I love Twitter, though I can’t really explain why. It’s interesting to catch people’s thoughts in such short bursts. At the very least, it’s entertaining.
This is an interesting related article.
This post is mostly for myself so I remember to look that over better when I have more time.
This has been sitting in my queue of unfinished entries for a while, but I’ve never quite had the motivation to reassemble all the thoughts involved. Some events in recent days have brought me back to this particular thought process. It’s a bit wordy, and possibly a bit disorganized, but it’s not like I’m being graded so that’s that. I’ve taken notice of late that I haven’t touched this blog in months. Since March 11th, to be exact. Not for lack of things to say, because plenty of things have happened in that time that would have been well worth writing about.
To cut this particular rant a bit shorter than it would otherwise be, the reason I’ve been feeling so avoidant of my own journal is the fact that there is someone who would love to take the opportunity to tell me that I shouldn’t write about my own life online. I should keep the details private and quiet and out of public view, primarily because they feel they’ve been written about here. I do, from time to time, make mention of the other people present in my life. There are a few of them, as there are in most peoples’ lives. I have friends and companions who I know would not mind being written about, and those I know who would, and I refer to them accordingly. It is my responsibility to maintain the anonymity of the people in the stories I choose to share with the world, and I take it seriously.
As a blogger, and a person with an invested interest in communication and technology, I’ve been reading about laws regarding written documents online – blogging in particular. I’ve been putting a lot of thought into blogging lately, and the consequence and ramifications that come with sharing my thoughts with the world. I have been blogging since around the time I was in ninth grade, which would put me at about fourteen or fifteen years old. That’s about seven years of chronicling my life for all the world to see. It’s interesting to look back at these entries now; most of them are no longer available online, but I still have my own personal record of them backed up for my own personal amusement. Regardless; this has been a part of my life for a significant period, when you pause to consider that I’m only twenty-two years old. That’s roughly one-third of my entire life. It amounts to no small volume, but that does tend to be the nature of life.
There are a lot of blogs out there, on just about any topic you can dream up. I read a fair few myself. Some are personal, some are on a specific subject, some are somewhere in between. When I started writing my own blog, I didn’t have a particular goal in mind. My objective was to build some type of platform for my own free expression. If I had something to say, that was the place to do it. While it’s gone through several evolutions, it remains primarily the same. Perhaps my subject matter has changed some, but that’s to be expected with the amount of time that’s passed and the number of years I’ve been working at this.
I’ve often questioned the reality of posting my journal online. Is this really something I want my name attached to? What will people think of me? But then again, if I’ve got something to say, why shouldn’t I exercise my right? I’ve often thought about tightening security on my blog, and putting a bit more limitation on what I write about, but quite honestly, if I’m going to censor myself to that end what’s the point in doing this at all?
So, what’s my deal? Well, getting back to the idea of subject matter, I find personal blogs to be one of my favorite types of blog to read. It’s interesting to learn about different ways that people live, what their values and personalities are, what they hold dear, and what they do with their lives. If you consider it from a literary standpoint, it’s something akin to reading historical memoirs, though the people tend to be as ordinary as myself and their history is written one day at a time. It’s a kind of hybrid between an autobiography, a newspaper opinion column, an editor’s note in your favorite magazine, and a (sometimes heated) public debate. It is one of my ways of learning about the world and better understanding my fellow human beings, and who better to tell the tale than the person who is living the experience?
To this end, this also further defines my own purpose in blogging. Keeping in mind my original goal of building a platform for personal expression and writing, along with the expanse of time I’ve covered here, I feel that I’ve collected a semi-complete personal history of myself from 2001 to the present day. I do it because I want to remember. I do it because I want to share with my friends and with people who might yet become my friends someday down the road. I do it to ask questions and provoke something in myself. I do it because it’s interesting, and because it’s fun. I do it so I have a reason to write something. I do it so I have a reason to code something. I do it because I can.
