Apathetic Thursday

If there is one thing I hate when traveling it is trying to find access to the Internet. It seems that no one offers free Internet for customers or visiters, but will gladly charge you hansomely for a few hours of access.

Recently, on a family vacation to the North Shore of Lake Superior, my domain name expired. I knew it was going to expire soon, but I thought I still had a few weeks because I had been ignoring the spam like emails that MyDomain was sending out every few days for the last two months. (Side note, I don’t see the point of renewing a domain name 60 days ahead of schedule, so stop bloody bugging me about it!)

Anyway, two days after my domain name expired I was in the town of Grand Marais, MN. Most of the town us covered by a BorealWireless service. (Which supplies wireless to most of the city, several busineses, and even their library.) Fortunately for me I found an open network called “NETGEAR” and was able to check my email on my iPod Touch. Even more fortunately, I actually read my email from MyDomains which told me I had an expired Domain. (Side note: I don’t trust them to hold onto my credit card info so the auto renew failed.) I was unable to renew my domain via my iPod, but I was able to call and renew my domain for another year.

Okay, so where am I going with this? This incident got me thinking. I don’t want to pay for an hours worth of time so I can spend 30 seconds checking my email to see if there is an emergency. What I would like to see happen can be described in two senarios:

(Mediocre solution) WiFi providers offer a 5 or 10 minute wireless plan for a small fee. Just enough time so you can check in on things. Then, if the need were to arise, the user could buy a longer block of time.

(Better solution) WiFi providers offer a limited 2 or 5 minute free period wherein the user may check in on things and decide if the need to purchase more online time.

Here is a novel idea, rather than charging people an exorbitant fee for a pathetic service, give customers something they are willing to pay for.

Okay. I just spent the better part of two hours doing something that should have taken me 15 minutes tops.

I had a problem with Finder and I thought I could whip up a short screen cast and put it online in order to vent. I have a free screen recording program, which was getting 2 frames per second, which wasn’t enough, so I decided to try Jing, the other free program I have.

Jing worked nicely, but outputs a swf flash file, which means, no editing, and no uploading to YouTube.

So I spent a good half hour or more searching for a viable means to convert from swf to a movie file that I could edit in say, iMovie or FCP or even Window Movie Maker if need be. Anything so I can trim down the file and put it online.

I tried several programs for Mac and Windows, none of them did what I wanted and were also free. I wouldn’t mind paying for software that did this and did it well, if I knew I was going to be doing this on a regular basis. But I don’t know this, and for a one time use I don’t want to shell out $20 or $40 or $80 for the type of software I would need. Several of the pieces of software that looked promising, either didn’t perform quite as expected, or were even advertised as a “free download” but the programs themselves were not free.

Anyway, I have finally given up. I am entirely sick of technology tonight and thus I have uploaded the unedited version of my complaint to my website, and post a link here (below) for all to see. (It’s about a 6MB file, for those who are bandwidth conscious.)

If anyone has any suggestions for dealing with these type of issues in the future, drop me a line. (And yes, I know buying a decent screen recording program would solve all my issues, but I can’t justify that type of financial purchase at the moment.)

Here is the link: Finder’s Search is Broken.

Several years ago in high school I remember hearing this phrase:

Let me control a country’s music and I will control the country.

At the time I assumed it was a quote, probably from one of the “great” dictators. But after searching all over for it for several years I could not find it. I tried different variations of quote and asked everywhere I could, nothing came up.

Until now. Reading for a class assignment I ran across the following quote in a communication theory book.

If a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation. - Andrew Fletcher

At long last, I have found the quote, or at least a similar and official deviant. (Which is a shame, I would have like to take credit for the first one.)

At any rate, this saying is very controversial, but also expandable. Today could we change it to say

If a man were permitted to make all the TV shows, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.

Or maybe not TV shows, maybe movies instead. Is this a legitimate claim? Are we shaped by media or do we shape the media?

On one hand, if we absorb what is put in front of us without a second thought, we become what we are told to become. But, as a consumer, we drive what is created. If no one watches a TV show, the company will stop producing the TV show. As a consumer body, we have control over what gets produced. The problem lies with apathy. If people don’t care what they are fed, or they don’t care what products are produced, they won’t have any say in their creation. Yet, if people do care they can make a change.

If everyone stopped eating food at McDonalds, we would collectively make McDonalds rethink their corporate strategy. But if no one cares what McDonalds does, they will have no reason to boycott. (Disclaimer: I am not anti McDonalds.)

