...on social sites
by Tim Faircloth on May 29, 2007, 9:10 am
When I say “social site”, I mean places like Livejournal, Myspace, and Friendster, not social bookmarking sites like digg or reddit.
I’ve joined both Livejournal and Myspace, and I just don’t see the point anymore. I think the idea is great, but it seems like they’ve all become hosts for internet stalkers and an endless supply of internet quizzes like “What Disney character are you?” (often referred to, perhaps improperly, as “meme”s).
The only reason I keep up with livejournal at all is because so many of these people use it as their regular blog, so every now and then there’s some regular content. I used to shy away from internet pop culture (I still refuse to get a friendster account), but I do care about some of the people on my friends list.
It’s the quizzes that get me down. Yes, they’re lame, but I just can’t help myself. I feel both joy and self-loathing as the tenth “which comic book character are you” quiz says I’m Spider-Man. Joy because, well, Spider-Man kicks ass… but loathing because I’m taking yet another “Which (blah) character are you?” quiz.
For me, social sites just point out how much of a recluse I am. I never get “tagged” to do an internet meme. I’m not in anyone’s Top 8. I’ve only got 45 friends on myspace. I just don’t see the point. Why bother meeting people online when I’ve got good friends in Americus that I can go visit whenever I want?
"I want a Hummer!"
by Tim Faircloth on May 24, 2007, 9:53 am
I honestly hope the author of this article is correct. Personally, I’d like to see 95% of all SUVs on the road disappear, but I don’t thing that’s going to happen.
Please note that when I say “SUV” I mean a big-ass gas-guzzling hunk of metal on wheels. Your CRV or 4 Runner doesn’t fit the bill. Think Escalade or… well, Hummer.
“But Tim,” you say, “what’s wrong with SUVs?”
Several things:
They’re gas hogs - Which impacts us all by driving up the demand for gas, and as we all learned in high school economics (hopefully), higher demand causes higher prices. If everyone drove sedans or small trucks, we wouldn’t be paying $3 per gallon for gas right now. Hell, even a sports car gets better gas mileage.
They’re “safer”, but not really - SUVs are basically tanks that are highway legal. If you get in an accident, you’ll probably be ok, but what about that other car you creamed? This leads into my next problem:
Few people that drive them are good drivers - A friend of mine once made the observation that young drivers are often given an SUV by their parents because the parents want their child to be safe. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I’ve noticed that a lot of SUV owners often make careless mistakes while driving. I think it’s because such large vehicles give you a sense of dominance over your surroundings, and remove you from what’s going on outside.
There are few people that need one - Yes, if you’re a vulcanologist, there’s a chance you’ll run into some rough terrain and harsh conditions. If Pierce Brosnan in Dante’s Peak had a Hummer in that little flashback at the beginning (instead of a cloth-top Jeep), his girlfriend would have quite possibly survived. Otherwise, you don’t need it. My Civic can handle a shallow puddle on a dirt road, and I’d guess 90% of the population doesn’t even go that far off-road.
They bastardize the American Dream - Yeah, it’s a bit of a stretch, but I had to reply to the comments in the linked article that say the H2 reflects the American way of life. It’s true. The H2, much like many Americans today, is “bloated, arrogant, and offensive”, but that’s not the American Dream. I prefer the model of a sports car — sleek, agile, and powerful.
I’m going to miss the Hummer commercials though. I like it when I’m sitting in a group of friends and one comes on. Inevitably, someone in the group will say “I want a Hummer!” and I’ll just smile and nod.
Monkeys are the key to world peace
by Tim Faircloth on May 23, 2007, 11:11 am
It’s always odd to me how humor can lead to such wisdom. In Shakespearean plays, a king’s Fool would often show much more wisdom than his title implies.
Or is it wisdom that begets humor? I don’t know. The point is that humor and wisdom, much like insanity and genius, often seem to come from the same source.
Programming hassles
by Tim Faircloth on May 22, 2007, 11:24 am
So, I got my first comment spammer. Good news for me (kinda) and bad news for all of you.
