Since I'm currently taking a course that dives into the social networking phenomena that has developed through the new media technology I try to sniff out new things that show up in that area. However this site I hadn't seen before and I have to thank one of my mates on one of the sites I frequent regularly for brining it to my attention.
Link
The site speaks for itself really.
Sunday, 9 March 2008
Thursday, 6 March 2008
I, the "Power"-Gamer
When reading through Sherry Turkle's book The Second Self (which I reviewed just a moment ago on this blog) I started reflecting about myself and my own interaction with the computer. Granted that Turkle's book is quite old and thus my interaction is hardly nowhere near what Turkle describes in her book but thinking back to when I was much younger I came to realize that I've always kind of searched for ways to play games.
When I was a child I played chess, Monopoly and other fun table top games with my brother but also with several of my friends. When I got closer to my teenage years I bought my first console, an 8-bit Nintendo that today is called NES. The NES didn't last all that long though because the games was to expensive for a 12 year old to buy so I bought a, second hand, Commodore 64 that came with something like 200 games and so I was pretty much dug in for years to come. Had it not been for the fact that I only a year later discovered the wonders of role-playing games I would probably have had my face glued to the screen playing The Last Ninja or Pirates still.
The roleplaying games gave me the chance to meet several friends over the years, one of them I even ended up sharing an apartment with for a few years, and most of them I still have contact with. Something that can't be said for most of the people I grew up with otherwise as they found other things (cars, bikes, etc) to occupy their time with instead.
In my early 20s I bought my first real PC (a 80486DX2 that I had custom made so to speak) and so I again dove into the wonderful world of computer gaming. I bought the computer mainly to learn about computer hardware at the time and also to learn more about computers in general, which I did but it quickly gave away to hours upon hours of gaming. The year just before I bought the computer I'd spent pretty much all of the time at a mate's place playing games and living a life that very similar to the life Turkle describes that the MIT hackers lived during the late 70s and early 80s. Stuck in a world of their own, programming through the nights and meeting like minded people for breakfast at the pancake house. Some of them living on a 36 hour cycle, which meant that they were awake for 24 hours and slept for 12. I had many days during those days in the early 90s where I lived on a 48 hour cycle, 36 awake and 12 asleep. How I managed to study too is today beyond me but I guess things change as we grow older.
After this period of my life I started studying at the University and not that many years later I got my first internet connection at home and this again of course lead me to pick up my gaming. And so I started playing Counter-Strike online and joined first one and later two more online communities created around computer games. One of these communities lead me to discover MMORPGs something that I've spent many hours on since then. During a leave of absence, during which I worked, I started to sink deeper into the online worlds, something that most likely lead me to lose the woman I lived with at the time something that in turn most likely also helped me sink even deeper in to the games. So when I lifted my eyes off the screen around Christmas almost 5 years ago I came to the conclusion that during the past months I'd spent about 120 hours a week in my game. So I shook it off and dragged myself back to my studies and that's where I find myself today.
Now you might wonder why the hell I haven't considered this before but when you live in it and you eventually find solutions to things and can put the blame on something else you don't really keep a clear view on how things actually are. Still, I wouldn't call myself an computer game addict even though I do realize that I might have been or at least many would say that I have been. I do however realize now that gaming has been a way for me to find a peaceful and recognizable place for me since I was a little boy and that in itself might actually be a problem that I maybe should look at more seriously. Today I still play computer games but I might average around 5 hours a week and many weeks less than that.
So why have I put the word power in the topic of this post? Well, many people that play MMOGs extensively are considered to be powergamers by the gamer community (Wikipedia unfortunately doesn't help us here since it only describes one type of powergamer). There are several different groups of powergamers but for this post that doesn't really matter, what does however matter is the time spent in front of the screen and so by writing this post I hope that others can come to realize that it might not be really healthy or good to spend all that time in an other world. Or if you have a kid that spends to much time in front of the screen then ask yourself why and actually think about what you can do to break them out of it except screaming at them or turning off the power. Because the computer might be the only place they consider safe, so don't rip it out from underneath them. While I was playing at the peak there were several others I played with around the world that were around the same age as me (say plus minus 5 years), that is late 20s. So this is not specifically a teenage or adolescent problem (as Wikipedia likes us to believe).
Well, I hope somebody else than me at least got something to think about or at least reflect over. If not, read Turkle's book. Personally I intend to read her latest book too since that one might have more to do with this subject than The Second Self did. Anyway, now I'm going to go play some games to unwind before I go to bed.
When I was a child I played chess, Monopoly and other fun table top games with my brother but also with several of my friends. When I got closer to my teenage years I bought my first console, an 8-bit Nintendo that today is called NES. The NES didn't last all that long though because the games was to expensive for a 12 year old to buy so I bought a, second hand, Commodore 64 that came with something like 200 games and so I was pretty much dug in for years to come. Had it not been for the fact that I only a year later discovered the wonders of role-playing games I would probably have had my face glued to the screen playing The Last Ninja or Pirates still.
The roleplaying games gave me the chance to meet several friends over the years, one of them I even ended up sharing an apartment with for a few years, and most of them I still have contact with. Something that can't be said for most of the people I grew up with otherwise as they found other things (cars, bikes, etc) to occupy their time with instead.
In my early 20s I bought my first real PC (a 80486DX2 that I had custom made so to speak) and so I again dove into the wonderful world of computer gaming. I bought the computer mainly to learn about computer hardware at the time and also to learn more about computers in general, which I did but it quickly gave away to hours upon hours of gaming. The year just before I bought the computer I'd spent pretty much all of the time at a mate's place playing games and living a life that very similar to the life Turkle describes that the MIT hackers lived during the late 70s and early 80s. Stuck in a world of their own, programming through the nights and meeting like minded people for breakfast at the pancake house. Some of them living on a 36 hour cycle, which meant that they were awake for 24 hours and slept for 12. I had many days during those days in the early 90s where I lived on a 48 hour cycle, 36 awake and 12 asleep. How I managed to study too is today beyond me but I guess things change as we grow older.