Here is my point. Far too often the solution that is proposed is a change of policy, but often for true change to be enacted it means a change in behavior. And as the old adage goes: old habits die hard.

I don’t like to dive into politics. I find politics to be a dreadfully obnoxious topic. Since it is convoluted and misrepresented by the media, it feels like a waste of my time. Anyone with any sense knows enough to think through the issues and come to a conclusion on their own. Those without sense are incapable of being taught, and in the end it always feels like preaching to the choir and nothing ever seems to change.

With the election approaching later this year, I figured that it would be good to know what the potential candidates are actually saying, that way when it is time to vote, I can make an informed decision.

But as I was looking over the positions and stances that these politicians hold, I can’t help but think that there isn’t enough apathy in our Government.

Let me explain.

The Math

First, we do some math. According to the US Census Bureau there are approximately 303,658,558 people in the United States. To make our life easier, let’s round that down to 300,000,000. So we have 300 million people living in the US. These 300 million people all come from different backgrounds, which ultimately means that there are 300 million different opinions on how government should operate. It is literally impossible to come up with a set of laws and regulations which will please all the people, all the time.

However, it would be possible to set a handful of rules and regulations which everyone could agree upon. Perhaps you could call these “inalienable rights” and they could involve things such as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It would also be beneficial to have a system of defense for everyone as well.

So now we have a system set up for protecting human rights, but life is still pretty chaotic, because nobody agrees on any other laws or rules. Logically, if we can’t define a set of laws to please 300 million people, we need to shrink the population size. If we divided up the 300 million people into smaller subgroups, we would have a better chance of finding a set of rules to which everyone could agree too. If we divide 300 million into say… 50 different parts, we have about 6 million people per part.

It’s still pretty hard to come up with a set of rules and policies that 6 million people can agree upon though, but it would be much easier than trying to please 300 million. With a group of 6 million people you could probably come up with a good set of rules concerning things like: punishment for violations of “inalienable rights” or save driving speed limits.

Now the neat thing about dividing up the 300 million people into 50 parts is that the end result is 50 different sets of laws and rules. This means that if someone is unsatisfied with the laws or rules that their “part” has decided upon, they can simple move to one of the other 49 parts which has a different set of rules. This allows for people to choose what laws they live under.

To truly make everyone happy, though, we have to shrink yet again. 6 million is a huge number of people to please, and there are still aspects of life which need some sort of regulation. If we break down 6 million people into, say, 500 subsegments, we end up with groups of about 12000 people.

I would claim it would be significantly easier to find a set of rules that 12000 people could agree with, as compared with 300 million people. Now these rules could easily cover things such as education standards and how to settle various domestic disputes.

Again, this is a really neat system, because we have 50 “parts” all divided into 500 “segments” which gives a total of 25000 different segments, all of which will inevitablely have a different set of policies. This means that if someone is not satisfied with the set of rules he is currently living under, he/she may move to a location where-in he/she is living under the set of rules he/she prefers.

Even 12000 people can be hard to manage, especially since this covers all groups of people both culturally and age wise as well. But breaking down this set of 12000 people into small groups of 2-7, we can be sure that they will all develop a set of rules they can all live by happily.

I think this is a really good idea, I think this could actually work. We could call the segments of 300 million, 6 million and 12 thousand, federal, state and local government respectively. (Groups of 2-7 people could be called “families”).

The Lack Of Apathy

It’s easy to see that the system of government in the United States has huge potential. The problem lies in trying to take duties that should be handled by state or local governments and hand them off to the federal government. Working with a smaller group of people can achieve a more efficient and productive results than trying to cram everyone into a “one size fits all” cookie cutter.

The Federal part of our government needs to be more apathetic when it comes to making laws that would affect the day to day lives of everyone in the nation. State governments need to stop handling issues that should really be locally governed. Families, especially parents, need to start taking charge or rules that they govern themselves by.

There are state senates trying to make laws concerning the sale of video games. I can understand why young children shouldn’t be exposed to violent and explicit games, but I don’t believe that it is the job of the government to enforce this. Even though I think that keeping young children (or even teenagers) from some of these games is a good cause, I don’t think it should be the responsibility of some older person I don’t even know who lives hundreds of miles away. The responsibility for why I as an adult watch should be mine. The person responsible for keeping my children (when I have children) from getting involved in bad things or terrible games is mine.

