Rants, Raves, and Ramblings

Where have I been for all these months?

The short answer is simply that I’ve been relaxing. After years of working full-time, teaching part-time, attending school full-time, and handling my little side projects (like web sites and LAN parties), I decided a few months off was in order. I meant to tell you all before, but complete exhaustion beat me to it. By the time I woke up, I was too busy taking it easy to type up a little of intent to all of you.

Well, actually, I still am, but I figure I’d throw you a bone while I had a little time to do so. I know, you’re all just so tickled by that, aren’t you?

To make up for many lost months worth of content, I’ll give you a bunch of short & sweet links to some cool things.

I’ve found perhaps the world’s most discreet WAP; the Windy31. These connect to a system via USB, and can act as either a wireless card or an access point, depending on which mode you set it in. I’ve been looking for something like this for a while, for penetration testing purposes. Could be all sorts of fun – let your imagination run free with the possibilities! And in case you’re wondering, it is b/g.
Courtesy of Bass, I was recently introducted to Driverpacks. These are a huge collection of files you can embed with a Windows installation disc that cover just about every conceivable driver around. Very useful stuff for those of you who do frequent Windows reformats/reinstalls.

I’ve found a place locally that does laser etching, which is surprising given that such services are usually only available in bigger cities. They are called LaserItAll, and I can personally vouch for the quality and friendliness of the people there. It’s really great that we have such a place here in town – keep them in business, check them out!

At The Next HOPE, which took place this past weekend, I was introduced to a fascinating little game called Digital: A Love Story, made by the wonderful Christine Love. The plot, set in the 80′s, revolves around using an Amiga-like system to dial into BBSes, where you soon get wrapped up in a mystery/romance. Highly recommended.

It’s amazing what kind of software we’re building right into browser windows these days. The features and functionality of SumoPaint blow my mind.

Speaking of fascinating browser-based technology, I’ve resumed playing Space Merchant for the first time in about a decade. It’s a free game that I guess falls into the MMO category, though it came out long before such things became popular. There is a complex but sensible set of rules which dictate how you trade goods, build experience, gain money, and even climb into ships to fight other players; the end result is an addictive numbers-based real-time multi-player strategy game.

The code hasn’t changed much since I last played it, and neither have the looks (which entail fairly minimal graphical representations);  this has definitely taken its toll on the player base, since youngsters are always demanding something visual to shut their imagination off with. But there is still a small and loyal fanbase that play regularly, and it’s been fun joining in the fray. If anyone decides to join, let me know and I’ll gladly get you set up with some good tips.

In a similar vein, I’ve rediscovered NationStates, which is not quite a game, but still fun. You create a nation, and are then presented with various issues and positions regarding those issues, which you then adopt. Each decision you make has an impact (sometimes unexpected) on your nation’s population, some of which are fairly amusing. It is a good balance of intrigue and humor, and I definitely recommend it for anyone looking for casual mental stimulation. You can see my nation here.

Now, feast on these morsels, and I’ll be back in the Fall to resume regular posting. Really. I promise.

A collection of various and sundry bits of info:

• According to my work PC’s idle process, the system has been on for 4824 hours, or almost exactly 201 days. I guess I should reboot the thing, but at this point I’m sticking it out as long as I can just to see if I can surpass a year. I’m not sure why, but this waxes my ego quite a bit.

• I’ve been tasked with running some mock interviews for Davis College graduates in the Computer Networking program there. That’ll be fun.

• I read my first James Bond novel last Friday. It was The Man With The Golden Gun, which I chose because it was perhaps my favorite Bond flick.  It turned out to be almost nothing like the movie, but I guess I should have expected that. I decided to read the reviews of it on Amazon after I began reading it (the natural order of things as I see it), only to discover that it is widely considered one of the worst Bond novels in the series. I still managed to enjoy it regardless.

Incidentally, this was the last Bond book by the original author, as Ian Fleming died while the book was just about finished. I’ve since read the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, so I’ve accidentally started at the end and then started over at the beginning of the series.

So far, I’m quite pleased with the books. They read very quickly and keep interest the entire time. I intend to read through the whole series, which at this rate should give me something to do until May.

It’s also inspired me to go back and re-investigate my long dormant fascination with the Bond franchise. The last film I saw was The World Is Not Enough, and I finally broke about a decades worth of disinterest in the films by watching Casino Royale (the new, Daniel Craig one) this past weekend. I was pleased with it, though not ecstatic; 7/10. I’ll definitely be checking out some of the old classics like Goldfinger and Live and Let Die soon.

Out of curiosity, anyone here a Bond fan?

…and we’re back. Spring Break went by without too much of a fuss; a trip to Ann Arbor, a LAN party, another trip to Ann Arbor for a concert on St. Patrick’s Day, a company banquet at the Glass Pavilion. I completed The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and picked up God of War as a new game to indulge in for an hour or two every week. So far, I like it quite a bit.

Now that I’ve gotten all that out of the way, we can get to the meat of this post. I am an obsessive absorber of information – like a thirsty sponge, I seek reading material on whatever subjects I deem to be worthy. Toward this endeavor, I have amassed a mental list of sites that I typically find to be interesting, and that I find myself checking regularly (or semi-regularly). They are as follows:

News
Slashdot – Probably the site I invest the most time and energy into reading. I read all the summaries religiously, plus the comments for any articles that interest me enough. I even comment myself from time to time.
Yahoo! – More or less just a habit from the days of using web portals. I usually check the headlines here to see if there is anything interesting, which there occasionally is.
Electoral Vote – Owned and operated by computer science legend Andrew Tanenbaum, I’ve been using this site as my primary insight into politics since 2004. Fairly objective and profoundly insightful, the site’s major gadget is a graph which amalgamates polls to show you what states are leaning where, along with possible explanations for those trends.
Memory Alpha – Star Trek wiki; I check the news section for word on the new Star Trek film.