After this period of my life I started studying at the University and not that many years later I got my first internet connection at home and this again of course lead me to pick up my gaming. And so I started playing Counter-Strike online and joined first one and later two more online communities created around computer games. One of these communities lead me to discover MMORPGs something that I've spent many hours on since then. During a leave of absence, during which I worked, I started to sink deeper into the online worlds, something that most likely lead me to lose the woman I lived with at the time something that in turn most likely also helped me sink even deeper in to the games. So when I lifted my eyes off the screen around Christmas almost 5 years ago I came to the conclusion that during the past months I'd spent about 120 hours a week in my game. So I shook it off and dragged myself back to my studies and that's where I find myself today.
Now you might wonder why the hell I haven't considered this before but when you live in it and you eventually find solutions to things and can put the blame on something else you don't really keep a clear view on how things actually are. Still, I wouldn't call myself an computer game addict even though I do realize that I might have been or at least many would say that I have been. I do however realize now that gaming has been a way for me to find a peaceful and recognizable place for me since I was a little boy and that in itself might actually be a problem that I maybe should look at more seriously. Today I still play computer games but I might average around 5 hours a week and many weeks less than that.
So why have I put the word power in the topic of this post? Well, many people that play MMOGs extensively are considered to be powergamers by the gamer community (Wikipedia unfortunately doesn't help us here since it only describes one type of powergamer). There are several different groups of powergamers but for this post that doesn't really matter, what does however matter is the time spent in front of the screen and so by writing this post I hope that others can come to realize that it might not be really healthy or good to spend all that time in an other world. Or if you have a kid that spends to much time in front of the screen then ask yourself why and actually think about what you can do to break them out of it except screaming at them or turning off the power. Because the computer might be the only place they consider safe, so don't rip it out from underneath them. While I was playing at the peak there were several others I played with around the world that were around the same age as me (say plus minus 5 years), that is late 20s. So this is not specifically a teenage or adolescent problem (as Wikipedia likes us to believe).
Well, I hope somebody else than me at least got something to think about or at least reflect over. If not, read Turkle's book. Personally I intend to read her latest book too since that one might have more to do with this subject than The Second Self did. Anyway, now I'm going to go play some games to unwind before I go to bed.
The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, Twentieth Anniversary Edition
The Second Self: Computers and the Human SpiritTwentieth Anniversary Edition, by Sherry Turkle
Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a clinical psychologist. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1948. Professor Turkle is also the founder (2001) and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. Turkle is widely considered one of the most distinguished scholars in the area of how technology influences human identity.Other than The Second Self, Turkle has published a couple of other books.
Psychoanalytic Politics: Freud's French Revolution, first published in 1978. It was the first important and substantial book about Lacan and his influence on psychoanalytic culture, according to Stuart Schneiderman, Ph.D.
Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, first published in 1995. It is a study of how people interact with machines, and some of the consequences for the way people use these computers, according to Wikipedia.
Turkle is currently working on Falling for Science: Objects in Mind and The Inner History of Devices: Technology and Self, they will both be released during 2008.
The Second Self : Computers and the Human Spirit, was originally published in 1984 but in this, the one I red, Twentieth Anniversary Edition Turkle has wrapped her work with a new prologue and epilogue. The book itself covers her 6 year work where she interviewed about 400 children, college students, engineers, AI scientists, hackers and personal computer owners with the objective to discern how the "evocative object", as she likes to describe the computer, affects our awareness of ourselves, of one another and of our relationship with the world. In the introduction of the book Turkle compares this new "evocative object" with a 12 year old boy called Victor of Aveyron that was found in wandering the woods of France in 1797. The boy became a concrete image of the views on nature versus nurture.
The book is written during a time period when computers no longer were confined to expert subcultures but had found it's way out into the lives of regular people. It was also a time when some elementary schools had put programming on their syllabus which presented Turkle with an opportunity to study children's interaction and reactions to the machine when using it in a similar way to an adult. Her goal with her study was to learn about computer cultures by living with them, participating when possible and help her understand things from the inside. She does this in an ethnographic style and perhaps is it that that leads her to write a book filled with anecdotes about people she has met during her years of research. According to the introduction from 1984 she uses her examples, which I choose to call anecdotes, to highlight specific aspects of the computer's influence of the people she interviews.
The book follows a kind of chronological order where she starts out with studying children between the age of 4-14 and how they interact with 3 different electronic toys. She does this in a similar way to how Jean Piaget studied children in the 1920s, but her goal is to find out whether the children considers the machines to be alive or not. Something that she finds many of the children say is that it must be alive since it is cheating. This is something that she comes back to several times through out the book when she later on meets men who are playing video games that comment on the machines in the same way as the 6 year old children.
From the children she moves on to adolescents and young adults who play video games. Turkle also seem to digress into an other sort of game called roleplaying. Both the video games and the roleplaying games part of the book have the objective to describe people lost in a simulated worlds though and thus fill an important function in the ongoing description of the "evocative object". In this part of the book she also describes her interviews with the adolescent programmers at a school she calls Austen. At Austen programming wasn't treated as a "school subject", as Turkle describes it, but rather the children had liberal access to the computers and with the help of a program called LOGO they managed to express, and sometimes even find, themselves with the help of the computers. Her she also describes the difference between the soft and hard master, a comparison she returns to when she describes the hackers she interviews at MIT.
In the next part of the book we have reached the adult computer users, both the expert and the not so technically expert users. Of course this was a time when there was no Windows so to what level the home PC owners were not technical experts is in my opinion questionable and especially considering most of the users Turkle spoke to used their computers to program on at home too. However Turkle describes how these users view the machine and how the machine reflects them to her. In this section Turkle also describes the hacker community at MIT and how they interact with the machines and gets absorbed by it while they flee the rest of the world and dive into the subculture that is active during the nights and practically lives in the computer labs.
