Category: Random Thoughts

The general category for posts on this blog.

Facebook wants to turn you inside out.

Random Thoughts

This is a post I started about a month ago and had left sitting in the draft bin, but due to yesterday’s post and topic, I decided to dig it up and polish it…

Most people, unless you’ve grown up entirely in the Internet enabled world, think of “being social” as joining groups.  You play sports.  You have a book club.  You form a tabletop gaming group.  You go to a party.  You sit at a lunch table.  You go to the company picnic.  Your kids play at the same park.  And so on.  Being social involves joining people doing something.

When I first joined Facebook, it was all about joining groups.  Your college, your high school, your jobs both past and present.  Groups still exist on Facebook, but just barely.  When people post things in the groups I belong to it doesn’t show in the feed, in fact it doesn’t show anywhere unless I go look at my list of groups.  Groups are a thing of the past, now everyone are “friends”.

Facebook is all about getting all your “friends” together from every activity and dumping them all into one place.  Of course, people in general don’t really function that way, and it has caused issues for many folks as they have dived into the “social web”.  Work friends and other friends used to be separate groups, and with a lot of work on your part they still can be on Facebook, but by default they are all the same.  Facebook doesn’t want you talking about things in groups privately among your friends, they want you to put everything in your feed where everyone can see it (unless you’ve taken the time to protect your feed and group your friends).  Facebook wants to take your segregated group, integrate them with the whole and put them on a stage, and they want to put ads on the page in the column next to it.

Facebook, Real ID and other such efforts are slowly eroding privacy.  Is this a bad thing?  Not everyone cares, especially younger folks, but many of them haven’t run into an issue where something they said on Facebook or Twitter or some other forum has cost them a job yet.  Maybe they won’t.  Maybe by the time it matters for them, the people doing the hiring and firing won’t care.

I can see the draw, I really can.  I grew up watching Cheers on TV and singing alone with “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name” and the social web feels like that sometimes, it feels like this intimate group of people who you can talk to, who you can trust.  But can you?  Once you’ve racked up over a thousand “friends” on Facebook that includes former coworkers and employers, current ones, old friends from a decade ago, ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends, and all the other random people who’ve come into contact, can you really trust them all with that thought that just ran through your head, down your fingers and spilled out onto your keyboard?  Do you want that random thought to exist on the Internet forever?  I know I actually consider everything I put out there before I hit the publish button here.  I’ve scrapped entire posts because I didn’t feel comfortable with the content, and others I’ve hacked up and removed specifics to keep a level of separation.

What the hell am I getting at?  I don’t know… perhaps I’m just an old man yelling at the kids to get off of his lawn…

Smartphones

Random Thoughts

I’ve been a smartphone user for a few years now.  The funny thing is that about 90% of the features of a smartphone I don’t care about.  Here is the list of things I don’t need my phone to be able to do:

  • Play music/MP3
  • Play video/watch TV
  • Play games
  • GPS navigation
  • Make fart noises
  • Twitter, Facebook and 99% of the Internet

Now, here is a list of all the features a phone needs for me to love it:

  • Make/receive phone calls
  • Text messaging with a full keyboard because I 442833 trying to type with a 12 key phone pad
  • Sync my contacts with other sources like Google or Exchange over the air

That’s it.  Really.  So simple, and yet no one does it.  At least not that 3rd point, unless you get a full blown smartphone and pay $70-$100 a month for service.  Sure, a camera on the phone is nice, but I don’t need it and use it so rarely that I wouldn’t miss it if it were gone.  But its the contact sync that is the deal breaker.  Every non-smartphone I’ve owned could sync, but you have to buy software and connect it to your PC to do it.  Lame.

I could be wrong.  Maybe there is a phone out there that does just what I need and doesn’t require a large monthly payment for service.  But if there is, I haven’t found it yet.

Reading is Fun

Random Thoughts

It is summer, or close enough.  Schools are out.  In some places it just gets too hot to do much of anything.  All good reasons to pick up a book.

Personally, I love reading.  I may not do it as much as I’d like, but I also love video games, TV, movies and a bunch of other things.  Even still, I read at least a chapter a day of whatever book I’m currently working on.  For me, the best part of reading is letting my imagination fill in the blanks, to build the world in full that the author outlines.

Heading off to college in the fall?  Or perhaps you are sending a kid off instead?  The National Association of Scholars recently put out a report analyzing 290 summer reading programs for incoming freshmen.  The links to the report and the list of books from the programs are here.

Of course, those books aren’t for everyone.  Most of them are about broadening the world view of incoming students, and few of them are books many people would pick for fun.  I’ve only read two, maybe three, books on that list.  On the other hand, Amazon has put together their summer reading page which includes lots more popular fare.

