Category Archives: w/r/t technology

May 2 2012

nostalgic

(1)

I miss vinyl. Not the sound of it, though The Beatles don’t sound quite right without the vinyl scratch. I miss spending a few hours with dad’s stereo listening to records backwards for hidden messages. It’s not the messages I miss; it’s the time it took to find them. These days I’d just look it up on the internet and go to just that spot.

I also miss vinyl for the artwork. Some of the album covers blew my mind(2) and I really miss getting lost in the artwork whilst listening to the album. Yes, my iPhone displays the artwork, but, well, size does matter sometimes.

I miss hooking my stereo up to the cable system in such a way that let me use about 15 – 20 miles of cable as my antenna. I would get FM stations from like Virginia. It was better than satellite radio because I figured it out for myself and because the DJs had cool accents and talked about places I’d never heard of.

I miss buying a new album at a store and going home to listen to it all in one sitting. I miss going through my friends’ dads’ record collection, discovering great bands and songs all afternoon. Now there are recommendation engines and Like buttons.

I miss how my brother and I would sometimes take one of Dad’s 45s and keep it in our room and listen to it over and over and over and over.(3) I miss how we would watch the same movie on VHS over and over every morning before school, stopping it when it was time to go out to the bus and picking up at that point the next day.(4) We ruined a couple of tapes doing this.

I miss family-owned radio stations that would play some weeeeeird stuff after about 2PM. The first time I ever honestly suspected someone was high was when I listened to some local station’s DJ as he went on and on about some band at 3AM. You’d never hear that today.

I miss the inclination to tinker. These days, security is always a top concern. And while I appreciate that, I also miss figuring out what else a device can do.(5)

I miss driving around to figure out who else’s garage door a given garage door opener would open. Which sounds really boring, I know. But drive by someone’s house about once every ten minutes and open or close their garage door each time and you’ll see in fairly short order how entertaining it really can be.

I miss picking up the phone to discover my little sister talking on the other phone in the house. I miss that if you picked up the receiver very slowly no one knew you were on the line. I miss dialing our own number and watching her or my brother pick up the phone. I miss the sound of rotary phones. I miss looking someone up in the phone book. I miss knowing all my friends’ numbers.

I miss how my friends would call me up just to see if I wanted to ride places with them. Burger King was one. Sometimes the lumber yard or to see a girl. Any event was an excuse for inclusion. Today everyone listens to headphones all the time, less, I suspect, for the music and more for the exclusion.

I miss the garage band my brother and I had going for a while. We were awful and didn’t even have a singer. But we had a lot of fun doing it. And I definitely miss jamming with my brother.(6)

I miss maps. I miss planning out a trip, which roads you’d take. I miss Mom asking when we’d get to this or that place and I was always able to figure that out fairly well. I would just pour over maps as a kid and have an almost preternatural understanding of the interstate system because of it.

And, lastly, I miss sitting in the back of a car with nothing to do. I couldn’t read in a car without getting sick, and we didn’t have GameBoys and certainly not small televisions in the car. At best we had a deck of cards. This is why our family are about the most hardcore Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game players out there.(7) I miss having nothing to do but doing so very much.

  1. If you’re reading this and you’re one of my parents, please let’s assume that the statute of limitations has run out on any and all offenses, real or perceived, contained herein.
  2. And in one case flat-out terrified me.
  3. We did this with both Billy Joel’s “My Life” and Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight.”
  4. We did this with Teen Wolf and at least one of the Star Wars movies.
  5. Without the arcana necessary to be a hacker.
  6. Who’s better at drums than I’ll ever be at guitar but who played so loudly no one could tell I couldn’t keep up.
  7. Dad one time connected Mr. Bacon with Charlie Chaplin in fewer than six steps. If we weren’t in a car at the time, we all would have bowed down to the Master.
Mar 14 2012

britannica

Mashable is reporting today that Encyclopedia Britannica will be going digital-only, making the last-ever print-edition available for a cool $1,395. This might, of course, explain why the publisher isn’t making money on the print edition anymore. In a world of Google and Wikipedia, who’s going to pay that much to be able to look stuff up? Instead, they’ll be focusing on the Britannica apps.

I’m not one to hesitate when it comes to technology nor when it comes to replacing old ways of doing things. When the new ways are cheaper, more expansive, and can bring information to more people, I am especially all for it. Nevertheless, I find myself saddened by this turn.

