Geekish

All Your Blog Belong To Us

indexIn July, a popular blogger posted an article on a well-read site that announced Blogging was dead – long live the blog. Not the first and not the last article that has/will proclaim the death of blogging. With the cyber atmosphere full of negativity many blogs not in the business to make money, sell, promote, etc. reacted and stopped, yep stated blogging was dead and like many before them just stopped blogging. Personal blogging has been declared dead more than once.
There is the “ugh oh” when bloggers realize that everything they post is out there – and make no mistake about this it is out there FOREVER. Security and privacy issues arise. I have waffled back and forth on this one. It is getting harder and harder to keep the online me from the private physical one becoming connected by the data miners. A personal blog allows me to control what I share or do not. While I can choose what I share on the larger social sites, I cannot stop them from collecting my data and selling it. If I am going to make an arse out of myself, I prefer someone else not making money off my idiocy.
Fifteen years ago, Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems made his notable quote
“You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”
Personal blogs use a journal/diary format BUT they also provide connections. If they were just diaries why have comment system? The end game (purpose?) is to make connections with like-minded people and when comments drop, it can quell ones enthusiasm. In addition, just like in other social groups (friends, family i.e.) feelings can be hurt and trusts broken.
Blogs do not guarantee an instant circle or group of friends. It takes time and effort to write a post. Personally, I am usually LAZY and the harder it gets to type, read the screen, and mentally express my ideas the less apt I am to post. It is tempting to just insta gram it, pinit, or forgo it altogether.
Blog posts do stay around longer. After awhile the importance (to them not you) of a particular conversation on the big social media sites diminishes. A blog post will be found easier for a longer period. You have control over what you can post without the “terms of service” many forget to read.
Going back to the roots of blogging and just posting interesting stuff I have found in cyber space is an option. I will continue in my belief that personal blogs really are not dead. Or I will have to see you from the far side of the moon.
I will end with a video. That inspired the title of this post. One of the earliest Internet memes “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” was about the flawed Japanese translation of the opening dialogue from the Sega game Zero Wing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vfwqvUPIRkg?rel=0

World Real Time

time period globe

time: 70's globeI watch the news, translate tweets, crazy, there is really only one common factor amongst the main players of war and strife right now – many generally dislike us if not hate. I do not wish to share my opinions on the political or religious conflicts going on right now. Maybe just convey the sadness or confusion. I do not know. I am conflicted.
The technological advances have created a new frontier. Social media plays out the details of war and conflict in real time. No immediate censorship – that is, if it gets out into the cyber space it remains. Sure, television stations, print news, and governments can delete them, fire those responsible, but if a tweet, a message board comment, or video hits the new frontier it will always be part of the record.
There are things I typed long ago using an old IBM 286 with a dial up internet connection posted on a PRODIGY board that I can still find. In the new cyber space frontier, what you type/share never disappears. Some of the opinions I held in the 80?s conflict with those I hold now.
Social networks and video sites have also created a great place for propaganda. It takes much investigation to weed through the bull. On the positive side, language translators exist in the new frontier. The happenings around the world in real time. Like any good debate it is easy to find the pro and con postilions of any situation. Then again there is a need to weed through the propaganda and untruths. As History plays out some choose to avoid, some censor, some just go for it and risk seeing or hearing the not so cleaned up, sanitized versions of what is going on around the world.
If I keep this crazy obsession with watching, listening, translating, in an attempt to understand the not so understandable I might end up learning a few new languages.
I bit of info if you choose to watch the following no guts nor blood shown video.

