to it. And, luckily, most of the apps I use on a day to day basis have Mac versions available, so it hasn’t been that hard to get up to speed with doing the things I normally do. Heck, look at me, I’m blogging already! And from bed, too! I hope Glitch and the Folding Keyboard don’t get too jealous, but, really, given the choice between a PDA and a full-on G4 iMac to blog on, well, the choice is easy.

So, I’ll be keeping y’all up to date on further developments from the iSide, but don’t worry. I’m not a Switcher. This will not become MacGnosisWeb. I just have one more (very, very neat) toy to play with.
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… and this is not an opinion, it’s a goddamn fact.

Ever since we had to move to Dorado, I’ve been receiving ‘broadband’ service from Liberty Cablevision. Don’t have much of a choice, really. They’re pretty much the only provider out here. $60 a month for 512 kbps. Highway robbery, I know, but then again, Puerto Rico kinda sucks.

So, for the first few months, all was good, it worked as advertised. But for the past month and a half, almost like clockwork, as soon as the sun goes down, my connection turns to shit. Download speeds regularly dip below dial-up level, and insanely high ping times, in the thousands, make online games like WoW nearly unplayable.

Now, I understand that connection speeds and response times naturally suffer a little at night as everyone gets home and boots up their machine. And if I was getting, say, 450 kbps speeds and 300-350 ping times at night, I’d say that’s what I can blame it on. But it’s ridiculous to expect me to put up with download speeds averaging around 100 kbps, with ping times in the 1000 to 2000 range and higher.

My girlfriend, of course, has had to put up with the worst of it, since she is usually up most nights hitting the WoW pretty hard. With how the connection’s been over the past month or so, it’s pretty much been pointless to even try to log on.

I understand that service goes to shit sometimes, that’s why tech support lines exist. Hell, I make a living out of fixing computers that have gone nuts for some reason or another. But when you call for service and are roundly ignored, when they try to blame the connection problems on your computer or router, and when they make your SO spend 2 fucking days waiting for a tech support guy to show up and never come, well.. that’s going above and beyond the call of suck.

So, to recap: My connection currently blows donkey dong. It’s Liberty’s fault, since I have examined every fucking inch of my home setup, and I make a goddamn living by setting up computer networks that have to be up 24/7, so I would know. And when you try to get them to fix it, the fuckers give you the phone runaround and never show up when they’re supposed to. $60 a month for this shit? I don’t think so. They’re not getting a cent out of me till they fix it. And in the meantime, I’m telling everyone I can to avoid these fuckers like the plague.
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The Techgnosisweb Network of fine-assed blogs, namely A Glint In the Void, A Hatred of Beautiful Things, Spiffy Japan, and yours truly, Techgnosisweb itself, had been offline since late last night due to a Denial of Service (DoS) attack on our hosting servers. Looks like we’re mostly back up and up to snuff again, so please, continue with your browsing and enjoyment. We may still experience a few hiccups during the day while everything gets completely sorted out. Also, send money.
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A picture of despair: a man, alone, wanders aimlessly through the halls of San Patricio Mall, in search of a cheap memory card for his PS2. All around him, quacks, con artists, and frauds try to push their wares upon him. Yeah, that’s right, it’s Psychic Week again at the local mall.

I tend to avoid the mall during the all-too-frequent ‘psychic weeks’, when the mall is full of makeshift kiosks chock full of all manner of crystals, incense, angel figurines, and anything else that fits the whole ‘New Age’ theme. And no booth is complete without a sign reading ‘Tarot Reading inside!’, unless it’s accompanied by a ‘Aura Photography!’.

I’ll admit, it was tempting to go from booth to booth getting tarot readings at each one and then laughing at how no two ‘psychics’ gave me the same predictions, but, alas, I don’t have the kind of money that would take. Also, I’d rather eat my money rather than give it to these con artists.

Still, I’m proud of myself. Throughout the hour or so I spent at the mall, I was completely able to restrain myself from running down the halls, screaming “FRAUDS!” and “Don’t give these liars your money!”. I wasn’t, howver, able to keep myself from going by each booth and making sure to meet the ‘psychic’s eyes squarely, before making a disgusted face and looking away while rolling my eyes. Yeah, I know, I’m a jerk. But at least I’m not charging you to listen to my unfocused rambling. All of my false predicitons are free.

Also, you will meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger. He will expose his genitals at you, at a socially crippling time.

While the debate on my previous entry continues, I’m gonna go ahead and poke the hornet’s nest a little more by pointing out this particularly scary poll I ran into:

51 percent of Americans say God created humans in their present form, and another three in 10 say that while humans evolved, God guided the process. Just 15 percent say humans evolved, and that God was not involved.

CBS News | Poll: Majority Reject Evolution | October 24, 2005 11:30:08

So, while there’s a 4% margin of error each way in the poll, it’s still downright scary. 51% of the population of the country completely rejects evolution, despite the mountains of evidence, despite its explanatory power as a scientific theory, despite the fact that the alternative they offer is that some invisible being in the sky waved his hands and created us. Hooray.

Americans most likely to believe in only evolution are liberals (36 percent), those who rarely or never attend religious services (25 percent), and those with a college degree or higher (24 percent).

