The Island Journal

I am not an alarmist, extremist, or any other negativly charged title ending in “ist”. I do, however, tend to live life by that old adage, “Plan for the worst, hope for the best, and you’ll never be disappointed.” That being said, I would like to share a revelation I have come to that, quite frankly, bothers me. We’re ignoring the robot uprising and considering to much the implications of the zombie apocalypse.

That’s right, I said it… It’s out there now and you can’t unread it.

As a matter of time killing fun, my friends and I tend to consider Zombies. It’s a running joke, really, that we all have plans should the fateful day come when the dead rise to feast on our tasty, tasty brains. We’ve each agreed that if one of us is bitten by a member of the afore mentioned horde, we’ll quickly and painlessly end the suffering of the one who has been bitten. We know for a “fact” that North Dakota, Canada, or possibly northern Colorado in the mountains will be safe at least until a spring thaw. We have all of these plans for dealing with a world full of walking dead, but what about the robots?

We seem to have overlooked the monstrous metal behemoths that will come after us with their laser eyes, pinching claw hands, and a fear of kittens. We’ve forgotten about the pulse rifles they’ll inevitably use to overthrow our government and destroy our way of life. We’ve lost sight of the real and present threat… Robots. I have to admit, though… if they were amicable to the idea, I’d be a collaborator. Heck, many of my friends and colleagues already believe I am a machine of some kind. The honest probability is that they will not keep humans as pets or slaves… what would be the need? Worst case scenario would be that they completely cleans the world of the verminous infection that is the human race.

I’m not being silly here… I don’t mean alien robots. I’m talking terrestrial robots. I’d like to think that alien robots would have better taste and much more important things to do than to exterminate us. No, friends, I’m referring to the home grown terror that is the personal companion robot. We’ve started to build simple ones like “Robosapien” and even more advanced stimulants that are just plain creepy. We’ve got robot nurses that follow patients around with their medication. We’ve got robots that sweep out floors. We’ve even got cars that parallel park themselves, a skill some humans never master. Where will the madness end?

In conclusion, I want you all to remember, when planning for the wost… don’t neglect the robot invasion. Many of the same survival tactics you’ve considered for Z-day will apply to the R-uprising. Be ever vigilant.

Oh, one more thing…. the worst of all possible things is here.

Tags: odd, opinion, robots, technology, zombies
Posted in Informative, rant | Comments Off

I am not usually a big joiner as previously stated, but in this instance I made an exception. Geocaching is like a global scavenger hunt with thousands of participants looking for hidden caches of items others who are playing the game have left. A person connects to Geocaching . Com and looks at a list of caches near them, writes down or downloads the GPS coordinates, and follows the bread crumbs to within 10 to 30 feet of the cache and the the person looks for it. It’s almost like hide and seek on a grand scale, a game I was particularly fond of in my youth.

There are a couple of thoughts that have been swirling in the quivering gray mass betwixt my ears that I thought I’d share with my readership. First off, treasures left behind in a Geocache are usually not treasures at all but what most would term “junk”. I don’t see it that way. When you were a child, I would hazard a bet that you had a small box, possibly tucked neatly under your bed or behind your dresser that held all of those baubles that you held most dear. If someone one were to find your precious stash of meaningful keepsakes, a toy ring, tin whistle, matchbox car, a colorful marble… what would they think? Maybe that they’d stumbled on a box of junk? You know and I know, it’s not junk but wondrous and meaningful items of great significance. Inside a cache, one might find a plastic bug or a toy racecar, possibly a plastic penguin, or a toy soldier. The person who left these items found them to be significant in some way and so that significance follows the item to it’s next owner. The point I’m trying to make is… what is trash and what is treasure? Who decides?

I have decided not to take something from a cache unless I find it meaningful to do so. As I usually won’t part with the things that are meaningful to me (call it greed), I have decided to put something of myself into caches instead. I am on a quest to make a token that will show that I was there and maybe give someone a grin or two. I imagine someone finding what I’ve left and saying, “Hey! I’ve got a Boomchit!” or “Wow, look at this!” and having a joyful experience. I know even if I left a toy car or a plastic insect, someone would find it significant enough to take it and move it along but I would rather more of an impact and really I wouldn’t know if I found it again if it were “my bug” or “my car”. It’s not unique enough for my liking. My friend Sarah uses ninjas… very her and rather unique. My friend Andy has a thing for penguins and I think that’s what he’s going to start leaving. Because of my Internet moniker of “Captain Jones” and my website being the Island On The Web, I thought maybe something pirate-ish. I thought about something with bombs and quill pens because of the other alias of BoomPoet. That’s when I decided to try out using polymer clay to mint my own coins…. trust me it didn’t work. While interesting in theory, it just didn’t work out.