I also embedded it so I could turn off the related videos that can show up at the end as, well they might be disturbing to some. If you wish to watch it larger just use the full screen icon in the lower right. If you open the tube itself no such guarantee.
Slavyansk/Slavyansk, is a city in eastern Ukraine (located within the province of Donetsk) that was a stronghold of pro-Russian militants. Ukraine’s army won the battle for 100,000-strong Slavyansk a few weeks ago.
The song “The Town I Loved So Well” was written by songwriter Phil Coulter about his home town of Derry and the way it was devastated by the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
The Dubliners was an Irish folk band that disbanded in 2012.
Once again I wish to make clear I am not promoting a side here. Everyone has a hometown.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tVg4jR51wLY?rel=0

Video Game Surprise

game controllers consoles

I play games, a lot sometimes. Because I stay indoors during the summer months I read, watch television and play video games. The X box and play station variety. I like open world (games designed where the player can move through a virtual world and decide when or how to complete an objective), first person shooters (played from the first person perspective and well pretty much usually shooting the enemy), games with some historical theme (Assassins Creed Series for example), well, I just like games.
I just finished a bloody FPS (first person shooter) called Wolfenstein the New World Order. Sometimes games will surprise. This game actually had a storyline. Set in WW2 albeit an alternate futuristic version. The war is over Germany won it is 1960. The main character you play as falls in love and through the years, the story develops. None of this is relevant other than to explain why after shooting robots, the enemy soldiers, the main enemy, etc. etc. the ending is rather a surprise. The unexpected, is not that you finished the game or that you have no clear idea if your character is going to live another day in a sequel or if they died in the story it is what plays at the games conclusion during the end credits.

Just after all the game carnage, you finally won the final battle, the end credits and song are unexpectedly sentimental and in total contrast to the game play.
The end: game credits and song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=d6VxDKWd9jA?rel=0
The end song a cover by Melissa Hollick. The song “I Believe” – is originally by Chris Isaak.
Here is the link to the launch trailer of Wolfenstein The New Order. i have taken the http and put it into brakets so that those of you who do not like guns, explosions, bad language etc. don’t have to see it.
{http://} youtu.be/tfnA69q_p-s
just remove the red if you care or dare

Intertwined Reality

intertwined communication photo methods

Muffs blog post today found/had/got/started me thinking about technology and how it alters reality. It is an interesting time we live in. Experiencing what I jokingly call “live” time and “Memorex” time.  Live time, sleeping, cooking, family gatherings, talking to a neighbor. Memorex time, cell phones, twitter, face book, blogs, and surveillance cameras.

In live time, I can maintain some resemblance of privacy. In Memorex time everything and anything is fair game. In live time, I can share a personal medical issue with a trustworthy friend and the chance of my grandniece ever knowing about it is minuscule. Share it in Memorex time and conceivably 40% of the worlds population could know.

When these two realities meet, it gets interesting. I like technology. My interest in computers started in high school and never stopped. My expectation of personal privacy a given. Then the two realities slowly started to intertwine. The Memorex reality has grown exponentially. A new generation out there has never known a world where live time did not include constant Memorex time updates. We now have terms such as In Real Life (IRL) and face time to distinguish Memorex time from live time.

I started making the silly videos and used u toob (yes spelled wrong to deter the web crawlers) to host them. Then the take down notices arrived. One for a “copy righted” song playing in the back ground on a truck radio in a bit of footage and the other musical tune I used in a video that had been on the tube for years all of a sudden became a problem. One more notice and they threatened to take down my site. Seriously?

Then the intersection where the major players face plant and goo gal seem to think that my online Memorex persona needs intertwining with just about anything you can think of. No, you do not need my cell phone numbers, no that g person is not the fb person etc., etc., etc. …

intertwined communication photo methods

The decision to blog on a given day is a big one. If I share X it is almost a given that the new Memorex generation will find it and in many cases use it in the live reality. If some members of my live reality were not arse holes this would be ok. Take the scum living in the townhouses here. If I shared a photo of a new toy here, is it an invitation to be ripped off? If I share something, would that end up read by some family member I have not seen in years?

To me blogging is a thread interwoven in the mix. Bloggers come and go. Some of us choose not to post for periods brief or long. Just a while back, someone that had not blogged for a few years posted an update. It was nice to know they were still about. In this intersection between live and Memorex we all have different expectations.

What are yours?

So ends this ramble.