Two Slashes

It’s always been said that there was a purpose involved with studying history.  Movies constantly preach about how you must study the past to move forward, and there are millions of people who dwell on historic fact in hopes that we can learn more about where we came from, and perhaps piece together shards of the map to our destination…whatever that destination is.  And one piece of history nobody can neglect is their own childhood – the only history not taught in schools.

Unfortunately, the majority of people are becoming more and more disconnected from their past, the times before that molded their lives into what they are, and there’s seemingly nothing we can do to stop it.  It’s not helping that evolution seems to be playing its part, as people seem to be jumping right from childhood to adulthood, skipping the memories that could help shape their lives and interests.

Digg was nice enough to remind me of a small part of my past in a roundabout way with the link to this article about the decline and possible extinction of pinball.  It’s saddening enough to realize that people don’t want the real thing anymore; they’re too busy firing up the cheap Microsoft imitation included on their PC, or playing something more recent like Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4.  What’s amusing to me is that these people play their games without a single thought as to what came before, or how they’ve developed into what they’ve become.  Hardly anyone younger than 20 even knows what an NES or Atari is, and you can completely forget about trying to convince them that anything older existed.  Some people might occasionally experience this phenomenon even with people of the proper age, just as I did earlier today what with re-introducing several classmates to the wonderful world of Hover!.  (No, that’s not bad punctuation…the legitimate name is “Hover!”.)

The pinball decline is understandable; the people who used to feed the machines with quarters they earned selling bottles and cans are now the people earning tens of thousands of dollars answering phones and making business deals with each other, and their priorities have changed from high score tables to high-return stocks.  What these people forget, however, is how easily the tables turn at the execution of a simple movement (a la bumping the table or using a flipper, though I could be making a metaphor )…and it might do them well to recall it.  And the machines that were once shrines to hours of fun are now the relics and antiques of yesteryear.  (Side note:  My hand is in those pictures on the first page as I help out repairing an older table…)

The lesson isn’t just relevant to pinball or old games, though.  As I said before, everyone’s always on the fast track, only worrying about where they’re going with no concerns about where they’ve been.  Perhaps it would be worth it to stop, take a second’s pause, and note what you have/see/do.  Then compare it with notes you’ve made, and the notes you will make.  Everyone claims they can improve…but without the records of what you’ve done in the past, how can you improve without a benchmark?  An even better solution would be to “Stay Young“, but without the experiences of their past, how could anyone possibly expect to

This is one of those times where suggestions on how to help yourself might be appropriate, so I might as well fill the gap while I have the chance.  If you really want to review the past (and especially yours in particular), it needs to be documented.  Memories fade, and opinions change as the result of new experiences, therefore a record is the only feasible way of maintaining a non-tainted record of the past as it was.  What I mean by record is completely flexible here.  For the more adventurous, there are plenty of blogging areas, but even keeping a simple word-processing document with some thoughts once in a while would be enough.  If you’re a photographer, take pictures.  If your nickname is Steven Spielberg, go make yourself a short video once in a while.  Even if you keep them to yourself, you’ll notice that the self-reflection (and even just the enabled ability to) is really what people mean when they tell you to “look at where you’ve come from.”

I think I’m getting too intellectual for the late-night hours…that’s enough insomniac-posting for one night for me.

If last week was the ‘Week of Problems’, this week is the ‘Week of New Things.’  And it has good reason to earn such a name, given all of the things going on this week:

(Technically, it’s last Friday, but I think it counts since I’m still having to deal with it…)  I’ve got a new hard drive in my dedicated server (see previous post) after the previous one failed suddenly, and everything seems to be working out so far.  Everything except TechCentric has found its way back up already, and I’m working to get the show back as soon as I can.  (And of course, the obvious side effect is that everything is reinstalled from scratch once again.)

Also, earlier this week, as the result of my newfound photographic habits and my recent camera purchase, I ran out of space on my Picasa account. (As a quick aside, why can we have 6GB+ for e-mail, and just a single gigabyte of photo storage?)  After looking into a couple of different solutions, I ultimately decided that sticking with Picasa was my best choice, and sank $20 into some additional space.  Hopefully I should be set for a while (and hopefully by the time I need to get more, they lower their prices a bit… ).

If you haven’t been keeping track, Canonical has released the latest version of Ubuntu, 8.04 LTS “Hardy Heron”.  This is their next long-term support release, which means that Hardy will get updates for three years on typical desktop installations, and five years for server installations.  This is also the first time I’ve been able to successfully use the automated upgrader without major issues (and a corresponding reinstallation from CD).  Of course, there are a few quirks I’m tending to, but it’s running happily for me on my crapified laptop.

It took a while to arrive, but today also marks the day my Pinnacle PCTV Remote Kit for Vista arrived from Woot.  It performs remarkably better than I anticipated, especially when you consider the one quirk that Pinnacle never did – using it on Windows XP.  Thanks to Paul Alger of Ironclad.net, you too can use it on Windows XP with the implementation of a hacked-up driver.  For those of you freaking out, the install is painless, and the remote is detected as a USB HID device.  The only issue I have is that not all the buttons work (and I’m currently looking for something that can pick them up so that I can remap them).  But nevertheless, it kills the basics of distant (I’d say remote, but that would be clichéd) media control.

