Who is more Nerdy? IT Staff or Accountants?

Hey yall!

This article is just for fun... gits and shiggles if you know what I mean.

But anywho, seriously... who is nerdier?

IT Staff or Accountants?

Well, its such a tricky question...

You see IT staff work with computers... so in theory they should be pretty nerdy right?

But accountants work with numbers constantly, and they do work ON computers... and since accountants are pretty boring at the office, ye gotta figure they are anything but boring in their private lives, right?

You know, Mr Tweed at work... goes home and he becomes Super Toy Railroad Construction Man!

The same thing with the IT guys... sure they like their computers and gadgets, but what happens when they go home? Dungeons and Dragons Online? Do they invite friends over and play Magic the Gathering? Do they watch the latest episodes of Big Bang Theory repeatedly (like I sometimes do...)?

Or do they go to the archery range? (Seriously, a whole lotta of IT guys at the archery range... its like golf for nerds. Note: I have yet to meet an accountant at the archery range however.)

The point I am trying to make is that accountants and IT staff don't sit at home in their sunrooms reading Agatha Christie novels... (Agatha Christie to me is the epitome of boredom.)

And then again they're not exactly jumping and down to go play basketball, baseball, hockey on the Rideau Canal when its iced over and slapshot a puck through some Ottawa windows... although frankly, hitting hockey pucks or baseball balls in the direction of 24 Sussex does sound quite entertaining.

Well... how about we let the INTERNET decide which is nerdier... lets pick two companies, one which does IT staffing Toronto and the other with Toronto accountants. I say Toronto because at least then we narrow the field for local bias. ie. Cleveland accountants might be more boring than Las Vegas accountants, for obvious reasons.

Next we go to their websites and see which website looks nerdier.

The accountants apparently like row boats, or in this case sculling.

The IT staffers apparently like to shake hands and sit around drinking coffee, occasionally stretching their muscles judging by the one girl flexing.

Next we do a Google image search of their domain names:

Accountants

VS.

IT Staff

Difficult to say which looks nerdier.

Post your vote in the comments section!

Rule 34 and the Rules of the Internet

TECHNOLOGY - Rule 34 - If it can be imagined, somebody has turned it into porn. See the image further below for the full "Rules of the Internet". Nerd culture... its kind of pathetic and depraved at times.

Cyborg Super Hearing

TECHNOLOGY - Ever heard of cyborgian theory? Its basically the idea that humans are becoming more and more like cyborgs.

We use glasses, contacts, pagers, cellphones, instant messages and we feel... incomplete when we don't have access to our email, phone, etc. for long periods of time.

We get so used to checking our messages on our PDA or BlackBerry that when we CAN'T check it we get physically and emotionally upset about it.

But there are other devices out there that make us more and more like cyborgs... such as heart pacemakers and hearing aids. Which brings me to the Loud and Clear hearing aid... which they are marketing to regular people who have no hearing problems.

I admit the ad above is annoying, but the sheer idea that they're basically advertising cyborg-like super hearing, well, I can't think of anything more nerdish than that. I can't help but start thinking of Data from Star Trek: TNG, Seven-of-Nine from Star Trek: Voyager, or Superman with his super hearing... true, only Superman has super hearing, but there's no reason why the previous two couldn't have been equipped with superior hearing.

No word yet when they finally figure out how our sense of smell works and create Wolverine-like super smell.

So does this mean soldiers in the future will be equipped with super hearing and other devices to enhance their senses? Maybe so.

Sub-Atomic Theory

TECHNOLOGY - Garrett Lisi explains geometry and sub-atomic theory. Nice.

RemakeoRama #1 The Films of John Carpenter

Hey everyone. Just go done reading a few things and I figured I'd do the first part in a "whenever the hell I want to write one" series called Remakeorama.

Hollywood does not trust new ideas. Always leery because the bottom line is money.

So in not wanting to trust new ideas, Hollywood is a fertile breeding ground for the remake. And right now one of the guys who get's remade a lot is filmmaker, John Carpenter.

Full disclosure: I love John Carpenter's flicks. The great, the good and the bad. In fact the only film of Carpenter's I'm not a particular fan of is Memoirs of an Invisible Man but that being said I will try and give the remakes a fair shake.

For instance, I didn't mind the remake of Assault on Precinct 13. Since the first one is essentially a remake of Rio Bravo it's kind of hard to poke holes. The Fog however sucked. The original isn't a masterpiece but it's decent, this thing with all it's bells and whistles of cg and other such technology missed what made the original half decent which was a heart of sorts.