Turkle ends the book with a look towards the future and the computer can sometimes be used as a psychological tool or instrument to describe our psyche. The book also covers the area of AI, artificial intelligence, and how the scientists at MIT view AI and how others might fear it.
Personally I must say I really enjoyed the book. It is written "in a clear and lively way", as the NYT's review from 1984 describes it, and is filled with anecdotes (as I mentioned earlier) which makes for an easily red, inspiring and interesting book. But, also as the NYT's review says, it lacks in one major thing and that is a view in to the massive amount of data she must have collected during her 6 year study that preluded this book. She mentions at several places in the book how many people she has studied to come to the conclusions she describes in a chapter and she also lets the reader know how many of those people she has selected to study more closely but to me, as a layman in sociology and psychology, it seems odd that she doesn't mention how representative the group she chose to study is or how large the group she studied is compared to other similar groups.
Still, she manages to stay somewhat neutral (even if the NYT reviewer does not think so) in her observations and descriptions of the people she has studied, which is a good thing. In that way she leaves much to the reader to decide and she does not judge on what is good or bad behaviour or what is good or bad regarding how people are reflected by the machine.
Considering I myself am a Gamer and have a very close "bond" to my computer and computers as a whole I sometimes found her reflections about peoples use of games as odd but at the same time very interesting. I also found myself wishing that I could have experienced the late 70s so that I could have had a chance to be one of the hackers she describes in the book. This might seem as odd, especially considering some would probably say that the only place Turkle doesn't hold her neutral distance to her "subjects" is when she writes about the hacker community and describes them as mechanical, unwashed and distant from the world the rest of us live in.
So all in all the book gave birth to many a thought about many different things and that I believe was one of the purposes of the book to begin with. If nothing else it "is still essential reading as a primer in the psychology of computation" as it states on the back.
When writing this post I tried to find what other people on the internet might have thought about the book but considering it's so old it quickly became clear that if something has been written about it it can't be found on the internet today. I did however manage to dig up and old blog post by Neal Grigsby that mentioned the book in passing as he tried to read it before a guest lecture by Turkle. I also found the title of the book nested into this blog post by boyhowdy, a blogger who describes himself(?) as a Cybersociologist, a title that Turkle has been granted in different parts of the internet and most likely in other written texts too.
Much more has been written about her latest book Life on the Screen and aside from books there are also several interviews with Turkle that can be found around the internet, like the one on Powerpoint, Robomanagers, and You or the one over at open|DOOR's or why not this one that covers women and computers something that professor Turkle seem to have a very different view on compared to many other women.
Lastly, I want to add that this has been an assignment in the course "Information retrieval and new new media", just as many other posts on this blog has and will be.
Monday, 25 February 2008
4th Bourne!!!
And not only will there be a 4th Bourne film but Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass will be staring in it and directing it respectively, according to Variety.
Personally I really like the Bourne trilogy. I think it's one of the best series of films about a spy/hitman out there. So to me this is fantastic news, especially considering Matt Damon said last year that he was "definitely done" with playing hitman Jason Bourne, saying: "I think we've ridden that horse as far as we can."
The Bourne Ultimatum won three technical awards at last nights Oscar's by the way, which is further proof that the film has something to offer. The previous two films hasn't even been nominated for Oscar's so it's good to see that the guys and girls behind these three great films finally got some recognition. With that said I don't mean that these films are the best in any of the Oscar categories really though and they aren't all that remarkable as far as films in general go, it's just that they are outstanding when it comes to this specific genre ... which would be spy/hitman films. Not sure if that is a genre to be honest?
Personally I really like the Bourne trilogy. I think it's one of the best series of films about a spy/hitman out there. So to me this is fantastic news, especially considering Matt Damon said last year that he was "definitely done" with playing hitman Jason Bourne, saying: "I think we've ridden that horse as far as we can."
The Bourne Ultimatum won three technical awards at last nights Oscar's by the way, which is further proof that the film has something to offer. The previous two films hasn't even been nominated for Oscar's so it's good to see that the guys and girls behind these three great films finally got some recognition. With that said I don't mean that these films are the best in any of the Oscar categories really though and they aren't all that remarkable as far as films in general go, it's just that they are outstanding when it comes to this specific genre ... which would be spy/hitman films. Not sure if that is a genre to be honest?
Thursday, 21 February 2008
Apparently I'm not alone
I found this on a forum I frequent and it feels good to know that I'm not alone.Well, I might not currently be living together with anybody but my quest to correct people is a life long undertaking. Seriously though, I don't know if I'd say that I'm a know-it-all but I like to add my opinions whether they are asked for or not and many a time that has been viewed as me being a smart arse. Considering several of the interactive parts of the internet is just full of peoples views on things though I like to consider myself as a contributor to the vast knowledge of internet ... ok, so I might be a bit of a know-it-all after all.
Anyway, I thought this picture was hilarious and so I wanted to add it to this blog too in the off chance that somebody takes a look here and finds it funny too and spreads it on.
Saturday, 9 February 2008
What is politics good for ...
... when religion controls the world?
I watched a video on Youtube the other day, it was an act by Marcus Brigstocke concerning religion. While it was funny it also got me thinking, which I'm sure was also one of Brigstocke's goals when he made the thing. While thinking is usually something that I detest and that makes my head hurt it made me rather sad actually this time. Because the more I thunk about religion and the fact that the great star of democracy called US of A just barely drag itself into the land of democracy these days when they climb over the great 50% threshold of people participating in the election, I came to the conclusion that it's no real bloody point to the whole thing.