Government should not be SimCity. No one human in power should be micromanaging the lives of others. That’s the whole concept behind the “freedom of speech” and “pursuit of happiness.” It all comes down to the division and delegation of tasks to smaller groups. The whole concept of “global” (global village, global economy, United Nations) is very scary. With technology the world has become a great place where everyone can interact, all 6 billion of us. But making one set of laws to govern 6 billion people is not only impossible, but really stupid, because no one is going to be happy with the result.

Unfortunately there is no simple cure for this. Some people will disagree with my opinion, case and point, you can’t please everyone. The goal of the people who govern us is to please as many people as possible. Ideal this should be because they are there to serve us, but usually it’s because they want to get re-elected. But they can’t serve us, unless they know what we want. As a United States citizen it is a great privilege to be allowed to contact my representatives and tell them what I want. Voting is another great way to tell officials what I want. If no one says anything, then no one is going to be helped by the government.

It’s a big responsibility, to know what the issues are and to know where a politician stands on the issues, but it’s a big decision that needs to be made, and well worth the time and energy. Every vote counts.

I had some time to think today and began to think about the video games that really rock my world. It is hard for me to choose my favorite video games, because I like several of them a lot and hold their potential values about equal in my mind. Some of it simply has to do with the mood I am in. But not only did I want to think about what video games I like, I wanted to look into why I like them so much and what it is that attracts my attention to them.

DISCLAIMER: This is me writing about my opinion, which is inherently bias. If your opinion differs from mine that is perfectly all right, and I would be glad to hear what you think, however, please realize that I hold the right to reserve reading comments until Thursday.

The Legend of Zelda

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was one of the first video games I had as a child. We got our SNES a few months before the N64 came out. (With a promise to our parents that we wouldn’t also want the N64 because it was newer… which turned out to be completely false later.) A Link to the Past has a quality to it that few other games have. I think it has an amazing replay value. Not necessarily because there are different choices you can make, there really are not any choices, or because it has a hard mode, it doesn’t, but it has a unique quality of game play that makes it enjoyable to pick up and play every now and then.

The game has a really neat feel, there is something about a bird’s eye view or a two dimensional world which makes the game a joy to play. The music quality is rather crummy, but the melodies and notation are amazing. The controls are simple which is a major plus because there is no learning curve to just sit down and play. Battling is easy and most the bosses can be killed amazingly quickly as long as you are capable of sustaining a bunch of damage. This is a game I love to sit down and just run through. The Ocarina of Time is also on my list of awesome games. Living in a three dimensional world, being able to rome around, ride horses, explore caverns and take on a number of side quests made this game an absolute wonder. The music was wonderful and the puzzles that were presented in the dungeons made the game a great challenge.

I was put off by Majora’s Mask and I was never able to get myself into Wind Waker, although the music for Wind Waker was awesome. Twilight Princess was a joy to play through, the Wii’s controller gave the game a whole new feel and it was wonderful. I loved the music and the gameplay. The thing I didn’t like, though, was the locked in feeling I was always having. There were blocked passages that littered the map, limiting progress to only one direction. Even when I had finished the game I didn’t feel like I had a direct route to everywhere I wanted to go. I also felt like there weren’t as many side quests and that there was a tremendous amount of unused territory on the map. Playing through the game again may give me a better chance to explore, but until then I don’t know if I’m entirely satisfied.

Metroid

I love metroids. I don’t know why, but I’m actually in the processes of trying to create a metroid screen saver wherein several metroids will roam around my screen guarding my computer from any intruders. (More on this on this later.)

As with Zelda, my first Metroid encounter occurred long after Metroid had been released. We borrowed the game from my cousins who are several years older than myself and after playing the game for awhile we succeeded in erasing their saved data by leaving the cartridge in the Nintendo for too long. Since then I have purchased my own copy of Super Metroid and I still find it to be one of my favorite games. I love the music, the control style and the gameplay as a whole. The maps and the world are fascinating and there is a great potential for exploring and searching out secret upgrades.

I am of the opinion that the Metroid Prime series was also very well done. The first is my favorite in terms of music, plot, etc, the problem I have with it is the control scheme. When I first played it I had not big problems with the control scheme, but since then I have played more first person shooter games which have the dual control stick scheme. That is, looking and walking are controlled separately whereas Metroid had then controlled together.

