Rants, Raves, and Ramblings

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.

Personal web pages are in vogue, polluting web browsers with animated GIFs, embedded MIDIs, and the ever-popular “Under Construction” images. Free web services drive this trend, with Angelfire, Geocities, Tripod, and AOL’s Hometown being among the most popular. 10MB of storage is normal, while those with a Godlike 100MB are the envy of the community. You get an e-mail address with your site, but it only forwards to a different one; forget sending anything from it. Your web site comes at a ridiculously long and arbitrary URL, but you don’t care; you get a certain joy out of having a web site at all. The idea that some random guy on the side of the country (or perhaps the world!) might stop by and read your site absolutely thrills you.

And what exactly is it that people are visiting your site for? Is it a portfolio of all your bad poetry and artwork, carefully layed out with colorful imagery using that fancy new CSS stuff? A collection of codes, walkthroughs, FAQs, and screenshots for a video game? A fan-site dedicated to your favorite band, collecting every bit of digital minutia you can find? Or maybe it’s just a site about you, containing a few pictures, links, and your e-mail address. Regardless of what, your site is guaranteed to have two things: a hit counter, and a guestbook.

Lycos, Yahoo!, and Altavista are major web portals. Hotmail offers a popular free e-mail service. Screenshots, either from a video game, movie, or television program, are scarce, and so are highly prized. You’ve never seen video on the Internet, except for a low-resolution clip someone sent you of an old news report about a whale getting blown up. You peruse warez sites for programs made in Visual Basic which manipulate the Windows API to unique effect. AIM punters…text faders…mail bombers…an animated character that follows your cursor on the screen…it’s all so random, so pointless, so absurd, and yet so awesome.

You connect with AIM (or AOL) and see that most of your contacts are offline; being online but AFK is frowned upon. Away messages are employed sparingly.

You recently discovered Napster, and have been feverishly searching for music to download. You find everything you search for, even obscure background music for a Sega CD game. Each mp3 takes enough time and effort to complete that each file becomes a prized possession, an item to hold dear if only because of the trials you endured in obtaining it. Large collections makes you the envy of your peers, regardless of who the songs are actually by.

To pass the time, you download PC game demos, finding amongst them some real gems, like Dink Smallwood and Unreal Tournament. Before long, you are immersed in the addictive gameplay of Diablo, and decide one adventurous day to connect to Battle.net. The novelty of multiplayer gaming with someone in a different city quickly wears off when they repeatedly kill and then resurrect your character, repeating childish taunts to you the entire time.

You soon find comfort in the form of a browser-based game called Space Merchant, whose low-fi graphics are compensated for with a complex rule system, embedded social dynamic, and open-ended design. One bored day in class, you make a killing with the trade route you develop while on your school’s T1 line, only to find yourself podded when you attempt the same thing on your home’s dial-up connection. Those with the bigger bandwidth easily trod upon those without, creating two distinct classes of players.

At school, you get bored after completing your assignment in Keyboarding class and decide to spend your time playing flash games like Pico’s School on Newgrounds, laughing at humorous articles on Seanbaby’s site, or amusing yourself with the pictures on Cliff Yablonski Hates You. Nothing is filtered, and you are able to shock & amaze other students by showing them sites like dolphinsex.org. Maybe 3% of the other students are online on a regular to semi-regular basis. The few that are comprehend little of what is out there. You feel a certain sense of knowing, of belonging, simply by being a part of this giant, yet still obscure and esoteric beast called…The Internet.

Fall is my favorite time of the year. That morbid Halloween atmosphere is descending on the world outside, and my commute is largely filled with Scratch Acid, Switchblade Symphony, and Pink Anvil. Most importantly, I’ll be hosting the annual Halloween Party at my new house; the first time since it’s inception that it’s been on a complete length of property. I’m very excited, and it couldn’t come at a better time: Halloween is on a Saturday this year, meaning it will undoubtedly go late and perhaps well into the next morning. It’s definitely given me something to look forward to.