White evangelicals (77 percent), weekly churchgoers (74 percent) and conservatives (64 percent), are mostly likely to say God created humans in their present form.

CBS News | Poll: Majority Reject Evolution | October 24, 2005 11:30:08

Just stuff to think about while tossing back and forth in bed, trying not to quake with fear.

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My point of view on religion is pretty clear: I’m an atheist, and I have some fairly strong feelings against organized religion, especially the people who lead organized religious cults, as well as the more ardent followers. However, due to my personal history, it’s easy to discount my point of view as simple ’sour grapes’. What’s not so easy to discount, however, is independent scientific study.

A recent study on religion and society, titled: Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health
with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous
Democracies, claims a strong correlation between influence from major organized religions on society and an increase in the rate of homicide, STD’s, teen pregnancy, etc.

Here’s a few short quotes from a commentary on the study:

“… To summarize it, a study in the Journal of Religion and Society compared religious belief in eighteen democracies (measured by how many of its citizens express absolute belief in God, how often they pray, and how often they attend church, etc.) with indicators of how well those societies function (as measured by rates of homicide, sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy, abortion, child mortality, etc.).

The researcher, Gregory S. Paul, found a striking correlation, that the most religious democracies exhibited substantially higher degrees of social dysfunction than societies with larger percentages of atheists and agnostics.

And the good old United States is the outlier in both categories, the US “which has by far the largest percentage of people who take the Bible literally and express absolute belief in God (and the lowest percentage of atheists and agnostics) – also has by far the highest levels of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.”

…

But the study does seem to thoroughly debunk the widely-held and often-repeated notion that religion is necessary for a good society. In paragraphs 3 through 8 of the study, Paul refers to a number of political figures, from Joe Lieberman to Pope Benedict XVI to Tom DeLay, all of them singing the same tune: that belief in God is the prerequisite for a civil society. Paul shows that notion is utterly, provably false.

Why the Pope would promote religion is obvious. Whether Lieberman and DeLay are simply pandering to their audience, or trying to actively preserve a voting bloc that will respond to authority rather than reason, I’m not qualified to say.”

Now, there’s a whole bunch of criticisms that have been leveled at the report, so let’s hit those quickly before the fundamentalist apologists show up:

• The author of the study is dinosaur paleontologist rather than a sociologist: a fair criticism, but easily factored out by examining his methodology rather than his resume
• The study does not explain the correlation: of course not, and it never set out to do that. The study simply shows that a correlation exists.

Let’s talk, instead, about what we do see in the study: there’s a correlation between religiousness and social dysfunction. What does this mean? It could mean any one of a number of things:

• Religion causes homicide, STD’s, abortion, and child mortality. (I know, I know, but bear with me here)
• That people who experience this sort of thing tend to turn to religion more often than those who do not.
• That there is a separate, common cause that underlies both rising violence and religious impulses.

Any one of these things, or several others, is possible. The point is, we don’t quite know yet. But what this study does show is that there’s something here that definitely deserves further study. To dismiss it out of hand, as many religious-based organizations have done, or to refuse to talk about it and study it further because it skirts dangerouly close to the usual ‘taboo’ subjects around religious influence on society, is a mistake.

And now, let the hate mail come. Unlike the author of the commentary linked to above, I always ‘relish the hateful mail and other retaliation I might receive from those loving, gentle people who model themselves after Christ.’
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And now, in a complete change of pace from the posts of the last few days, it’s time for some of my tradermarked ‘techno-enamored rants’. I’ve got a couple of techie reviews that I’ve been meaning to post up for some time, and I’ve got some time to kill tonight (my main Net connection’s acting up.. Liberty Cable sucks), so let’s get to it.

I don’t usually hide stuff behind the ‘more’ link (witness the unfettered lenght of my last two posts), but since there’s gonna be three of them, and they’re mostly technophile-only stuff, well, there you go. So click on the ‘more’ link below to read about which Sudoku program I chose to go with for my PocketPC, what’s the best software I’ve found for blogging on the go, and what I think of the latest browser to ruffle the Web 2.0 feathers, Flock.
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You know, with all the hullabaloo about crazy old coots making incoherent threats in my general direction, it’s all too easy to forget about the important real life things that happen. So I want to take a moment away from all that and say goodbye to Blue, who left us yesterday.

Who’s Blue? She was one of our pet rats, the second one we got, after Yuki. Soon after we realized that Yuki was an antisocial little bastard (may he rest in peace), we decided to go ahead and get a real pet, instead of something that was just going to sit in a cage and glare at us. So, after a bit of searching, we finally found a pet shop that sold rats. We went into the dingy, dirty back room where he kept the poor creatures, and that’s where we first saw Blue. There were easily a couple dozen rats crammed into that little cage, the guy obviously sold them as food for snakes, not as pets on their own merits. Most of the animals in the cage were either sick or starving, and either huddled, frightened, in the far corners, or slept and ignored us. But not Blue. She stood out from the bunch, with her sleek dark brown/dark gray fur, sharp dark eyes, and attentiveness. While most of the rats in the cage shied away from us, Blue came right up to the bars, sniffing at us curiously. The decision was immediate: she was the one. We took her home that day, and never regretted the decision.

