Of Trajectories
...Just something to think about.
Over the last few days, as I've been working on Chedr (the top secret application that's technically my second app), I've noticed that while I'm understanding a lot more about Java, I've really slowed down.
Which makes me realize something about the way I learn things: I go after huge, lofty ideas, can't make any sense of it, then eventually have a eureka moment where everything falls in place. But, if I'm just sort of trudging around and picking up small bits here and there, I quickly forget most of that I learned.
As it is, I have a total of 5 Java books, out of which I've only read three.
I really need to sit down and read the other two, even if they're not really "Learn Java" books and more "Giant Ass Reference Tomes of Doom"... So, I suppose this post is more for just reminding myself to stay on task. A book dedicated to Java GUI development would be awesome though. (Alternately, some Java genius pointing me towards the proper resources to make the snazzy GUIs I see other people do, as opposed to the current hey-its-1995-again look.)
*shrug*
Either way, I still need to finish the covers for Issues 2 and 3, then I'll be putting them up on the site, under the Comics page. It shouldn't take me more than a week, provided I don't dig myself into another book.
And, in other news, I'm getting my crap out of the storage place in Colorado in the later half of next week. Hopefully the weather is nice during the trip, and double-hopefully I don't pull any muscles this time.
T'would be nice, me thinks.
The Coordinates of Teamwork (U, I)
At the very beginning of the school year, in our American Studies history class, we spent an hour or so on an activity. We drew an arbitrary letter up on the whiteboard, and then were told to promptly forget it was a letter, and to think up other objects the picture could be. Together as a class, we were able to come up with many, many more responses than any individual one of us could. And this leads to a pondering of just how much of a role cooperation and teamwork play in an ordinary day-to-day life.
For one thing, most inventions and trinkets that we rely on so heavily would not have been invented without intense amounts of teamwork. For example, let's examine the lightbulb. Here's a direct quote from the Wikipedia about the light-bulb's accredited inventor: "[Thomas Edison] was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large teamwork to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory." He was basically the inventor of the factory-line! Another invention life would be dramatically different without is the atomic bomb. It was developed by a crew of scientists working at breakneck speed, but more importantly, a crew of scientists working together, sharing data and bouncing ideas back and forth.
We ourselves go through an incredible amount of teamwork in an ordinary day, though most of it is rarely noticed or paid attention to. Traffic? A large group of vehicles, driven by people, that moves according to a set of orderly and enforced laws. Drive on the right side of the road, stop at stop signs, turn on the blinker lights before making a turn. While this cooperation can be seen as forced and not genuine teamwork, I would disagree. Regardless of why, the majority of drivers comply with these rules of the road, and work together, if inadvertently, to make progress on the road and arrive at their respective destinations. Is there anything that can be accomplished without some form of teamwork?
THQ vs The World 2011!!
Short Explanation: THQ has decided to use a "one time code for online play" for Smackdown vs. Raw 2011. A lot of people go insane. Especially people who prefer used games. THQ then stands up for its decision and says "Hey, we don't really care about people that buy the game used because it doesn't profit us."
Yeah, those guys.
So there's two main camps here: Those that say what THQ is doing is unfair, and those who say it's understandable.
So I'm going to tackle a few of the popular arguments of both sides, just because.
Of Computer Repairs
So a few months ago, I was heading to work, steppedout the front door and onto the first step. Then blam! I was on my ass and I smashed my back into the bottom stair. I was in severe pain as I had injured my back only a week previously. I went back inside and called in, then settle into a less painful position to relax for the duration of my shift.
I whipped out my laptop very slowly, and noticed the screen was dead. So I was out a laptop, right?
Wrong.
I did some shopping around for a a new screen and found it, ranging in price from $50 to $500, which was more than twice the price of the laptop to begin with. So I said "Screw it," for a while until my brother offered to get me a new laptop screen. That arrived today, but the installation was hell.
In order to replace a 10.1" laptop screen you have remove 10 tiny screws from random places throughout the back of the screen. Which isn't a problem if you are doing computer repair in a proper place. But in a dark basement with very little in the way of light makes thing difficult. But I managed, through sheer frustration, to install the screen. Which was a massive pain. And irritating. But my laptop is functional again. So hooray.
In honor of 4/20
Today is 4/20, and that means that marijuana users are crawling out of the woodwork. A large portion of them seem to be spouting off the same old tired, ignorant crap. So, I have this to say, this year on 4/20:
No, it's not healthier than tobacco or alcohol. You're still burning something and inhaling. Pound for pound, it's just as dangerous as smoking cigarettes. Second, natural tobacco isn't as addictive as corporate tobacco. When you finally get marijuana legalized, what, you think it's going to stay all natural and not be ridiculously addictive? What, you think major corporations aren't going to try and make a profit out of it? Huh? Seriously. Is Phillip Morris just going to sit by while Ralph's Reefermobile makes $5 an ounce?