My parents bought a set of encyclopedias when I was young. There was a wooden shelf in our living room that held them all. They looked so official with their maroon binding and gold inlays. I often couldn’t resist pulling one from the shelf and leafing through it. Or I’d just open to a random page and learn something new.

In other words, I loved the encyclopedias not because they helped me learn what I wanted to know but because they helped me explore what I didn’t know.

And this, in my opinion, is something the internet simply isn’t good at. I can’t possibly do a Google search for something I don’t know that I don’t know. StumbleUpon purports to help with this sort of thing, but it still wants you to input what you like so the results aren’t strictly random. And, let’s be honest, 90% of what you find using StumbleUpon is just a variation on the stuff you’ve already found using StumbleUpon.

I see this trend in the library as well. People used to come to the library armed with one call number and walk out with maybe six books. They took part in something I call serendipitous searching, which is finding something useful beyond what you meant to find. Nowadays, though, people hop on the online catalog and simply request the item they want. My students and I pull the item and the patron comes to desk and picks up the one item they wanted to get.

Like strictly-online resources, I don’t know that this inhibits research. I have no hard data or statistics. But it does seem to limit exploration, even adventure. That’s really what those encyclopedias were for me, a way to slip out of the living room and into the waters of the Amazon or between the quarks of an atom or even fly among the varying beliefs of the world’s religions. I learned so much that I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

The death of a printed Encyclopedia Britannica is another step away from the less-traveled roads. While I love the idea of a great Britannica app, I would miss flipping to a random page and discovering something completely new about the world. I would miss finding a lot of things without searching for anything at all.

Feb 22 2012

nomophobia: why I’m tired of hearing about it

Yesterday I came across an article on Mashable about nomophobia and I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard of it nor was it the first time I rolled my eyes. For those of you who aren’t well-versed in made-up words, nomophobia(1) is the fear of other losing your mobile phone or being out of mobile-phone contact.

Let’s forget for a minute how ridiculous this is, that some people genuinely feel their lives have come to a halt because they have forgotten their phones. Of all the more ridiculous aspects of modern culture, such as that both Renee Zellweger and Reese Witherspoon have won Oscars, this one takes the proverbial cake. It’s on par having nothing to do because your television is broken or not being able to walk because you can’t find your shoes. It’s that ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPhone just as much as anyone, but the few times I’ve been without it it wasn’t like the orchestra started playing over my acceptance speech.

But I don’t want to talk about the phenomenon.(2) I want to talk about the word itself.

According to Wikipedia and about half-a-dozen other equally unreliable sources from the internet,(3) nomophobia combines the word phobia (meaning ‘fear of’) with nomo, which is a portmanteau of no mobile. I don’t have a problem with portmanteaus in general. There are some really great words created by combining two other words, such as squish, squawk, motel, escalator, gerrymander, pixel, emoticon, and best of all, brunch.(4)

The problem is that, unlike all of those examples, nomo is already a root-word. The Greeks gave us the word nomos, which means the principles that govern human conduct, esp. as defined by culture or custom.(5) The root-word nomo is used to form words relating to laws or legislation. Hence we have nomocracy, a system of government based on a legal code. We have nomogenesis, a theory which regards evolutionary change as resulting from laws inherent in the nature of living organisms, rather than from external factors. There are nomism and nomotheism, which are both Christian approaches that bind everything – even God – to the strict adherence of universal laws.

So if anything, nomophobia would be a fear of law, a fear of strict code, or perhaps a fear of strict enforcement of the law. It would not be a fear of losing one’s mobile phone.

I’m not against making up words. I’m against making up words that make zero sense given the history of our language. Perhaps a better word would be perdiphonophobia, which is not only somewhat more etymologically accurate but also nicely hints at the purported perdition these without-their-phones people seem to be caught in. And it also has the advantage of not tromping over root-words that already exist.

I know this is a losing battle. I know that the seven people who read this blog(6) won’t be enough to actually change this nonsense word nomophobia. And frankly it’d probably be better that we rail against the phenomenon itself. But for right now I’m sticking with perdiphonophobia. If the two worst actresses of our time can win Academy Awards, there’s a least a chance that one man with one blog can eradicate a stupid word.

  1. Which autocorrect keeps changing to homophobia.
  2. Other than to talk about how ridiculous it is, obviously.
  3. My thinking here is that the unlikely probability of six sources having the same wrong information increases the probability that the information is correct. This thinking, by the way, is probably why I don’t work at the reference desk.
  4. Kinda wish staycation would just go, though.
  5. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, my friend and companion for many years now.
  6. Readership’s up a bit!
Jan 25 2012

busy busy busy

Sorry I haven’t the time to write much of a blog post today. After writing about Google+ and social search the other day, I started systemically removing everything I’ve ever posted to anything owned by Google. And it’s a good thing. Yesterday The Washington Post wrote about Google’s new terms of service, that Google plans to follow a user’s activities across all of the platforms it operates, such as Gmail and YouTube.