Blue always did remain a little wild, a little untamed, but she came to trust us quickly. In fact, she became a little too fond of us, often staying up all night and day just watching us, looking for attention, trying to get us to pick her up so she could crawl on our shoulders. We never did figure out what fascinated her so about perching on our shoulders, but she would do just about anything to get up there.

Of all the girls, Blue was easily the most active, most inquisitive, most attentive one. Everyone who saw her, even people who weren’t ‘rat people’, always commented on what a beautiful animal she was. It’s pretty clear she was one of our favorites, and she earned it.

Unfortunately, despite her energy, she was always a little sickly, sneezing a lot. We took her to the vet once or twice (where she showed her particular personality by desperately trying to jump off the examination table and onto Natalie’s shoulder, as well as taking a bite out of the vet. To his credit, he didn’t even consider feeding her to the bulldog in the next room.) Despite all this, she grew older over time, and eventually her body’s defenses started failing her. The day before yesterday, we saw her gasping for breath. She was suffering from an acute respiratory attack, and could barely breathe. Despite that, she still kept trying to run around on the wheel in her cage, climbing the walls, trying to play with the other girls.. She always was a stubborn little thing. As soon as we could, we took her back to the vet, where he gave her a dose of antibiotics and treated her for dehydration. We brought her back home, hoping for the best, waiting for her breathing to return to normal. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. We put her into a separate cage, as the vet told us to quarantine her, and kept an eye on her. She followed us as we moved around the room, desperately trying to get to us.

Frankly, remembering it is heartbreaking. We picked her up, tried to comfort her.. You could see her eyes tearing up, she was honestly terrified. The poor thing was barely able to breathe, she was scared witless.. and in her terror, she didn’t try to hide or run, instead, she was almost desperate in her attempts to get to us, to get us to hold her, to snuggle into our touch, seeking warmth, companionship, and help. She came to us for comfort and help.. Unfortunately, as much as we tried, it wasn’t enough. She didn’t last the night.

We buried her in the backyard, and I wasn’t even able to say a real goodbye. There are people who will never understand how someone can become so emotionally attached to a tiny little animal like a rat. These people are dead inside, and I have nothing to say to them. For the rest, who know that one can form a true bond with any creature that you share your life with, and who have felt the kind of unconditional devotion that they give us, and that they deserve from us in return, I think you will understand. You’ll understand why it was that, when I picked up her body to put it into the little box that we buried her in, and I felt her little claws snagging on my shirt, my heart flipped over in my chest. Because, for an endless, painful second, I though she was alive after all, and she was trying to hold on to me again, and I’m not ashamed to say I cried my eyes out as I was forced to realize all over again that she really was gone, and I put her in the box.

Goodbye, Blue. There will always be a spot on my shoulder just for you. I miss you terribly.

Dear Jack,

Hi! How are you? I hope you and your family are well. I’m doing good, been having some minor health issues, but nothing too serious. Work’s been keeping me terribly busy, though. Well, I’m sure you know how it is.

Let’s get down to business, Jack: I’m putting up this open letter in response to the comment you left on my previous entry, which I quote below:

# Jack Thompson Says:
October 18th, 2005 at 3:33 pm

This story is completely false and defamatory. Take it down or else legal action will follow.

Now, I know you’re a very, very busy guy, Jack, since your license to practice law is currently under review and you seem to be in danger of being disbarred, which is why I’m going to go ahead and give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you were probably just distracted, or maybe suffering from lack of sleep, when you penned that little comment on my personal website. Still, the fact remains that you’re clearly mistaken on the basic definitions of the words ‘false’ and ‘defamatory’. As a favor to you, allow me to define these words:

false (fôls) adj.
1. Contrary to fact or truth
2. Deliberately untrue
3. Intentionally deceptive
4. Not genuine or real

and…

de·fame (d-fm) tr.v
1. To damage the reputation, character, or good name of by slander or libel.

… which of course, requires us to define ‘libel’:

li·bel (lbl) n.
1. 1. A false publication, as in writing, print, signs, or pictures, that damages a person’s reputation.
2. The act of presenting such material to the public.

So… basically, in order for my statements to be ‘defamatory’, they must be false. Unfortunately, my dear Jack, they are not false. Here, let me do you a favor and provide my sources, as your antics are quite well documented:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php?date=2005-10-17
http://gc.advancedmn.com/article.php?artid=5883
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=12259
http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000627063759/
http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000743063662/
http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000193063914/
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/gta4/news.html?sid=6135979

There are more, of course, but I do think that these present a fairly accurate picture. Now, seeing as my statements, or ’story’ as you refer to it, is not demonstrably false, then it stands to reason that it is also not defamatory. Sorry, Jacko, but you struck out on both counts.

In fact, let me go a little further, you know, just so we’re all on the same page here. What I posted up about you, not only was it factual and not defamatory, but it also contained my personal opinion of you, which, I’m sad to say, is not terribly flattering. Seeing as this website is my very own, personal place of expression, and I am putting forth a personal opinion, and, furthermore, identifying that opinion as such (please see the final paragraph of the previous entry for confirmation), it is therefore constitutionally protected free speech, which I would assume you know all about, being a big-shot lawyer and all. Just in case it’s slipped your mind, however, I refer you to the 1st Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, under which jurisdiction we both fall. So, I am entirely within my rights to express my opinion on this, my personal website. Sorry about that, Jack.

