Fun With WiFi

There is an unsecured wireless network in our apartment complex; it's the free internet that everyone uses. Having recently killed our internet, my roommate and I use the unsescured "linksys" for all of our internetting needs.

Lifehacker discussed some scary wireless network names via this story. The two posts got me thinking of funny/scary names for wireless networks. Here is the list...

c:\virus.exe

rapeU@midnight

WeCanHearUHavingSex

ICanWatchUFroMyPC

c:\d_firewall.exe

w32/kilonce.b.worm

Warbiest_Terminator_v.2.0.exe

unmarked surveillance van

Trojan.Downloader-647

Win32/Nuwar.N@MM!CME-711

botnethasu

IdRathrbphishing

W32.MyDoom@mm

virtualvahjj

These wireless network names are meant to deter others from sapping your wireless bandwidth. Of course, the other option would be to secure your wireless network. Duh. And remember kids: just because you secure your wireless network, doesn't mean you have to settle with the default "linksys" SSID. Be creepy creative.

Organizing A Digital Life

I have a netbook that I consider to be my primary computer. If my apartment were burning to the ground, this netbook is one of the few things that I would grab and shove into my backpack as I scramble away from the searing flames. The netbook contains most (if not all) of the silly little writing projects I'm currently juggling. Devoid of music and pictures, I use this mobile writing machine for note-taking, free-writing, and brain-storming. It's also my primary e-reader. Not in the same vein as a nook or a kindle, but if I'm going to read something electronically, I'll probably read it on this little guy. It's great for blogging and surfing; plus, it has Doom and a GBA emulator installed. All the fun I need right there.

Just as dust builds up on forgotten bookshelves, so does crap collect on this computer; it's time to clean it up and clean it out. Messy.

The same could probably be said for my other computers, but right now I'm just worried about this netbook. The horror stories circulate of crashes and data loss; they've finally scared me into backing up my stuff. Now I need to figure out the best way to do the backing. My instincts tell me external harddrive. And if it's just a matter of copy-pasting every month, I'm cool with that. However, in this day and age of "There's an app for that," I feel like I could hunt down, well...an app for that.

For a small amount of back-up and syncing, I already use Dropbox. This little application killed my use of and dependence upon USB flash drives. I still have one floating around here somewhere, but it's contents are just as messy as my netbook's.

Some interesting options that I've found are SugarSync, Amazon CloudDrive, and Crashplan. Now, to be completely honest, I'm a flickr nut. That network is my home for photographs. The problem is that I take way more pictures than the ones that I post to my free flickr account. What do I do with those "B" images? That's where SugarSync comes in. Dropbox has some of the photo sharing functionality that SugarSync features, but it can't beat SugarSync. The five gigs of space that SugarSync provides (for free) are dedicated to all the crazy, weird, crappy shots that don't make the cut for my flickr page. Occationally, I dig into those gigs for photoshop inspirations of the crazy and weird category.

I'm still very much an iTunes dude; my iPod touch still gets around. Amazon's CloudDrive with it's five free gigs was a bit outside my comfort zone. Then I realized I could buy one album and bump those five free gigs to twenty gigs (for a year). So I jumped, signed up, but still haven't purchases the el cheapo album to qualify for the extra free gigs. I'm hoping for something that I like that's also under three dollars. It hasn't happened yet.

Last is Crashplan. I first read about this guy on Lifehacker; they covered the app in detail, but I had to play with it first. The free features sold me initially, but when I grow up and get a job, I'll shell out the jeffersons for the cloud back-up features. I've no momentary shortage of external media; imagine a nifty mosaic made out of SD and pro duo memory cards. Don't tempt me. Seriously though, I have a big external harddrive that I'm using for now.

Because of the no internet thing, I've been spending much more time with my little netbook (as I carry it to coffee shops, the library, and occasionally campus) and I want to make it a more efficient and safe machine. Being outside or sharing a table with a fellow laptoper has been a nice change to my dark, dank bedroom that serves as the center of my computer prowess.

Hurricane Mary

Death has never been an unsettling thing for me. It's a part of life. A part of living. Sure, it's jarring when it's unexpected, especially when it's a child or a young person shuffling off this mortal coil. But old people? I know and I know they know that their clock is ticking. So when somebody old dies in my family, my grieving process is incredibly short.