There was life in the original Fog characters, like the priest. It was a character that had depth. The remake was filled with people from the WB.

So it scares me when my favorites Halloween, Escape from New York and The Thing are lined up next.

Halloween is the only one definitely in production at this moment in time (well probably done production. It currently has an August release date) and it is in the hand of Mr. Rob Zombie.

Now Zombie I'm willing to give a shot. House of 1000 Corpses is not great by any means (but in it's defence, how could it ever live up to like three years of hype of the "horror film studios were scared to release"). Devil's rejects however I thought was awesome. Great vengeance/horror film and it also showed Zombie's growth of a director.

Zombie is a huge fan of the original. Now that's a tricky line to tow. How do you remake a movie you love without doing a shot by shot remake (Psycho anyone?) and still make a movie that is yours and is good?

Here's even a very brief side by side compariosn for you to consider.

Halloween 78


Now Halloween 07

The New Bat Suit

Not much to say other then it's a pic of the new Bat suit. A little more tech looking then the one in Begins but hopefully it fits. Taken from Entertainment Weekly and aintitcool.

(revised, I found this better looking version of the pic)

Apartment of the future

Momus and his blog readers put together an amusing tongue-in-cheek look at a new year in Technology with his article "Touring the Home of the Future" over at Wired.

But how about touring the apartment of the now? I've been mulling this over for a while, and considering this age of 'convenient entertainment' that we live in, we can have most of that entertainment- for free (or cheap) and completely contained on a hard drive.

Of course, as a person that cherishes analog media, I would never get rid of my cassette tapes or battered paperbacks (or unique hard-covers). But that has a lot to do with how I was raised, and my own personal experiences.

If I were more bent on saving space (and really, I should be) then I would opt to have all of my media paperless, plastic-less, and all contained on a single storage medium.

Currently, with Flash memory at its finest, you can fit about 10 gigabytes into something smaller than the size of a deck of cards. Movies and videos are watchable even at a smallish resolution (YouTube has proven that). You can store a whole album's worth of songs in about 50 megabytes, and the average Microsoft Reader version of a novel takes up about half a megabyte (nevermind how mind-boggling small plain-text would be).

So let's speculate that I don't go too crazy, and I just get a couple of 500 Gigabyte external hard drives to store things on. I just recently signed up to iTunes, so I can eliminate all physical versions of future cd purchases. If I lived in the US, I could make use of a service like Movielink to buy or rent movies online, and just download them (legally). If I have more obscure tastes, there is always Google Video, YouTube, and public domain content, which totally free. There are many, many podcasts out there to listen to as well, which are usually free.

For books, there are often eBook versions of popular titles available, and many, MANY classics are legally available for free on the internet from sites like freebooks5000.com. I could spend a couple of lifetimes reading all of the best works of literature, without even filling out a library card.

There are also subscriptions to streaming content of popular video and audio through sites like SaltWaterChimp or Streamwired.com. For about $5 to $10 a month, I can watch as many hours as I can plow through of my favourite TV shows, all on Winamp, without taking up a single bit of hard drive space.

I've got my pda and cellphone for on-the-go computing, and note-taking, and who needs paper when I've got windows notepad? I can ditch that pesky landline phone too, and just have myself a headset, and a Vonage subscription.

So my apartment 'of the future' could feasibly just (aside from appliances), contain one or two large hard drives (which would take up significantly less space than my bookcases), my desk, my PC, a really kickass monitor and some nice speakers, and perhaps a large screen tv. There are many online and cd-rom versions of classic board games, and if I scan all pertinent correspondance, I can get rid of that pesky pile of old mail in the corner.

word of the day - iGeneration

Wikipedia describes the iGeneration, in one sentence, as:

The term foregrounds the paradoxical ways in which this generation's idiosyncratic subjectivity and individualism ("I") develop within global capitalism and its technological mediation in a way that both constrains and expands the possibilities for identity-formation, akin to how Michel Foucault points to the relationship between sexuality and discourse in the nineteenth century's generative effects of power.

Well, I think that just about covers it. But just in case you needed any visual aid to clarify:



Ya, I'm scared too.

weird link of the day - did the Titanic really sink?

I found this entry on Piratebay, although, I couldn't get the torrent to download. Still, the premise sounds interesting:

The Titanic Mystery
Was she switched with her sister-ship
Who was Paddy the Pig
Why didn't JP Morgan sail on her maiden voyage

To find out more about the REAL CONSPIRACIES like 9/11
come and see us

http://conspiracycentral.net:6969/

"Ubiquitous computing"

Boing Boing: "Yesterday I caught a presentation by Adam Greenfield about the ethics of "ubiquitous computing" (the idea that the devices around us will know where they are, what they are, and who you are)."

