New Year Resolutions For Geeks

Want to be a geek?

"I am going to socialize more." It seems that there are two types of geeks, those that lead perfectly normal lives and don't seem to be any different than anyone else. However, these geeks are on the endangered secessions list and are normally found only at night playing pool and drinking heavily. This resolution is not for them.

This is for the type that spends an additional 5 hours per night playing World of Warcraft and any other online game, the newest being Second Life (life is but a game). The new social networking system is set in a WOW type environment. Push away from the keyboard! Put on your shoes and a clean shirt, open the door, NO not the one on your computer the one physical one. Now go out and meet people!

"Go outside." A recent study said that Americans on average spend only 42 minutes a day outside, for geeks it's probably less than that. While I completely acknowledge that the digital trees and flowing rivers are quiet cool, I have no doubt that your skin is probably whiter than a 19 year old Goth’s, (unless you’re not Caucasian).

Here is your weekly challenge and resolution: Go to a wildlife conservation park (look one up online) and go to the park for no less than 20 minutes. Trying knocking on a few trees, you’ll see that the trees are real. The birds, they’re real too. You won’t see any winged horses or an elf (unless your at a SCA event) but you will see what it’s like to be surrounded by actual woodsy life.

"I'm going to eat healthy" Geeks tend to be either very skinny or not very skinny (to be polite). Computer geeks have some of the worst diets, constantly drinking soda and eating snacks. Take these snacks out of your fridge and replace it with something healthy, fruit perhaps, maybe even a vegetable! You don’t know what a vegetable is? Move on to the next resolution.

“I will shop at actual grocery stores” I’ve gone grocery shopping with geeks and very few of them will enter a grocery store and not buy something that isn’t canned or frozen. The grocery stores as well as the occasional book store you visit, for your newest game guide and or hardware / coding book, also has cook books for people who have never cooked. I don’t mean microwave cook it for 3 minutes cooking. I mean actually using the big thing with 4 burners that some of your friends use to light they’re cigarettes with. The grocery store has a huge variety of items that you combine to make a meal. Think of it like adding all the coding together to make a super cool website or game character.

"I'm going to exercise." When you sit in front of a computer all day, your body really suffers. Your only your hands and arms do not count as exercise. It doesn't have to be hard exercise and it doesn't mean going to the gym five times a week. However, your body needs exercise. Need more encouragement? Studies show that when you physically exercise, your brain becomes sharper, more focused and is able to make better decisions. Just think, you’re a pretty good game player now, but with exercise for your entire body you’ll be a even better gamer who looks good and feels good.

So here are some other New Year Resolutions you should consider.

• I will spend an hour teaching a child the rudiments of programming, even if it's just "Hello World" in JavaScript.
• I will not respond to requests for help by informing the questioner that they should stop reading romance novels and start learning how to work they’re computer.
• I will decrease my writing in binary code and will give the actual time of day to people who ask instead of pointing to my binary clock.
• I will recognize that not everyone learns computer programs by the time the reach the age of 10 years old.
• I will contribute to an open-source project because they need my skills, not because I like the project.
• I will be nice to the people who pay me.
• I will stop cyberstalking my ex-lovers.
• I will go back and do something interesting with all my failed, half-finished hardware projects.
• I will stop debating meaningless theoretical fights between Sith Lords and Comic book characters.
• I will limit speaking Klingon and will only speak it at Science Fiction Fantasy conventions.
• I will only write ten lines of code everyday for the person I love (aka cyberstalking)
• I will stop obsessing about the future development of Perl 6 (programming language)
• I will stop writing apps that are just giant, nested loops and releasing them as popular software packages.
• I will pay for at least a couple of the shareware apps that I use daily.
• I will limit my t-shirt collection to 50 and start buying shirts that have buttons.
• I will stop asking women at bars who they’re favorite Star Wars character is

Find great colleges for a Tech Career

Geeks have all the fun!

Be a geek!

Mike Yates and a laser hacker pal Duncan, designed and built the ultimate Lazer Tag Team Ops (LTTO) compatible IR (infrared and or IR detector) weapons system. The Scorpion’s most obvious feature is the 4 rocket magazine (gun power) which attaches to the top of the weapon. 4 Mac pneumatic relay/solonoids control the airflow from the 3000psi air tank to the various rockets through stainless steel plumbing. The trigger/grip for firing the rockets is from an actual tank and was found on eBay...In addition to being a rocket launcher, the weapon functions as a high powered LTTO sniper rifle with a 1500 foot range thanks to the 4″ adjustable focal length lens.

Mike Yates and his friends are hardcore laser tag players who play in as real as you can get outdoors such as abandoned military bases, using highly modified custom equipment.

Sometimes you see something that's such a ridiculous case of overkill you just have to stand up and say, "Way to go; that's the most awesome thing I've seen this week!" This is one of those times.

