jr conlin's ink stained banana

Oddly, there's been a lot of new things as of late.

1. i got a new car.
Mind you, i wasn't really planning on it, and it was driven by the old car's computer deciding that it no longer wanted to work quite right. But, considering that i got a helluva lot for trade-in, a bit of bargaining, and some "year end" deals designed to keep the dealer from paying taxes on inventory, i got a new car for probably what it would cost me to repair the old one. (Ok, a bit more, but hey, now i don't have to worry about repairs for six years.)

2. i got a new set of cooking knives.
Granted, i had an 8" chef's knife for around 20 years that is still serving me quite well, but getting a slicing knife and a smaller chef's was an unexpected delight from my parents.

i also got a semi-translucent sweater from them.

3. i'll (be getting) a new phone (updated link to not point at sprint's broken site).
Oddly, i've discovered that having a Treo is nice and all, but not really what i needed. What i need is a high speed, bluetooth capable modem with speaker phone. It's nice to know i can use SSH from my Treo to connect up, but i only did that once and frankly, i usually have a laptop with me. That works better for stuff like that.

(i'll also note that while Mookie's phone does indeed rule, again, it's not quite what i need, and Sprint won't pay me to get it like they are for the phone i'm getting.)

4. i got a new outlook on the media.
Ok, this isn't really "new", as a bit of a confirmation. This morning, on the news, they ran a bit about the 10 least covered stories. They had a guy on from Project Censored and spent the full five minutes with him touching on as many uncovered stories as they could have the gardening and features guy do. That's when i realized the plain obvious.

In a nutshell, there is no conspiracy. There's no effort to censor these important discussions, it's just that the news doesn't know how to make them entertaining enough for people to watch. Brining Jack Hannah and his badger heroes on CNN (No, i'm not kidding) is a pretty easy score when it comes to this sort of thing. This, of course, boggles my mind.

Consider the special effects budget that these shows have to do those amazing fly-by graphics of Branjolina's DNA mix-ups. Obviously, not a nickel needed to be spent discussing things like net neutrality (which could VERY well affect media sites like CNN, Fox, etc.). And besides, it's not like they can do what Ze Frank, or Jon Stewart, or Peter Sagel do in highlighting, you know, important stuff in clever ways.

What i've learned is that i've stopped being a little embarrassed that i don't watch the nightly news or read papers. i haven't done it in over a year and i knew all about the "censored" stories, even the ones that weren't particularly shiny.

There's nothing wrong with getting your information from comedy.

After all, you gotta be smart in order to be a smart-ass*

Up until a few days ago, i really wanted a 4GB iRiver clix.

i mean, what's not to like about it? Huge screen, great audio, intuitive interface, lots of memory, can play audiobooks and runs flashlite so i could create programs to load onto it pretty easily.

Well, turns out, there is quite a bit wrong with it.

First off, i'm not a big fan of proprietary connectors. Excuse me, let me clarify. i hate proprietary connectors. All that they mean is that the company responsible is trying to milk more money out of their player by charging licensing fees to third party vendors. Of course, unless your device is a planet conquering juggernaut, a great many of those potential third party folks just ain't gonna do it.

But to find out that not only does the player have a proprietary connector, but so does the USB cable, that's a bit extreme. Doing a bit of digging around on the iRiver wiki site, i see that the extra pin is used for additional power, ok, no big deal. So i poke around a bit more and discover that it can only be charged from a PC running Windows Media Player 11.

Wait, what the hell?

Mind you, plugging the player into a USB port (like the kind i've placed in both my cars) kicks it into USB mode and stops the player. That's annoying, but i can deal with that. i just don't plug it in while.. well, i'm in the car driving around. Ok, that's beyond annoying, that's just plain stupid, but that's currently beside the point. What this means is that if i'm traveling around with this thing, not only do i need to remember to bring the stupid proprietary cable that i can't buy at the local radio shack, i need to remember to pack a computer that runs WindowsXP and has the latest version of their Media Player installed.

Ok, you know what? Forget everything good i ever said about this device.

This is a device that was created by morons. This is a device that rightfully loses against things like the iPod, Sansa and the Zen. This is a device that has a lot of promise, but should only be given to those you wish ill upon.

i'll note that i have a laptop with WMP11 loaded on it, that i travel around with it. Tossing the cable in would not be a problem. i still think that tying this to a specific version of the media player is asinine because the last player that i had to do that became worthless when Microsoft decided not to support WMP5 anymore. It will happen again (Did someone say Zune?), and that means that soon after i won't be able to use this decharged paperweight.