Perhaps the most exciting (for me, anyway) of this week so far is my finally giving in and signing up with Twitter.  For those not in the know, Twitter is a service that enables you to share what you’re doing (though the people I’ve seen also tend to post random thoughts or occurances, which is also fun) via the web, SMS, or IM to make sure you’ve got a way to keep your “followers” updated.  It also appears that Twitter’s managed to grow themselves a cult, as there are several third-party applications and resources to make your Twitter experience all the more flexible.

I’ve only been using it a few days, but I’m rather enjoying it.  If you’ve got an account, feel free to follow me (see the sidebar on the homepage).

I hate to be all about me, me, me…but I guess I’ll let it go this once.

As most people probably know, I recently switched to a new dedicated server to host all of the projects I’m associated with, partially as the result of a group decision to ditch the ailing PhreakBox.  Things had been working great…until Friday, that is.

Of all the things that could happen in that particular week, and of any of the seven days in that week, it had to be Friday that the server’s hard drive decided it needed a permanent vacation, along with everything else going on in my life.  That’s right, all of the stored content for Two Slashes, LostCarrier.net, TechCentric, and any of my other projects ended up disappearing forever into the ether.

Being a responsible administrator, and knowing full-well that according to my provider’s AUP statement that they won’t recover data, I’ve got reasonably up-to-date backups (wait, that’s a first, isn’t it?) of everything, so it’s not like there’s more than a few hit statistics missing or anything, but there’s a lot of data to transfer and it’s very time-consuming.  Especially not great timing if you factor in my upcoming finals and all of the homework my professors have been assigning me.

But, like I said, it’s a long and strenuous process.  Most of Friday was spent in e-mail exchanges with the support people at my provider‘s hosting facility, requesting an IPKVM and necessary configuration information and reloading the operating system and essential services, and having the techs look at a few issues as they came up.  I have to commend and offer thanks to them for their hard work and help in getting everything back online (and they didn’t pay me to write that), but there’s still the problem that recovery isn’t a drop-and-go ordeal; I’ve got to double-check that everything restored correctly (so far, so good) and rewrite configurations where necessary.  It’s not what I’d rather be spending my weekend doing.

On a different note, Digg managed to distract me for a few minutes with this morsel:  a gentle prod of current computer security techniques and why they are outdated and now qualify as “insecurity” techniques.  I think it has some merit to it and is at least worth looking over; even if you’ve barely got a shred of intelligent thought about you, a lot of what’s mentioned should be common sense but isn’t for some odd reason (i.e. precedent?).

And no matter what those “security experts” come up with, I don’t think they can hold anything to the owner of this fine automobile I saw parked on the street earlier today.  Sky blue with owner-added (and crappy – notice the mistakes between the top and bottom of the driver’s door) striping (which looks like some sort of black tape, I might add) just screams “I’m the brightest bulb!”, doesn’t it?  I would love to meet the person who parked that contraption there so that I can congratulate them on driving an oxygen-deprived zebra.

EDIT:  And for anyone who wants to complain about LostCarrier’s downtime, go right ahead.  I’m sure Last.fm is having a great time dealing with all of the downtime they’ve been experiencing this weekend as well.

When I first heard about Art Lebedev and the Optimus Maxiumus and Tactus keyboards and Mini-Three keypad a while ago, I thought he and his crew might have had something.  (After all, the closest I think I’ve seen to having a changeable display on a keyboard is the one mounted on the top of my Logitech G15.)  And indeed he must have had something, for people still drool over the blasted things when they’re so expensive and hard to come by. But still, I have to give kudos for the attempt and the originality.  And the speakers that look like a mockup of speakers?  Clever-looking, though from what I saw they seem a little lacking in the Ooomph department.

Then there’s the Upravalator, not so much a keyboard (which is still what it seems to be called by them) as a dynamic palette for things like color swatches.  While still a cool idea (especially with the stand), it’s a little less useful as it only has twelve keys, but requires a full video card to run.  It’s still kind of cool, but a little more limited in the ideas I can think of for it.  But still…a video card and VGA port?  I write it off as a technical difficulty, but hey, I’m not the one who designed it.  There’s probably a reason.

All of the other interesting trinkets and accomplishments aside, I was browsing through the portfolio and found Vilcus.  And that’s where my awe went out the window.  To bereplaced with…(and pardon the pun)…shock.

For those too lazy to read the link, Vilcus is a device designed to aid people in electrocuting themselves.  Yes, it’s designed for the sole purpose of allowing you to plug two fingers into a live electrical socket in the hopes that you can give yourself free electroshock therapy.  (I told you the amusement stopped.)  And if it’s not interesting already, they even through in universal adapters so you can get your therapy session in at your hotel room overseas.  Very convenient.

If it’s not depressing enough that there’s actually a demand for tools that enable people to shock themselves enough that such an esteemed design studio needs to get involved, there’s definitely a smack in the face when you find out that ThinkGeek has the blasted things on sale.  Yes, the one and the same ThinkGeek with the caffeinated soap.

I looked, but I haven’t found any news stories about people using these things to shock someone they know in their sleep or anything, but perhaps something like that just doesn’t get published.  It’s bound to happen sooner or later.  And I love how Lebedev even suggest group sessions using Rozetkus.  It’s just a giant o**** of shocks, sparks, and zings.  (ZING!)

I’m so surprised that I don’t think I can rant anymore…so I’ll leave you with my warning that I don’t recommend you try this.