Apex81

Social networks, cliques, or whatever the hell you want to call them, can have their benefits.  It’s kind of fun seeing what people are up to around the world, and seeing what kind of bizarre things they do on a daily basis.  I don’t really know anyone who would disagree with me about that.  But, these “social” networks have been implementing the “is a fan of” rhetoric that is really starting to piss me off.  I’m not a “FAN” of nike running shoes. I’m not a “FAN” of Veronica Belmont. I’m not a “FAN” of your Podcast.  SO STOP CALLING ME ONE.  I don’t know what the word is that I’d use to describe these interactions, but “fan” is as lame as it gets.  Fan means “an enthusiastic devotee, follower, or admirer”.  For starters, I’m not enthusiastic about much on the internet, nor am I devotee, or an admirer.  I guess i’d fall under the follower… but even then it’s as bit of a stretch.  If Nike collapsed…I wouldn’t care, and much goes for ever other application, podcast, or “acquaintance” online.

Stop labeling me as a fan.  It makes me sound pathetic, and it boosts others egos… that is something we really don’t need any more of on the internet.  Everywhere I look ego stroking is going down!  Yuck!

People who check out this blog, or other sites I run aren’t considered “fans” to me, and if I ever call them that… someone call my shenanigans.

So, is it just me or does this time of year really suck?  I always have a hard time getting to sleep, but come late January and early February  I get like zero sleep.  I spend all my time  laying awake at night thinking about what is, what could have been, what might be… and frankly, I’m starting to get really annoyed by it all.  I did come to the conclusion that I could have written SuperBad! 1000x better with my experiences from high school.  This also led me to the conclusion that I probably have a ton of material for a novel.  I’m also tinkering with the idea of letting the url fade into obscurity and put up a blog with my real name.  Clean things up a little… what do you think?

It’s about sudo-celebrity tech journalists self promoting themselves and their other sudo-celebrity friends and showing the world just how cool they are. They aren’t in it for the tech… they’re in it to be celebrities… I wouldn’t trust a thing out of 80% of their mouths.

So, the year might not be technically over, but It’s pretty much done for me. I thought It’d be kind of fun to put together a list of thing that really made my year enjoyable. So here it is.

Music

1. Radiohead-In Rainbows
2. Modest Mouse-We were dead before the ship even sank
3. Arcade Fire-Funeral
4. Cold War Kids-Robbers and Cowards
5. The Shins-Winching the Night Away

Movies

1. A Scanner Darkly
2. Transformers
3. Casino Royale
4. 300

Applications

1. Coda
2. Billings
3. Transmit

Events

1. The Wedding
2. The Honeymoon
3. The week up to the wedding
4. Early xmas dinner at my sisters
5. Oilers Game in Ottawa
6. Doing the macgasm podcast

There it is… happy holidays…

I can’t believe it.  It’s been a bad month for Canadians.  Rogers is  testing a system that lets them embed content on any website they want, that is being navigated to on their network.  Essentially users will get a nice little box of goodies telling them they’ve almost reached their bandwidth limit.  Great, right? WRONG!  What’s next? Ads for rogers, ad campaigns based on statistics gathered from this embedded code?  Who the hell do they think they are?  I can’t wait to get the hell away from rogers.  As soon as my plan is done for my cellphone I’m getting the hell out of there. I hope you all do the same. Rogers can go to hell.

From a web designers perspective, I’m screwed.  I’m going to be getting calls non stop from clients asking me why this is on their website, and how I can remove it.  Great.  They won’t  take no for an answer, and I’ll be left with a big freakin headache that can’t be rectified.  Dear god, please someone with money sue them out of this practice. Google? Microsoft? Apple? ANYONE?  We need some real politicians with balls that will stand up against this shit.  Yeah, I’m looking at you Mr. Minister, if you want my vote in the next election grow a set of balls. You can read the article here

I’ve been done classes for a week now, and I officially have the burnout!  I can’t focus on anything at all, and any time I try to accomplish something my motivation fails me.  I guess it doesn’t help that I am waiting on a number of projects to get started. When I have work to do I can get back into the swing of things super-quickly, but if I have a lull it’s game over.  I seriously hope this week doesn’t go down the tubes.  I have 2 sites to get started on, but I’m waiting on clients.  I have 2 sites in the finishing up phase, and one of the clients has gone MIA, coincidental? I think not.  I also have 4 potential sites on the horizon.  I’m hoping those potentials work out because they’re for fields I’ve never worked in before.  That’s one of the things that I love about web design, it affords me the ability to learn about all kinds of stuff that I wouldn’t normally get involved in.  Fun stuff.  I’m also trying to think of creative ways to advertise on the cheap… anyone have any good ideas?  It’s not that I’m cheap, it’s that I have a hard time spending money on things that don’t guarantee results.  I plan on looking into advertising on the metro system here tomorrow, but out side of that I’m at a loss. Help a brotha out!  Drop me a comment and let me know if you have any ideas.

According to wired magazine the new batch of Western Digital hard drives come with built in copy protection that thwart you from sending file of the mp3, divx, and mov variety across a network: both local and external. I’m not shitting you.  Not only do I have to deal with the MPAA, and the RIAA trying to make it illegal for me to back up my legal content, but now I have to deal with hardware companies who have jumped in the sac with them.  I have a media server in my house where I keep backups of all the media I own.  I stream from this one server to all the other machines in my house.  If I were to use these drives, I wouldn’t be able to send backups from my laptop to say…my desktop…across the local area network.  It’s officially here people, fascism… corporation’s making laws, and furthering their own interests, instead of people making laws to keep corporations in check.  It makes me sick to my stomach.  But, there is a little bit of information in that article that gave me a chuckle.  Apparently you can circumvent the whole thing by not installing their “required” software. I never install hardware software for hard drives, and I don’t know why anyone would.  So, again, this is the case where the law abiding citizens get screwed, and the real “pirates” go on pillaging.  RIAA/MPAA/Western Digital… can you please, for the love of all that is holy, stop screwing the average citizen with your shoddy software, and crappy attempts at locking down your media.  Hackers, and pirates will continue to find ways around your stupid as DRM.  Hell, anyone with half a brain can find out a way around it if they really wanted to, so stop hiring monkeys to write your code, and start fixing the problem by abandoning your draconian policy change plans on file sharing, and actually coming to terms with the new digital age.  GET WITH THE PROGRAM!

I’m done my exams finally, and holy crap does it feel good.  I huge load off of my shoulders, and now I can finally focus on finishing up two sites.  Anyway, I’ve been promising my wife since Nov. 1, that as soon as my exams are done I’d get festive!  It’s been one heck of a festive couple of days.  We bought a xmas tree ( a real one) and decorated it yesterday, and today we got a large chunk of our xmas shopping done.  All in this really crappy weather that we’re getting in these parts… seriously, this is insane.  It’s making it really hard for me to enjoy the snow for Christmas.   The snow needs to go.  I can’t wait for spring…heh.

This article really has be freaked out.  What the hell is wrong with this country?  When did we loose our backbones?   The people at the battle of Yrpes, and Vimy ridge would be disgusted at the lack of Canadian balls in standing up to pathetic american corporations, who are so far removed from reality, that they are running themselves right into the ground. Read the rest of this entry »

I finished up one exam today, and it went pretty well.  No complaints.   Unfortunately, I have one more to go, and this one is going to be a little more difficult.  Anyway, I should get back to studying.  I have some updates sitting in my draft folder, so once my exam is done friday i’ll upload them.  While you’re at it why don’t you check out my other sites? Macgasm, and The Smart Fool