I skimmed the actual article, and without going into what the article is truly about (it's pretty philosophical), the Boing Boing guy has apparently failed to look 'ubiquitous' up in the dictionary. "Ubiquitous computing" is the idea that technology/computing becomes so widespread that it permeates pretty much every facet of our life, without us giving it a second thought. This is the definition the original article link is trying to use, but the Boing Boing poster has apparently misinterpreted the use of the word "ubiquitous". And since I'm baffled by their comment system, I'm posting my comment here.

Ubiquitous: (adj) Being or seeming to be everywhere at the same time; omnipresent: “plodded through the shadows fruitlessly like an ubiquitous spook” (Joseph Heller).

Not to be confused with sentient coffee makers. :)


The original article's definition

Repost: On the Cusp of something Bigger

Yesterday, was the last day of my placement, and technically, the last day of my academic career. Approximately 18 years of my life, have been devoted to academic education. Eighteen years straight. The day before I started university, I quietly wrote to myself in my room (the last night in my room as a permanent resident) about how I was hedging on a new part of my life, and how I got there.

Oh, there was so much I didn't know. So much I had to learn. And I couldn't possibly have fathomed that I would meet someone like Phil, who lit up my life like a yellow sun that drowns out all the stars. Teenage fickleness be damned- I've now been with him for over four years, and I regret nothing.

So now I write to myself again, in wonderment of the life that now lays out before me. The possibilities, the directions. Yesterday I had a job interview, which is something I'm not as good at as I should be, but I did my best. Throughout the interview, I kept thinking, "I'm not qualified for this, I'm not qualified for this..." and when I went Judith's to wrap up, I was sure I was going to get a bad review. I didn't. When I asked her about where my strongest skills lie, she was a lot more positive than I expected. She just said that the stuff I was weak in was stuff that could only be learned through experience- and I'm a newb in the field, so that was sort of okay. She also suggested that I should know myself as a writer, and what works best for my craft, and work around that- don't try to write in the morning when you write best at night, etc. It made me feel a lot better, and realized that my paranoia was just that- paranoia.

Paranoia is a funny thing. It is a certainty that springs from uncertainty and lack of knowledge. Don't trust it. It is always easier, and better in the long run, to just ask the question you're dying to ask, and be done with it.

So, I'm not going to say something overly-dramatic like, "this the first day of the rest of my life", because it's not. Life has already begun. Life is living. I should just do it the best way I can. (and stop waxing philosophical about, because it probably makes people nausious)
----------------------------------------------------
Sept. 3, 2000
Well, this is it....this is the last night I'll be sitting alone in this room- writing to myself the same way. By tomorrow night, I will officially be out of the nest.
Today Michelle and I found a little bird. We could tell by it's markings it was young, probably just out of the nest. We couldn't figure out which tree it was from. The little bird just sat, clinging to the grass on the ground, even as we tried to pull into our hands. After we had picked it up, we poked it and prodded it but it refused to fly. After a while, we noticed the bird would spread it's wings ever so slightly when it thought it was in danger of a fall. We realized that he wasn't going to try otherwise, so we dropped him. As soon as our hands were removed, the little bird spread his wings and flew off like a shot, as though he knew exactly where he was going. Sometimes we need to lose that footing to realize our wings are there.
I hope I discover my wings tomorrow. It's useless to cling to the ground all my life, so I will be dropping myself and testing myself. I'm definetely scared, but that fear is fortified by an anticipation of adventure. Making a new start. Meeting new people....I'm going somewhere I've only been twice, can barely navigate and have to learn to call home for an indefinite period of time. There's also a high crime rate in that area. Yee-ha. So, help me God! I'm so glad things wrapped this nicely, which is more than I hoped for...

Well, I best be getting to bed, and I suppose the last night in my bed should be a good one.
Jumping off a cliff-

-Meg

[Edited for mushy romantic content that no one who was friends with me in 2000 will want to read. If you want the full text, I'll show it to you sometime.]

"Cultural Commons"

I don't know if it's the program that I'm in that has made me more aware of my New Media 'language', but being that I already read some of Howard Rheingold's "Smart Mobs" and have read countless articles about similar subjects, it kind of annoys me when someone misuses the term "Cultural Commons".

Boing Boing used it in this article.

"So there you have it: the MPAA has ripped, mixed and burned a phrase out of the cultural commons -- they appropriated it, reversed the meaning it had been imbued with by its copyfighting popularizer, and put it out there, not even bothering to credit Lewis or Barlow. Sly old MPAA."