Ohhh righttt.... Marijuana is a symbol of like, freedom... and like... you know... like... peace... So... when the big companies start selling it... they're going to like... mellow out and feel the love... yeeeaaahhhh....... and it will, like... totally change the world!... They'll see how they're hurting people... and they'll like... totally stop and just vibe with us... And then wars will stop... and I'll win the lottery... Oh Dude... A unicorn just walked in through my window... Nah, I'm messing with you... It's just Jen... Hey Jen... Oh wait... I typed that instead of saying it... lolololol.......
Uh. No. Sorry.
And, as The Colorist is always pointing out: If science really believed all the bubkis and hype about marijuana, then the beneficial elements would be been identified, refined, and distributed in a more efficient delivery method.
Glauconex: Helps resolve cataracts and glaucoma.
Or maybe like, Nautegra: Combats nausea and stimulates appetite for cancer sufferers and anorexics.
Nope. Sorry. It's social. It's about personal identity. It's about who you want to be, not about what the drug does, and that's tainting every argument you make. It's no different than saying "I want a vehicle". Well, if you just want a vehicle, you can pick one up for cheap at a junk yard. "Well, I want it to be a good vehicle." Okay, so how about this truck then? "Naw... I like cars, not trucks." Okay how about this one? "No... I want it to be red."
You don't want just a vehicle. You want a good, red, car.
You don't want to just treat the disease. You want to feel good, and not care/remember how bad you feel.
So stop trying all this pseudoscience, completely bullshit crap, and just say you LIKE it. I might actually support legalization then.
BBC News – US and Russia announce deal to cut nuclear weapons
BBC News - US and Russia announce deal to cut nuclear weapons.
Well well, finally some good news. I don't know about everyone else, but Nuclear weapons are not my idea of cool, and anything that reduces the stockpile is a good thing. I seriously felt i should post this here, because after visiting Hiroshima a month ago, I don't even want to imagine those things existing. Get rid of them all, launch them at the sun or something. Convert them all into Hyperion nucler batteries powering VASIMIR plasma rockets in space. Just, please, get rid of them.
Peace
Berga
It Burns.
So, today, I'm not going to bother with pictures, because today's rant is going to rant about... my rants.
Okay, so it's really more about the people who read and comment on my rants, but still:
It seems like there's a lot of people who are reading my rants, stopping a couple lines in, or just glossing over the whole thing, then just trying to rip me a new asshole over something that was usually the complete opposite of what I was saying.
Please, for the love of kittens and unicorns, stop doing that. It gets really fucking irritating.
If on the other hand, you believe that you did understand what I was saying, and you did read the whole thing, and after reading this, went back to the rant you tried to rip me a new one on, re-read it, and still don't get it: Go back to elementary school, and take a reading comprehension class. Seriously. "They" and "I" do not actually mean the same thing.
Of course, I wholeheartedly recognize the visitors we have from Bizarro World, and I wish to offer a reminder to these poor souls: This world is backwards from Bizarro World, and as such, when I say I really hate something, I really do mean I hate it, and I'm not secretly trying to say I love it.
But yeah, it's gotten to the point now where everytime I write a rant or opinion I'm expecting there to be at least two or three people who just didn't get it, and want to start a world war with me.
Like, if I were to write a rant about, say, America selling guns to third world countries and how stupid it is, I would expect a few people to shoot back with page-long dissertations about how I'm stupid for supporting America's support of foreign dictatorships. Even though, you know, the entire rant was about how I'm against it.
Either that, or they'll call me stupid for being Republican white trash that hangs out in bars on tuesdays... Even though I'm not a republican, technically not white, and don't drink or go to bars, much less on tuesdays, and not a single bit of it was even in the article, or even implied.
It makes me wonder if there's some other blog or site out there that is putting up articles and their comment page redirects to my site, because honestly, I really can't see where a lot of people are getting their stuff from. Quite a while back, I had this big rant up about Tobacco Law and smoking in general. My stance on it was pretty obvious, I even blatantly pointed out my stance in the first paragraph of the rant: I am a smoker, and I recognize that smoking can cause damage to the human body, but I also know that the tests to prove it were biased, and paid for by people who wanted tobacco to be taxed, so I promote levity and fairness rather than blind fear-mongering.
For the next couple weeks I got harassed by somebody who was royally pissed that I was "out to end smoker's rights". My article goes on about how the taxes for cigarettes are unfair, and I have people yelling at my that I'm a tool of government oppression.