And not only that; about a month after the Halloween Party, we’ll be hosting a LAN Party at Computer Renaissance, on Thanksgiving Eve. A month after that, and we follow it up with the year-end New Year’s Eve LAN Party. So between now and the end of the year, I’ve got something to look forward to.

And on the subject of things people are looking forward to, this Thursday marks the official release of the new Windows 7. Here are my thoughts on the matter:

Eh.

I don’t expect this one to be a complete failure like Vista, but I don’t expect it to be anything particularly exciting, either. After all, what really will Windows 7 offer you, as a general computer user, that you don’t already have? Will it make your computer run faster? Will it give you access to groundbreaking new technical features? Will the user experience be significantly more exciting than anything you’ve ever experienced before? I think the answer to all of these will be a resounding no.

It really seems that MS has completely lost it’s way as far as pioneering new tech – something they could have begrudgingly been credited with doing at one time. NT-based operating systems were the last really relevant thing I can recall them doing; everything since then has been an exercise in fixing things that didn’t need fixing, while largely ignoring the major things that did. Maybe it’s because Ballmer is at the helm now, but MS really seems to have lost its way. I’m not shedding any tears though.

I will say that I’ve played with 7 a little bit, and wasn’t terribly impressed. I wasn’t put off, either. It did seem punchier (more responsive) than Vista, and also seemed a lot less “busy” with the UI. It ran okay. But you have to remember, this is a totally new operating system; it should have something far more noteworthy to it than “its not as annoying as Vista.”

I think the notion that Windows 7 is essentially what Vista should have been is right. I also think the rumor that it should have been a service pack for Vista rather than a whole new OS is spot on. Nothing about this seems to be so revolutionary that it requires a whole new release, complete with a $120+ price tag.

You may be asking, “Well, smartass, what would you do to make a new OS worth the cost?” And I’ll tell you. But first, let’s frame the argument a little bit.

I think when you look at what makes an operating system desirable, you have three major areas to look at: functionality, interface, and features.

1. Functionality – The core of the OS lies in the kernel, which, among other things, handles all that nasty hardware code and ensures that all the fun stuff will function with minimal harassment from your PC. This is the solid foundation on which any OS is built, and it also happens to be the least glamorous and least marketable. At one time, it made sense to brag that your OS would work with just about any PC; nowadays, that sort of thing is just expected. Which is probably a good thing; but look at how MS dropped the ball on this with Vista. From what I understand, MS has done a much better job of working with hardware manufacturers ahead of time to ensure that W7 drivers will be ready and working properly. Still, you don’t get points for this: it’s expected, remember?There are also considerations like how your OS handles basic tasks like copying files that Microsoft still gets wrong. More on that later.
2. Interface – Ever since Mac OS X hit the scene and made eye candy a vehicle for selling their wares, Microsoft has tried to beat them at their own game, and has proceeded to do this…and fail miserably. Vista’s Aero fell far short of topping Aqua, IMO. More importantly, they lost where user interface really shines, which is in the ease of use. UAC was rightfully a fiasco that took the wind out of Vista’s sails; who seriously thought this was going to improve security and make for a better user experience? Listen: users are confused enough as it is, and if the OS can’t determine bad software from good, what makes you think the average user can? It seems like one of the basic strengths of Windows has historically been that it’s easy for idiots to use, but they seem to have completely forgotten about this fact when releasing Vista.Windows 7′s UI seems to be cleaner, with less clutter and unnecessary shininess than Vista. One big thing is that they’ve decided that text is no longer relevant in taskbar items, so tech support people better get used to describing icons in painstaking detail and hoping that the eyesight of their clientele is better than what it has been historically. I can see an argument for strictly icon-based taskbar items, but I don’t know that taskbar space has been that much of an issue for normal people. If you’re lacking taskbar space, you’re either running at some ridiculously low resolution or are just too lazy to close windows you don’t need anymore. But that’s neither here nor there I suppose…
3. Features – One of the reasons I consider XP/2000 to be “good” Microsoft OSes is because the wealth of features that came with them. System Restore, NTFS, Driver Rollback, RDP support…there were actually genuinely cool technologies that came with these things. After a few years, when a good deal of the major security failures were patched up and drivers were ubiquitous, I think XP hit a level of maturity not seen before (or since) in Windows operating systems. There were so many features that were actually useful to an end-user or a technician that I think those alone made it worth the fairly condescending Playskool theme.Now look at the jump from Windows 98 SE to Windows XP, then look at the jump from XP to Vista. There is no comparison to make; the features in Vista were practically nothing compared to the leap forward provided previously (I think, aside from Bitlocker, that nothing was even worth mentioning when it came to Vista features). I think 7 is going to be much the same way; I don’t see any features that jump out as being super-awesome. We’re still running on NTFS, so forget any ZFS-like file-system technology (and no, Volume Shadow Copy is nowhere near as cool as ZFS). A quick look at their features page shows us exactly why you NEED to get the new OS. This includes “HomeGroup”, which looks like a networking wizard that “takes the headache out of sharing files and printers on a home network.” If this is anything like previous attempts to make home networking understandable to the average Windows users, I have no faith in it’s abilities. Those networking wizards have always been seriously god-awful; I believe the one that came with XP required you to copy files to floppy disk and then take that over to all the other computers on your network and use those with the wizard on those PCs. And let’s not even get started on the New Connection wizard…