Now, I know the whole Free Speech thing can be a heady experience, and you’re obviously the kind of guy who tends to get carried away when he gets excited over something. So, before you start warming up those cute little fingers and typing up yet another comment response on my personal website, let me clarify something: by reading and using the comment form on this website, you are making use of my personal computer resources, which I own and have paid for personally, and which are, therefore, my property. This means that, while the Right to Free Speech allows me to use my own personal website to put forward my opinion of you, it does not protect your comments on my website, nor does it give you the right to make comments on my website. As this is my personal property, using the comment form on any part of this website is a privilege that I afford my visitors, and it is one which I can revoke. Therefore, I’m terribly sorry to do this, but I am hereby revoking your privilege to use the comment forms, read articles, and post responses on this website. That’s right, Jack, you’re not allowed to post any further responses to anything I post in this site. If you want to respond, then, please, email me (I feel no need to provide said email address, by the way. Since it would be you initiating contact, it is your job to find my email address, not my job to give it). Or, hey, start your own website. TechgnosiswebSucks.com, it’s got a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

In any case, it is my sad duty and obligation to inform you that any further comments posted on this website, or any further attempts to contact me, will be considered personal harassment, as I have broken no laws. Of course, ‘legal action will follow’, as you’re so fond of saying, if you continue to harass me or mine. And as it seems quite clear that I am quite a bit more proficient with the English language, the law, and the Constitution than you are, I do not believe that ‘legal action’ against me is something you would enjoy pursuing.

Hugs and kisses,

Katsushiro

UPDATE: Oh, Jack, you never really learn, do you? Now you’ve gone ahead and posted the following on the same previous entry:

I have sent the following letter to your local Police Department:

Superintendent Pedro Toledo Dávila
Police Superintendent
Puerto Rico Police Department
Ave F.D. Roosevelt 101
Cuartel General, Piso 3
San Juan
00936-8166

Dear Superintendendent Toledo:

A Puerto Rico business by the name of Techgnosisweb, employs certain personnel who have decided to commence and orchestrate criminal harassment and difamation of me.

This company has done thise because I dared to go on CBS’s 60 Minutes in March and again in July to explain a wrongful death lawsuit I have brought on behalf of two police officers and a police dispatcher in Fayette, Alabama, who were shot in the head and killed by Devin Moore who obsesively trained on Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to kill them.

As you may know, this incredibly violent Rockstar Games product is actually a “cop-killing” murder simulator. There are a bunch of computer geeks out there who think that the video game industry has a constitutional right to paint a bullseye on your back and on your officers’ backs but that I do not have a constitutional right to point out on 60 Minutes or anywhere else that they do not have that “constitutional right.”

That is what the criminal difamation of me by Techgnosisweb is all about. Their diffamation can be found on their www.techgnosisweb.com web site.

I look forward to working with your fine Police Department to shut this little extortion factory down.

Regards, Jack Thompson

… sigh… really, Jack, I’d hoped we could resolve this with just a few vague legal threats back and forth, but you had to go and try to call in the police. I’d say that was a bold and original move, if it wasn’t for the fact that you’ve done it before to other people, and, in fact, you’ve even forgotten to actually send the letter to the intended recipient (although you’ve sent copies to everyone else). In fact, the letter is almost word for word a copy of the same one you’ve sent to others. If it wasn’t for all the misspellings and grammatical errors, I would say that it wasn’t you. Alas, the IP address for both comments was the same, so I’m forced to conclude that it was you after all. In any case, your letter contains a number of factual and grammatical errors, which, in the interest of not wasting the police department’s time, I will detail below.

1. You misspelled ‘Superintendendent’
2. There is no ‘Puerto Rico business by the name of Techgnosisweb’, and this fictional business does not employ anyone.
3. ‘criminal harassment and difamation of me.’… Haven’t we discussed this before?
4. Also, you misspelled ‘difamation’… and ‘thise’.
5. My criticism of you has little or nothing to do with this supposed appearance on CBS, which I, in fact, did not watch, as I prefer to get my news from actual respectable journalists, rather than the type of attention-hungry media whores who would actually consider someone like you to be any sort of ‘expert’ on video games.
6. Actually, I strongly believe in your constitutional right to express your free opinion… just like it is my constitutional right to express my personal and free opinion that you’re obviously a deeply disturbed individual with less than average inteligence.
7. You misspelled ‘difamation’ two more times.
8. For this to be extortion, I would actually have to be demanding something through coercion or intimidation, which, as it is quite clear, I am not doing.

Now, as you know, Jacko, my boy, any further contact or attempts to post here from your part will be considered harassment! You’ve been warned, my friend!