So am I wrong for wanting to share the joy and the passion with which I live each day of my life? For writing about the things that inspire me, move me to tears, make me think, or simply make me laugh? For putting down my notes, thoughts, and ideas in a place where other people happen to be able to see them? If these actions are so criminal, then I can see why this person has convicted me without trial. When things are written down, they tend to bear a certain kind of truth. Even when those words are fictional, they project reality just closely and briefly enough that we latch on and give in to them for a moment; hence the popularity of many books. When I write down my thoughts and stories about my life, I am encapsulating the truth of what I’ve felt and seen and thought. I may not be anyone’s hero or anyone particularly important in history, but in a way I am writing down my autobiography. What matters to me is that I am writing down what is most significant to myself, and that just happens to be in a place that my friends (and a few other people) can view at their leisure. I could fictionalize, but what would be the point? In any case, I think the person who feels the way he or she happens to feel about me and my blog is simply frightened. Afraid to admit the truth, because to admit the truth would be to admit that I’m right. I’m twenty-two years old, haven’t yet graduated college, haven’t yet “lived,” or seen the real world or really done anything significant, so I can’t possibly be right about something, and yet I am. And for that, I pity this person. That’s right, I feel bad for you.
But in the end, I just can’t give up on this simply because you’re afraid of something. My being right about something doesn’t make you any less human, and I suppose it’s okay to be angry with me. But I refuse to go back in my box and hide as you do, simply because it would please you to watch me feel your own fear so you can tell yourself you were right all along. I’m done pretending that I don’t blog. If this hasn’t made sense to you, that’s okay, it probably wasn’t about you, anyway. This is my journal, and I will use it as I always have.
In late middle school/early high school, I remember using a laptop in class on rare occasions. The district had purchased a set of laptops which were placed on a cart which traveled the school. I can’t remember what we specifically used them for at the time, but I was always disappointed that it wasn’t for anything particularly significant or for any extended period, since they didn’t seem to be very well-maintained. Since then, I’ve found the subject of computers and children (especially in education) fairly interesting. It’s definitely something unavoidable; computers are so mainstream now that it’s almost impossible not to encounter them in some way in life. To assume that children won’t need to learn about them in order to be successful is silly.
I was particularly lucky because my mom was pretty forward-thinking in that respect – going to computer class and computer camp are some of my earliest childhood memories. Well, not earliest, but very early just the same. I got to use the internet in some of its earliest public incarnations, and you can bet I was the only second grader in my school who knew how to handle a 5-1/4″ floppy. Where has this taken me now?
Well, where am I? I’m in college, studying communication design, which is a field where computers are utilized heavily. I work at a job completely unrelated to what I’m studying, because I know how computers work and how to make them work when they stop doing what they should. These are things I’ve picked up through experience, and I still use some of the knowledge I gained in those early lessons. Knowing the difference between ROM and RAM, for example. A huge part of one of my classes last year focused on numbers in binary, which I learned about when I was very young in a game in one of those classes where we flicked flashlights on and off to represent zeroes and ones to spell words.
In short, I think my own experience with computers has helped me to go much further with what I want to do and enjoy doing, as well as given me many more options as to where I can go. I don’t know what other schools were like early on, but I know my own was sadly lacking in this type of education for a very long time. A few classrooms in elementary school were equipped with Apple ]['s. (Yeah, those Apple ]['s.) The teachers were completely unprepared to use these, or to allow students to use them, which was really unfortunate. Although they were a little dated for the time, they were a really good experience in learning the basics for how a computer works – what its parts are, what they do, how it works, etc. Am I lamenting antiquated technology? Okay, maybe, but the jist of my argument is that everyone else could have had just as good a start as I did had the technology been made available to them. My mother had to find classes for me independent of my school as a result. While it was worthwhile, it’s illustrative of the techno-phobia that seemed to exist then.