Apparently Google is facing some backlash over this. And while it’s tempting to throw my opinion into the mix…well, I just did that. What I had to say about Google+ and social search applies in much of the same way as Google combining my data from Docs and Picasa.

So the reason I don’t have time for much of a blog post is simply that I’m busy deleting anything I can find that I ever posted to any Google-owned site. Over the last six years we’ve developed an extensive partnership. But that ends today.

Goodbye Google. Good luck with that whole don’t be evil thing.

Jan 3 2012

paranoia and the netflix curiosity

Over the past six months or so, Netflix has demonstrated beyond a shred of doubt that they can screw up on a macro scale. Need proof? Check out the stock-price nose-dive since July, 1:

Only the average length of celebrity weddings falls more steeply than that.

Of course, what else should they expect when they raise prices by 60%? That’s what they announced towards the beginning of July or, as it’s known around the Netflix offices these days, The Halcyon Days of Yore. That, coupled with a horrendous decision called Quikster, caused subscribers to jump ship faster than all the rich people on the Titanic.

Despite having been a longtime subscriber, I would have been one of the first to leave. Any price increase of more than 15% is more about profit than inflation, and an increase of 60% simply shows how greedy Netflix has become. But Mom had given me and Ashley the gift of Netflix last Christmas – a yearlong streaming-and-one-DVD plan. So I didn’t have to pay that drastic difference.(1) If I had I’d have dropped them quicker than a Kardashian.(2)

Today I learned that Netflix can screw up on a micro scale as well. Or at least a seemingly micro scale. And now I want to drop them even though Mom gave us another gift subscription. Or, more accurately, because of how they handled Mom’s gift subscription.

Back in December, the day after we had our family Christmas gathering, I hopped on Netflix with the little certificate Mom had given me. In the box marked ‘Redeem’ I entered the little code and…nothing. Some text showed up in red asking me to enter a gift code if I had one. So I tried again. And again. And again. With the dashes. Without the dashes. Caps-lock on. Caps-lock off.

Nothing worked. Netflix behaved as though I’d entered a bad code. So I let it go for the day. The next day I got the same results. I was like that I time I thought that there’s just no way that show New Girl sucks as much as I thought it did…but then learned that it did – no passage of time changed the fact that Netflix was sucking at redeeming Mom’s gift.

Last week I called someone at Netflix to help me work this out. She verified that the code was valid, but neither her nor her supervisor could figure out why it couldn’t be redeemed. Nor could they just redeem it for me, which I’d have thought a logical solution, but they behaved as though I suggested they coat their heads in honey and walk under a bee’s nest. The best they could do was suggest that I wait until my current gift ended and try on that day.

That was yesterday. It still didn’t work.

This morning, already in something of a grumpy mood, I figured what the hell and tried again. This time it worked just fine, like there had never been a problem. Like the big-bad wolf who hadn’t just eaten my grandmother.

But there was a catch. Since my gift subscription ended yesterday, they are now charging me for the month of January and my gift subscription will start in February. In other words, Netflix just made money by refusing to accept my valid gift-code and then telling me to wait until my current gift ended. This doesn’t seem like a big deal, but you have to wonder how many subscribers they pull these kinds of shenanigans with and how often.

Look at it like this: Netflix has around 23 million U.S. subscribers. Even if they pull this trick with 1% of that subscriber-base, they’d make more than $1.8 million. And that assumes that each of that 1% avail themselves of the streaming-only plan. In reality the amount could be much, much more.

I realize this is a bit paranoid, but it’s not hard to imagine a company in relatively dire financial straits – especially one whose aforementioned straits are the direct result of them screwing over customers – pulling this kind of trick. I really hope they’re not, but the whole thing was suspicious, how the code wouldn’t work, how they told me just to wait, how they couldn’t just redeem the code, and then how it magically worked…for the following month.

I’d like to think they wouldn’t treat their customers this way, but their record of late suggests they care more about money than about subscribers.