I believe I’ve held forth on this blog before about a certain Jack Thompson, but I’ll repeat this whackjob’s history here as quickly as I can: In my opinion, Jacko’s an absolutely insane and quite possibly dangerously violent person who, unfortunately, also happens to be a lawyer. Apparently, for some bizarre reason, Jacko’s decided to wage war against the video game industry, making outrageous and outlandish claims about violent video games being ‘murder simulators’ and ‘training children to kill’. This nutjob is so over-the-top crazy that even major national organizations that are opposed to video game violence being available to children (and I agrtee with these organizations completely: children should not have access to overtly violent games, such as, for example, the GTA series, or anything rated M by the ESRB) have begun distancing themselves from him and asking him not to use their names when he starts spounting off about organizations that ’support’ him or share his goals.

Recently, Jacko put out a press release where he stated that he would donate $10,000 to a charity of the game industry would produce a game he detailed that involved a disgruntled parent going out to seek revenge against the video game industry after his son is killed by a 14 year-old gamer. Anyway, I’ll just repost here something that showed up today over on Penny Arcade:

You Lose

Mon, October 17 2005 - 12:04 PM
by: Tycho

It was only a matter of time until a mod team took Jack Thompson’s disgusting revenge fantasy and made it flesh - and, just as I suggested, it was deemed insufficient.

Thompson now claims that his repellent suggestion was “satire,” and we must conclude that his financial offer was also satire, some new breed of satire apparently that I’m sure is just hilarious to people in need.

You know what, Jack? We’re going to be the men you’re not. You said that your insulting, illusory ten thousand dollars would go to the charity of Paul Eibeler’s choice. We’ve got a good guess that he’d direct your nonexistant largesse toward The Entertainment Software Association Foundation, a body that has raised over six point seven million dollars over the last eight years. We’ve just made the donation you never would, and never meant to. Ten thousand dollars’ worth. And we made it in your name.

(CW)TB

The preceeding has been the opinion of the author, and does not reflect the opinion of anyone else, inclduing his host, sites linked to, or anyone else, at all, except the author himself. Go fuck yourself, Jack.

How odd. Have you ever had one of those weekends that seemed to be too long and too short at the same time? I have this strange feeling as if I’d been gone more than 2 days, yet at the same time, I definitely don’t feel ready for Monday yet (then again, I never really feel ready for Monday). Well, I’m going to bed as soon as I post this up, hopefully a good night’s rest will rid me of this weird sense of displaced time.

While we’re on the subject of displaced time, I stumbled across a couple of blogs and articles earlier tonight talking about the ‘Uberman Sleep Schedule’ (Google it up). Basically, it’s a way of compressing your total sleep per day to only 2-4 hours or so, by staying up for 4 hours at a time and then taking 20-30 minute naps. The idea is that after a few days of this, your body jumps right into Stage 5 REM sleep as soon as you take the nap, which is supposed to be the most restful sleep. As an interesting side-effect, your dreams tend to be very vivid and you develop the ability to remember them much more clearly. The upside of this, of course, is that you suddenly have a lot more time every day to get stuff done, be it writing a novel, coding, whatever. Legend has it that Leonardo da Vinci and other great geniuses throughout history slept like that.

Of course, no real studies have been done on the long-term effects of keeping that type of schedule. For all we know, it cuts 10 years off your life expectancy, or makes you more susceptible to Alzheimers, or something else equally dire. One thing I have read in a few places is that people who do this tend to develop cravings for certain foods and drinks they didn’t crave before, notably grape juice and fruits in general. Some people have speculated that perhaps skipping some of the other stages of sleep and going right into REM sleep makes it harder for your body to naturally regenerate certain chemicals, which are instead replenished by the fruits and juices.

If I was single, younger, and working on my own schedule or going to college, I would try this in a heartbeat. I know that for a certain time in college I was easily getting by on about 3 hours of sleep a day. Of course, that didn’t do much for my mental health back then, but this method is a lot more structured.

In Sudoku news, I’ve discovered something wonderful: pencil-marks. Basically, for the harder puzzles, it’s very handy to be able to mark down what numbers a given set of squares *might* be. You might not know which square the 4 goes in, but if you’ve narrowed it down to two or three squares, it can be very handy to mark those. Being able to narrow the potential numbers of a group of squares can also be extremely handy for eliminating the possibilities of other groups of squares. For example, if the only two spaces where the 4 might go in the middle left 3×3 square are both in a single vertical line, then you can safely assume that the 4 in the 3×3 squares above and below that one are not going to be in that particular horizontal line. Luckily, both of the PocketPC programs I’m currently trying out, Mastersoft Sudoku and Sudoku Rules!, allow you to do ‘pencil-marks’, and this has improved both my ability to solve the more complex puzzles and the time it takes me to solve them considerably.

And in non-Sudoku, non-weird sleep pattern news, I’ve discovered that Natalie and I can be very difficult when it comes to finding something to do on a Saturday night. Here’s the thing: we’re both geeks, and we’re both fairly antisocial. In short, we hate people, and crowds. We like our friends fine enough, but we’re in no rush to meet new people or be surrounded by strangers. So, that severely narrows down the range of choices as to where to go and what to do on a Saturday night, especially in this island. Clubbing is out, neither one of us drinks so going to a bar is not particularly fun.. We like playing pool, but that usually involves crowded, smoky bars. Not happening. So, we could go to a nice, not-too-crowded restaurant, have a nice, romantic dinner for two, right? Sure, except for the fact that restaurants cost money, and we’re perpetually tight on money (more so this month than most due to the fact that we need to take the car to get the electrical system checked. Random lights keep turning on and off inside, and this worries me terribly). So maybe we could just pack a few things here, I can prepare something nice to eat, and we can go out and have a midnight picnic? Sure, sure… Except that involves grass and trees and bugs and it’s been raining every day and every night so everything is damp and muddy and.. no. So what’s left? Not terribly much. We could go out to friends houses, and we often do, but sometimes you just want to spend time together as a couple, you know? We weren’t feeling particularly social, we just didn’t feel like being cooped up at home all night.