For me, I’m reading Boneshaker now and then I’ve got a pile of books, most of them you can find in my library here on the site.  And I’m always open to more.  So, what are you reading this summer?

Zombie Economics

Random Thoughts

You know, it isn’t often you hear the shambling masses of the living dead used in economic theory.  But Nicoholas Colas, ConvergEx chief market strategist, is not afraid to invoke the word zombie.  The best part is that he continues through with the analogy, covering the spread of infection and the inevitable need to close the door on someone outside calling for help surrounded by the undead.  I don’t normally talk politics on this blog, but this particular item leaped out at me (for obvious reasons).

It is a harsh thing to think about, letting the economy of an entire country fail, but I think sometimes we are better off air dropping supplies or tossing them over the wall instead of entangling and dragging everyone down.  There is a point where the financial end of government needs to step away and let charitable and private organizations step in to help the survivors get back up on their own feet.

Finding my ‘Why’

Random Thoughts

Nearly two years ago I had an idea.  A tool to build, a website.  But no matter how much time I spent on it, I never really got anywhere with it.  I wasn’t inspired to finish.  When I first watched yesterday’s video nearly a month ago, it got me thinking about my own project.

Originally, the idea had just been about making money.  I was working a contract job that was running out and all my attempts to find new work were failing.  I had one of those moments where I realized that it was entirely possible to create a job for myself rather than rely on finding one.  Despite the idea I had, which I still think is a good one, I found that I didn’t have the drive to work on it.  The potential for money wasn’t motivation enough.

After watching the video on starting with why, I asked myself, “Why do this?”  I figured, if I couldn’t state why I wanted to do it then there was no point daydreaming about doing it.

I found it.  I know “Why”.  Stay tuned…

Saturday Cinema: THEM!

Random Thoughts

Saturday Cinema will be, every Saturday that I’m able, me picking a movie available for streaming on Netflix, watching it, then talking about it in the comments.  Won’t you join me?

This week I’m going all the way back to 1954 for THEM!

The inhabitants of a small Southwestern town feel the fallout when radiation from bomb tests creates giant, mutant ants that descend on their community. Facing human extermination, a team of scientists scrambles to figure out how to stop “them.” Filled with creepy creatures large and small, this 1954 sci-fi spectacular is one of the most influential horror films of all time — and also captures America’s mood at the dawn of the Atomic Age.

The Littlest Server

Random Thoughts

I have eight computers in my house.  The wife and I each have a “main” machine, identical Dell XPS machines we bought a few years back.  We have a Media PC where we download and watch TV shows (it has 6 analog tuners, which was awesome until Comcast ditched analog and the PC can’t handle 6 digital tuners, but it makes a good media server).  There is a PC in the bedroom (when the last DVD player died we just moved an old PC in there to watch stuff on – bonus, it lets us watch Netflix Instant in bed).  There is an iMac, which barely gets any use at all, but we sometimes drop it in a room that we want to stream music to.  I have a netbook and the wife uses my old laptop for portable computing around the house and out of the house.  And lastly my wife’s old laptop that she lugged to England while she went to university over there about 8 years ago.

As someone who does web development for a living, one thing I’ve always lacked at home was a server.  Sure, I’ve installed the dev environments on my main machine to be able to test things out, but I’ve never had a server that worked like a real server.  Monday I decided to rectify that.  Not wanting to buy a new machine I had to repurpose an existing one.  Obviously, the main machines were out, as was the Media PC, the bedroom PC, the netbook and the laptop the wife uses.  So my options were the iMac or the decade old HP laptop.  The iMac still serves a purpose, and not just as the occasional music streamer, but from a web development standpoint I sometimes use it to see what sites I build look like under other browsers.  I might still turn it into a server one day, for now though I went with the HP laptop.

The HP Pavilion n5150 latop.  This beast had Windows ME installed on it.  Yes, I said Windows ME.  This, above all other reasons, was why it was chosen for the server.  Plus, I like the idea of being able to put the server on a shelf out of the way where it doesn’t take up much space.  My current webhost (Dreamhost, who I am very happy with) uses Debian OS based servers.  As such, I decided that Debian would be my choice as well.  I downloaded the network install ISO, burned a disc, put it in the laptop and booted up.  It took about 2 hours, maybe 3, to finish (the network install puts the base OS on and then downloads everything else).  Clearly, the PIII-600MHz processor, the 256MB RAM and 10GB HD are woefully below the specs of a PC you’d actually want to use these days, but as a little web server it chugs along just fine.  Then I put MySQL and a few other bits on it and it is ready.

I am excited as I move into the next phases of my own little side projects, both the business app that will make me rich and the zombie web games that I’ve always wanted to build.

Drive

Random Thoughts

I’m still chewing on and basking in the glory of the season finale of Lost from last night.  I wanted to post something, but I didn’t want to spend much time on it, so you get this.

Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.