Now I’m on a mission. I’m seeking something that’s uniquely me to leave behind as evidence of my passing. Those who don’t know me might think that I’m putting to much thought into this, but those who do would say it’s a normal level of interest and consideration. Hey, it’s better to think of something pleasant that to stress over things that are not.

Tags: geocaching, technology, travel
Posted in Informative, rant | 1 Comment »

Alright… here it is. Chat Roulette…. The blog-o-sphere is all a buzz with informative posts and opinionated rants regarding this “new” and “innovative” interpersonal nightmare. I have said before that technology was disconnecting people, turning us all into mindless 30-second-attention-span-zombies. As you all may or may not know, I’m not entirely opposed to a Zombie apocalypse in the traditional sense, but this… I digress.

I saw this website on one of the many fluff pieces CNN likes to throw at the breakfast consuming masses and I decided that I would try it… then I decided I wouldn’t. I read some blogs on the subject; some hail the coming of a new “Internet speed dating phenomenon” others simply regard this new viral fad as something akin to having your ego bashed in with a brick. A writer for the New York Times said it was a horrific experience and another blog did a poll, asking it’s readership if they thought it was a great invention or, as previously stated, an interpersonal nightmare which overwhelmingly won the poll. As I said… I haven’t tried it.

I have something of a fragile ego myself and don’t know how well I’d take the mass quantities of rejection as people see my glowing simi-bearded face light up their screen then click “next”. I am, contrary to popular belief, am a compassionate soul so I would have some issues doing the afore mentioned next clicking when someone hideous or a pervert pops up. Hideous perverts need some “love” too right? I would just not want to get hurt or hurt anyone.

For the purposes of making an informed decision, however, I think I’ll give it a whirl. Not to long, maybe a few minutes to see what the hub-bub is all about. I will post again when I have completed the experiment and digested the data. That’s me talk for… “I’ll try to be impartial and not take this to seriously but at the same time detach emotionally and view this whole thing as an experiment as I view most other humanesque interactions.”

Update -

Chat roulette was horrid. I was on for about 10 seconds and in that time I saw dude after dude, a hot girl who immediately hit “Next” and a man’s harry buttocks. I decided to try something else… a picture of two dancing birds with a word ballon that said “Dance <3″. Surprisingly, the response was good. Pretty much all the chat partners stopped and danced for a second before moving on and it made people smile. I guess it’s not all bad, but still it begs the question… What the hell is wrong with humanity that they’d need to reach out like this? Just wondering.

Tags: chat, communication, dating, internet, personals, technology
Posted in Informative, computers | 1 Comment »

I’ve finally done it. I have attained the level of geekdom long denied me. I’m building my own system. Woot! Alright, it’s a little melodramatic, but just think, I’ve been fixing computers for years and the next logical step would be to build one. It’s something I’ve never done. It’s an experiment.

A few years ago, I bought a case (similar to the one on the left, but a little different). It’s beautiful metallic blue aluminum with brushed metal panels on the front covered in clear plexi, three fans including one on the clear panel side, blue neon throughout and expansion slots for days. It’s a thing of beauty and it’s in a box that’s covered in dust. I had always intended on pulling it out and building a system in it and just never got around to it. I recently started buying components for my new system, however; ASRock A780 mATX motherboard expandable to 16 gigs of ram with a gigabit network chipset and 512 onboard graphics and an ATI GPU, AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000 3.1GHz dual-core processor, 4 gigs of ddr2 ram to start, 320gig Western Digital Caviar SATA hard drive on which will be installed Windows XP 64 bit with a lite step shell on one partition and Ubuntu on the other, and a couple of other bells and whistles that will make this puppy soar right out of the box. There is a problem. The power supply in my case is sub-standard now. Garth is “lending” me another case to put the guts of the beast into, but it’s klind of depressing that this beautiful specimen of engineering that I’ve have patiently waiting in it’s dusty box will not be used… for now.

This all leads me to my next point of interest. In my search for interesting cases, I found a blog that spoke of wood. Get your mind out of the gutter people. I speak of the renewable resource that literally grows on trees (I wish that was my joke). Apparently a group of case modders has gone completely eco friendly in case design and have come up with some spectacular cases. It’s enough to make one wish they were a carpenter, or more specifically, a cabinet maker. These are beautiful works of art that can only be truly appreciated sitting out in the open as they glow and hum, not shoved into a hole somewhere in a tiny cubby in your desk or huddled at your feet like their metal and plastic cousins. After seeing these, I started thinking of what I’d want in a wooden case. I’m sure I’d have to add some brass and copper just to make it look all steampunkish or maybe I could get my mom, who does great stained glass, to make some cathedral style windows for the side pannels and build the case as if it were a cathedral or castle. The options are limited only by your imagination.