I have to thank Monster for her noble and heroic efforts to give us ideas for stuff to do that night, but, alas, we were unable to find anything that really motivated us to get out. In the end, we just turned up the AC, curled up in bed together, and watched a few episodes of Penn and Teller’s Bullshit on DVD. A good time was had by all.

… from reading way too many Fantasy and Sci-Fi novels:

1. Don’t you see? The power was inside of me all along.
2. The reason my mentor didn’t tell me about that until now, when I’m supposed to face the single most evil entity in known reality one on one, is because he/she/it is an insufferable prick.

Just found out about this while listening to Escape Pod (easily one of the best podcasts ever, with some really good and fun short fiction every show):

“The Bear’s Grove” by Sam Chupp. Sam holds forth on roleplaying game design, writing, running and playing with special focus on kids & RPG advocacy, romantic roleplaying, and other storytelling-focused aspects of RPGs.

Sam is also the co-creator of Wraith and Changeling, two of the more under-appreciated WoD RPG’s. I just subscribed, and it looks like it should be good. Topics in recent shows include:

• A rant about older gamers who just “don’t have the time” to play RPGs anymore.
• How and when to get kids involved with RPGs
• How to accomodate a new player into a regular RPG session.
• What wonderful drama can arise through such romantic-related things as marriage, childbirth, parenthood, and family?

I’ll let you know how it is once I’ve listened to a couple shows.. hmm.. you know, makes me think.. is anyone doing a podcast focused on online roleplaying (ie. MUDs, MUSHes, MUXes, etc?) I wonder…

Ah… Just finished another rousing session of Sudoku, and now it’s time to blog before I pass out for the night. I found a couple of versions of Sudoku for Glitch today. The first one, Mastersoft Sudoku was good enough… Until I finished my first puzzle and it promptly erased everything on Glitch, resetting it back to the original factory settings. Good thing I had just performed a full backup to the SD card that morning and managed to restore everything with no problems. Still, erasing everything on my PDA does not seem like the best way to reward me for solving a puzzle. Next, I tried Spiralsoft’s Sudoku Rules!, which has been working pretty flawlessly. It has some nice advanced features, such as tutorials, automated puzzle solvers, and keeping track of ‘pencilled’ in numbers. I’m still on the trial, but I think I might just plunk down the $12 for it.

Anyway, on non-number-game news, I was driving home today after a weird day at the office where I was forced to take over a cubicle at one of our client’s offices because the government had locked me out of the parking lot for our main office. As so often happens, I was stuck behind a big-ass SUV. And, as many SUV’s around here seem to have, this one had a little screen inside on which the people in the back seat could watch DVD’s. Usually, this annoys me. However, as I had a long time to stare at this screen, being stuck behind the SUV for a good long chunk of my drive home, I noticed that they were actually watching Final Fantasy: Advent Children on it! All is forgiven.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I hate cars with TV screens or random gadgets inside them. It’s that I hate not being able to do the mods to my car that I would love to do. A DVD player inside the car is the *least* of the things I would put in there, had I the time and the means. The latest issue of Make magazine has a series of articles on installing an in-car computer or two, complete with high speed mobile network access, external wireless accessibility, and plugging the computer system in to most of the major car systems.

Imagine the possibilities: being able to log into your car’s built-in web server from the office and turning the car on and switching on the AC to start cooling the car off before you leave the office after a hot, sunny day. Left my keys in the car again? No problem: pull out my celphone, SMS the right code to the car, and the locks pop open. Or else, log into the car from my PDA and input the door code. All of this handled by a simple Linux computer contained within a low-power network box running off a set of rechargeable batteries that automatically charge up once the car is on.

Once I actually get in the car, a second computer powers up, with a touch screen and simple voice recognition. I can access Gigs of music and video here, set up and access play lists, etc. I can also activate and access a GPS mapping and direction system, play podcasts, and have RSS news feeds read to me while I drive, all from a simple voice command menu so I don’t even have to take my eyes off the road.

Once I’m home, the network box takes over again, and automatically connects to my home wifi network, downloading the latest podcasts, media files, and updates to the main car computer so they’re ready for me next time I go out, all automatically.

With this kind of setup, getting the car stolen is always a worry. It’s at this point that the GPS system, built in web server, and remote starter access kick in, allowing me to see at any moment where my car is on Google Maps, right down to the street, in real time. I can then lock the doors, turn off the engine, and alert the police al from my PDA with a couple of taps. If I really felt like it, I could record a quick voice message, zip it over the network, and play it on the car speakers. I could even set the computer to automatically record anything being said in the car, so as to gather even more evidence against any would-be car thieves. Cleverly placed web cams would provide views of both the inside of the car, the passengers, and the outside location.

