I've actually found this program quite helpful, as my luddism has kept my investigation into new web tools at check for a while. Well, that and my lack of a decent net connection for the bulk of the last few years. Anywho, the added convenience I alluded to in the last post has helped reshape how easily I get around my daily/weekly web endeavours. And, as this has happened, I've noticed how much more up to speed so many of my friends, family, lovers, colleagues, etc, etc are than I am. My aversion to dissolving into the net - probably something to do with a fear of SHODAN - will probably still keep me back a few steps, but time management's a big issue in my life, so I'm not too worried about this impulse. In terms of the way I approach my profession, it's definitely intriguing and enlightening. I'm presently trying to imagine a juncture where web 2.0 technology and aspects of our zine collection can happily collide without dismissing the beautifully anarchic and tactile nature of zines (not e-zines, though... they have their place in that realm already and need no assistance in staying there).
Time will tell.
Goddamn I'm annoyed about that stupid widget clock.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
#17 Gettin' there
Okay, after looking at a bunch of literature and seeing where and how so many of these new tools work, I think I've narrowed all this down (ah-huh... yeah, I'm not sure what I'm typing here... ah-huh): convenience and communication. Open dialogue is a big one - feeling like you can have input wherever you receive information. And where do you want to receive that information? At home. Or, ya know, wherever (honestly, I just missed gen x... only just). Things are just getting more and more convenient, or perceivably so, so our job is to make sure that the relevance and quality of information is still there, whilst still giving them the opportunity to have a say in how the information is flagged and described. Is that too simplified?
#16 Pod people
Ended up search Podcast.net and, via a link to a (sadly) dead podcast by local gothy Scot Dave Callan, I found a recommendation to this one. I remember listening to abysmal streams many, many years ago when I was out of range of most Melbourne public radio transmitters - not much Black Metal on JJJ... well, not enough for 17-year-old me - and trying to convince myself that 8kbps Realplayer files were decent. Foolish, foolish me.
Though at the moment, this... this is much more like it. Not sure why I don't patronise podcasts much already. The sound quality is there, and the speed is there, and the variety and competition (hence, content quality and frequency) is increasing. And they cater for a style of knowledge absorption that is often unavailable in libraries, at least in the level at which a wide enough range of topics can be selected from.
And there's Dan Savage, who is awesome.
Though at the moment, this... this is much more like it. Not sure why I don't patronise podcasts much already. The sound quality is there, and the speed is there, and the variety and competition (hence, content quality and frequency) is increasing. And they cater for a style of knowledge absorption that is often unavailable in libraries, at least in the level at which a wide enough range of topics can be selected from.
And there's Dan Savage, who is awesome.
#15 Ewe chewed
Three-fold post, this. You Tube is pretty impressive, despite reaching the Napster problem(ish) of getting so popular that all the lovely pirated material is all too easily found by the creators (greedy critters... think they deserve rights... humph) and promptly removed. Oh, and despite killing all our bandwidth. Yeah. Though, if you're an independent, unsigned band like Schadenfreude, it's awesome, even after you debut on Rage late one night. Heck, Rage must be feeling pretty damn neglected at the moment.
Sciencehack is obviously still in the formative stages - a search for Black Noise only yielded one result - but the interface, though primitive, is at least a bit cleaner, lacking all the peripheral glut that YT tends to love so much.
I guess it's understandable that anybody who's no longer in school would find Teacher Tube a little annoying and limiting. It's obviously pretty tightly regulated, though at least there are ninjas. Yeah.
NOTE: And now, for everyone who wondered what it would be like if Michael Jackson grew up in Bollywood...
Sciencehack is obviously still in the formative stages - a search for Black Noise only yielded one result - but the interface, though primitive, is at least a bit cleaner, lacking all the peripheral glut that YT tends to love so much.
I guess it's understandable that anybody who's no longer in school would find Teacher Tube a little annoying and limiting. It's obviously pretty tightly regulated, though at least there are ninjas. Yeah.
NOTE: And now, for everyone who wondered what it would be like if Michael Jackson grew up in Bollywood...
#14 Widget tool
The idea of Widgets, I think... yes, I mentioned them earlier in this blog, and, yes, after checking out this winner of the widget category in SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards, I will have to concur that they are indeed added fuel to the "why can't I just surgically attach myself to my computer chair?" line of thought. It's. Just. So. Damn. Convenient. Damn...
I didn't go to the point of developing my own widget - something that keeps an eye out for early/rare Morgion and Joyless releases on Amazon and eBay at the same time - but I altered a couple of their readymades (should've added my signature beneath 'em... hmmm) and added them to the top of my blog. Just weather and time... y'know, just in case I can't be asked moving my field of vision to the clock in the ever so far away lower right hand corner of my screen, and, y'know, open the curtains and crane my stiffening neck a harsh 105 degrees to see what the weather looks like "outside".
The ease in which you can syndicate said widgets is pretty awesome, though, as I alluded to earlier, they will become the death of alot of things. Like, I guess, your desktop. Doubt I'll be porting them there anytime soon. I dunno, I just happen to like my completely non-existent wallpaper (at home). It keeps me sane. Too many years of staring at album covers I happened to like, and mash up desktops made by obsesssive music fans - it's just nice not to have too much to absorb when I switch my PC on.
NOTE: I have since removed the time function when I realised that it hasn't recognised Daylight savings yet. Silly.
I didn't go to the point of developing my own widget - something that keeps an eye out for early/rare Morgion and Joyless releases on Amazon and eBay at the same time - but I altered a couple of their readymades (should've added my signature beneath 'em... hmmm) and added them to the top of my blog. Just weather and time... y'know, just in case I can't be asked moving my field of vision to the clock in the ever so far away lower right hand corner of my screen, and, y'know, open the curtains and crane my stiffening neck a harsh 105 degrees to see what the weather looks like "outside".