Blogs
Bruce Schneier – Probably my favorite pundit on matters of security, cryptography, and computer science. Great resource for links to new research and news stories with added commentary and occasional essays/editorials. After /., probably my most visited resource on the web.
John Scalzi – Sci-fi writer whose work I’ve never read, but I nonetheless enjoy his blog quite a bit. Lots of various and sundry bits that run the gamut of writing advice, amusing anecdotes, social/political commentary, interest pieces, and general geekery. What a blog should be.
William Bennett – Creator/frontman of Whitehouse. Lots of short but insightful essays, observations and opinions on culture, and movie reviews. Always throught-provoking.
Wil Wheaton – Honestly, most of his updates aren’t that interesting to me, and he updates it sporadically on top of that. I guess its just the novelty of reading Wesley Crusher’s blog that keeps me coming back.
Jhonen Vasquez – Creator of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, staple reading for my social group back in high school. Later went on to make Invader Zim. Only discovered last week, but it’s been very entertaining and will likely make it into the usual rotation.

Humor
Somethingawful – Everyone gives me a look when I tell them I don’t read the forums. Just the Front Page News and a couple other sections. Kinda hit or miss, but worth it for the occasional side-splitter.
Seanbaby – Another hit or miss comedy site with treasure trove of great archives that I’ve read on and off for over a decade. Updated every Thursday.
The Best Page In the Universe – Maddox’s page. Hardly updated anymore, but I still dig the content.
GaijinSmash – A site containing interesting tales and observations of Japan from the point of view of a young black man who moved there as a JET student and stuck around after his contract was up. Done now in the form of a seldom-updated-blog, it started as a series of “editorials” that my friends and I read religiously back in 2005/2006.
XKCD – Nerdy webcomic, good for the occasional laugh or interesting diagram. Updated Mon/Wed/Fri.
ToothpasteForDinner – Classic webcomic by Drew, read mostly for the nostalgia I get for the early ’00s when viewing. Updated daily.
MarriedToTheSea – Another webcomic by Drew whose premise relies on adding captions to old public domain images. Updated daily.
Superpoop – Another webcomic by Drew which uses the formula of adding text, other photographs, or both to pictures found on the net.

Now, the big question: what are YOUR daily must-read websites?

It’s Friday night. I’m at a remote campus, surrounded by little more than fields and empty factories for miles and miles. I’m in a scarcely-used building during a quiet weekend, alone except for the fellow watching the desolate computer lab down the hall. It’s dark, cold, and windy outside, with the snow alternating between an elegant declension and a violent downpour.

This is how we begin SPRING BREAK! (kind of a misnomer, isn’t it?) here at Owens Community College in sunny Northwood, Ohio!

Due to some awkward scheduling decisions by the goblins in the President’s Office, I won’t be seeing my students for about three weeks. Weekend classes have their advantages, I suppose (for students and teachers).

What are YOU doing with your Friday night?

A couple weekends ago, I assembled a new computer for myself. The one I had been running was only a couple years old, but it was a bare-bones deal from TigerDirect that I got for $500 just to be functionally capable of playing UT3 when it came out*. It came in a tall, ugly, unwieldy case that has one of those stupid doors on the front which needs to remain open all the time so you can stick flash drives in it and eject the optical drive tray; a pointless encumbrance that looks tacky when taken off, and is functionally annoying when on. Needless to say, I never got comfortable with that machine in the way I like to;  there is something rewarding about knowing that a machine is what it is because of the parts you personally chose for it.

A little after I got it back in 2007, I promised myself that some day, when I had the money, I could go out and buy myself a new computer that fit me. And I guess that time came late last year when I started ordering parts. Here’s what I ended up with:

CPU: AMD Phenom x4 9750 2.4GHz – NewEgg had a sale. I figured that a quad-core processor for $80 isn’t a bad deal, even if it doesn’t come with a heatsink/fan.

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H – Matched all my other parts, and included an integrated gigabit NIC (are any integrated NICs NOT gigabit these days?) Also got brownie points for having an HDMI, eSATA, and Firewire port which I’ll probably never use, but will be pleased to know I could if I wanted to.

Memory: 4x 2GB Crucial DDR2 800 – I dig Crucial for hosting their insanely useful Memory Advisor. I went with this particular memory stick because it ended up being a relatively cheap 8GB of RAM.

Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar 1TB – It feels good to finally break the terabyte storage barrier. I’ve needed this for a while, actually, so I can better organize the placement and storage on my WD Passports, which act as backup drives (320GB and 500GB).

Optical Drive: LG 22x DVD-RW w/Lightscribe – Generic. Nothing special here.

Case: Cooler Master Elite 334 nVidia Edition – I never realized how many cases were either hideously malformed, had doors on the front, or incredibly boring before I went shopping around for one. I liked the look of this one, and saved myself something like $30 by ordering it from Amazon instead of NewEgg. Got free shipping, too, which is where buying a case usually really hurts.

Monitor: Asus MS238H 23″ 2ms Widescreen LCD – I broke down and purchased a new monitor for I think the first time in my life. I’ve really fallen in love with this monitor, though the ring stand base makes me nervous sometimes.

Keyboard: Lite-On SK-1688U/B – Finding a good keyboard is hard these days, too; I like a big backspace key, stands that actually angle the keyboard up a significant length, and an otherwise clean setup (no multimedia keys or whatever). I ordered three of these, and I’m really, really happy with the results. **

Operating System: Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, 64-bit – running XP inside of VirtualBox. I intend to install a Windows 7 VM at some point and see if its worth bothering with.

The mouse and power supply were taken from the old PC, while the heatsink/fan was some fancy-ass Zalman deal that I bought from Computer Renaissance. It came in like 20 pieces and had no instructions, so I ended up spending about an hour with it before realizing that most of the parts were there for other socket types. Embarrassing, but I guess I learned something.

Also, I did get a PCI-express video card of some kind for nice graphics, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was. You can see how much I care about gaming on this machine (it runs all my Compiz settings just fine – thats all I really care about).

Eventually, I’ll purchase and install a card-reader/floppy combo drive (oddly enough, the motherboard I got features a floppy drive channel). I always think my case looks empty if there isn’t a slot to insert some kind of media hanging around smack-dab in the middle of it’s front.