So, a bit later, there's some little comment war going on at the bottom of my rant, where people had started talking about weed, and there are a few very vocal proponents of The Marijuana. I tell them that I don't want people promoting drug usage on my site because I personally detest drugs and stoners. I'll tolerate an academic discussion, but I don't want people saying "Oh yeah man, you should try ______ and _______. I had a couple bowls of that last weekend and DAMN!!" I'll try to be fair and all that, but there are certain things that I don't want on my site, because the minute it starts creeping in, it will take over like a plague.
So what happens? I get a couple emails from some lady about how she loved my comic until I told everybody I was a pothead, and then she couldn't read it anymore and I'm a horrible person for suckering kids into my webcomic and seducing them into a druggie lifestyle.
...From me talking about how I disliked potheads and don't want it on my site, she construed that I must therefore love pot and have a sinister plan to sell drugs to kids.
I'm sure you guy can see at this point what I'm talking about. I say something, and people... just don't read it, I guess.
I've had this problem with pretty much every long rant I've ever put up on the SEDiverse, and I would like to see it stopped. I'm not going to delete comments to "clean things up" or get rid of the ridiculous things I'm irritated about, because that's kinda against the whole thing of SED. (Only things I police for in comments is obscenity or encouragement of unsavory things.) What I am going to ask though, is that before you post a comment, you read the damned article.
The Myth about Monitor Refresh Rates and Fatigue | random neuron misfires
I had actually typed up another big rant earlier about some advice column I saw at Yahoo, but then it never got sent to the website and was lost in the depths of the Web. *Spookymusic*
More's the pity. But oh well, here's something new to talk about!
The Myth about Monitor Refresh Rates and Fatigue | random neuron misfires.
Awesome. Although... not entirely accurate from what I can tell. From what I know of the situation, there's still a 5-7% of the population that get the same eye fatigue from LCDs. (It's a specific type of LCD... I have a lack of information on the subject though.)
So, the only thing I can really say about this is: Nay! Not all LCDs are purfektly okee dokee!! I, for one, can still get migraines from poor refresh rates on LCDs. Of the aforementioned certain types anyways. I had this old BENQ thing... any time it was set to 60hz my head started pounding, the same way it did when my old, giantass, 22" Dell CRT was set too low. Crank up the refresh a bit, and bam problem solved.
But, on the flip side, that was a really old LCD, back from when LCDs cost about $500 for a 14".
That monitor was the only LCD I've ever encountered that could give me screen-induced migraines, so yeah, LCDs in general don't have the same problems as CRTS because of the difference in technology, and I agree with bulk of the blogticle, but meeehhhhhhhhh.
(Plasma monitors, I have no clue about!)
Anybody that reads this know why that old LCD could cause headaches? I'm sort of curious...
Bah. This whole thing is a rambling mess. So, time for a recap!
1. I saw the article and went: Meh, but my old monitor could give headaches.
2. I do understand why LCD's don't give fatigue in general.
3. Now I'm just randomly curious as to why my old monitor did. Never really thought about it before. I just sort of shrugged my shoulders and got a new monitor.
4. Completely not covered in this entry except in this recap that's not really a recap:
Operating at 60Hz, they may cause a stroboscopic effect with any machinery which has parts, such as pulleys or gears, running at speeds that are a multiple of 60Hz. The stroboscopic effect will cause the machine to appear motionless, which could be a deadly hazard.
If you've never seen this in real life: That visual effect is awesome. It will drive you bonkers and bend your brain, but it is undeniably cool. Unfortunately, you can't capture it on film.
(As a side note here: Now that I think about it, remembering the old days and such, the monitor was also marketed as a power saver... It makes me curious... Maybe their power saver was throttling the power and ending up with the same effect as a CRT's Nuker Gun.)
Facebook Schemes
I see a lot of people that keep joining these groups on facebook hoping to get things like free ipod touches and crap like that, and honestly, i'm rather appalled that anyone could actually believe this stuff.
Your odds of actually getting any of the free stuff: Virtually DICK.
See, look, they just wanted an ipod and now they're homeless. I think.
Why? Because most of them are nothing more than just simple fishing schemes. First, look at who made the page. It's in the "creator" thing off to one side. Was it made by an organization? No? Was it made by just a girl with like 50-100 friends? Yes? Okay, well, here's the deal with that:
Most likely it's just a random person who made a random account, stole a picture off google images, and then made the giveaway group for their fishing scheme. Why is it a girl? Because people are more likely to trust an unknown girl than an unknown guy. Ever notice that its always a hot, young, innocent/sexy girl with a picture that looks like it's straight out of a teen vogue article on the internet habits of hot young innocent/sexy girls? Rrrrright.