   There are also “Jump Lists”, which look like a slightly modified context menu that includes personalized guesses at what you want to do. No use for that. “Snap”, which is a “quick (and fun) new way to resize open windows”…because I want resizing windows to be fun. Looks like we have full 64-bit support with 7, which I know my grandmother has been personally nagging me about…major selling point here.

So with these concepts and criticisms in mind, what would I do to make a new Windows OS worth the cost? Well, I’m not UI designer, or even a programmer, but as a SysAdmin, I have a few ideas from the front lines that I’m sure can be done without a terrible amount of hassle to a multi-billion dollar company.

• Fix the file copying code. I may be wrong, but I believe Windows 7 still uses the same basic code for copying files, which is terrible at handling multiple data streams (try copying two large folders at once – they both become extremely slow). Moreover, one corrupt file, and your entire copy procedure is over. This is especially shitty when you’re copying numerous levels of folders containing lots of files, and have no idea what files were copied and what ones weren’t before the copy finished. There is a third-party app called y-copy that keeps track of corrupted files but continues the copy procedure, so why can’t MS make their own version and tie it into the OS?
• Make customization of the interface more far-reaching and easier to do. I was amazed at how well WindowBlinds was able to completely change the appearance of Windows. The Themes feature of Windows has become a scarcely-populated feature; I hardly see anyone make them anymore, and when you try searching for them, you find yourself adrift in a see of malware and ugliness. Yet look at how many themes are made for Window Blinds, and how awesome some of them look. Why can’t Microsoft learn from this and code some kind of API that could handle radical customization like this? I think they’d single-handedly get rid of their need for designing UIs – something they have proven they suck at – by having communities develop them instead. I doubt it would cost as much, either.
• Create a repository-style way of installing and updating software. I think it would benefit users of Windows greatly if we had a single, unified, trusted interface for distributing software updates instead of letting the Adobe Reader, Java Runtime, and anti-virus program X all harass/confuse users constantly from the taskbar. What’s really keeping a malicious program from giving them exact same message (or one that looks enough like it) to trick a user into downloading a Conficker variant? I think it’d also go a long way if we made finding and installing free windows programs easier. Download.com is a mess these days, and trying to instruct a less-than-savvy user in finding and downloading free software is a nightmare. It’s far too easy to get led to sites that trick you into downloading malware, and I think having a software repository could go a long way to remedying this.

I have more, but I can’t think of them right now. I had a list somewhere…

Honestly, I’m way more excited about Google’s ChromeOS, since it seems way more like the kind of thing I’m talking about. I like Google’s track record with software design, since they usually incorporate a fair amount of technical capability with an easy, simple interface and . I know it’s going to be a free OS, but I hope they sell copies in Best Buy just so I can have a reason to buy software from a store again. God knows most of the software worth buying is sold online these days.