I spent the whole weekend installing software, migrating data, and tweaking settings…and I actually enjoyed doing so. Some notes on this process:

• Running Windows in a strictly virtual environment is kind of an experiment for me, but so far I haven’t had any major issues aside from being unable to do full-screen YouTube videos inside of it.
• Installing UT2004 on Ubuntu was of course needlessly difficult, but I found my salvation in this guide. The only thing left is getting audio to work smoothly in it. And maybe installing UT:GOTY as well.
• I really like how Ubuntu has incorporated nice themes, wallpaper, screensavers, etc. into their OS. I’ve mentioned it before, but the “cool” factor is important in any software experience, and the Ubuntu people have done a good job in this regard.
• Compiz, as always, made the experience that much more engaging. I found a great animated skydome that still makes me giddy to see in action.

There is a certain joy in exploring new hardware and software that is difficult to appreciate if you’ve never been in that position before. Trying to get disparate things to work together and then actually succeeding in doing so is an immensely rewarding experience – the kind where you walk away knowing not only that you’ve picked up some new skills, but also had a lot of fun doing it.

*This turned out to be a fool’s errand, given that I ended up playing UT3 maybe three times before not caring anymore

**As a side note, prior to ordering these I’d been using an old grey PS/2 eMachines keyboard that was cracked from me slamming it repeatedly against a desk in anger. The weakened plastic and uneven feet caused it to bounce a little bit every time I typed on it.

…because I absolutely despise the word “blog”.

You may have noticed the new look and feel of the journal. That’s because I have officially caved and switched over to using WordPress. I know, I know…this is backpedaling somewhat on my initial grandstanding over coding my own journal. But I feel I made the right decision in converting, and here’s the big reason why: I wasn’t getting as much posted as I wanted to on the old journal.

As stated in my previous posts, I actually do have a lot of entries I’ve wanted to make – some for well over a year. But I found myself not really having the time or energy to flesh them out – at least, not a satisfactory degree.

My hand-coded stuff was a pain in the ass to work with; everything had to be done in raw HTML, including line breaks and text formatting, and editing entries or comments after the fact required going in to phpMyAdmin to manually tinker with the data. I didn’t have an easy way to store drafts or proofread, and the aesthetics, frankly, looked dated.

These are all things I could have fixed – believe me! – but just didn’t have the time to sit down and mudge together. I barely had time to type out the entries I wanted to post, much less go through and fix up a bunch of code. And hey, I didn’t make this journal as an experiment in php (well, not as a primary reason, anyway) – I did it to 1) archive my ever-so-humble insights and observations, and 2) to keep in touch with friends, acquaintances, and former students. The real mission of the journal was suffering, and that was unacceptable.

So, I got a commercial blogging engine.

But why WordPress? I’m glad you asked.

When shopping around for a new back-end, I decided to look at what some of the blogs I read regularly use: William Bennett uses Blogspot, Bruce Schneier uses Movable Type, Wil Wheaton uses TypePad, and John Scalzi uses WordPress. That narrowed my options down to four simple choices. In the end, I found Blogspot to be too obviously templated and blase, while Movable Type failed to excite me in any way. TypePad seemed very viable, but I was kind of turned off by how heavily it touts integration with social networking crap like Twitter and Facebook. WordPress won the trial.

And I have to say, I really like WordPress so far. My biggest complaint with them a few years ago was how every WordPress site looks the same; I’m happy to report that they have done a great job at providing a good selection of layouts. Everything else is pretty solid; there’s no annoying ads, a very easy to use dashboard for managing the blog, plenty of bells and whistles, highly configurable…I’ve had plenty to play with over the last weekend.

The most time-consuming parts were tweaking the layout and moving the old posts and comments over. It was kind of interesting to get some numbers for the last 2.5 years worth of blogging (32 posts and 125 comments, for an average of 3.9 comments oer post). I also like that my little text editor includes a word count (currently up to 533 for this post); it’s made me curious what the average word count is on all my posts combined. Haven’t found that feature yet, though.

All in all, I hope this move doesn’t shock or repulse anybody who loved the old setup. The end result should be more posts more often, which is how I originally intended it to be, and which I hope you look for as well. I would like to hear what everyone thinks of the change, especially the layout. For example, I know I’m kind of iffy about the calendar feature over there on the sidebar. I need some outside opinions to help me decide what to do.

What do YOU think about it? Like it? Hate it? Like some parts but hate others?

It has been way too long since I’ve made an entry. Believe me, I’ve wanted to make entries detailing all of my little projects, adventures, and insights – I just haven’t had the time to sit down and type them all out. A rather privileged problem, if I may say so. And it has the bonus effect of resulting in about a dozen good entries just waiting to pour out of my skull. So for anyone looking for new posts – don’t get too discouraged by the relative silence here. There is plenty brewing.

I know that I’ve professed my lack of interest in video games before, but that’s mostly to deflect the incessant talk about video games that invariably occurs when you admit that you like them within hearing/reading distance of a game nut. Back in the ’90′s, I used to play a lot of console games; it was a major hobby of mine. For the last decade, I’ve found myself relegated to playing the occasional PC game – not for any deliberate reason, mind you, but because games simply don’t interest me like they used to.

I think video games are a fascinating medium, and certainly one of the most engaging. I do predict that the video game industry will one day (in my lifetime) be on par with that of the movie and music industries, in terms of money and popularity. I just hate how playing video games has become so popular that a substantial portion of the population somehow find it worthwhile to talk about minute details of the industry that bore me to death. I have approximately no interest in what publishers are doing, what new technologies are coming out, or what gossip is going on about some big game. I just like playing a specific handful of games – that’s it.

That being said, I was recently reminded of some old games that I felt warranted a little reminiscing about.

As I was moving into my new house last summer, I rediscovered my Nintendo 64, and in doing so also found some old games that, once upon a time, I spent countless hours indulging in. Super Mario 64, GoldenEye, and Bomberman 64 – all favorites of mine from the late 90′s. I instantly hearkened back to Jason Scott’s fantastic talk about Super Mario 64 at last year’s Notacon*, and before long I was playing the game from the beginning.

SM64 really is a timeless classic, and I found it every bit as fun as it was in 1997 (okay, maybe a little less so – but still very close). It has aged well, and Mr. Scott’s musings about the underlying philosophy of the game rang ever so true to me as I went through and got all 120 stars (with a little help from my friend Jade).