So way to go; that's the most awesome thing I've seen this week.

I don't even want to think about how much something like that would cost if these guys decided to make a business out of making costumed designed Lazer Tag military weapons, but I have no doubt that many grown up bois and gurls would be willing to put a heavy dent into a credit card for one.

Who says the French have no humor?












Want to blend in with the french?

The city's famously rude inhabitants have long been a headache for tourism authorities who have made repeated attempts to persuade Parisians to be more friendly to foreign visitors.

The latest campaign appears to cede to the notion that if you can't beat them, join them.

Play the Act Like a Rude Parisian game.

pearls before swine

Are you addicted to the internet?

Just because I spend 8 hours a day online does not mean I am an addict. Just because half my purchases are online doesn’t mean I’m an addict… and just for the record just because most of my acquaintances are online and I talk to my friends more online than offline does not mean I’m addict. It’s just well…. OK I suppose that spending 8 + hours per day on the internet is a dead giveaway. However, the good news is that I rate a 38 on the addiction scale. According to the Internet Addiction Recovery organization They rate me as following.

20 - 49 points: You are an average on-line user. You may surf the Web a bit too long at times, but you have control over your usage.

HA! In your face, I’m average! Wait… I’m average? Average as in boring? Ah damn! So not only am I average offline, I’m also average online? THAT SUCKS!

Read More

The World's Stupidest Tattoos


#2



A man goes 132-1 at 135 lb weight class in High School. Man decides to get a tattoo to remind him of his feat. Man ends up a gay rape scene on his arm instead.







#6


This could be the worst. We've all slipped and scraped our face. Most people stay out of public to avoid the constant questions of what happened. Only one person in the world wants to keep that look. Who wants to look like Wolverine kicked their ass EVERYDAY. I can't wait to see this one in 30 years.

BERLIN (Reuters) - German police arrested a man for drunk driving after he mistook a police spot check for a breakdown and stopped to help.

Officers inspecting a car by the roadside suspected the 37-year-old passing motorist was under the influence of alcohol when he lurched from his vehicle to offer assistance, police in the northwestern town of Bremen said Friday.

"Obviously his optical assessment of the situation as he drove past was that this was a vehicle breakdown," the police said in a statement.

The man was arrested and banned from driving.

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.

- Voltaire

Social Networks: Second Life - My first 3D virtual life experience.
Game Designing from concept to distribution

When being a game character isn’t enough.

With the cute hipster dreadlock boi standing next to the tattooed hotti with the composed model Goth gurl standing quietly in the background with her transformer and WOW admirer patiently waiting for her attention…. I thought I had stumbled upon a WOW (World of Warcraft) mirror wannabe site with cool graphics.

This isn’t any WOW game… Second Life is being promoted as the next step in better social networking; sort of like a live role playing game based on reality. You play the character of you in a 3D enhanced version where the desrcibtion reads more like Cyber Punk than My Space. While the thought seems uber cool, the fact is that hackers periodically shut down Second Life.

Real-life companies such as Warner Bros, Adidas and even Intel are considering setting up virtual shops to further they’re branding to the hip and forward-thinking, virtual community. However, many long-time and original virtual residents view the arrival of big brands as a threat to the established mom-and-pop entrepreneurs. Annoyed and vigilante residents have set off bombs -- via malicious computer code that destroy virtual buildings or cause the application on your computer to freeze. One of the more humorous technical glitches is when a space is swamped with visitors a bug in the system can make avatars' clothes disappear.

Now before you go rushing off to Second Life signing up in hopes of 90+ visitors… Linden Lab, the company behind the site, recently met with federal authorities to address this cybercrime(s).

Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, says the supporting technology for Second Life is continually being developed in new areas and advancements. "Second Life is improving in resolution and functionality at the rate of Moore's Law."

Rosedale visualizes the future of Second Life as a possible 3D Web browser. With your Second Life avatar character, you would direct your character to walk into a 3D virtual city store such as Amazon or Adidas. There, your character can shop, browse shelves, buy books, and chat over a virtual Starbuck’s Non fat Chai Latte with soy milk. No Starbucks hasn’t signed up… yet. But we all know that they eventually will. I mean there are just so many countries they can build stores in and I don’t belong the un-commercialized jungles of Africa are ready for a Double Grande with a shot of Vanilla.

Second Life, of course, is still a work in progress. None of the companies are spending real money in launching they’re campaigns as they are testing the waters to see how successful their efforts could be. While Second Life definitely looks cool, it's not easy to make any real money selling virtual goods. There just isn’t enough city resident volume and activity. The registered population has passed a million, but only 10,000 people on average are online at any one time.

Big brand companies are looking to Second Life as a new venture in advertising their previous, current and futuristic products as well as possibly connect remote employees to one another and recruit new hires.

Being a former game geek addict and current geek hag, I just had to be one those tattooed hotti / model Goth Gurl hybrids – I signed up.