Suddenly my Zen Microphoto is looking a lot more appealing again. It charges and plays at the same time, has a standard Mini USB connector, works with any version of WMP installed (really wish that it did USB instead), and has a micro drive so that i'll never run out of flashes.

My search for the perfect media player continues…

It's that time of year so here's my list. It's part of my goal to reach near perfection in my predictive score, so there's great hope that all of these have the same outcome.

1. i predict that Godzilla, Rhodan, and Mothra will not only be discovered as quite real creatures living on a previously undiscovered island somewhere off the coast of Montana, but were under the protective mind control of Gerald Ford. Needless to say, we're screwed.
2. Scientists, working on a way to reduce the size of fuel cell based hydrogen batteries will discover a method to detect dark matter which they will report surprisingly tastes like chocolate.
3. At 4:03:32PM EST on April 3rd, the entire population of Georgia, with no external coordination, will simultaneously blink. The event will pass without notice.
4. The San Franscisco Bay Area, will be shaken by a major geological event which will happily result in few disruptions, other than Halftime at UC Berkeley will take on a whole new meaning.
5. The new Presidential Dollar Coins will be as warmly received by the general public as the Sacagaweas, sparred partly by scam artists trading one pile of Jeffersons for a very different set.
6. Swedes will quickly abandon the maple sauna thatch fad for undisclosed reasons. Fad originator and alleged wallet thief, Tony "Whack Job" Battitore remains at large for the remainder of the year.

Expect more later, or provide your own below.

There's an interesting article comparing the internet (specifically the web) to a human brain. It notes that web pages are much like neurons and that the interconnectivity of said pages parallels how brains develop (highly important neurons have many connections while less important neurons are… less well connected. Likewise, a neurons importance can change by how it's connected to). It's an interesting thought exercise.

Of course, one problem with that line of thought is that there's no general guiding force behind this "mental growth". While the "brain" grows, it doesn't actually learn anything, nor is it capable of individual thought. You really can't ask the web anything.

Ok, so you really can't ask your brain anything either. You have to use proper communications channels like your vision, hearing, taste, and touch centers. (i'll add that while each of these are capable of producing similar results, they can often produce wildly different ones and folks generally don't complain.)

So, something like social search should actually be fairly straightforward, right?

Well, no. Unlike that mass of jelly and cooked pasta in your skull, there are literally billions of highly intelligent entities crafting completely arbitrary neurons, like this one. (If this were to happen in your head, that would probably be called "cancer" and you'd not be very happy. Yay! i'm a cancer!)

i suppose there might be certain weighting being done by favoring specific "trusted" sites over less trusted ones (Hmm… seems like that's been done before.) which, like you, would favor certain types of behavior over others, but again, this is contrary to an "unbiased" view would be. Oh, don't give me that. You are too biased. Everyone is. You simply call it "favorite" and base your preferences off of perceived reward.

Thing is, i'm not sure that having a group or individual craft that sort of thought is really the best way to approach the problem. It's like having a child that literally can't think for himself. There's a term for that. What's more, the web never asks questions of you.

Perhaps what is needed is not more hand-crafting of the constant tide of information, but instead the ability for the web to start learning for itself. Perhaps it needs to be able to ask, learn and discover on it's own. Of course, the thought of actually birthing the bastard child of HAL and SkyNet is probably not horribly appealing to many, but i don't really think it's all that far fetched.

Besides, considering the bulk of the net, it'd probably spend most of it's time looking at porn and wondering when that guy in Nigeria will send the $30 Billion. (Morale: Give the net thought, but don't get it a credit card.)

Huh, i forgot to note it.

On the 16th, i've been blogging for four years. During that time, i've been horribly, horribly wrong.

After four years of abject irrelevance and well deserved obscurity, i can only say that this blog exists purely as a function of personal masochism for both myself and those that visit.

The very sad thing is that i fully expect there to be some sort of fetish page about this. "Hot young teens reading really awful blogs LIVE!" featuring poorly lit images of anonymous girls suffering through my rants about peanut butter.

Still to both you and the small horde of enslaved, asian girls currently appearing on a basement webcam somewhere in Dubuque, thank you.