GoldenEye, which I still count as my favorite game of all time, was a blast to play through again as well. I was pleased to find that all the little details that made it fun and all the secrets that gave it intrigue were still intact. I even managed to defeat every level at every difficulty alongside gaining every cheat, which was a first for me. GE will also hold a special place in my heart for being the focus of my first regular Internet forum, which was ostensibly centered around discussion of the game but eventually devolved into anything but.

Bomberman’s virtue is held in its uniquely Japanese styling; everything about it, from the maps to the characters to the music screams kitsch Japanese. It’s a fun enough game, especially in multiplayer, but I think I enjoyed revisiting it mostly for the memories of high school that became associated with it.

I couldn’t find two other games that I recall playing a lot, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (which I ordered off Half.com last week) and the almost universally hated Quest 64 (which I ordered right after I finished typing the title). I did hook up my old Sega CD as well, but only played a limited amount of Sonic CD before losing interest. Still hungry for old games, I went out and bought a Playstation 2.

Now I hated Sony forever for entering the video game market; I was a Sega loyalist until they got out of the console business, and after that, I got behind Nintendo. I always saw Sony and Microsoft as heralding the entry of true corporate interest in the video game market, and still fault them for introducing the current dismal state of video games which has kept me completely uninterested in the field for about the last decade. Still, I did spend quite a few hours at the houses of friends playing games like the original Resident Evil, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and GTA3. Plus, I had just finished reading John Nathan’s fascinating biography of Sony, which sparked my intrigue in them just long enough for me to pay GameStop for a refurbished system.

As the Fall semester began, I found myself playing less and less as I had to concentrate on all my usual duties, but I hadn’t completely forgotten this temporary rebirth of gaming interest. Over the Winter break, I downloaded ZSNES and played a Harvest Moon ROM for a few weeks, making a valiant attempt to complete the game for the first time since playing it on ZSNES six years ago. (I never owned a Super Nintendo – just played a few ROMs on an emulator during the summer of 20020).

I guess all that’s left is to pull out my old Game Boy and Pokemon Blue cartridge. God help me.

The 90′s were indeed the era of console games for me. Somewhere in the very early 2000′s, I completely lost all interest in console gaming – overnight. I haven’t looked back since, unless it was at games or consoles that came before that time, and even then it was done on a strictly nostalgic/non-serious basis. On the other hand, PC gaming became a cool new obsession, and I did indulge myself in that particular pastime for a bit. However, I’ll save the details of that particular journey for another post…

*You can actually see me in this video, as I was right up front for this particular talk.

Takagism

Many years ago, I somehow found my way onto a website called Takagism. The name comes from the creator, a Japanese fellow by the name of Toshimitsu Takagi. I’ve always sophomorically pronounced the name “Taka-jizzum”, though there are reasons to believe this is the actual pronunciation. It’s difficult to say for sure.

I can’t remember exactly when or why I first visited the site, though I’m pretty sure it was around 2003/2004 and had to do with the Crimson Room. Takagi created the Crimson Room as his take on games like Droom, Mystery of Time And Space, which are apparently examples of type of game that Wikipedia feels deserves its own genre despite an incredibly small number of games that follow its formula.

The Crimson Room is a simple flash game; it’s all point and click, and relates to you with a few captions before you begin that you are waking up to find yourself in a room you’ve never seen before, and the door is locked. You’re trapped! Your job is to escape the room, and you do so by clicking around, finding various disparate items which are then used in odd ways to perform a series of actions which then lead to escaping the room. It actually is very odd – like, David Lynch odd – in its plot and style, but it is actually very fun and addicting.

After escaping the Crimson Room, you are free to leave your name to the wall of escapees, which was actually a pretty novel idea for a flash game at the time. Actually, pretty much everything about this game was novel for a flash game at the time. This wasn’t the sort of thing you saw at Newgrounds or eBaumsWorld (thank God) or Albinoblacksheep; it was too high-brow, too artistic, too intellectual. And I think it still stands as a shining example of the kind of unfulfilled potential of the Internet.

Upon beating the game I looked up more information and found Droom and MOTAS, which were both incredibly fun (especially Droom). I was amazed that such games were out there – games which operated in your browser and so required nothing extra to obtain, games which were absolutely free of cost, games which posed serious intellectual puzzles (Droom even has multiple endings). It changed my perception of the Internet from awesome time-killer to wonderful new horizon, single-handedly.

Takagi released a few sequels to the Crimson Room, including the Viridian Room, Blue Chamber, and White Chamber. My favorite is probably the Viridian Room (which is also probably the most difficult, be warned), though I think the Blue Chamber is cooler when you consider that it was originally meant to be a cell phone game. Naturally, I found my way onto the creator’s website – Takagism – which, as I think I mentioned, ended up becoming my favorite web site of all time.

Takagism is still the same page it was when I first visited it all those years ago, except for the ads that are placed on it now. A catchy, fun-spirited low-fi song loops in the background – the kind of guitar/sampling fusion you hear and instantly think “This guy is definitely Japanese.” The interface, shown below, gives you a fun little animation where you can choose the hair, eyebrows, glasses, and mustache on the man it shows. If you’re indecisive, you can always click the final button, which picks a random assortment for you. Most of the styles are either humorous or bizarre – a recurring theme in everything Takagi seems to touch.

A little bio on the right-hand size explains who he is. We find that Takagi is currently (as of 2009) 44 years old, and does work with multimedia on the Internet. It would appear that this site is basically a collection of multimedia experiments, almost all in Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash format. You are taken to different sub-sections of his site by clicking on the images in the left-hand side. At first glance, that may not sound that new or exciting, but go ahead – look further. You’ll see what I mean.

Probably the most apparent link takes you to the site where he houses the Crimson Room, its sequels and a fun mini-series of Flash Games called Smile Ninja Picomaru. The mini-series, it’s worth noting, acts almost like a television program, with each game being a progression of the “episode” before it. To play a game, you must have completed the “episodes” prior, and the games remember you by a cookie placed on your computer. High scores (of which I am still in the top ten ranking, though I was briefly in the number one spot as “Maldoror”) are recorded for those who set records in each game.