Tags: case mods, computers, technology, wood
Posted in Informative, computers | Comments Off

It has been my firm belief that technology is separating human beings from the greater community as a whole, regardless of it’s promise to unite us. When I was in college my world was small by today’s comparison. I had friends, I had family, I had all the wonderful interpersonal connections that made life interesting. Along came the Internet with it’s telnet chat and it’s web pages (still mostly text and very little graphics… if any at all), and it’s declaration of connecting everyone, every where. Instead, it made a very large group of moderately intelligent, pasty, twits who did nothing but chat on line and have very little interaction IRL. This was also the source of the abbreviations like IRL meaning “In Real Life”.

Those who couldn’t really get into chatting decided to walk away and go straight for cell phones. Who among us can live without one. Many have turned off the home phone and use exclusively cells for everyday calls. I still own a home line, but recently decided to switch from the phone company for cable Internet instead of DSL and get a VOIP for home use. How dare I? At any rate, cell phones were meant to connect those of us not glued to a computer and they did for a while, and to some extent it’s still comfortable and convenient for some to pick up a cell and call someone to chit chat or for assistance or if you’re riding home on the subway and an axe wielding maniac is chasing you from car to car, or if you’re sitting in a club and your girls friends have all hooked up and left and you’re so drunk that you’re willing to go home with the very next dude who smiles at you and you’ve been crying so hard about your fitness instructor Brad who said you need a few extra hours on the Stairmaster that your mascara is running and… Anyway, you could call someone.

We don’t call anyone anymore though, do we. No, it’s “texting” now. Instead of typing meaningless drivel on the Internet, we type meaningless drivel with our thumbs on tiny keypads while dodging cars driven by other texters in rush hour traffic. Can you imagine, some cities have passed laws to stop people from “texting” while driving? I can’t drink coffee and drive much less type. These typed conversations use the very same, if not more complex, abbreviations that those afore mentioned pasty twits who used to sequester themselves for days while chatting in a MUD used. Not one hot 19 year old would have given the time of day to one of those geeks then, oh but now, it’s “geek chic” because they need help figuring out how to use all the gadgets and widgets in their phones so they can “text” one another. It goes both ways too, chick geeks help their surfer boyfriends figure out how to send and receive video email or dock their MP3 players so don’t look at me like I left someone out of my stereotypical rant.

Speaking of MP3 players, and getting to the point very soon, they too were meant to help us connect through sharing but I see people in Airports a couple times a month who exist in there own little microcosmic, music induced coma worlds and they’re using earbuds to shield them from interaction with other human beings. Not to mention, it’s illegal to share. Let’s look at that, shall we? If it’s illegal to “share”, how are MP3s supposed to connect us? There are some players that won’t let you play anything unlicensed, sharing programs like the early Napster, Lime wire, Bit torrent (which is the bomb) have made criminals of us all. MP3 players, however, are allowing us to fight back. We still share our music. We still experience new bands or rediscover old ones and we still congregate in bedrooms, home offices, around water coolers, in parks, on school playgrounds, and yes… in airports to do these unlawful acts of willful disobedience in the name of unity.

There is a new, and legal, MP3 sharing experience that recently came to my attention. I heard about it on, of all things, a radio. NPR ran a story about Silent Raves, large groups of kids getting together and dancing as though they were at a rave, but each and every one listening to their own music and completely separate from the whole. They’re synchronized events with a definite start and end time. Some are planned in secret and enacted in malls peaceful, bouncing mobs while others are highly publicized and held out in the open air. Some synchronize the playlist so that everyone is listening to the same play list, others have no playlist and resemble undulating masses of people shaped jellyfish. Drugs don’t play a role as they do with so many other secret night time raves in old warehouses or abandoned schools, NO! These are real experiences with real fresh air and real sunlight!

It’s a beautiful thing, really, to know the youth of America, with all the disconnections we fostered in our youth and all the high idealism of our parents influencing us, are actually making a difference and getting to know each other. They’re sharing their music and their time. They’re sharing their knowledge and experiences as they experience them. They’re protesting everything and nothing simultaneously. They are truly connecting and that is what the technology is intended to do. Grab your iPhone, iPod, Creative Zen. Bring your Sansa, your Archos, or your Zune (maybe not). Load your playlists and fight the power. Rage against the machine. Damn the man!

Tags: mp3, rant, silent rave, technology
Posted in Informative, rant | 1 Comment »