My understanding of "Cultural Commons" is that it represents a common good that many people contribute to, and a large number of people benifit from, whether they contribute or not. Like for instance, Bittorrent (and this comes up a lot): many people download but not everyone uploads or seeds.

Given this, although I can understand the context (a quote from a famous IP abolitionist), does the song necessarily describe that? The song isn't part of "Cultural Commons"- it's a song. And even if it was, the irony is, it would technically be okay for anyone to quote from it..? I think it was just his phrasing that got me, but I understand his frustration.

It reminds me of that commerical I saw once (might have been a car commercial- I can't remember) that was very patriotic and it used a clip from CCR's "It Ain't Me"- the irony here being that the song was railing against how easy it was for the upper class to be patriotic. I remember Doug went crazy when he saw that 'cause he's such a CCR fan.

Anyway just blabbing some thoughts down.

ps, if you wanna see the MPAA in action, here ya go.

Technify the Old

First of all, I managed to find some drivers for my TV card, from the company website, since I can't find the disc that came with it. I don't get the program that it's supposed to run with it, but that's okay too since it's a generic card.

This time around, I actually have Windows Movie-Maker,(and a better computer) so I hooked up the VCR and gave some VHS capture a shot- it worked. I had to fool with the audio to get it to come through- I don't think the audio on the card is set right, so I used my sound card instead.

Anyway, when I get some more time I can capture all of my favourite home-movies to digital format and burn them to DVD. This also means that I could make little music videos and such.

In other news, my computer clock keeps losing time...it's very disconcerting.

Dear God!

The unthinkable has happened...for some BIZARRE reason, my angelfire blog has disappeared. Vanished. Finito. Now, maybe Angelfire is just happening to have a temporary memory lapse, but according to my account, the blog no longer exists. Two years worth of blogging down the drain? Well....

No.

It just so happens that in my infinite wisdom, I already backed up my blog around the beginning of december, meaning I've theoretically only lost about a month and a half's worth of entries. I also managed to find some more by way of stored files, but if anyone checking my angelfire blog on a regular basis can find copies of my blog entries from the past month in their temporary internet files directory or something, it would be much appreciated.

Just to be sure, I also changed my passwords, and a lot of the stuff in my webshell is already backed up(not a big deal anyway).

Whether or not I wake up in the morning and this little inconvenience is gone away, I've learned a valuable lesson about blogging- backing up is a good idea! If it is, in fact, permanently gone, I'll either put it back on Angelfire or move it somewhere else and repost it. Angelfire has pissed me off enough times that I would consider leaving them for good.

In other news, I downloaded the Halo PC Demo to test my new gamepad, and am I happy to report that my gamepad was practically made for the game. It was easily calibrated (plug 'n play- no drivers needed), and was a lot of fun to use. My lack of a proper video card sort of....made the game look a little bit more angular, but not much.

*dances with glee*

Nothing much else to report at this time.

eXPect the uneXPected

Anyway, on the weekend I FINALLY gave in and bought Windows XP Home Edition Upgrade...I didn't get a gamecube, at least not yet. I bought a cool game paddle though that looks almost exactly like the xbox paddle (it's USB) and I bought
"Armed and Dangerous", which is this kooky first-person shooter by LucasArts, but unfortunately it wouldn't run on my PC because I didn't have the right video card. That's fine. I'll just keep it around until I buy one of them fancy video cards I've been hankerin' for....I don't know when that will be, but it's not really a huge priority right now.

What else...I watched "What Dreams May Come" again lastnight...it made me cry. It's such a beautiful movie. I also started reading "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya sisterhood" by Rebecca Wells. So far, I really like it.

First New Year's Resolution....

To update this blog more. I feel bad for leaving it like this.

Anyway, technologically-related stuff in my life:

• Got my marks back- not too shabby. Haven't seen my new schedule yet
• Yahoo! has a couple of new features of the MyYahoo! part of their site- this includes RSS feeds, and which I figured includes Blogger. The engine for setting them up is still really finicky, but I've managed to get a few on there
• Bought myself a Nexxtech 128mb mp3 player that doubles as a USB flash drive, on boxing day. I didn't get a deal or anything; I just really, really wanted one
• Got a bunch of cool stuff for christmas, including a book called "Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling" (which I asked for, specifically) and a couple of DVDs- one of them was the Last Unicorn, which was recently re-released, with absolutely no excitement, on disc

• Phil parents bought us a brand-new washer-spinner to replace the one that was eating our clothes
• I couldn't find "The Sims" for mac- it did not occur to me how many of the major chains that sell computer games are entirely slaves to the PC realm. Michelle will just have to wait 'til later or until somebody else finds it for her, since I have a lot to learn about shopping for Macintosh hardware and software (and yes, I thought of "Data Integrity" at York)

New mantra for the year: "I said it, I did it."