The ease in which you can syndicate said widgets is pretty awesome, though, as I alluded to earlier, they will become the death of alot of things. Like, I guess, your desktop. Doubt I'll be porting them there anytime soon. I dunno, I just happen to like my completely non-existent wallpaper (at home). It keeps me sane. Too many years of staring at album covers I happened to like, and mash up desktops made by obsesssive music fans - it's just nice not to have too much to absorb when I switch my PC on.
NOTE: I have since removed the time function when I realised that it hasn't recognised Daylight savings yet. Silly.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
#12 Publishing
I decided to approach google docs, as the idea of another password to remember gave me a nervous twitch. I've used the site a handful of times, and have since used that as a way of sating disappointed patrons who want to edit word docs. It's still not all that straightforward, in that it can't work with remote files - they have to be uploaded first. I guess that would probably open them up to attacks. Arrr... this is looking to be a short post. My time on the desk is nigh over.
Haven't gone back to use the site that much - not really useful if you already have full office software on all the PCs you use. Still, one day I'll be stranded... and yet, not.
Haven't gone back to use the site that much - not really useful if you already have full office software on all the PCs you use. Still, one day I'll be stranded... and yet, not.
#13 Tech-Nostalgia
The stream of computers that came into the home I grew up in started around the time my mother went back to work in the early 90s. She needed something to word process on, so she got some sort of cut-down early-days laptop with a basic LCD display that made gameboys look flashy. All it did was typing, and saving of documents... I THINK we could save on to 3 1/2" disks, though I think there were limitations. It was, in essence, an 80s word processing machine without the built-in printing capacity. I think that was when old mini-gun-whirring dot-matrix came into the picture.
The next couple of computers were hand-me-downs from my richy tech-head uncle (visits to his computer 'nook' always prompted lots of silent gawking at the bell's n whistles). The first one of them enabled my brothers and I to cut our teeth a bit with basic DOS commands. Figuring out what executables were, learning how to copy files between drives, and using the blessed 'dir' command to see what wonders were held within. As it turned out, it was Q-bert. Other stuff was there, but I think I got a gameboy not long afterwards, whereafter I was trapped in Wario Land for quite some time.
The second computer eventually became my baby, mainly after the family's first Pentium was purchased around '98. As time went by, I scrounged up some second hand bits to add to my jerry-rigged Doom and X-Com beast (ahem). Parts of it are actually still chugging away in the room of a housemate of mine. Admittedly, only the case and power-supply, but living in denial never hurt anyone (irony). It continued to be my pet, going through at least a couple of 3D cards, until a couple of years ago (2004 actually) when I jumped on the 'good enough to play pretty things' band wagon, receiving a brand spanking new computer for my birthday. Although I still insisted on building the damn thing myself.
Not alot has changed in the system since then. The RAM's doubled, the cooling system is now able to keep the damn thing below 90 degrees (c), and the DVD drive has changed. Most of what I've learnt about computers has been trial and error - if, when my adolescence lead me to techy dissection, it didn't explode... I ran with it. Not too much has changed. I read the manuals a bit more these days, but I often get a bit impatient, jump right in, then kick something later. I'm astonished at what I was able to accomplish way back when, considering all that. For a time, I managed to network 4 computers in my parents place (this is around 1999-2000, I think), all tapping into the same 33.6kbps dial-up modem. Hmmmn... snail. Then, a few years later, I networked 7 computers in a uni share-house, nearly all of them having different versions of windows. Um, yeah... though, truth be told, I just wanted an excuse to force people to play Doom when they came over for 'dinner'.
God, I'm sad.
The next couple of computers were hand-me-downs from my richy tech-head uncle (visits to his computer 'nook' always prompted lots of silent gawking at the bell's n whistles). The first one of them enabled my brothers and I to cut our teeth a bit with basic DOS commands. Figuring out what executables were, learning how to copy files between drives, and using the blessed 'dir' command to see what wonders were held within. As it turned out, it was Q-bert. Other stuff was there, but I think I got a gameboy not long afterwards, whereafter I was trapped in Wario Land for quite some time.
The second computer eventually became my baby, mainly after the family's first Pentium was purchased around '98. As time went by, I scrounged up some second hand bits to add to my jerry-rigged Doom and X-Com beast (ahem). Parts of it are actually still chugging away in the room of a housemate of mine. Admittedly, only the case and power-supply, but living in denial never hurt anyone (irony). It continued to be my pet, going through at least a couple of 3D cards, until a couple of years ago (2004 actually) when I jumped on the 'good enough to play pretty things' band wagon, receiving a brand spanking new computer for my birthday. Although I still insisted on building the damn thing myself.
Not alot has changed in the system since then. The RAM's doubled, the cooling system is now able to keep the damn thing below 90 degrees (c), and the DVD drive has changed. Most of what I've learnt about computers has been trial and error - if, when my adolescence lead me to techy dissection, it didn't explode... I ran with it. Not too much has changed. I read the manuals a bit more these days, but I often get a bit impatient, jump right in, then kick something later. I'm astonished at what I was able to accomplish way back when, considering all that. For a time, I managed to network 4 computers in my parents place (this is around 1999-2000, I think), all tapping into the same 33.6kbps dial-up modem. Hmmmn... snail. Then, a few years later, I networked 7 computers in a uni share-house, nearly all of them having different versions of windows. Um, yeah... though, truth be told, I just wanted an excuse to force people to play Doom when they came over for 'dinner'.
God, I'm sad.
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