All of this is doable right now, with current technology, in about a weekend or two, for something around $5k in parts. Screw flashy rims, spoilers, and LCD screens in the headlights. I’m driving K.I.T.T. I should start a business installing these advanced computer setups in cars. If people are willing to drop down serious cash on custom paint jobs and blinged out rims, maybe the techie set is willing to plunk down just as much money to have some serious geek cred installed.

Yeah, I know. I promised a Massively Multiplayer update, and, as usual, I haven’t delivered. I’m working on it. No, really. The problem is, though, I get easily distracted by, say, a bit of yarn, anything shiny, or any updates on any of the hundreds of web sites I trawl through every day. This is not very conducive to writing. It’s not very conducive to working, either. But I’ve discovered a trick. It’s called (10+2)*5.

Catchy name, huh?

So what is it? Well, (10+2)*5 is shorthand for ‘work ten minutes, take a two minute break, repeat five times’. It’s a nifty little mind hack for people like myself, who are easily distracted/compulsive websurfers/habitual procrastinators. The idea, as should be self-evident by now, is that you work for 10 minutes, focusing entirely on whatever task you have at hand. You don’t need to finish the task in those 10 mins, but you do need to at least make some progress. Then you stop whatever you’re doing when those 10 minutes are up, and take 2 mins for yourself, to do whatever. Play a game, check a web site, send off an email, blog, call your loan shark, whatever. Then you do another 10 minutes and another 2 minute break. After 5 of these, an hour has flown by, and you actually got some work done! Now, here’s the trick: the 2 minute break is *mandatory*. No matter what, at the end of those 10 minutes, you take your 2 minute break. You are not allowed to skip breaks, at all, for any reason.

What’s the catch? Simple: you *will* end up skipping breaks. As you get used to spending time focused on a task, at first due to the upcoming reward, the breaks actually start to become annoying, as they start to come in just as you’re getting into the stride of things. You skip a break here, skip a break there.. Next thing you know, you’ve been working solid for an hour. Not too shabby, huh?

I’ve been doing it yesterday and today, giving the system a try during the week, and the jump in productivity has been noticeable. I haven’t gotten to the part where I want to skip a break yet, but I’m sure I’ll get there. In the meantime, I’m getting quite a bit done, 10 minutes at a time.

So what am I doing during that 2 minute break? One word: Sudoku. Sudoku is a number/logic game, where you’re given a 9×9 grid, divided into 9 3×3 squares. There are numbers in some of the squares in the grid. The idea is to use logic to figure out what numbers go in the empty squares, and complete the grid. The rules are simple: you can only use the numbers 1-9. In each 3×3 square, each number must only appear once. The same goes for each 9×1 row and column, so each square, each row, and each column would add up to 45. It’s quite simple to get into once you figure out the basic rules, but it can be fiendishly difficult, as you use logic, elimination, and occasionally a wild guess or two to fill in the squares correctly. At first, I didn’t think I would get into it. Then I finished my first puzzle (took me about an hour in 2 minute breaks so.. About a day) and immediately dived into my second one (about 20 minutes to solve, 2 or so hours in 2 minute breaks). Now I’ve got a Java version of Sudoku installed on my celphone so I can hit the puzzles from anywhere, and I’m looking for a version for Glitch as well. Fiendishly addictive. It’s funny, too. I’ve got a GBA with nearly a dozen games installled on the Flash Cart. A PDA with dozens of books and games as well. And the celphone itself has 10 or so other games, with flashy graphics and gameplay. But what keeps my attention most is that damn simple 9×9 grid of squares and numbers. Evil.

So, anyway, I owe you folks an update of Massively Multiplayer. So I’m gonna try an experimetn. This week, maybe tomorrow, I’m going to try and hit it with the (10+2)*5 method, and see if it works for writing too. Wish me luck!

And so, true to my word, I blog again. First off, and before I get to the rant at hand, a big congrats to the Hussy on her new job. Being employed is, generally, better than being unemployed, if only for that whole pesky ‘need money’ thing. So, hey, woot.
Anyway, Sunday night, blogging in bed again with Glitch and the keyboard. Gotta love that air conditioning. The weekend was fairly unremarkable, so I spent it hanging out with my girl and watching some fairly terrible shows on the SciFi channel. I gotta say, I love me some fantasy and scifi movies, even when they’re bad. And the two I saw this weekend definetly qualified, although I enjoyed them thoroughly.

First one was Dungeons & Dragons 2: Wrath of the Dragon God. That’s right, the sequel to one of the worst movies ever made. Even the death of a Wayans couldn’t save that piece of crap (and trust me, normally the sacrifice of a Wayans is enough to satisfy most of my needs). However, it wasn’t half bad. For one thing, it was on TV, so I didn’t have to shell out money to see it in the theaters. Second off, hey, it’s D&D! The D&D ads they played every time they went to commercials were worth the price of admission alone. Third: hot elf babe, hot barbarian babe. ‘Nuff said. Fourth: geeky delight as I recognized actual game mechanics being employed in the movie. Overall, it kinda felt like I was watching a re-enacment of an actual D&D play session. Shiny.