Here is my step by step registration experience.

1) I get to pick my first name but not my last. They had several last names to choose from – what dos each one mean? Anyone who has made up a few dozen RPG (Role Playing Game) characters knows that the name can be an essential part of the character… So, being a good RPG geek, I looked up a few.

Some of the names in the list you will recognize but most, unless you’re a super trivia retention geek, you won’t be familiar with. Here are a few examples to save you a little time.

Alcott: 1799-1888 American teacher & philosopher
Balhaus: German / Actor
Idziak: Polish / Cinematographers

Mathieson: Different meaning / references – mostly entertainers

Nakamura: Artist

2) Select an Avatar
I was super disappointed that Second Life didn’t list the tattooed Hotti or the composed model Goth gurl. Instead, I reluctantly choose the Hot Topic looking pigtail girl with purple bangs (Harajuku Female). It was her or the anorexic Charlize Theron as Aeon Flux with killer ponytail hair chop sticks (Cyber Goth Female).

Your other choices include

Girl Next Door – Why anyone would ant to play The Girl Next Door is beyond me. {Puke}

City Chic ( American Apparel type guy wit a goatee)

Harajuku Male ( Looks a lot like the American emo boys)

Nightclub Male ( “I’m too sexy for my shirt, too sexy yea”)

3) Real Life information
Name
Country
Password creation
Ect…

4) The Sales Pitch
"To receive free” (NOT FREE) “Linden Dollars to spend on whatever you like in Second Life, please complete the following details. “
Credit Card Information
I chose No Thanks
5) Sales Pitch No 2

"Premium Accounts, starting for as little as $6.00/month, allow you to own land on which you can build, display your creations, entertain or run your own business. Premium account holders recieve a one-time grant of Twelve Hundred Fifty Linden Dollars (L$1250), plus a weekly allowance of L$300.”

$6.00/month, billed annually ($72.00)

No Thanks
Next Screen / Page
“Your Second Life account has been sucessfully created.”
Apparently the virtual city doesn’t have Spell Check, they spelled successfully wrong.
Your Second Life Account: SierraNightTide Zemlja

Next step/Page:
Refer Your Friends!

(Sales Pitch no 3)

Log in to the Second Life community site and use our form to invite your friends to join you in Second Life. To show our appreciation, we'll credit you L$2500 for each one who becomes a Premium.

Download and install the Second Life client

Client? Download?

I really hate downloading anything because I have no idea what the file could include i.e. viruses, spam, little computer Satanic computer demons that mischievously trashes important files or beloved pictures. However, for the time consuming lust of entertainment, I downloaded it… I hope ya all appreciate me.

After download a very WOW looking program starts

Make sure to remember you name because you will be asked for it before loggin in.

Connected
My first impression: Neon Zombies

I’m Red!

I started walking in the very WOW looking scenery and next ting you know I’m yellow? What happen to my weird Harajuku Female? I’m wearing Jeans and no top!

What is this, a virtual nudist resort?

Keep walking…

So I choose the clothing folder and I’m given Gap Clothing… This is NOT something SierraNightTide would wear.

This is just weird…

Some one tries to talk to me through IM and anther person (character) looks like he’s checking out my ass, just like in real life. :) Us gurls just can't seem to get away from these little boys, even in virtual life, sigh

I decide to see what some of my character buttons do.

Fly: I can fly! Look I’m Super Gap Girl!
Friends: No friends - I’m such a Gap Loner, just like in High School, except I was much more of a Durany
Snap Shot: Take a snapshot and send it
Search: Places / People / Things
Map & Inventory: Self Explanatory.

I decide it’s time to check out the rest of Neon Zombie World and head on down to the Main hub.
I get to the main hub and teleport to the city…

Real Virtual City Life

I feel like part of me has been teleported into freaky bazaar movie. Suddenly, my offline boring life seems blissfully beautiful.

Naughty: Some guy tries to hand me his paddle so I take it and unsuccessfully throw at him. All the time thinking, get away from me you neon green Aeon Flux wannabe!

I ummm have a virtual boyfriend

Ahhhh, I have to virtually wash my hair

Hey! Is that the Backstreet Boys, I gotta check them out! See ya

After seeing

• Satan Superman
• 8 year cigarette smoking skateboarder
• Britney Spears in her leather Dominatrix outfit wannabe

...and the usual “can I be your friend” male cruisers, I logged out.

So this is the future of Social Networking? Be scared!

It was just too much for me in one day. People who play World Of Warcraft and or people who love the virtual 3D life concept will love trading in they’re real life for they’re virtual one.

As for me, I’m going to lunch, to eat

• real peanut butter and jelly sandwich
• with real Coffee
• in a real concrete mall shopping center.

Product Developer's creative world

"When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him."
- Thomas Szasz

"Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'ma dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement."
- Charles M. Schulz

Happy New Year!