Quote Of The Month
“It’s not like I have no content; I’ve got lots. It’s the initiative to write about them that’s the problem.”
Archive for December, 2007
Ahh!
Did I ever mention that I love the Hammer? The Hammer is a mass collection of requested tasks that all have a priority 1 setting and all have either the same due date or consecutive due dates. What makes it fun is that these requests are from different departments so they have no idea what the other is requesting.
The Hammer also always happens on a Friday.
The Future is Now
One of the Sci-Fi “what-if’s” I’ve read had power and internet connections on airplanes. Well, Virgin Atlantic is already offerring power and USB connections and now JetBlue is testing out limited email and instant messaging capabilities. It’s only a matter of time before full internet access is made available. It’s an exciting, albeit also scary, thing for fiction to be made real.
Richard Calder’s Cythera visualized PDA’s with full color video and music playback in 1998. And only a year before in Idoru (or here for LibraryThing Fans) is there mention of native power and internet access on airplanes (to what I mentioned above).
In Pat Cadigan’s Synners, there’s even the proliferation of television channels and their shows that the word “porn” took on a slightly different meaning. For example, Food Porn is the term for the overload of food shows and channels.
What’s next? Will we have full 3D holographic communication devices? Pleasure bots? Slices of silicon and circuitry that operate as a personal computer terminal, newspaper and diagnostics tool that recharges off of our body heat while attached to us?
The future is now.
Thinner is Better?
Rumors abound about an ultra-portable Macbook coming up. As someone who once had an ultra-portable laptop and a recent convert to Macs, this info is very delicious. But my Macbook Pro isn’t old enough to replace. It works cherry and for something to show me love, I can’t rightly just toss it aside for the next latest and greatest.
Well, not that it hasn’t happened before. But anyway! What makes an Apple ultra-portable so seductive? Besides the, mostly guaranteed, snazzy design and the cool OS X operating system? LED backlit display for one. Solid State Drive for another. Vibrant imagery after a near instantaneous boot up. Mmm! Part of the rumors mention there wouldn’t be an internal optical drive, but I doubt that’d be a deal breaker as long as it came with an external drive. The ultra-portable I had was a Sony Vaio, it had an internal DVD drive and an SVGA display. Pretty crisp display and when not doing heavy video (couldn’t play much games on it with the shoddy graphics card), the laptop would run for about 4 hours straight on battery. My current Macbook lasts around 3.5 hours when not doing anything strenuous. I wonder how long the potential upcoming Macbook would last?
So exciting! (although I probably wouldn’t get one when it comes out. Maybe.)
Addiction
I don’t know what’s the lesser of two evils, MMORPG addiction or Net addiction. I remember the days (actually, nights) that I’d spend hours chatting in IRC, posting on message boards and diddling with some scripting and usually all three at the same time. At least chatting in IRC got me out of the house from time to time as most of the people I used to chat with would hang out together. I remember on quiet nights, I’d fire up a singleplayer game and spend a couple hours on it. But now, for a few years what has gotten my attention is the genre of video games called Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games.
MMO’s can be scary things. Their main goal is to keep the player ensnared in them. To become a thrall whose main objective is to continue their monthly subscription. I’ve complained about the game mechanics of Final Fantasy XI and how everything you do in that game is a time sink. But in reality, the game in its entirety IS a time sink. Just like every other MMO out there. World of Warcraft is one of few MMORPG games that are friendly and accessible to the casual player; one who only plays for an hour or two a day. Yet that game is also a time sink and seeks to keep you drawn into it to continue paying $15 a month.
Now, I’m not saying playing MMORPG’s is a complete waste of time. I’ve had wonderful memories playing with friends in both Final Fantasy XI and World of Warcraft. Most of such games require social interaction and you meet and befriend people similiarly to meeting people in a chat room. Except you can do stuff with them while chatting. However, all these people and all these adventures, do they really add up to something worthwhile? I think it depends on how you appreciate it. A large part of me wouldn’t give up the time I spent in Final Fantasy XI. Meeting new friends and playing with them. Hanging out in game and chatting. I wouldn’t give up the time I met like-minded people in World of Warcraft where we’re fantasy writers and weave our characters in storylines. I wouldn’t give up the fun I had.
Was it worth spending all that time in video games instead of continuing to chat with people in IRC (and even meeting/hanging out with them), to maintain a presence in a few online message boards, to continue to involve myself in other peoples’ lives through their blogs? Putting it in that perspective, now I’m not so sure. Yet, if there’s anything I’ve come to learn in life, it’s that nothing is more worthless than wallowing in the past. Reflect on it, learn from past choices, but don’t keep sitting in the dark crying the woes of the here and gone. Realize what’s going on and do something about it.