Bare with me here for a second (or ten), I vote and I participate in the democratic process in my own country and I hate when people say that there isn't any point to go to the urns because it doesn't really matter who is in power since we are going to have just about the same government anyway. While this is more true for USA than my own country it still isn't an excuse for not voting in my opinion. If you don't participate you can't sit around and complain either and since I love complainin' I'm also votin' ;)
So what do I mean when I say that there is no point? Well, lately I've come to the conclusion that no matter what cool ideas our politicians come up with it's all going to come down to religion in the end any way. Today we, in the west, live in a rather un-religious world but many parts of it is still controlled by the religious ethics and rhetoric and so no matter what great strategy we come up with in the end there is always going to be a bloody religious nut standing in the way of progress and peace.
So there you have it good folks, if there is something we really should work towards it's the abolishment of religion and then we can start thinking about political agendas because not until then will there be any point to doing something about the political aspect of things. Until we have a world that isn't controlled by religious believes I'll just quote Rage Against the Machine, "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me" and keep living with respect of my fellow man but kick against the pricks.
/Peace
I watched a video on Youtube the other day, it was an act by Marcus Brigstocke concerning religion. While it was funny it also got me thinking, which I'm sure was also one of Brigstocke's goals when he made the thing. While thinking is usually something that I detest and that makes my head hurt it made me rather sad actually this time. Because the more I thunk about religion and the fact that the great star of democracy called US of A just barely drag itself into the land of democracy these days when they climb over the great 50% threshold of people participating in the election, I came to the conclusion that it's no real bloody point to the whole thing.
Bare with me here for a second (or ten), I vote and I participate in the democratic process in my own country and I hate when people say that there isn't any point to go to the urns because it doesn't really matter who is in power since we are going to have just about the same government anyway. While this is more true for USA than my own country it still isn't an excuse for not voting in my opinion. If you don't participate you can't sit around and complain either and since I love complainin' I'm also votin' ;)
So what do I mean when I say that there is no point? Well, lately I've come to the conclusion that no matter what cool ideas our politicians come up with it's all going to come down to religion in the end any way. Today we, in the west, live in a rather un-religious world but many parts of it is still controlled by the religious ethics and rhetoric and so no matter what great strategy we come up with in the end there is always going to be a bloody religious nut standing in the way of progress and peace.
So there you have it good folks, if there is something we really should work towards it's the abolishment of religion and then we can start thinking about political agendas because not until then will there be any point to doing something about the political aspect of things. Until we have a world that isn't controlled by religious believes I'll just quote Rage Against the Machine, "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me" and keep living with respect of my fellow man but kick against the pricks.
/Peace
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
The Steam Engine is back
Saab's old steam engine technology has been awoken again. The technology is today owned by Ranotor and it is that company that will develop the new BC-hybrid (bottoming cylce) technology together with Saab and Volvo.
Basically the engine means that gasoline consumption will be lowered to 20% of what is used today in large lorries. Not only will this save money of course but also more specifically the environment, since the engine uses the heat energy that is lost through the exhaust pipe and pretty much recycle that energy back in to the engine.
The largest problem the new engine faces is that it needs three new components. An HRSG (Heat Recovery Steam Generator), Air cooled Condenser and an oil-free reciprocating piston engine operating at high pressure and with high-pressure ratios. It is paramount that the HRSG and the air-cooled condenser is very compact and perform extraordinary well from a thermal and hydraulic point of view. These things means that we won't see the engine in the stores until 2013 at the earliest.
To be quite honest, steam engine was the last thought I had when it comes to solving the gasoline problem of the future.
Basically the engine means that gasoline consumption will be lowered to 20% of what is used today in large lorries. Not only will this save money of course but also more specifically the environment, since the engine uses the heat energy that is lost through the exhaust pipe and pretty much recycle that energy back in to the engine.
The largest problem the new engine faces is that it needs three new components. An HRSG (Heat Recovery Steam Generator), Air cooled Condenser and an oil-free reciprocating piston engine operating at high pressure and with high-pressure ratios. It is paramount that the HRSG and the air-cooled condenser is very compact and perform extraordinary well from a thermal and hydraulic point of view. These things means that we won't see the engine in the stores until 2013 at the earliest.
To be quite honest, steam engine was the last thought I had when it comes to solving the gasoline problem of the future.
Tuesday, 5 February 2008
CIA admits to waterboarding
So there it finally is, the director of CIA finally admitted to what the rest of the world has expect for some time now. That the USA has been subjecting their prisoners to enhanced interrogation methods, to use the words of director Michael Hayden himself.
My gut feeling is that using, what I would call, torture techniques to get information from your prisoners is to sink to the same level as your enemies. So to continue to fight the "good" fight is now impossible for USA and it's allies until they stop using their enhanced interrogation methods. On the other hand I also realize that in times when time is of the essence torture might be the only way to gather the intelligence needed to prevent an attack that could kill hundreds or even thousands of people. So what to do?
It would be rash of me to proclaim that I know anything about the way intelligence work works and so I'll not claim that torture is not a valid way to gather intelligence but disregarding the fact that I do not know anything about that I strongly believe that it is wrong to gather intelligence in a way that could be called torture. And to subject somebody to the feeling of drowning (which waterboarding is) is torture in my book. That does not mean that I don't think that USA should do what ever it takes to protect them self from attacks, it does however mean that I don't think they should use torture.
The question still remains though, what to do? Well the only answer I can really give to that is that they spend more money on intelligence work so they can discover threats earlier or in other ways. I'm sure a lot of money could be taken from the actual war effort if better intelligence would be gathered due to more money spent on it. That way nobody would have to be tortured and a lot of lives could be spared on all sides.
But what do I know. I am glad to see that the CIA finally owns up to what they have been accused of doing for a long time though.
My gut feeling is that using, what I would call, torture techniques to get information from your prisoners is to sink to the same level as your enemies. So to continue to fight the "good" fight is now impossible for USA and it's allies until they stop using their enhanced interrogation methods. On the other hand I also realize that in times when time is of the essence torture might be the only way to gather the intelligence needed to prevent an attack that could kill hundreds or even thousands of people. So what to do?