It seems that the world is finally catching on, at least in my own observation. High schools are suddenly expanding to include new computer labs, and apparently making some attempt to keep up with the rapid turnover that dominates the technology world. By the time I was a junior in high school we’d finally gotten some decent Dells in the labs, but they were just as quickly outpaced by everything else on the market at the time. I wonder how schools stack up these days.
Regardless, the effect on children is something interesting. For a brief period after I graduated high school, I worked as a sort of day-camp counselor, and part of our day involved taking the kids into one of the labs for a while and letting them loose. Some of my colleagues and I constructed various games for this block of time, like Google scavenger hunts. We involved them (all of them – from Pre-K to 6th grade) in the production of a newsletter that they could take home to their parents. It was really interesting to watch them work. They were very interested in how neat and professional the finished product looked and actually took their time perfecting their articles and drawings, whereas at craft time they’d give anything to rush through it so we could get outside faster. I could never get as large a roomful of them to be quiet and well-behaved as I could when we were in the computer lab. Children have an innate curiosity which makes teaching them about technology a logical move.
Anyway, all this ranting was brought to you by a couple of internet finds this evening:
The Laptop Club: unprovoked, a group of children start making their own paper laptops and playing with them after school. To me, this just expresses the same sense of curiosity and interest to learn about technology that I had which I also witnessed in the children I worked with. It’s interesting to look at the types of features the kids draw into their paper computers. It reminds me of all the features we have now; Dashboard Widgets in OSX (or Yahoo Widgets) and Firefox plugins. Customizations are unlimited.
And, you know, I wish I had a “mathbotton.”
OLPC: The One Laptop Per Child project is an interesting one I’ve been following for a while. I absolutely see and agree with the importance of teaching computer skills to children in developing countries, but at the same time I would like to see a similar movement within the United States. It’s not as though we don’t have the money or technology available to us, especially with new developments that appear constantly. What about technology like tablet PCs? I can say with certainty that my own made me a much more organized student in college so far. If only I’d had something like that in high school. I don’t understand why schools aren’t making use of these things which are available to them. Or why companies who produce textbooks and other materials don’t take better advantage of it. In my perfect world, textbooks would exist digitally. Why show in pictures or words what you can better express with video or sound? But that’s just me, I guess.
According to oldcomputers.net, the original Macs had all the signatures of the designers cast into the inside of the case.
I have one of those. I’m sort of tempted to crack it open and see.
I’m not sure if this is a just a PowerPC Mac thing, or a Mac thing in general, but it seems that they do not play nice with USB webcams. Not that I’m a webcam fiend or anything, but I have one, and it’s occasionally fun for taking goofy pictures with. It’s a Logitech Quickcam Chat, the older blue and white version. (The one in the link is not the exact one I have, but it has the same name so I’ll assume it’s an updated version. It’s very similar to mine, though.)
Anyway, I decided that there HAD to be some kind of solution to this since I have Leopard now, and Leopard has Photobooth, and Photobooth is all kinds of ridiculous fun. So I went on a Google hunt. And after much Google hunting, I got it going.
Here’s what I did:
1. Download macam: macam is an independently-created USB webcam driver for OSX. Grab yourself the proper version for your version of OSX and install. It’s easy. After that, open up the macam application and test it out. If it works, great. If not, I have no idea what your setup is and I can’t help you.
2. Download iChatUSBCam: iChatUSBCam is another USB webcam driver for OSX, but this one is specifically for iChat. It’s shareware, and I’m still on the trial. Now, I didn’t do very extensive testing or experimentation here, so I’m not sure if it affected anything other than iChat (which was the problem I was trying to solve since I basically never use iChat anyway) but I know it works for iChat, at the very least.
3. Start Skitch: This one, I can’t help you with. Skitch is still in an invitation-only beta, so do what you have to to get your hands on it. It has a function built in which allows you to capture from your webcam (which is terrific if you have a shiny MacBook) which also works after you install macam/iChatUSBCam.