But wait, they have friends!
Seriously, when has a hot girl on the internet NOT had like 60 people run up to her and try to be her friend? Just make the account, wait about 24 hours, then get crackin with the promotion.
People enter for the giveaway. Their information is taken, and sold in a mailing/email list. Nobody is terribly surprised when they never get a notification later on that says they won something. Reason they never got a notification though, is because there was never actually anything to win. Go figure. But, because nobody puts up a stink about (because they figure they just didn't win) it makes these little giveaways a perfect way of harvesting your information.
On the bright side, you won't have to buy firewood for years.
What do they do with your information? They keep in on file, then sell it. Over... and over... and over again.
Okay, right. Now onto the tricky stuff.
Sometimes these giveaways are real. ...Sometimes. I know a few people that seriously did get PS3s or Ipods with these things. My mom, for instance, actually got a $500 gift card for Macy's from one of these things. But none of them were on facebook.
Doesn't mean that the facebooks ones are just straight out bubkis, but think about it. There's not a company in it's right mind that would buy "tens of thousands" of ipods then just turn around and give them away. That's about like burning hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even when Apple gives away ipods, they only give away about 500 at a time.
And, the people i know that won stuff, they didn't get away unscathed: all of them got deluged with spam when their information was sold.
But, we all go: Hell, if all i have to deal with is spam to get a new PS3, then i'm in!
But... it's not just spam. If somebody... shady... buys that list, and they have your mailing address and your email, well, it's not to hard to figure out everything else from there. Anybody who has googled themselves probably knows how easy it is to get the rest of the information about themselves.
It happened to my mom in particular. So, she got a $500 gift card, but she also got somebody in Alabama buying a computer with her address and name on the bill.
But this is kinda dragging on, so my point here is:
1. It's goddamned facebook, people.
2. Check out the person who's supposedly offering it.
3. What is that person getting out of it?
4. How easy would it be for you to scam somebody else on the internet?
5. Now, what? Do you think everyone else is just too goddamned retarded to figure out how to do it too?
6. It's goddamned facebook.
Australia bans small breasts
Australia bans small breasts - Somebody Think Of The Children.
Ok, Maybe it is just because I am tired and cannot sleep, but seriously. My country seems to be going down the toilet in a rather dramatic fashion lately.
First (OK, not first, but recently) it is the video games, Left 4 Dead 2 was pussified to the max to allow it to be sold down under. Let me tell you, it is pretty weak, i think goldeneye on the 64 was more violent. You want to know the interesting thing, in the same shop that I bought L4D2 I can get L4D which includes all the gore, decapitation and body piles (albeit smaller) of an abotoir running out of control.
COME ON AUSTRALIA, WTF
Second, the gov is trying to put in an internet censorship plan which bans certain sites on the web. Now, do the public get to see this? HELLS TO THE NO WE DON'T, the government has this list of things they don;t want us seeing hidden nicely away. Today it is nasty porn sites, tomorrow it is people advocating anything the government gets butthurt about, and next thing you know, welcome to North KoreAustralia, with supreme dictator Kim Jong-Rudd in charge. Do they even realise people who traffic illegal porn don't just Google the bloody stuff, they use sneaky means of moving it. The same way that drug dealers don't set up their bloody labs at the local police station!
come ON Australia, WTFH
And now, the censorship board is banning girls with small breasts that look like they might be under 18. What. The. F*CK. If you are a 25 yr old with small breasts who looks young, you are not allowed to have pictures of yourself in the public domain. So what if there is a guy who looks really femenine but is over 18, if he snaps his top half it is ok? Maybe next they will be handing out bhurkas and rounding all us atheists up and shoving us into camps.
The people who push for this stuff are Family First, essentially a front for the Catholic church. I bet that suprised you. They also deny climate change, oppose abortion and all the rest, but are definitely not a religious group trying to impose onto politics. Well, I guess most of the people who read this will be American so you know all about the religion/politics thing. Oh BTW I heard your president speaking today, at least he sounds like you could hold a conversation with him without facepalming fifty times.
SO, in summation, I am starting to get a little bit upset about older people like THIS WANKER, Michael Atkinson. Watch the vid, see the stupid in action. He is protecting the children, OH NOES, they might get hold of an R18 game. Well, only if their parents buy it for them you twit. Haha, did you also see the bit where he talked about the 'violent Americans' and the GTA Krishna killing. Ok, so i'm starting to rant and rave a bit now, I'll leave you all be. Maybe I will show the link between a lack of violent video games and torching the AG's house!!
Just kidding, I'm able to differentiate between games and real life.
(Angry) Berga out
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