It would be rash of me to proclaim that I know anything about the way intelligence work works and so I'll not claim that torture is not a valid way to gather intelligence but disregarding the fact that I do not know anything about that I strongly believe that it is wrong to gather intelligence in a way that could be called torture. And to subject somebody to the feeling of drowning (which waterboarding is) is torture in my book. That does not mean that I don't think that USA should do what ever it takes to protect them self from attacks, it does however mean that I don't think they should use torture.
The question still remains though, what to do? Well the only answer I can really give to that is that they spend more money on intelligence work so they can discover threats earlier or in other ways. I'm sure a lot of money could be taken from the actual war effort if better intelligence would be gathered due to more money spent on it. That way nobody would have to be tortured and a lot of lives could be spared on all sides.
But what do I know. I am glad to see that the CIA finally owns up to what they have been accused of doing for a long time though.
Monday, 4 February 2008
End of the WGA strike?
The rumour mill has been turning a lot lately and yesterday WGA finally acknowledged the fact that they are moving toward agreeing to a tentative deal with the majors, which in my TV junkie mind is great news.
I sincerely hope they get what they want since I believe in their cause but I also really do hope the strike end soon. So far we (here in Sweden) hasn't really been affected by the strike considering most of the shows are almost a full season behind what is shown in the US but if the strike continues much longer we will be affected. So when I find news like these it puts a smile on my face. Even though the mail actually tells the WGA members to disregard any rumours about that the strike would be over it's still good news since it most likely (at least) means that we coming close to an end of the strike.
So go on writers we (the public or at least I) is on your side but for crying out loud get to an agreement please :)
I sincerely hope they get what they want since I believe in their cause but I also really do hope the strike end soon. So far we (here in Sweden) hasn't really been affected by the strike considering most of the shows are almost a full season behind what is shown in the US but if the strike continues much longer we will be affected. So when I find news like these it puts a smile on my face. Even though the mail actually tells the WGA members to disregard any rumours about that the strike would be over it's still good news since it most likely (at least) means that we coming close to an end of the strike.
So go on writers we (the public or at least I) is on your side but for crying out loud get to an agreement please :)
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Avril Lavigne, the spoiled brat
I have to admit that once upon a time I really liked Avril's music and considering I'm a sucker for the Punk genre I also liked the attitude she was selling her music with. But I haven't been blind to the reports over the years about her behaviour, earlier I just blew it off as immature but considering she now is over 23 that can't really be done any more.
I recently read an article in the Globe and Mail about her that is well funny. It is a well written piece about her as a person and quite frankly I'm a bit surprised that the kids are still interested in defending her behaviour. It's one thing to kick the media, the industry and what ever else kind of establishment with some sort of power over things but to sign your autograph as eff you and spit and scream at your fans is just not acceptable. It's not cool, it's not rock and roll and it's not fucking funny. If you can't be nice to your fans, the very people that made your life what it is, then you don't deserve what you have. What you do deserve though is empty arenas, people trashing you all over the internet, no more sold albums and nobody shouting your name (since she apparently thinks that's cool).
So Avril, go fuck yourself will you. You once had a chance to be somebody but now you are just a fucking brat that deserve all the shit that you get.
I recently read an article in the Globe and Mail about her that is well funny. It is a well written piece about her as a person and quite frankly I'm a bit surprised that the kids are still interested in defending her behaviour. It's one thing to kick the media, the industry and what ever else kind of establishment with some sort of power over things but to sign your autograph as eff you and spit and scream at your fans is just not acceptable. It's not cool, it's not rock and roll and it's not fucking funny. If you can't be nice to your fans, the very people that made your life what it is, then you don't deserve what you have. What you do deserve though is empty arenas, people trashing you all over the internet, no more sold albums and nobody shouting your name (since she apparently thinks that's cool).
So Avril, go fuck yourself will you. You once had a chance to be somebody but now you are just a fucking brat that deserve all the shit that you get.
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
Rambo in a wheel chair?
I have to admit that "Rocky Balboa" was actually a pretty decent flick and although Sly felt old in the beginning his age was well fitted in to the story line but come on, "Rambo"?
Sly is 62 years old this year and he will be doing the role of John Rambo, the special forces dude that kicks all kinds of ass. Judging from the trailer it doesn't seem to be a mellow film with lots of reminiscence in either. So my question is, did he pull it off?
According to Brian Lowry over at Variety he doesn't pull it off, neither does the rest of the film crew apparently. On the other hand it did gross about 18 million on it's opening weekend, which isn't all that shabby. But to be totally honest the box office is rarely a good measurement of whether a film is good or not. Judging by Lowry's review it lacks in most aspects except in the department the Rambo films has made them self known for and that's body count.
Considering action is pretty much what one wants out of a Rambo film I have to say that I'll probably watch this one too even though I sincerely hope that Sly chooses to play something else on the screen in the future. We all know that he can act (Cop Land anybody?) and I really thought that the first Rocky was pretty good so he can write a script too. So why the need to play roles where he has to show his biceps? You are to old for that Sly.
Sly is 62 years old this year and he will be doing the role of John Rambo, the special forces dude that kicks all kinds of ass. Judging from the trailer it doesn't seem to be a mellow film with lots of reminiscence in either. So my question is, did he pull it off?
According to Brian Lowry over at Variety he doesn't pull it off, neither does the rest of the film crew apparently. On the other hand it did gross about 18 million on it's opening weekend, which isn't all that shabby. But to be totally honest the box office is rarely a good measurement of whether a film is good or not. Judging by Lowry's review it lacks in most aspects except in the department the Rambo films has made them self known for and that's body count.
Considering action is pretty much what one wants out of a Rambo film I have to say that I'll probably watch this one too even though I sincerely hope that Sly chooses to play something else on the screen in the future. We all know that he can act (Cop Land anybody?) and I really thought that the first Rocky was pretty good so he can write a script too. So why the need to play roles where he has to show his biceps? You are to old for that Sly.