  1. And they continued to honor Mom’s gift even though by their new price she paid far less than what it would have cost. They weren’t going to at first, but right around the time Apple settled an iTunes-gift-card lawsuit, Netflix had a change of heart.
  2. An officially recognized unit of time equaling 72 days.
Dec 26 2011

my transition is now complete…

No, not to the Dark Side…though that would be fun.

You’ve met Cooper:

You’ve met Amie:

Now meet Dave:

I have wanted a Mac for so long that this really is something of a momentous occasion. The recent Samsung ad pokes fun at creative people being somewhat snooty about needing Apple devices,(1) but here’s what I know: if you go to almost any store or website and enquire about recording music on a computer, almost everyone will tell you that you need to start by purchasing a Mac. I know this from personal experience.

And it’s not just a software thing. Everyone I know who’s tried to use a Windows machine to record – no matter which software they’ve used – has either devised wildly complex workarounds for basic audio-interface problems(2) or has simply given up.

I can’t speak for all creative people, but personally I haven’t wanted a Mac because I’m creative; I’ve wanted a Mac because they actually work, which frees my time to focus on creating.

I am no longer a PC. I am part of a happy Mac family.

Now I’m going to go make stuff. Or apply at a Starbucks.

  1. Let me just jump in here and say that Ashley and I both have owned a couple of different Samsung smartphones and they are turds. Big honking turds. This ad, in my opinion, is an acquiescence to Apple. Samsung is effectively admitting that they cannot produce a better phone and because of that have decided that their best angle is to attack Apple’s fans.
  2. Read: lag.
Dec 21 2011

gamer for the holidays

I’ve always enjoyed video games. Mostly I think I like both how they tell stories in such an immersive way, immersive in the sense that in no other medium am I literally in control of what does or doesn’t happen. I also enjoy that playing a video game is different from letting your brain die from television. Games – most games anyway, or at least the kind I tend to play – engage the brain in various ways and it feels less like I’m shutting down than I feel after about two episodes of New Girl(1) or just about any show.

The problem is that I’m a completist. When I find an author I love, I read all of his or her books. In order. I never watch just one Star Wars flick; I have to watch all six. I have never warped any level ever in any Mario game. If there’s a footnote, I read it.  I don’t just fart. I fart, pick my nose and scratch my balls all at once. Just as a few examples.

Video games offer a lot to be completed, especially the types of games that catch my attention. My sister’s fiancée(2) seems personally offended that I won’t play Skyrim, no matter how much I explain to him that I can’t play that kind of game. It is literally meant never to end – infinite side-quests! - and I just can’t roll like that. If I can’t ever actually finish the entire game, I’d rather not start. No offense to family members.(3)

All this means is that I generally don’t have a lot of time to play video games. But, perversely, that doesn’t stop me from buying games.

My favorite games are The Legend of Zelda franchise. Each game has a huge world to explore, treasures and heart-pieces to find, and side-quests galore – not to mention that Link is the best lawn-mower this side of International Harvester and I simply cannot resist using the awesome weapon that is the Master Sword to cut down weeds and trees in the hopes of finding a few more rupees. Even elvish folklore heroes gots to get paid.

But it takes me a really, really long time to play a Zelda game. I feel like an Ent: It takes a long time to play a video game, and I never play a video game unless it takes a long time to play.(4)  Any Zelda game takes me a few months to play, at least. I’ve been playing Majora’s Mask off-and-on for almost a year now.

Starting Saturday, I will be off work for ten days. I’ve decided to take  little break from reading – which is a weird thing for me to do – and instead finally get to this pile of awesomeness.

Zelda games

I already know there’s no way I’m going to get through all of these games in 10 days. But the thought of doing little else during that time is too tempting not to try. Like I said, I’m a completist. I might as well try being completely lazy, right?(5)

  1. Why the hell does everyone like this show? I see celebs tweet to Zooey Deschanel that she’s so amazing in this show. If I were a celebrity and I knew Zooey I’d tweet that I’m sorry prostitution didn’t work out and she had to take this gig.
  2. Unsure whether or not calling him my brother-in-law is a bit cart-before-the-horse here or not. Plus using the word fiancée gives me the chance to use that grave accent on the first e there. That’s always fun.
  3. He hasn’t married into it yet, but I consider him family, grave accents be damned.
  4. I figure it’s totally fine to mention both Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings in the same post if that post is about video games. I’ll see if I can work in a Dr. Who reference just to round things out.
  5. Couldn’t quite make that Dr. Who reference work in an honest and non-ham-handed way. I feel like I’m letting you down, but I’d feel like I were letting you down more if I’d have gone for the half-assed reference.