4. Start Photobooth: Photobooth is OSX’s built-in camera-grabbing application. It works just like those silly photo booths you find in malls – hit a button and in 3 seconds it snaps a picture. From what I have read, Photobooth doesn’t support USB cameras, and initially, I couldn’t get my camera going in Photobooth, but if I start Skitch first, then start Photobooth, then close Skitch, Photobooth magically starts working. I cannot explain why this is since it’s well outside my realm of knowledge (for now), but I know that it works.
Here are the (ridiculous) results:
Someday, when I am a famous Rock Star, this one is going to be my cd cover.
That’s right, I’m suspicious. Suspicious OF YOU.
And after my first cd, this will be the cover for my second cd. Creepy looking. I think it will be like a “Meg Unplugged” album where I wail depressing songs to an acoustic guitar. It’ll sell millions.
No, I absolutely have no plans on becoming an actual Rock Star someday, but it’s kind of fun to think about. I haven’t got a musical bone in my body.
…then again, neither do a lot of actual rock stars.
So now that I’m home and awake and together enough to write about it, here’s what happened on Leopard day!
I met up with a friend and we drove out to the Apple Store to pick up Leopard. We hadn’t really anticipated a large crowd or anything, but when we got there, that’s exactly what we found. There was a pretty good-sized line that wrapped around the outside of the store and around the corner. We went to the end and prepared to wait forever.
But we definitely didn’t wait forever at all – the line moved really quickly, which was great. All the while Apple store employees stopped by to ask if people needed anything, were buying anything besides Leopard, or would like some bottled water. There were chairs set out for people who didn’t want to stand. Very thoughtful, I thought.
We finally got around the corner and could see the entrance, and then we saw that they were handing stuff out to some people. We assumed it was something for Leopard purchasers, but we couldn’t tell what was going on. So we waited. Then we noticed that someone had wandered over to the Dell kiosk across the way and had loaded up the “Mac and PC” commercials on their biggest display. The Dell employees didn’t seem to notice. I was definitely very amused. 
When we got to the head of the line, we had to wait briefly while some of the other people already in the store cleared out. I definitely have to commend them on their crowd control tactics; an extreme difference from an experience I had at Wal-Mart about two years ago. So while we were waiting, we chatted with the guy guarding the door, a young-ish, shaven-headed Apple lackey clad entirely in black, grinning painfully from ear to ear.
“I love seeing the store like this!” He said with barely-contained glee.
The store itself wasn’t crowded, but it was extremely busy. People everywhere, crowds building outside. I couldn’t blame him for his excitement (I was pretty excited, too) but I also don’t think I could have kept up with it all, either. Soon enough, we got inside.
We were met by yet another giddy Applehead who asked us “why we were there today,” in a very leading sort of way.
“Uh, to get Leopard?”
Which was apparently the right answer, as she passed us each our very own Leopard t-shirt. Awesome. Then she directed us to the back of the store, which had been converted into “mission control,” as it were, a real Leopard launch HQ. There we picked up the goods and headed back out.
On the way back to the car, we saw a guy in his car, with an Apple store bag and his Macbook already out and installing. This is serious business, people. Though if I’d had a full battery at the time, I might have considered doing the same.
After that, it was time to pizza it up and install. Install was painless – as an OSX install almost always is. A bit of a longer process than the Tiger install, but ultimately very similar, as it should be. Then a long restart, and Leopard was up and running. Hooray! I had done an upgrade rather than a clean wipe and full install, so all my stuff was still there, and lucky for me, everything still seems to work. There are reports afoot on the internet of botched Adobe CS3 installs, broken Adium, and other horrors, and even Leopard discs that just won’t read at all, but somehow I’ve bypassed them, by some stroke of luck.
Leopard itself so far is very different, but very familiar at the same time. The visual style is much like Tiger, but with a lot more flair. The Finder has changed quite considerably, but it’s still very suggestive of the old style. Before I did the Leopard install, I took a head of screenshots of various elements of the old interface for comparison, so that will be an upcoming post.