Me and my cell
As I mentioned in an earlier post on this blog I'm taking a course called Information retrieval and new new media and so this post is also an assignment in that course. Just so you that happened upon this blog get an idea of why I would sit around and write about my cellphone.
I've got a couple of cells but the one I'm currently using is a SE K750i. I bought it a few years ago because I don't own a digital camera and neither do I own an mp3 player and this phone has both. It was the first phone (to my knowledge) that was sold, in Sweden, with a 2 mega pixel camera and so I hoped I'd be able to use it to take pictures with. As it turns out I underestimated the need of optics and so I hardly ever use the camera function other than to document things on the fly so to speak (it's sometimes useful for taking notes of whiteboards in school with as an example).
The phone takes Memory sticks up to 4 GB (I only have a 1 GB though) which comes in handy when you want to use it as an mp3 player, something I do on a regular basis. It also has the ability to play FM radio and mpeg-4 videos, two things I don't use quite as often.
There are a bunch of features I never use on the phone such as GPRS, Bluetooth, modem and mms. Most of those I don't use since I can't afford to activate them. Bluetooth I don't use since I don't have any in my computer and I haven't found any other use for it either. There is also an IrDA port (something I've never used either) and the ability to connect the phone to a USB port. That should cover all the communication abilities of the phone, except of course the basic abilities of calling and sending text messages.
The phone also has a slew of features to long to list here but there is a longer list over at gsmarena.com that might be interesting to check out for specially interested.
One thing that I thought could be interesting to note though is that it supports WAP 2.0 and MIDP. Something that means that the phone could be used for quite a lot of things. There are, as an example, already a whole bunch of games to buy and download to the phone. Other than that my guess would be that only the imagination is the limit of what you can do really. As an example people has started using cell phones with WiFi as a wireless mouse. I'm definitely not sure that can be done with my phone but considering it has Bluetooth and Java support I don't see why it shouldn't be possible.
Well, that's pretty much it. To finish off I can say that the features I use most on my phone (except for the telephone part) is the phone book, the mp3 player, sms, the alarm clock (otherwise I wouldn't get up in the morning), the calendar and the timer (very useful when cooking or doing laundry).
I've got a couple of cells but the one I'm currently using is a SE K750i. I bought it a few years ago because I don't own a digital camera and neither do I own an mp3 player and this phone has both. It was the first phone (to my knowledge) that was sold, in Sweden, with a 2 mega pixel camera and so I hoped I'd be able to use it to take pictures with. As it turns out I underestimated the need of optics and so I hardly ever use the camera function other than to document things on the fly so to speak (it's sometimes useful for taking notes of whiteboards in school with as an example).
The phone takes Memory sticks up to 4 GB (I only have a 1 GB though) which comes in handy when you want to use it as an mp3 player, something I do on a regular basis. It also has the ability to play FM radio and mpeg-4 videos, two things I don't use quite as often.
There are a bunch of features I never use on the phone such as GPRS, Bluetooth, modem and mms. Most of those I don't use since I can't afford to activate them. Bluetooth I don't use since I don't have any in my computer and I haven't found any other use for it either. There is also an IrDA port (something I've never used either) and the ability to connect the phone to a USB port. That should cover all the communication abilities of the phone, except of course the basic abilities of calling and sending text messages.
The phone also has a slew of features to long to list here but there is a longer list over at gsmarena.com that might be interesting to check out for specially interested.
One thing that I thought could be interesting to note though is that it supports WAP 2.0 and MIDP. Something that means that the phone could be used for quite a lot of things. There are, as an example, already a whole bunch of games to buy and download to the phone. Other than that my guess would be that only the imagination is the limit of what you can do really. As an example people has started using cell phones with WiFi as a wireless mouse. I'm definitely not sure that can be done with my phone but considering it has Bluetooth and Java support I don't see why it shouldn't be possible.
Well, that's pretty much it. To finish off I can say that the features I use most on my phone (except for the telephone part) is the phone book, the mp3 player, sms, the alarm clock (otherwise I wouldn't get up in the morning), the calendar and the timer (very useful when cooking or doing laundry).
Thursday, 24 January 2008
The Witcher Review
Finally I found somebody I can agree with regarding the Witcher and again it's Yahtzee Croshaw over at The Escapist that both agrees with me and does his Zero Punctuation thing that he does so well. Even if you don't play computer games but do have a slight idea of what it is watch it because the stuff he does is pretty funny.
Anyway, my point is that everybody I know (and their mothers) have said that the Witcher is such a great game, that it leaves Oblivion in the dust and that all other CRPG should use the Witcher as a model from here on out and so on and so on. Personally I have to say that that is a load of crap. The Witcher is a really boring game that is shopped to pieces by cut scenes and loading screens. For starters the back story is just yawningly boring, the intro movie is well done and looks cool but who the hell wrote the story for that piece of garbage. So after you've suffered through the absolute first bit you are launched in to the part of the game that I guess has the intention of giving you a chance to learn the controls, it's just that the game never really lets you control the avatar because the whole experience is cut to pieces by a gazillion different cut scenes.
But ok, after three sessions on three separate days (something that is pretty much unheard of in my case) I finally get passed the "intro" part of the game and arrive at the first village where I can choose my own quests and start unravelling the story. After playing for a couple of hours I realize that all I'm doing is running back and forth, back and forth, etc between NPCs and I say to myself "Hey, wait a second I recognize this game mechanic ... it's in every fucking MMORPG on the market!". So what have the developers done? They have created a single player MMORPG that is riddled with cut scenes and loading screens. Fuck yeah, that's a great idea! No it is not, you stupid fuckers. I really expected more from a game that wears the BioWare logo.
Personally I'm so disappointed with this game that I wouldn't even recommend it to my worst enemy ... wait a second ... why did my friends recommended it to me?