I played through Metroid Prime three or four times and have always been meaning to go back and play through it again, trying for a low percent walkthrough, or at least try to get the high jump boots first. (I did once and haven’t been able to since.) I have only played through the two following Metroid games once a piece, since school has not allowed much of a break to go back and play. As a result I don’t know them as well as I know the first one, which also makes me not like them as much.

Metroid Prime 3 is my favorite in terms of control style and the music was good too, but I find that the bosses were far too easy. The disadvantage I had with Prime 3 was that I had to put it down for a month due to school and so I had to pick up the game midway and try to remember what I had done. For this reason alone it is on my list of games I need to run through again.

Mario Kart

My life would not be complete without Mario Kart. I could play Mario Kart for hours, and for that matter, on occasion, I have. The racing style of Mario Kart is perfect, the items allow anyone to have a fair chance (well… sort of…) and the variety of tracks and battles keep things interesting.

Going back to the Super Nintendo it is hard to imagine ever enjoying the choppy screen of bad textures which holds a great potential for giving seizures. Nonetheless, I’ll always remember having battles at my friends house and getting that feather so I could jump over the bump into the water, where I could sit until someone chased me out.

Mario Kart for the 64 is still a game I love to play, despite the fact that multi-player has all sorts of sound related issues. The tracks were fun and the cheats were great when you could get them. Favorite track is Rainbow Road,of course (pun intended). Double Dash provided a whole new aspect of racing which I have found to be both a blessing and hinderance at times. I love racing on my own, but having a partner help is a special challenge that is fun to take on from time to time. The graphics are better, there are more courses and more drivers and the music is fantastic.

Kirby’s Avalanche

I don’t know what it is about Kirby’s Avalanche, but I just can’t play enough of it. My biggest problem is finding people to play against. Everyone I know either doesn’t find it nearly as fun as I do or gets tired of being pummeled multiple times over, despite the fact I am playing with a seemingly enormous handicap. The hard part is beating the computers, who have a reflex ability that far surpasses mine.

Donkey Kong

Until recently my family’s Donkey Kong collection consisted of only Donkey Kong Country 3 and Donkey Kong 64. I have finally been able to produce Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2 from ebay and am in the process of working through the second one with my brother. I love the scrolling style of this game, which is something that is not found anywhere anymore.Donkey Kong 64 was a great game as well and has some great music that I really don’t listen too enough. To be honest, I never actually got to beat the game because our game data was erased by a neighbor kid before we finished it and we never started it back up.

Others

I love MegaMan, but never actually bought any of the games. Only rented them and downloaded their soundtracks. Kirby always had great games and I’ve purchased the old ones for the Wii now. Smash Bros is a great series that has offered weeks of great fun with friends. Perfect Dark was by far the best first person shooter for the N64. Beetle Adventure Racing was pretty sweet and while I’m thinking about racing games the original F-Zero is on my list of games I enjoy to sit down and play every now and then. Star Fox is a great series too, but I haven’t played the newest ones a whole lot. I enjoy the occasional jaunt into Halo, but more often then not I’m just listening to their soundtracks. Final Fantasy VII is a classic and one of these days I’ll remember that I still have to fight the final boss. Sim City for the Super Nintendo is the best Sim City game ever except that our cartridge was rather fickle and we were never able to keep a city going for very long before the data was erased. Of course, I can’t leave out Mario World Series and Super Mario 64.

The Why

The big theme that I see running through these games are the soundtracks. Almost all the games I like have a great soundtrack, most have good gameplay and at least some sort of replay value. I just wish I had more time to play some of these old games to see if they are still as good as I remember.

Anyway, those are the games I like. What do you say?

It’s official. I am now going to rely on the Onion as my sole source of news.

A few months back I passed up the opportunity to see Pan’s Labyrinth in the theater. It was too expensive, a long trip, and I had other plans for the night the group was going, but I knew I wanted to see it. So the first movie I put on my Netflix Queue when I started Netflix back up this summer, was Pan’s Labyrinth.

For those who don’t know, Pan’s Labyrinth is a foreign film, set in Spain during one of the wars. As a result, the film is in some form of Spanish, so I was forced to read subtitles for the duration. I am curious as to how accurate the translation between the Spanish and the English is, there were a few exclamatory lines where in I wondered if the English was more of a loose translation of the Spanish, but besides that I assume it was fairly accurate.

I  was extremely impressed by the cinematography of the movie. Unlike American films, where the camera changes angles ever two seconds whether it needs too or not, this film was nothing but long shots, and the majority of the shots were panning or moving. As a result, the shots never felt too long, and between the amazing camera work and the intriguing story-line, the movie flows along smoothly, and almost too quickly. It was a two hour movie, and when it was done, I could hardly believe that two hours had passed.