Good news for me because it forces me to deal with a problem I’ve willingly ignored, naively trusting in the intelligence of the people that would find this site. It turns out logic isn’t quite as prevalent as one wishes.
Bad news for you all because until I get my moderation code finished, posts are effectively disabled… but not really. Right now I’m setting it up so comments aren’t shown until I personally approve them (though they are shown up in the database), and since I’m still working the kinks out of my comment email notification I don’t know if people have commented.
I’ve thought of alternate ways of moderating comments. Slashdot won’t allow more than one post from the same ip within two minutes. That wouldn’t be too hard to implement, but it’ll take a little bit of coding. I find that approach to be less censoring.
Captcha’s an option, but I just don’t like it. Kinda hard to code anyway.
So, feel free to comment… but it may take a few days before it shows up. Apparently it only takes one freak to punish everyone.
In case anyone at GSW hasn't noticed...
by Tim Faircloth on May 18, 2007, 10:38 am
Is it just me, or does one of our Computer Science teachers look almost exactly like my favorite star of Heroes? It’s increasingly odd to me since Dr. Fu is Chinese and Hiro Nakamura is Japanese.
Here’s the only picture of Dr. Fu I could find from when he was a student at Santa Barbara:
…and here’s a picture of Hiro Nakamura:
Judge for yourself.
(By the way, that picture of Hiro Nakamura is probably copyrighted by NBC Studios or something, but I found it in someone’s flickr stream so I call it fair game.)
A new IM client
by Tim Faircloth on May 17, 2007, 10:19 am
So, I’ve noticed that Pidgin (formerly Gaim) 2.0 has been released. Apparently it’s been out for a week or so, but I must have missed it since I use Adium on my mac. I hope someone from the development team reads this post, because I’m a tad disappointed.
First off, where’s the frickin’ changelog? I want to see what’s changed between 2b6 and 2 final, but I can’t find it.
Second, there’s an RSS feed for the (empty) “news”, but none for the “blogs”. Why are they separated out anyway?
The website was once more geek friendly. Perhaps it was a bit dated, but I don’t think I have much room to talk about website design. I do feel that one should focus more on content, though.
Also, I was promised built-in voice and video (vv) with 2.0. Hell, I was promised vv back in 1.5. WHERE THE HELL IS IT?
I dunno. Maybe it’s there. You’d think they’d make a bigger deal of it since it’s been the most desired feature since… well, forever.
Oh well. In my mind it’s still the best IM client around, but right now it looks like they’re going the way of other IM clients by focusing on form instead of function.
"Hey, it's me!"
by Tim Faircloth on May 14, 2007, 8:54 pm
How many times have you left a message on someone’s voicemail that starts out “hey, it’s me”? Uh… who else would it be? If you’re the one talking, of course it’s you.
I have since updated my “rules of voice mail etiquette”. Take a gander:
- Leave a meaningful message, not just “call me back”. If you just want to chat, email me or catch me on gtalk. There are a few exceptions to this rule.
- Make it short and to the point, or at least don’t say anything important after the first ten seconds.
- Unless I know you quite well, don’t assume I know who’s speaking.
- Leave your number unless you’re absolutely sure I have it. There are subrules to this one.
- Use proper phone number rhythm. As Kevin James says: bum-bum-bum, bum-bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum
- Say the numbers clearly. I hate getting six out of seven digits
- Don’t leave a long message with your phone number at the end. I don’t want to have to hear your entire message again just to get your number.
- Don’t say “It’s me” without saying your name afterwards (“It’s me, Tim”, not just “It’s me”). If I recognize your voice it’s obvious that it’s you, and if I don’t know you, I won’t know who you are unless you tell me your name.
Relaxen und watchen das Blinkenlights
by Tim Faircloth on May 14, 2007, 4:22 pm
I recently read a slashdot post about LEDs on electronic devices (article link).
Sigh
Yet another mouthbreather that thinks the world revolves around him. Those lights annoy me, so they must be removed. What do they mean? I don’t know, and since I’m omniscient, nobody knows. Not even the designers.
God forbid we lowly computer geeks create something that gives us a visual warning if something’s going wrong.