Anyway, my point is that everybody I know (and their mothers) have said that the Witcher is such a great game, that it leaves Oblivion in the dust and that all other CRPG should use the Witcher as a model from here on out and so on and so on. Personally I have to say that that is a load of crap. The Witcher is a really boring game that is shopped to pieces by cut scenes and loading screens. For starters the back story is just yawningly boring, the intro movie is well done and looks cool but who the hell wrote the story for that piece of garbage. So after you've suffered through the absolute first bit you are launched in to the part of the game that I guess has the intention of giving you a chance to learn the controls, it's just that the game never really lets you control the avatar because the whole experience is cut to pieces by a gazillion different cut scenes.
But ok, after three sessions on three separate days (something that is pretty much unheard of in my case) I finally get passed the "intro" part of the game and arrive at the first village where I can choose my own quests and start unravelling the story. After playing for a couple of hours I realize that all I'm doing is running back and forth, back and forth, etc between NPCs and I say to myself "Hey, wait a second I recognize this game mechanic ... it's in every fucking MMORPG on the market!". So what have the developers done? They have created a single player MMORPG that is riddled with cut scenes and loading screens. Fuck yeah, that's a great idea! No it is not, you stupid fuckers. I really expected more from a game that wears the BioWare logo.
Personally I'm so disappointed with this game that I wouldn't even recommend it to my worst enemy ... wait a second ... why did my friends recommended it to me?
Life on Mars?
Really there is!
Or maybe not. It really depends on your level of imagination and possibly wishful thinking. BBC have an article today that discusses the topic that is apparently making some of the corners of the interweb buzz with excitement over proof of extraterrestrial life.
At first glance I have to admit that the picture does awake some imagination and deep hopes of that the proof is finally here but rather quickly I have to say that I do agree with Badastronomy.com, dimension is the key here. Without digging to deep into the subject a quick look at the original picture will make you understand that what people are talking about is about a pebble in size.
So yeah, sure it does look like a humanoid but personally I can say that I've seen Dragons in the gravel in my backyard. If that means that there really are Dragons in Sweden or that there are tiny aliens on Mars that is up to you I guess.
Still, it's an amusing thought and story :)
Or maybe not. It really depends on your level of imagination and possibly wishful thinking. BBC have an article today that discusses the topic that is apparently making some of the corners of the interweb buzz with excitement over proof of extraterrestrial life.
At first glance I have to admit that the picture does awake some imagination and deep hopes of that the proof is finally here but rather quickly I have to say that I do agree with Badastronomy.com, dimension is the key here. Without digging to deep into the subject a quick look at the original picture will make you understand that what people are talking about is about a pebble in size.
So yeah, sure it does look like a humanoid but personally I can say that I've seen Dragons in the gravel in my backyard. If that means that there really are Dragons in Sweden or that there are tiny aliens on Mars that is up to you I guess.
Still, it's an amusing thought and story :)
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
The Me and Media
To make this a bit more reader friendly I'll try to refrain from just listing stuff from top to bottom and instead write a bit of a biography (in lack of a better word) of how I use and partake in different kinds of media. Mostly because I personally think it's more interesting to read it like that.
So where to start? Well I'm older than most people studying so lets start there.
As most people older than the internet I grew up reading comics, books and newspapers. I watched TV a few hours every day (which during the 80s was considered a lot for a Swede) and listen to radio about an hour or so a day. I bought LPs and listen to those and when the CD player started to become a big thing in Sweden me and my bro bought one together. I like all my friends borrowed and copied CDs and LPs of each other like crazy (something that is fully legal in Sweden I might add) when I was younger.
When I was about 12 years old I got an interest for computers or more precisely computer games. It started with text based games on a friends ABC 80 and pretty soon after that I got a NES (the first Nintendo console). During my early teens I bought a Commondore 64 (a computer) and while I mostly played games on it I also did a bit of programming in Basic. In my late teens I got other interests (girls and beer anybody?) but my interest for computers stuck with me in some ways and when I was in my early 20s I bought my first PC, a 486. This time my main reason for getting a computer was not to game on it but to learn about computers and to program. I took a couple of computer hardware courses and software developing process courses. Of course I ended up playing more games than doing anything else in the end though.
I didn't get an internet connection at home until 2001 so I'm actually fairly new to the whole internet thing considering I could have been much more involved with it. I was "online" for the first time back in 95 or possibly 96 (memory fails with age and so on ... ). Before that I had connected to various bulletin boards with a modem together with a mate during the late 80s. During those days they were pretty much a substitute to heta linjen (sorry if you don't speak Swedish but I'm not really sure what it compares to in other countries), a place that people connected to to communicate in a very childish manner (typical for teens). Anyway, my point is that when I finally got a connection from home my interaction with people and activities almost took over my life. I got involved in several game oriented communities and I spent a lot of time online playing various games.
So today I use my computer for most of my social interaction be it via phpbbs forums, Google Talk, MSN (or actually WLM), Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, Facebook or what ever. In some instances it's actually gone so far that I interact with people that live in the same town as me over the internet instead of meeting them in person. Of course I still go out and meet people face to face and talk about things that has nothing to do with media, games or computers. Actually it happens fairly often that I do that. But the majority of my time is spent in front of some kind of screen, be it the computer screen or the TV. My TV is today hooked up to my computer to enable me to watch videos on my telly and also to listen to music while I do other things on the computer.
I also use my computer for studying and some web coding. When I code I use a lot of the knowledge that people have gathered on the internet in different places. Most places I find good tips and tricks are actually in blogs. There are tons and tons of blogs dedicated to web programming in different ways out there so because of that I read quite a lot of blogs but very rarely the same one. My internet use is based around my game communities (links to them can be found on this site to the right) and those I visit daily (many times). Some other places I visit regularly can be found here, just don't look at the rest of that horrible thing of a site. To my defence it's only a skeleton of what I'm currently working.