That site holds little of the charm that I feel permeates Takagi’s personal page. I’ll go through each of the subsections and give you the highlights below.

Shockwave Theater – This is where the bulk of the site exists. A fairly spooky little sound lip loops in the background as an old film projector’s light flutters in and out. Each of the icons represents a different game or animation, with a description explaining each game in Japanese above the fray. The titles are still in English, though, which gives you some clue as to what the game pertains to. The trio of “Runnin’ Nude”, “Flyin’ Nude”, and “Cyclin’ Nude” have a risque approach to the traditional flash game, while QP-Shot 1000 displays a fair amount of black humor. “Machine Gun Etiquette”, in which your job is to shoot a bunch of ant-like people escaping from a room in the bottom-right hand corner of the screen while handling the exaggerated kickback of a machine gun, ends when any of the entities scales the walls and makes it to a hidden exit at the top left-hand corner. “Nicholas on the Monocycle” takes the old Windows game Pipe Dream, makes it a bit more three-dimensional, and then replaces green slime with Santa Claus on a unicycle. The reasons are never explained.

Of course, there are simpler games, like “Portrait Zigsaw”, which is simply a Shockwave implementation of a jigsaw puzzle; “15 Blocks”, a classic numbered slider puzzle; and “Amo Jan”, which is a game of rock, paper, scissors with a girl who removes an article of clothing every time you win. Of course, once she’d in her underwear, she suddenly begins a streak of wins and draws that seem to keep you from going any further, though a list on the side seems to hint that its possible to get her nude. Is the game fixed, perhaps to make you self-conscious about the effort you seem to be exhibiting to see this cartoon character stripped bare?

And not everything is a game…at least, in the traditional fashion. “Snake Paint” has a series of snakes emerge from the left-hand side of your screen and then inch slowly toward stage right. While they move, clicking one of them changes the color of the snake to something else, apparently randomly chosen. Most other options on this screen are animations, some incredibly simple, some interactive. The interactive ones behave in simple, almost useless ways: “Hana-yoshi” plays a solemn plucked tune and allows you to open or close one of two doors leading to a bar. Nothing else. “My Life As An Insect” uses images of a man and makes him into a centipede that follows the cursor of your mouse.

The other animations seem to display certain recurring conceptual themes. For example, many have a penchant for recursion: “On The Northern Lake” simply loops a few images that start from a romantic scene with a girl on a boat with her lover on a lake in Japan, while “Metempsychosis” displays an infant vomiting another infant indefinitely, before reaching the end of the screen and then being swallowed back into the previous child. Transformations are also popular: “Man to Evil to Man” shows the transformation of a normal human head into a demonic one, complete with backwards-masked audio clip – remarkable when you consider it’s creation in 1994 – while the self-descriptive “An Apple Decays” also illustrates the novelty of the time for simple animations.

Some animations are just random and unlike any others. “ZZZ…I Want to a Sleep” acts as a short film depicting the conflict between a young man and his insatiable girlfriend, complete with a twist ending that would probably be offensive to some. My favorite is perhaps “The First Lover”, a simple endless loop of a young man gleefully pedaling his bike on a path, with mountains slowly passing by in the background. It makes you feel as though a certain artistic sentiment was being attempted…

Flash Theater – this appears to be more modern than the Shockwave Theater. Most of the options here are mere looped animations, some of them short, while other last about a minute. “A Running Girl”, “Flying Baby”, and “The Explanation of Socrates” stand out as highlights of this section, along with the interactive “Body Control”, which allows you to manipulate portions of a displayed body by enabling or disabling the appropriate sections of a brain. Much less interactive on the whole than the Shockwave Theater, the Flash Theater still adds more to the atmosphere of the site, mixing aural and visual content into a pleasant, if absurd, experience.

Takagism For Inpaku – This part of the site makes more sense when you find out that Inpaku was an “Internet Fair” in Japan around the turn of the century where they got a bunch of people together to demonstrate the capability and promise of the Internet. I like the vague and open-ended idea behind this, and I’m guessing Takagi did as well, since he provided this particular subsection of the site as one of the demonstrations for the event.

The opening page, a looped sketch of a guy removing his shirt to some upbeat surf-like tune, captures the spirit of the whole site in a way. It’s fun, it’s artistic, and for the time, it was very high-tech. The left-hand side has five links, each of which take you to a flash-based animation or game, much like what Takagi holds inside the Flash and Shockwave Theaters. These animations were done specifically for Inpaku, and aren’t seen elsewhere on the site; it includes a page containing a face manipulator like what is seen on the home page, only this time with six people to work on. It also includes an arcade-style flash game where you play a floating wine bottle that fires its cork at angry heads which will cause you to burst if they touch you. A couple token animations with a story in Japanese that I can’t read round out the site.

All in all, it’s a very small site, but I find it worthwhile to visit at least once or twice, if just for the opening animation. It’s also a keen reminder of a time when people were still rather open-minded about the Internet; what it was, and what it could be. I praise Takagi for envisioning an Internet more concerned with fun and free expression than simple social networks or corporate web sites.

Takagism Remote – I still haven’t figured out why this site is separated from the rest, but I’m sure there is a good reason for it. I mostly never visited this part of the site, given that it only has some photographs, a couple of the usual odd animations, and then a game called “Botanical Room” that took me forever to figure out. Once I figured it out, I became addicted, and again found one of Takagi’s finest works.

You start off as a nude man standing on a ledge which is, at a closer glance, a nude woman. You use a boomerang to strike weird insects which float in circular patterns; your goal is to get them to fall on certain outlined parts of the body below. Certain insects leave behind certain items when they fall in certain spots, which can then be fused to grow very odd plants. Your goal is to get all 15 plants, at which point nothing special happens at all, in line with Takagi’s style. This game alone earns Takagism Remote its rent on the site; I spent hours on it the first time around – watching the animation for the plants that grow is as mesmerizing as it is visually stunning.

(The Rest) – Since I’m not fluent in Japanese, the Takagism blog has been mostly useless to me, though there are usually some interesting photographs mixed in. The Thumbsync Demo appears to be precisely what it sounds like; a demo for how to use thumbsync on cell phones or other mobile products. This is a strictly commercial exercise, and lacks the enchanting quirkiness of the rest of the site. That’s all I can really say about the these two.