Given the spiritual state of my family, I believe that when a loved one has passed on, she has gone to an infinitely better place compared to the broken world in which we live.

The body, the leftover flesh, goes in an expensive box that goes in the ground. The living bury the same decaying organic matter as everything else on this planet. What goes in the ground is not who we are. We are immortal beings; our spirit or our soul or our light leaves a physical body behind that was nothing more than an earth suit.

I don't grieve the loss of a ripped shirt, torn pants, or worn-out socks. Why grieve the loss of an earth suit?

In every death there is a radiant birth as our soul transcends the boundaries of this physical world. Free of its shackles, our light returns to the light.

My Computer Wants More Attention

Oh shit, it's that time again. I can feel the primordial urges swelling up inside me, tearing away at my civil, organized, and laid-back nature. No, it's not a full moon and I'm not transforming into a werewolf or some other shape-shifting beast. It's time to dive back into PC gaming.

It's a vicious cycle; my PC gaming history dates all the way back to Myst and Doom 95. If you were to plot my PC gaming with a fancy graphing calculator or just scribbles on a white board, it would look like your average sinusoidal wave. Complete with crests and troughs; large, wide troughs representing valleys of console gaming and sharp, peak-like crests representing my periodic ascension to WASD greatness.

So, maybe it's not as sequential as I'm imagining it, but there is a clear pattern here: new computer. Our first family computer, my first personal computer, my first laptop (for college). Those are the three peaks, right there. The odd thing about each peak is that I carry games from new machine to new machine. Myst kind of died with Windows 95, but I've installed Doom on every PC of mine that I can. I picked up Diablo 2 and The Sims with my first personal computer. That machine was also where I first played Fallout (such a special place in my heart). The Dell XPS that traveled with me to college was my first high-end gaming machine. Unreal Tournament 2004, Far Cry, Dungeon Siege 1 and 2, and Paraworld spawned from that dorm room desk.



Yes, I said Paraworld. I like my RTS games with dinosaurs. Hell, everything is better with dinosaurs. Take Jurassic Park, for example, if not for the dinosaurs that movie would have sucked. I've added an iMac to that computer collection, but it's not for gaming. That's for all the multimedia editing that I do for work and freelance. I also picked up an Acer netbook sometime in graduate school. Guess what the first program I installed on that baby was? The Doom Collector's Edition. All the Doom you can handle in one neat little package. Then I installed all the crap I needed for class.

So far, there are five PC games to which I'm constantly returning: Doom, Diablo 2, The Sims, Dungeon Siege, and Paraworld. Being able to play these again will be a plus, but it's games like The Old Republic and Diablo 3 that are spurring me to contemplate a new gaming machine. Maybe I'll even build my own PC this time.

A Blog On Writing, How Meta

If you look around on the internet, especially the blogosphere, you can find all sorts of "helpful" posts about how to write a blog, how to make money blogging, or how to improve your blog. I'll just go to Google right now and search. Here's what I found

Crap.
More Crap.

Obviously there were more than this, but I only wanted a couple examples. I could read how-to-blog help posts from now until I'm blue in the face and I don't think I'd find anything helpful (for me). Is it because I'm beyond help? Well, hopefully not, but I'm also more optimistic than that.

Given absolute freedom, I'd rather do what I want and write what I feel. That's how I approach blogging. The internet drills on about framework and structure and content. Titles and take-aways. I say bunk-a-bugga. From five paragraph essays to term paper outlines, we've been force-fed this way to write and it looks as messy as orange barrels and detours in a construction zone along the interstate. Blogs need to defy that pre-fab, cookie-cutter writing mentality in exchange for exploration and creativity.

I first noticed this order versus chaos dichotomy in a creative writing class. It was creative nonfiction. I'm still not sure what that means. Anyway, we used this stupid course management system forum to post our assignments, respond to what we were supposed to be reading, and comment on each other's work. So we would all upload a neat and pristine word document, our creative nonfiction on display, then wait for classmates to respond and critique in the forum comments section. Man, I loved reading the comments; regardless if my work was ripped to shreds or placed on a pedestal. That class's forum comments section was a primordial cesspool for real writing. Raw writing. Some of the craziest shit I've ever read. Maybe I need to wade through some more forums across the internet. Upon entering the blogosphere, I expected to find that raw, untamed wilderness. Sad to say, but the orange barrels are already here.