Internet has also given me the chance to interact with people from all over he world, though they are mainly situated in English speaking nations but I have friends both in Australia, Japan, USA and people spread out through EU. These people I mostly interact with via the for mentioned methods but mostly through forums because of time difference.
Except the computer and TV I also interact with people through my cell phone mostly by calling. I actually avoid using text messages as I don't like it as much as using my voice to communicate but it happens every now and then that I both receive and write text messages on my cell. The most use my cell see today though is it's mp3 function. I will dive deeper into the usage of my cell in an other post on this site.
Other types of media, such as those I mentioned in the beginning, has almost vanished from my world. I still watch TV occasionally and I actually listen to quite a lot of Radio today but it's all web radio stations (I use Screamer and my favourite station is one of SomaFM's stations). I read the occasional web comic and rarely open a newspaper (except for a tech paper I get delivered at home every week NyTeknik) but I actually do still read books. Probably much more today than I did when I was younger. I'm currently reading Steven Erikson's Garden of the Moon and Stephen R. Donaldson's Fatal Revenant, which will probably lead you to make an incorrect guess about what genre I'm most interested in.
Well, that should be it. I think that explains what the me in media is. Oh, one more thing. To people without the knowledge of me taking a course called "Information Retrieval and New New Media" this whole topic and post might seem very odd. But read the information about that course and you might get an idea to reason behind this post.
So where to start? Well I'm older than most people studying so lets start there.
As most people older than the internet I grew up reading comics, books and newspapers. I watched TV a few hours every day (which during the 80s was considered a lot for a Swede) and listen to radio about an hour or so a day. I bought LPs and listen to those and when the CD player started to become a big thing in Sweden me and my bro bought one together. I like all my friends borrowed and copied CDs and LPs of each other like crazy (something that is fully legal in Sweden I might add) when I was younger.
When I was about 12 years old I got an interest for computers or more precisely computer games. It started with text based games on a friends ABC 80 and pretty soon after that I got a NES (the first Nintendo console). During my early teens I bought a Commondore 64 (a computer) and while I mostly played games on it I also did a bit of programming in Basic. In my late teens I got other interests (girls and beer anybody?) but my interest for computers stuck with me in some ways and when I was in my early 20s I bought my first PC, a 486. This time my main reason for getting a computer was not to game on it but to learn about computers and to program. I took a couple of computer hardware courses and software developing process courses. Of course I ended up playing more games than doing anything else in the end though.
I didn't get an internet connection at home until 2001 so I'm actually fairly new to the whole internet thing considering I could have been much more involved with it. I was "online" for the first time back in 95 or possibly 96 (memory fails with age and so on ... ). Before that I had connected to various bulletin boards with a modem together with a mate during the late 80s. During those days they were pretty much a substitute to heta linjen (sorry if you don't speak Swedish but I'm not really sure what it compares to in other countries), a place that people connected to to communicate in a very childish manner (typical for teens). Anyway, my point is that when I finally got a connection from home my interaction with people and activities almost took over my life. I got involved in several game oriented communities and I spent a lot of time online playing various games.
So today I use my computer for most of my social interaction be it via phpbbs forums, Google Talk, MSN (or actually WLM), Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, Facebook or what ever. In some instances it's actually gone so far that I interact with people that live in the same town as me over the internet instead of meeting them in person. Of course I still go out and meet people face to face and talk about things that has nothing to do with media, games or computers. Actually it happens fairly often that I do that. But the majority of my time is spent in front of some kind of screen, be it the computer screen or the TV. My TV is today hooked up to my computer to enable me to watch videos on my telly and also to listen to music while I do other things on the computer.
I also use my computer for studying and some web coding. When I code I use a lot of the knowledge that people have gathered on the internet in different places. Most places I find good tips and tricks are actually in blogs. There are tons and tons of blogs dedicated to web programming in different ways out there so because of that I read quite a lot of blogs but very rarely the same one. My internet use is based around my game communities (links to them can be found on this site to the right) and those I visit daily (many times). Some other places I visit regularly can be found here, just don't look at the rest of that horrible thing of a site. To my defence it's only a skeleton of what I'm currently working.
Internet has also given me the chance to interact with people from all over he world, though they are mainly situated in English speaking nations but I have friends both in Australia, Japan, USA and people spread out through EU. These people I mostly interact with via the for mentioned methods but mostly through forums because of time difference.
Except the computer and TV I also interact with people through my cell phone mostly by calling. I actually avoid using text messages as I don't like it as much as using my voice to communicate but it happens every now and then that I both receive and write text messages on my cell. The most use my cell see today though is it's mp3 function. I will dive deeper into the usage of my cell in an other post on this site.
Other types of media, such as those I mentioned in the beginning, has almost vanished from my world. I still watch TV occasionally and I actually listen to quite a lot of Radio today but it's all web radio stations (I use Screamer and my favourite station is one of SomaFM's stations). I read the occasional web comic and rarely open a newspaper (except for a tech paper I get delivered at home every week NyTeknik) but I actually do still read books. Probably much more today than I did when I was younger. I'm currently reading Steven Erikson's Garden of the Moon and Stephen R. Donaldson's Fatal Revenant, which will probably lead you to make an incorrect guess about what genre I'm most interested in.
Well, that should be it. I think that explains what the me in media is. Oh, one more thing. To people without the knowledge of me taking a course called "Information Retrieval and New New Media" this whole topic and post might seem very odd. But read the information about that course and you might get an idea to reason behind this post.
Introduction
This blog is created for one purpose and one purpose only. To learn about blogging.
I'm currently taking a course at Linköpings Universitet called "Information Retrival and New New Media". One aspect of that course is to learn about blogging. Both about creating a blog and getting people to read it and comment on it. Something I obviously need help with ;)
I'm currently taking a course at Linköpings Universitet called "Information Retrival and New New Media". One aspect of that course is to learn about blogging. Both about creating a blog and getting people to read it and comment on it. Something I obviously need help with ;)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