The other bad fantasy flick I caught was actually a rental I picked up at the local Blockbusters: Librarian: Quest for the Spear. Plot synopsis: total nerd gets picked to be the Librarian for the Metropolitan Public Library, which just so happens to be the place where they keep such relics as the Holy Grail, and Excalibur. First day on the job, the piece of the Spear of Destiny that was in the library gets stolen. It’s his job to go find it. Totally fun. Lame jokes and one-liners abound (”Horrible! Horrible! Horrible high-speed flaming pie of death!”), and I honestly enjoyed the movie thoroughly. It wasn’t good, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a really fun ride, and that’s all it needed to be. Total wish-fulfillment goodness as the nerdy guy saves the day, gets the girl, and becomes a hero through his knowledge of random factoids. Extra bonus points because I got to annoy the girlfriend by often either blurting out the factoid the Librarian was about to say on screen just before he said it (me: “Hey, those guys are speaking Portuguese!” Librarian on screen, one second later: “I know that language, it’s Portuguese!”), or expounding on a particular factoid by adding more details to it after he says it (Librarian: “The Procession! The ancient Mayans calculated that the Procession was the time it took all the stars in the sky to make a full orbit and return to their original place, which is 25,765 years!” Me, one second later “… and the current Procession ends on December, 2012, the end date of the Mayan calendar, and a popular end-of-the-world date for many nut jobs. As an aside, other nut jobs studying the I-Ching came to the conclusion that it shows the same ending date for the world, which is a funny coincidence.”). Double shiny.

And with that, I bid you all a good night. Tomorrow: Massively Multiplayer returns.

WOW…

… It’s been a while since work has kicked my ass this thoroughly. For the past couple of weeks, work has devastated my soul, drained my spirit, and destroyed my energy with a sort of furious determination. I mean, I can’t sit here and lie to you and tell you I was too tired to blog or write for the past ~3 weeks or so. No, I got home and I had energy. Not plenty of it, mind you, but it was there. I could have sat down and typed, and it wouldn’t have been too much bother. But with the way work savaged me, I simply didn’t have anything in me left to share. I literally worked myself into speechlessness. I’m not sure if that’s a real word.

Anyway, I’m back now. Work’s still pretty intense, but it’s backed off enough that I am once again able to at least put together a semi-coherent sentence or two.

So, to the folks who’ve been missing me, be it here in the blog, over on the MU*’s, or even out in the Big Blue Room where the Evil Daystar lives, I’m back. It may take me a couple more days and maybe the weekend to get myself fully back up to speed, but I can now state with some certainty that I’ll be back to my usual, not quite witty enough to make you laugh, self once again.

Now, on a topic that’s not me apologizing for not blogging: Serenity.

Holy shit. George Lucas should take himself out back and shoot himself, just put himself out of his fucking misery. It’s over, there’s a new king in town. You may accuse me of being a Firefly fanboy, and you’d be right, but this isn’t just a case of fanboyism. This film easily blows every other movie I’ve seen in the past couple of years out of the water. Yeah, Batman Begins was great. Sure, there have been a few other good movies out in the past few years. This is just my opinion, but, dammit, Serenity is better. I’m not the only one who thinks so, either. Google up some reviews. It’s gotten nearly universal praise. Hell, Orson Scott Card (a man whose work I admire but who’s personal politics I abhor) wrote a review of it the other day where he practically declares it the best sci-fi film ever made. That may not be an exaggeration.

If you’ve already seen Serenity, then you already know what I’m talking about, and the only question in your mind is ‘When can I see it again?’. If you haven’t seen it yet, you need to do yourself a favor and go see it. There is nothing, absolutely nothing in the theaters right now that even comes close. Go, see it, take a friend or two, watch this movie. I know I’m hyping it up a lot. I wouldn’t be doing that if I didn’t think it can live up to the hype, and then some.

Do you need to have seen the series and read the comic books to enjoy the movie? No, it stands on its own, and quite well. But if you have seen the series, then this movie answers questions that have been around since the beggining, raises new ones, and sheds new light on the characters, the story line, and the ship. In my opinion, Serenity takes everything that would have been a second season, and compresses it in two hours.. And does so masterfully. I simply cannot say enough good things about the movie, but I’ll stop here, because to say more I’d have to start dropping spoilers. Just go see it. And let me know when you do, so I can go with you.

In other news, I finally finished the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince audiobook, which was masterfully read. The HP books have gotten better and darker and more enthralling with each successive volume, and this one was no exception. The story was good, we learn a lot more about Voldemort and Harry’s destiny, and massive changes happen that will make the last book very interesting indeed. It’s no secret that a very major character dies at the end of the novel. What did surprise me was how hard this fictional death hit me. I was literally depressed for days afterwards, as if a real person who I knew and admired had died suddenly. I attribute this to both Rowlings’ writing and the truly magical reading of the audiobook. It’s been a while since the death of a fictional character has affected me quite this much, and I consider that a testament to how good the book is. I can’t wait for the next one. It promises to be truly epic.

Well, that’s about it. I promise to start flexing my own weak writerly muscles again with the next chapter of Massively Multiplayer in just a couple of days, and I’ll keep blogging more often again now. See you all soon.