Chawlk

1. Drawar
2. Fenxy
3. Decaflon
4. Two Credits
5. Wriging
6. Loose Suits
7. Chixe
8. Dud3s
9. Wing Colors

 

Touch typing is basically having the entire keyboard memorized, and typing on feel rather than looking down (even if it's for a split second).

I'm a touch-typer with a speed of around 96wpm. Anyone else touch typers?

In case you didn't know, Cartoon Network shows Voltron early in the mornings and I missed it thanks to the new Nintendo DS.

This will remain an esoteric question, if you know what I'm talking about great. If not, check out a full blog entry about it on my site, here here.

I suggest you read it, as it supports the following question:

Why has it taken VALVe three previously failed attempts, and nearly a decade to create a game with one of the simplest online FPS formulas ever?

TFC invariably set into motion the most widely emulated gameplay method for a multiplayer shooter ever. Capture the darn flag without dying. Does it really take 10 years to create something like that? Albeit, graphics and networking for online games have changed, but this is not the first time Valve has balked on releasing a game much longer than promised.

I just got back from WalMart getting a pink DS Lite. It is now 5:30AM EST. And I don't regret it one bit. What's the craziest thing you've done for a video game?

I now have a white and pink one. Now I need to find the black one, which is apparently, quite rare.

Alright, so in response to a recent occasion that involved me waking up at the crack of dawn and picking up a friend, only to have that friend ruin the trip by suggesting terrible shortcuts, changing my radio station, and smoking in my car...I present "The Guide to Riding in Someone Else's Car"

Taking people places can be annoying when you could otherwise make them take their own cars. It’s even more frustrating when five people call ’shotgun’ at once, and then arguments ensue. Therefore, I have created the ultimate guide to riding in someone else’s car.

Calling Shotgun

1. Whosoever wants to ride in the front seat must call shotgun. Shotgun can only be called when both the driver, and the person who wants shotgun are both outside; not underneath a roof. If the driver is outside, and an individual calling shotgun is inside, the inside person is automatically denied shotgun privileges.

2. If two people simultaneously call shotgun, the taller of the two people gets the front seat, the smaller, must ride bitch.

3. In the presence of a female, she automatically gets shotgun.

4. Should the brother or cousin of the driver be present and call shotgun simultaneously with another individual, the brother automatically gets shotgun. This does not apply for brother-in-laws, or anything less than second cousin.

5. If the brother and cousin both call shotgun simultaneously, the brother wins.

6. Parents automatically get shotgun.

7. If ever a discrepancy should occur over who called shotgun first, the driver gets to choose who rides shotgun.

8. He who called shotgun en route to the destination may not call shotgun on the way back unless the return trip occurs two days after.

Hitching a ride

Hitching a ride is defined as riding with a driver when he/she had no intentions of any riders. This can occur when one needs a ride home, as the driver is “on their way”, or if someone needs to be picked up from a friends house. These rules will be enforced.

1. All rules of shotgun apply.

2. Unless the driver specifically asks for directions, the rider(s) will not say “turn here” at any moment, suggest any short-cuts. It is understood that by virtue of the driver’s graciousness to do you a favor, he/she knows what he is doing.

3. The driver has control of the radio. Permission must be asked to touch it, insert a CD. Suggestions are welcome, but no touchy.

4. If the driver is not a smoker, the riders are not smokers. Should the riders have a sudden “nic-fit” they’ll have to deal with it unless the driver permits them to.

5. Do not eat in the driver’s car unless he/she gives permission.

6. Riders, under the clause of ‘hitching’ must provide a minimum of $5 for gas if average citywide gas prices have an average of $1.90(-)/gal. $7 if the average is $2.00(+)/gal.

7. If a rider wants to go to a fast-food restaurant, he must offer to purchase something for the driver, as the driver probably had no intentions of going there in the first place.

8. Should the driver have less than stellar driving habits (like your grandmother, or like Jeff Gordon), at no point will the riders complain about it. They asked for a favor, they best be glad they’re getting it.

9. If the driver is driving someone else’s car as the ‘designated driver’, all of the above rules still apply. They have control of the car, where it goes, how it gets there, and how fast. Period.

I think these things really needed to be said, as I’m tired of patiently taking people places and having them whine, complain, and act like an aggravated child about how I choose to drive my car. Feel free to print this and have people sign it before you take them places.