And who says they all have to have function? Why can’t we put pretty lights on our computers that just… look flashy?
I take that back. Those “decorative” lights serve a function. They scare off fuckwads like you. Henceforth, I propose a rating system for electronic devices:
No LEDs: for retards
One LED: for the average joe
Two LEDs: for intelligent people
Three LEDSs: for savy people
Four LEDs: for geeks
Five LEDs: for professional geeks
Also, is redundant to say “LED light” instead of just “LED”, or is the Light Emitting Diode part of a LED light?
Spiderman 3 and George Washington
by Tim Faircloth on May 13, 2007, 7:12 pm
That’s right. I went to see it on opening night a week ago. My opinion? I’ll tell you what I tell everyone else.
I was highly empressed with Sandman. Lowell from Wings was a good casting choice; I think he portrayed the character well and his likess to the comic book version of Sandman was incredible.
I was impressed with Venom. Topher Grace, though he looks nothing like Eddie Brock, played a convincing role. I liked the fact that his twig-like build contrasted with his bodybuilder facade once he was taken over by the symbiote. Besides, didn’t we all love Eric Foreman from That 70’s Show?
Overall, I think it was an OK movie. Not a great movie, but I went to see Venom… and the ten to twenty minutes he was onscreen were great.
But isn’t this supposed to be an action movie? Weren’t there supposed to be three villains simultaneously beating the crap out of Spidey until he finally figured out some great plan to beat them?
SPOILER ALERT
Why then, was half the movie about him and Mary Jane? Why did it take so long for Sandman to recuperate from his… uh… forced mudding? Why were there no villains until the last half hour of the movie besides the tainted Spidey?
How the hell is Carnage going to rear his ugly face if Eddie Brock has been blown to hell and back? Hell, half the reason I was excited about Venom is because I knew his existence (eventually) leads to the time of Carnage.
Why is Harry Osborn “The New Green Goblin”? Isn’t he the Hobgoblin?
END SPOILERS
Moreover, Peter Parker’s got no rythm, he can’t pull off the whole emo kid look, and neither he nor Mary Jane are pretty when they’re crying.
But why would I bring this up now? Here’s why. Check out error number 113. Is that a reference to this youtube video about George Washington? Mother fucker did have, like, thirty goddamned dicks (and once held an opponent’s wife’s hand in a jar of acid. At a party).
In other news, this site is hosted by Fuze Technologies. Their site’s under construction, but I’m helping them out with that.
I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER?
by Tim Faircloth on May 10, 2007, 11:57 pm
We all need humor in our lives. Check out I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? and add it to your rss feeds. Now. It’s definitely worth it to start from the beginning and check out all the pictures.
This one is my favorite. PEW PEW PEW!
New Host
by Tim Faircloth on May 10, 2007, 2:02 pm
In other news, I’ve moved slashback.org to a new host! Hopefully it’ll have much better uptime.
Also, I may need to put something at the domain root, even if it’s just a redirect to my blog.
Mysql woes
by Tim Faircloth on May 10, 2007, 11:44 am
So I’ve decided to go through all my php and change out the Pear::DB code for native php mysql code. It wasn’t easy, but I’ve managed to get it done.
My only hangup is insertion. My sql is correct and there are no error codes from the mysql_query function, but for some reason, the data isn’t inserted into the database.
…So for now I’m sticking with Pear::DB, at least on my “production” copy of the blog. If anyone can help me out, here’s the relevant code (after connecting to the server and selecting the database):
$sql = “INSERT INTO table (field, field, …) VALUES (value, value, value, …)”;
mysql_query($sql);
is there some sort of mysql_execute function I need to run?
Downtime
by Tim Faircloth on May 10, 2007, 8:38 am
Sorry about the downtime, folks. I’ve recently changed to a new server.
Luckily I had been planning the move for some time. Last week I moved my web files and my database, and this week home directories on my previous server died. All I had to do is update DNS and configure apache on the new server.
You know what? The only person that hadn’t backed up his files was the administrator of the system. Isn’t it funny how life works?