I think the reason I love this site so much is that it embodies everything I love about the Internet. It’s got no purpose except to show off some interesting things, some of which are fun, others of which are unusual, and all of which are mentally stimulating. It displays a flagrant lack of decency or censorship at times, yet still evokes feelings of fun and excitement. I have yet to see another web site that comes close to achieving the level of expression and immersion of atmosphere that Takagism does.

I don’t know what Takagi is doing these days, but I wish he’d return to developing his site and keep working his worldview into ours.

Being a tech for fun and profit comes with a lot of baggage – some of it nice, some of it not-so-pleasant.

For example, I work at a very conservative financial company, and I have long hair. Were I anything but “the computer guy” (or maybe a member of cleaning staff), this would probably not make it to the acceptable appearances list. But nobody has ever voiced a concern about it to me, and I think that’s probably because of the stereotype propagated through popular culture (and to a lesser extent, reality) of what a “computer guy” looks like.

I consider this a plus. Though I’m not that attached to my long hair, I do prefer having it over shorter hair. Would I be willing to cut it, if my employer asked? Probably. But would I prefer to? No, I don’t think I would. I like having that option left to myself. Call it a personal preference.

True to the stereotype, I am often somewhat awkward in social situations. Being a tech guy makes for a half-humorous, half-serious excuse for that sort of thing; and surprisingly, it works quite well. I’ve pulled it out numerous times, and it always acts as my “Get Out of Jail Free” card. Score.

On the other hand, some aspects of the stereotype I’d rather avoid, futile as that hope may be. I’m hard-pressed to think of any that really grind my gears, but I can think of a few that provide a mild annoyance. And what else are blogs for, if not for recounting pointless minutia* and petty grievances? (*I hate trying to spell this word)

In that spirit, I have decided to catalog a few of the most-despised misconceptions that I encounter. Please feel free to share others that you find I’ve left off.

1. I don’t really play video games. I think this likely comes more from the combination of being a younger guy and a tech, but I get it often enough that I feel it’s presence on this list is merited.Full disclosure: I grew up living and breathing video games. From about the ages of 7 to 14, video games were probably my biggest hobby, and certainly my favorite. My love of video games is what inspired a lot of my early ventures onto the Internet, and kept me there long enough to turn it into a habit that has yet to fade. I’ve also hosted LAN parties for the last four years, and have been an attendee of such events for the last seven. So I can see why people might get the impression that I actually am into gaming.

   However, once you scratch the surface of those statements, things become a little more clear. First, there’s a reason I stopped playing games regularly when I entered high school, and that is that they got really, really boring to me. Most video games these days just don’t hold my attention, and I can’t say I’ve ever really cared enough to determine if that was because I changed, the video games changed, or both. Though I still like to pull out a game now and then, it is probably only once every other month on average, and even then, not for very long. I rarely spend more than a half-hour playing any given game.

   And the LAN parties? Well, let me just say that while I do get a kick out of the games we play, the real reason they exist is for the social opportunity to see so many of my geeky friends together in one spot. If video games are what sells them on showing up, so be it. I’m just there to hang. The gaming comes second.

   I’ve also noticed that since I’ve left the video game world behind, its grown by leaps and bounds. The video game industry is huge now, and is no longer the exclusive domain of young punks and technophiles. Video games have become a national pastime, with all sorts of fancy subcultures and the requisite obsessive losers. Really, I take offense to being lumped in with such a pathetic group of time-wasters; it’s a lot more refreshing to me when I hear someone my age talk about reading a book instead of the new Metal Gear Solid or whatever.

2. I am not always totally psyched to be talking about something techy. Hard is this is to believe, I don’t spend my every waking moment absorbing tech news and tech info, then fall asleep and dream in Perl about all the nifty stuff I assimilated. I actually have a large multitude of outside interests, and I engage in them quite regularly.Sure, I read Slashdot religiously; I even submit articles and comment from time to time. I also have a fairly large collection of computers, and a mildly voluminous workbench area. But reading /. is just as much education as it is entertainment (that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it), and my workbench is no different from most men’s garages. In other words, I’m really not uniquely obsessed with computers – more like normally obsessed with them.

   People (usually students at Owens) often approach me and try to engage in a conversation about tech stuff. Generally, I welcome this sort of off-the-record interaction, as it is a great way to develop relationships with people. At times, I even find it quite flattering, since the notion that people think my opinion is worth seeking says a lot about their assessment of my knowledge.

   And at other times, I’m just really not interested. I find that this depends on two major things: my mood, and the topic at hand. I’m fairly certain I’ve rubbed a few people the wrong way by seeming disinterested in the particular subjects they bring up, but I guess that’s just because…well, I am. I do try to be polite, but this is where I’ll fall back on that excuse about techies not being that great socially.

   Overall, I like talking shop as much as the next guy, but keep in mind that technology is such a broad term these days – even when implying just computer technology – that every tech has their areas of interest and disinterest alike. It’s not realistic to assume I enjoy talking about the caveats of Java programming just as equally as the nuances of memory voltages. If you’re keen on discussing something with another person, make sure that the person you’re speaking to has somewhere near the same degree of interest you do; doing anything else is a recipe for awkwardness, and you run the risk of leaving a bad impression.

   To take it one step further, I don’t always feel like talking tech stuff. After all, I’m surrounded by it constantly, and it’s nice to get away from time to time. I think we’ve all known someone who got a job at a restaurant that they liked, only to end up losing their appetite for the food after working there for a few weeks. The same thing happens to tech people; we don’t always feel like we’re doing our job when we’re not working. It’s strictly psychological.

3. I don’t have an orgasm over every new technology that comes out. Really, most new “technologies” that come out simply aren’t that impressive. The only things that grab my attention are the ones that demonstrate 1) a new approach to a problem and 2) a more effective way to solve the problem. Dual-core processors were interesting. Quad-core processors were not. I like the stuff that mark little revolutions, not the stuff that just repeats previous victories in an amped-up fashion.I’m not sure why so many people assume I have technolust over every shiny new toy. My only guess is that overly-obsessed techno-geeks make for better expository passages in TV scripts and bad novels, so the image has become emblazoned in our national consciousness as a truism.