Apparently, every new social network that comes up is either following the "format/formulae" of the two biggest names out there. MySpace and/or Facebook. This would have to apply for my current network of choice, My.9 from 9Rules. While MySpace caters to pretty much anyone who thinks they know something about HTML, and FaceBook wont let you join up without some arbitrarily difficult processes including hardly ever supporting your particular college (or maybe that was my situation, audible laugh), if you and two other buddies create a social networking site that becomes popular, it is tagged as a descendant of MySpace.

At least, that's what GigaOM says.

I'm sure that in a rhetorical sense, there is a difference between the phrases 'commodity' and 'feature'. I chose the former, GigaOM chose the latter. That, I reserve the right to say is completely irrelevant.

For now.

However, the one synonymous virtue of social networks hold regardless of host, creator, or underlying technologies is the idea of collaboration. Of course, I still don't see anything similar between MySpace and My.9. Sure, you've got friends, you've got messages, but is any social network any different from the master social network, email? If anything, MySpace has followed the format of email. You've got a contacts list, you have the ability to send messages en masse, if someone sends you a message, you can forward that message to other people.

Back to rhetoric. What's the difference between a commodity and a feature? A lot. In a mostly economic sense, commodities are valued for sale, purchase, profit. They're not as easily accessible as entire entities (due to the labor required, I suppose), as opposed to features, which are aspects that make up a whole. Compare it to the phrase all dogs are animals, but not all animals are dogs. Commodities are whole, features make up the whole. Commodities are valued, features if left out, will make consumers go without, while grumbling about it.

So..I'm wanting to say then, that friends lists, mass message queue, and the ability to share your mugshot are features of a social network as a whole; as a commodity. I disagree with you GigaOM. Social networks are not features. Last.FM, the site itself is a social network. It doesn't have many other features that make the social network aspect of the concept of Last.FM stand out as a separate entity. It has tools that continue to turn the gears of features not found elsewhere. So, again, as I did in the last post, I'm going to end this post with math

features + features = commodities
commodities + features = ideas
ideas = collaboration
collaboration = innovation

Good night.

Justin (quite possibly the only person I find a slight bit of intellectual profundity in, and as a result is the only person I enjoy being around in college) and I are probably going to get arrested because of a bar fight. The fight will probably have started when one of us came up with a rather pointless business plan to make lots of money, really fast, with no minimal effort. The entire premise of our now hypothetical endeavor will be borderline pointless, and capitalizes on the most fundamental concept of getting rich quick, common ignorance. A biker will turn around, point out that our plan wont work because we lack a crucial element, capital or startup money. He will apparently have gone to business school, dropped out although making straight-A's after deciding college was too formalistic and uniform to allow free thinking.

This is when I tell him our business will succeed because people are dopes, and he was a dope for going to college to become 'educated' on a concept of which our entire national economy is built: freedom of enterprise. He will punch me in the face, Justin will break a bottle over his head. Two hours later, we will resume our discussion on the deadly business plan, and at some point, one of us will call this "genius".

Amazing how the mind works, because all of this will have been spawned by a sign I read driving to Taco Bell which read "iPod Repair. Cheap! Call Doug".

Understanding that the most work a person could do to an iPod in an attempt to rectify any wrong that has occurred is to press two buttons, this was pure genius. If we look at the premise of humans being complete dopes (as a hole; a person is smart, people are terrified, uncontrollable behemoths of existence), we'll understand why product manuals are the most useless incorporated item packaged with electronics. Thus, the average soccer mom will drop her iPod while getting out of her Ford Winstar and slightly shake up the internal operating system.

At some point, she will see this sign, give Doug a call who will promptly tell her where to bring her iPod, and when to expect it back. She will have her iPod back in three days, although the process in which it is repaired will take less than three minutes (possibly, for the sake of familiar alliteration, twenty three seconds). Doug, being the opportunistic man he is, will replace the music on the iPod with corrupted versions of the songs ensuring himself something we know as 'repeat business'. Thus starting his cycle anew.

It is thus possible that in the future, I will come up with an arbitrarily pointless business plan that most consider trivial, not thought-provoking and rather, bluntly said 'stupid'. However, in the backwoods of reality, there will be some unemployed college student looking at this and calling it pure genius. The simple fact of it is,

technology + capitalism + ignorance = genius