There were a few instances where the music was very touching, but overall the soundtrack was not very noticeable. Which gives you a bit of an idea how everything really just blended together.

It is also a very sad movie, and although it is described as a fairy tale for adults, it
might not be the fairy tale ending you initially expect.

Overall, I think it’s a really amazing movie, and superbly executed. It deserves the awards it has achieved. Highly recommended for those who don’t mind the violence that is portrayed.

I recently bought and am currently reading through David Allen’s book, getting things done. So far I am very intrigued with what he has to say, and I more or less subscribe with his line of reasoning. Several of the things he talks about and suggests, are things I have seen myself, only I haven’t really been able to explain or perhaps even notice it. Over the past few weeks I have been partially following his steps and I think for the most part his advice has really helped.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. If you re-arrange the words of his books title, you get “Done Getting Things” (Or, Getting Done Things, Things Getting Done, Things Done Getting, and Done Things Getting… but that’s not my point either.)

In the high tech gadget society in which we live, it is very tempting to get everything. We want, we want, we want. My theory here is that at the same time we need to start getting things done, we need to stop getting things. This will virtually ruin our economy. This too, is not what I want to talk about.

What I really want to focus on is me. I’m a person, and as a result, I am thrilled to talk about myself, what I think, and how I feel. I do not want to talk about this aspect of human nature… at the moment.

So what exactly, am I trying to say? I need to start getting things done and I need to stop getting things that I don’t really need… And I guess I really don’t have a whole lot more to say on this subject. At least for the moment. I’ve been brewing over it all day and I thought maybe I was getting somewhere, but alas, I was not.

I have come to the conculsion, and not very lightly mind you, that I have a problem. This problem is namely an M&M addiction. While alcholoics can’t wait to get home from work to have a drink, I can’t wait to get to my dorm room for a handful of M&Ms. It usually doesn’t stop at one handful either. I usually haev two or three. Sometimes, I even have as many as four or five. Today I have been particularly… …hungry… and am getting down to the last few handfuls of M&Ms. At my current rate of consumption, they will probably not live past Tuesday.

The problem is now becoming, “where can I get more M&Ms?” I would suppose that the store is a good place to start, but I’m not at a store right now, so this causes the problem. Going to the store, to buy M&Ms, is also a problem, because I don’t have time and I don’t have money to go and buy M&Ms.

I hate to think about it, but I may have to go cold turkey to pull myself out of this one. It could be a harsh week. Fortunately, I have 24 bottles of Lipton Green Tea with Citrus that I can use to help nurse me off my M&Ms. Now, I will need to get some more M&Ms eventually, because when my Green Tea runs out, I’ll be pretty addicted to that, so I’ll need something to help me get over my Green Tea Addiction.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Sorry, everyone, but I just need to rant.

So, I’m having some issues with one of my blogs, issues that look like it might require a complete deletion of wordpress and a re-installation. No, biggie, right? Bethany has a 5 MB up 5MB down connection, it’s the weekend, so most of the students are gone or sleeping or doing homework. This should take an hour, tops.

Well, from my room, when connected to the student network, it’s taken three hours, and it’s still not done. That’s right. Three hours.

Bethany, takes the liberty of limiting the bandwidth that people logged into “student” can use. For most web browser, people won’t notice. Downloading large files, people might begin to see something. Trying to upload a 29 kb file? Isn’t going to happen folks!

That’s right. I kept getting timeout errors, while uploading 29 kb files. Think that’s bad? Try uploading a 300byte file and get the same error.

This is rediculous. I finally, gave up. I grabbed my computer and took it to the computer lab. I threw a copy of WordPress on my flash drive and logged into a Lab computer. To upload the 2.2 MB of WordPress files took roughly four minutes. Maybe less, I didn’t time it.

The bandwidth is limited so horribly, it’s almost better for me to do my work at home, where I have 256 Kbps on DSL. However, the internet usually goes down whenever I am doing important web work at home.

So here’s the deal. The world revolves around me. It has too, there’s no other way for this to work. And since the world revolves around me, it decides to stop revolving any time I decide to do web work. This is the only logical explination.

It seems there’s never a good day for web design.

Sorry for the rant. I don’t like to write such incoherent opinions, but sometimes you just need to vent some frustration.