   Corollary: I don’t use an insanely overblown, expensive, and needlessly complicated computer at home. Most of what I do with my PC involves reading e-mails, exchanging a few IMs, and reading web pages. I occasionally write a small program, play a video game, or code a web site. Call me a minimalist – I just don’t have any use at all for anything beyond a fairly standard computer from years ago. Sorry if this ruins your little fantasy about techs being walking egos who believe every drop of marketing hype and have deep enough pockets to squander a truckload of cash for every stupid new widget that comes out. (Then again, that pretty much describes the typical Apple fanboy, so I guess I see how people get confused.)

   I’ve always put more of an emphasis on systems that are stable, reliable , and that have just enough performance to do what I do with it, and little more.

   In fact, people that go out of their way to brag about their ridiculously overpowered system tend to make it onto my short list of losers to avoid being around. Why? Well, when you ask these people what they intend to do with all that horsepower, the answer invariably comes back, “Um, well…you know, nothing special I guess.” “So…why do you have this??” “Because it’s cool! :::big smile:::”

   Listen: there’s nothing impressive about being so rich and/or so stupid that you flush money down the toilet just for the chance to show off how rich and/or stupid you are. I tend to increase my opinion of people who use sound logic in making their decisions, and lower my opinion of people who proudly display such narcissism and wastefulness.

   The whole thing just reeks of annoying. How insecure do you have to be to want to be judged as a person by your possessions? It’s like when you were a kid, and there was always that asshole kid at school who clearly got off on showcasing whatever obnoxiously overpriced toy his obsessively doting parents would get him, just because he knew he lacked the personality to make real friends and tried to make up for it by being the guy with the latest gizmos. I always hated that kid.

   And I still do.

4. I’m not messy and disorganized. I’m actually quite the opposite, which is, as far as I can tell, a novelty. Every job I’ve had that involved other techs invariably meant I had to do with a severe lack of order, which agitates my OCD-like desire for structure. I’m really not exaggerating when I say this; every tech gig I’ve had involved tools strewn about, placed where they were last used (rather than where they were stored for easy reference), parts thrown into piles or boxes with reckless abandon; you name it, someone went out of there way to do it. And I have no idea why this is.I think part of my success as a tech has been, in part, because I am a rare flower blooming amongst these weeds. Good for me. But it’s also meant that I’ve spent the equivalent of many days working non-stop to inventory, group, and store any number of parts, tools, and devices which have accumulated. This can be kind of stressing, especially when the system you set up gradually erodes, owing to the carelessness of other techs. Oh, they’ll praise you for getting things organized, but they’ll curse you when they can’t find something – and they definitely won’t expend a moment’s worth of effort to keep things in the order you put them.

   Ah, well. You’ve got to take the bad with the good, I suppose.

5. I don’t use Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, et al. I think Schneier said it best when he explained that young people today are socially skilled when it comes to technology, but not technologically skilled. People often confuse the two; it’s easy to assume competence with something is the same as understanding it, especially since competence is a trait we see so often from our repair guys at work. From shallow observation, the two would appear to be the same. But they aren’t.Because people often don’t notice this distinction, it gets assumed that knowing how computers work is synonymous with using them constantly, especially for popular things; this works the other way around, where it gets assumed that if a youngster uses their computer to get on the net a lot that they must possess some skills with these devices and should therefore go to school to become Computer Scientists or Electrical Engineers. And young people often buy into this belief, overestimating their own talent only to get taken down a peg or four when they see what Computer Science or Electrical Engineering actually involves. But that doesn’t impact me nearly as much as the first misconception that stems from this logical fallacy.

   Now I am certainly usually aware of what “the kids are doing these days”, as far as Internet and PC usage goes. But that hardly makes me want to partake in any of it. I’ve long grown beyond finding the ability to hit on/deride/troll random strangers on the Internet to be a mind-blowing capability that warrants a large investment of my time – I think it’s part of achieving technological adolescence. I of course still find the net to be a fascinating way to spend lots of time, just not for the same reasons. I like to think more intelligent, detailed conversations are a better way to take advantage of this powerful resource. Call me crazy.

   So when people ask me if I’m on Facebook, I have to laugh a little. MySpace has thankfully started to become passe, so now I’m just waiting out Facebook’s popularity so I can laugh at everyone who uses it. Aside from the concerns over privacy and user data, I just don’t find the idea of putting myself in touch with people so easily to be that appealing. Wake me up with anti-social networking sites become chic. (Or was that what Deadjournal was supposed to be?)

   I’m not sure what people have against good old-fashioned personal web sites, or e-mail, or even AIM these days. Everything has to be a blog (which is just a personal site with the ability to leave comments), or a twitter account, or a Facebook wall, or whatever. People…there are many ways to communicate using the net, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. You don’t have to go with whats popular, or what makes yourself available to the largest number of people. Sometimes, it’s nice to be a little obscure.

6. I am not well-versed and knowledgeable about everything, nor do I want to give off the impression that I am. Since many technicians seem to have a borderline-Autistic inability to communicate, there is this stereotype that many of us are essentially mantoddlers who crave nothing more than a boost to our ego in the form of some hyperbolic praise or facetious hero-worship. Let me assure you that, at least in my case, none of that is necessary. I’m quite happy simply resolving a problem, with no need for applause from the people affected. It’s definitely kind of a dick move when you insult me or find a way to blame me for your problems after I fix your stuff, but fortunately that is a fairly rare occurrence.There is also this thought amongst non-technicians that simply because a person uses technical terms, they must be trying to make themselves appear more knowledgeable than they really are. Granted, enough people do this to make that stereotype occasionally true, but I really feel that I don’t encroach on this territory like other people do. I am careful to keep things simple, unless I’m speaking with another technician, but occasionally, there are words or concepts which have to be used or at least explained in order to answer a specific question. Far too many people ask difficult questions expecting the answer to be simple when it is not. It is not because I’m concerned with looking smart that I give you an honest answer; and yes, I am dumbing things down, believe it or not. For some people, that’s still not enough.