Meanwhile, off to see what other new details there are to find!
It seems that the latest version of OSX is lacking in one major way – the ability to open ports manually on the firewall. I helped a friend get around this issue by doing the following, and maybe this will help someone else out because the internet is just great like that:
Open Terminal.
Type the following: (don’t type the bits in italics, that’s just a note for clarification)
sudo ipfw add allow tcp or udp, depending on what you need from A to B
Replace A and B with the starting and ending values of your port, if it’s a range. If it’s not a range (a single port number, say 5500 or something) then you just type “from 5500 to 5500″
Hit enter. It will probably ask you for your administrator password; type it in and hit enter again. Terminal won’t show your password as you type, so type carefully.
If you don’t receive some type of error, then it likely worked. Give it a shot and see what happens. If it doesn’t work, well, that’s not my fault. I really hope Apple comes up with a fix for this, it’s kind of disappointing and ridiculous to have to go through Terminal just for this when it was possible to add ports manually in Tiger.
More on Leopard later, but other than this little flaw, it’s definitely really awesome so far!
I find it really obnoxious when people I am in class with / work with / overhear at school say things like they’re “only here to get a piece of paper.” If that’s all, why even bother? It’s always something said by people I’m quite certain could absorb a few things from class if they actually tried, so I don’t understand why they say things like this. It’s negative, and frustrating, and if you really honestly don’t want to be there that much, then don’t. You ruin the experience for everyone else. It’s like a discussion from one of my classes recently, about why it’s useful to have an understanding of more than just your chosen field; knowledge carries over from field to field, and knowing something about one can make you better at the other. I think we were discussing Peter Behrens, specifically, and so many people had such a difficult time grasping the idea that someone could be a designer as well as an architect, with one set of skills overlapping and benefitting the other. Personally, I see it as being a parallel. Example: Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings are designed so that air, light, and people move through them in a particular way. He set up the building to guide these elements in this way. Graphic design can work in an almost identical way. A designer organizes information in a way that guides the reader through the piece in a very specific way. The work is different, but the ideas are parallel.
Anyway, this has become a digression, and basically, I don’t understand why people waste my time / professors’ time / everyone else’s time with negativity and disinterest when they could at least make an effort. Not that people should just take what information they’re given with no regard for opinon or debate, but class is more interesting when you try, and I’m not an especially talkative person, either.
In other bits, I’ve become sort of fascinated with microblogging lately. I’ve been using Twitter for a while to make the “Where is Meg” updates on my main page, but I just got into the Pownce beta and I really like the look of what it has to offer. I just need to find or make a handful of friends so it is more useful… I have a few invites left, if anyone wants to give it a go. I’d prefer they go to people who would actually use them, but anyway. Social networking is extremely interesting, if a bit strange.
I have become extremely fond of the “Stickies” application in OSX lately. I remember playing with it way back on the Classic and other Old Macs, but having it in color and RIGHT THERE ON MY SCREEN!!! is the best thing ever. Organizationally speaking.
I can leave myself very important notes like this:
Also, I haven’t used the Skitch beta as much as I’d like to be since I got in, but I am slowly finding new ways to abuse it. It really is an excellent little program for taking and playing with little screenshots on the fly. I imagine it would be a lot more fun if I had an iSight (Oh, MacBooks…) but I am quite content with what I can do with it. Which is a lot.
I’m not sure that this is publically viewable, but here’s a link to my “mySkitch,” where all my odd little screenshots and bits live. And I can use it for posting screenshots of my Stickies and everything else. And that is rather awesome. Perhaps I will do a more in-depth review later on. Hm.
I got my new battery from Apple as part of the battery recall replacement thing today.
So now, not only do I not have to worry about the thing spontaneously combusting in my lap anymore, but I have a shiny new battery! Very nice.