A Man Unplugged

In an attempt to waylay unsavory habits of borrowing movies, music, and software my household unanimously decided to cut the cord (so to speak) and cancel the internet component of our cable services. Even though I did my best Jeff Winger, I couldn't convince them to kill everything. College football is starting again and they would have none of my just-cancel-the-cable craziness. Apparently they need football at home much more than I need the internet at home. So I lost and won.

Officially I am unplugged; it's a can't-stop-my-hands-from-shaking feeling, like an addict going cold turkey. My brain, suffering from withdraw, started listing all the things I could no longer do without the internet. Team Slayer in Halo Reach, gone. Wait, that means Xbox Live is...gone. And that means the PlayStation Network is also...gone. The shakes come back. Who am I going to lose to in Mortal Kombat? What about all those new features in the next Disgaea game? Screaming now. The lights go out. What have I done? Paying bills online...gone. No more youtube, iTunes, or flickr. All is lost. All is lost.

What have I done? Okay, relax. It's not as bad as I'm making out to sound. The disconnected life does mean that the Xbox and PS3 lose their online multi-player; there will be less idle browsing in flickr, youtube and facebook. Yeah, I'm going to miss this stuff at first, but it won't be a horrible loss. And there's one key word I want everyone to read: TEMPORARY. The plan is to flip the magical internet switch back on at the beginning of September. Think of it as a cache-clearing technodetox.

This is an experiment, in the greatest sense of the word. I want to see if I can do it. Go without the internet at home. I can still read up on things and blog during my mandatory hour lunch break at work. On top of all that, I can use my new phone to check my email and jack into the interwebs (which I won't do too often because I'm not a fan of touch screen interneting). All the bases of necessity are covered and I feel confident I can make it until August 31, 2011 before I call the cable company, half screaming, half crying for them to give us back our internet. I don't know how my roommates will manage, but if worst comes to worst...

...there's always unsecured wireless networks.

Pre-order, Prinny Please

Once again, I find myself falling prey to pre-order swag. The fourth reincarnation of Disgaea releases this September and I'm constantly reminded of the pre-order goodies from NIS America. A special "thank you" goes out to the email spam prinnies polluting may inbox with their Hades-spun advertising. Still. Art books and soundtracks are tempting treasures. Wait, what am I saying, after about a week the Disgaea game music gets annoying; I usually turn the BGM all the way down and grind through the item world to Rush or podcasts. So I'm really just interested in the art book. And where's the Disgaea 4 strategy guide (which is basically an art book with the walkthrough, character/weapon/spell/monster tables, and secrets)? Yeah, I'd rather have one of those.

Tempting though those goodies may be, the one thing that has me salivating about Disgaea 4 are the PlayStation network connectivity options. Every since popping the original Disgaea into my PS2 and delving into the item world, I have wanted to make my own item world maps. In fact, I'm sitting on three designs in a graph paper notebook that will be the first ones I churn out. I even did a geo panel pattern in the carpet of a Sims house. Okay, you get the picture. I really want to design levels in Disgaea 4. But this is just one of the functionalities spanning the PlayStation network, there's also Senator swapping, Pirate customization and battling, and game data comparisons. My Laharl can hit for 999k damage. Oh yeah, my Laharl can hit for more. It's about time we had some Disgaea dickwaving options in real time. I'm tired of all the youtube anyway.

It's exciting to see all these features promoting interaction in the world of Disgaea. I'm a fan of the series (this much should be obvious to you now), but I'm a little upset that it's taken this long to implement the interactivity. Sure, Afternoon of Darkness had the multi-player option, but it was way too little for such a large world as Disgaea's. I envision Little Big Planet style of interaction and cooperation for Disgaea's Netherverse. Call me crazy, but I think co-op levels, multi-army battles, and team-based objectives would open Disgaea up and launch an immersive gameplay experience. Picture a multi-player level riddled with Deathblow, Clone, and Warp geo panels and six blue pulsing base panels, three on each side of the map; a middle no man's land splits the sides, barren, save for geo symbols. Sprites file out of each base panel, turn by turn until the set unit number populates the map. Then the battle ensues, like some psychedelic, six person, spell-casting chess game.

Maybe the prinnies are listening. Maybe I'll get my wish. DLC?