   What can you do?

Anyway, I just wanted to get these off my chest. These things don’t exactly keep me up at night, but they are a bit bothersome, and I hope other technicians read this and know that they aren’t alone when they get taken for something they are not.

I recently purchased an Acer Aspire One, so I could sample the whole netbook craze. I went with Acer mostly because I like their product line; the Acer Aspire 5050 laptop that I’d been using for the last couple years has worked great, and was very easy on the wallet as well. My experience has been that Acer makes good, simple, affordable systems, without a lot of the frou-frou that OEMs like HP like to throw in. It also helped that John Scalzi wrote a pretty good review of an Acer Aspire One on his blog. So I said, why not?

A big one of my concerns with getting a netbook was the size of the keyboard, and how awkward typing might end up being as a result of having to use such tiny keys. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised with my Aspire One; the keyboard works perfectly, I almost never hit another key on accident, and I think I can actually type a little faster/better on it than on my regular keyboard at work. I also find that the Fn-key-based numeric pad works fairly well, without any straining or difficulty to type out numbers using it.

One thing that took some getting used to was how the trackpad’s left- and right-mouse buttons are placed on either side of the trackpad itself, instead of snuggling each other above or below the pad. This wasn’t too bad, especially since I only have to use it when I happen to be sans flat surface. My retractable USB mini optical mouse has seen much use with this one.

The 8.9″ screen is a bit small, but well, duh – it’s a netbook. I’ve found that this doesn’t interfere too much with my web browsing, since much of it is text-heavy, but I’d definitely prefer a larger screen for some of the longer texts I read. Slashdot and blog posts work great though, and requires an acceptable number of deployments of my scrolling finger.

I went with the 160GB hard drive over the 4GB SSD, simply because I do tend to hoard data and 4GB simply isn’t enough. Yes, an external drive can mitigate that, but the advantage of having a fair amount of storage natively was well worth the risk of failure that it takes. It sleeps and resumes without any issue when I close the lid, and to date, I don’t think it has sustained any notable damage despite being lugged around everywhere. Then again, I am probably less reckless than the average joe.

Some other misc. facts:

• I bought the whole thing for $260, Buy-It-Now with free shipping, on eBay. Definitely worth the cost.
• One of the major reasons I wanted a netbook was to reduce the weight of my carrying bag that I take to work. Even my fairly lightweight Aspire 5050 was hurting my back a little, when you added it to all the paperwork and network tools that I typically carry with me. Even the adapter caused a little strain. But the netbook has made my bag much easier on the spine. Don’t underestimate that value of this to me.
• It came with an XP Home license, which I’m keeping for now simply because the machine seems to work well enough with it. I’d like to throw the Ubuntu netbook remix on it eventually, maybe dual-boot, but I’ve been too busy to do it lately.
• It has the factory-default 1GB of DDR2 RAM in it, which I plan to upgrade to it’s max of 1.5GB soon enough. I haven’t seen any real problem with performance that would require it, but I like to think it will make my attempt to run Unreal Tournament 2004 on it go smoother.
• I’ve used the VGA port to connect to projectors during my lectures, and never had a problem, despite running at the off-beat 1024×600 resolution. The Intel graphics driver that came with it handles dual-monitors and screen cloning without issue.
• I have three USB ports, which works out well, leaving me room to plug in my mouse and flash drive and still have on left. The multimedia card reader hasn’t seen much use, but I can see it being handy down the road when I finally get a new digital camera.
• The built-in webcam is a nice addition that I doubt I’ll ever use, but I like that I have it on there. Never know when you want to take a quick picture or record a short video.
• Battery life is typically about two hours, which is just okay, but nothing that impressive. I may try to throw in a six-cell eventually and see what that gets me up to.
• Wireless B/G connection works great, no issues; same for the 10/100 NIC that is included. I love when things just work.
• The built-in speakers are pretty faint, as you’d probably suspect, but carrying a pair of earbuds with me has proven to be a good solution when I want to watch a video on YouTube.
• I was able to find a car adapter and tote bag for it for less than $10 each, free shipping, on eBay. They both came from China, which I guess fits since I’m pretty sure thats where my netbook came from too. I do like that there are plenty of cheap accessories available for it.
• Not being able to load or burn discs was a definite minus, but this was easily rectified by purchasing a laptop-size USB-powered DVD-RW for about $50 on Amazon.
• In case anyone was wondering, the processor is an Intel Atom 1.6GHz with 533MHz FSB.

Because I had the cash at the time, I splurged and bought an Asus Eee 900 just to compare the two. Here’s what I found:

• The keyboard on the Eee wasn’t as easy to type with.
• The battery life was not very good, though it may be specific to the one I bought, since it was sold as used.
• It did come with some specialized Linux OS pre-installed, but I’m really not impressed with it; I’d rather run Windows XP Home on it any day (though I think this will end up being where I test the Ubuntu netbook remix in the near future).
• It featured a 4GB SSD drive, which is kinda cool, but as I mentioned before, I don’t think the performance and mobility advantages are quite worth the hit in storage capability, especially when my regular old SATA drive in the Aspire One is fast enough and durable enough.

Not terrible, but seeing as how I can buy an Aspire One for about the same price (if not cheaper), I’d definitely recommend it over the Eee any day. I think the MSI Wind comes pretty close to the Aspire One, and if I were to investigate another netbook, that would be it.

Dell, HP, and Lenovo all have netbooks out, but I see them as more of the johnny-come-latelys of the netbook trend. I haven’t heard anyone talk about HP’s, while Dell’s and Lenovo’s models seem more like smaller laptops than true netbooks. I really dig the size of the Eee/One/Wind; it’s not too big, but not too small, either. Just right for the purpose. Why go for a half-breed?

I think there is something inherently cool about a machine so small and portable that can do so much. Pretty much everything I use my computer for can be done on this machine, considering that my usage mainly consists of reading text, browsing the web, running SSH or RDP, and maybe a bit of programming. I don’t require any kind of hardware that wasn’t around four years ago, and I’m happy to pay less and get less in this kind of circumstance.

Overall, I rate it 5/5.