Just like Sam. ;)

JFK Reloaded

A Company called Traffic has released a computer game on the anniversary of JFK's death which recreates the assassination and puts the player behind the gun. The game is an attempt to dispel conspiracy theories by proving how easily all three shots could have been fired from Oswald himself.

Add to this, they're offering a $100, 000 contest to see who can most closely replicate Oswald's shots. Their site offers various 'tips and hints' on how to do this.

That being said, although I would have the temptation to download the game (which actually costs money- go figure) and examine it on a purely technical basis, there is no way in hell I would be able to point that gun. I can't even begin to describe the sort of sick, sick feeling such an image would give me.

And it gives pause for thought that although we have games about war, games about actual events that took place where people died; everybody has their limits. We can either look at this as a few developers that got a little carried away, or we can look at this as an example of how identification and sensitivity can have a huge effect on how we view these sort of video games.

This sort of simulation can be viewed as educational from an objective standpoint, and possibly an inventive way of putting to rest old suspicions and conspiracies; and it might even make people stop and seriously consider the people in the real world who aim those guns; but, I really don't think the developers seriously considered the people who would be 'playing' it. Who exactly is their audience?

Not me.

Fotorgrafs

I tried Angelfire's new 'gallery' feature. It's....well, it's a start. Actually, it kind of blows. I don't need an automated interface to make a basic gallery page with a bunch of thumbnails on it. The currently viewed picture would be in larger size, but every time I clicked on another thumbnail, the page would reload. I HATE photo galleries like that. To think of the hours I spent trying to get my javascript album to work, such that the user can flip through pictures easily with minimal load time of the pictures and NO load time for the page....jeez. I never dressed it up, but I think I like that one better.

My pictures-with-a-story gallery, on the other hand, is easy as...well, you know. Basic HTML skills and a blog. The logistics of my site idea will DEFINETELY not follow in Angelfire's footsteps.

Speaking of which, I'm just STARTING to get my head around some of this stuff. I really don't know much about marketing, and delegating has a lot to do with the technical stuff, and of the technical stuff I have only the most basic of knowledge. I guess I don't have to reinvent the wheel, but.... well, I've never really done something like this before. I am businessly-challenged. Profit? What's that? I'm a moron. ;)

Damn, almost a week

Bah, what an exhausting week. Over last weekend my group of friends basically imploded, and everybody's plans for THIS weekend seem to be rather helter-skelter, and as if that wasn't bad enough, it means I don't know who's coming to my birthday party. Everybody keeps changing their minds. Which means I'll either buy too much food, or not enough.

The DDR pads came in yesterday, and we got one working this morning. There doesn't seem to be any problems yet, other than it's a lot harder to move your feet than your fingers. ;)

We're currently troubleshooting Arthur's new messageboard, which I suspect gets turned off a night. I think he's going to have to hide that server box. Pat got his wish and is now a moderator, and he'll be helping with the web-site.

You may remember me from such posts as...

Well, today was an exciting day. Sam took us on a field trip to the CBC building, where we got a good look at the press room, and learning lots of wonderful things, like why we would never work there, because we're not journalists :( (well, Rafiq is) But that's okay, because it was still incredibly exciting, and we got to see the mail-bot jet back and forth across the room.

Sam also clued me in on IGDA and their monthly meetings, which apparently anyone can go to. I have to say, his input has been rather encouraging, and it makes the industry seem just a little bit more real. It's a shame the class he's teaching is ending soon. I kind of like having a teacher who's successful at his job, but also has nerdish interests...gives me hope for the world. *wipes away a dramatic tear*

For the latter part of the day we departed for Jarek's house, which is very beautiful. He showed us some camera tricks, and a little bit of editing on his computer. We all found out that our filming schedule isn't as hectic as we thought (everyone took a breather on that one) and he put our minds a little more at ease about the cameras. My group has worked out a pretty good way to get this thing done, we just need a lead actor. Are there any asian men in the GTA who are between 18 and 25 and would like to be in a short film? Anybody? I'm willing to settle for just somebody that can speak fluently in another language (but not french). I'm currently trying to get ahold of good 'ol Mike (not the one in my class), and see if he'll do it. Failing that, I'll try to call Nirshan (heaven forbid). Failing that, I'll just have to kidnap someone off the street.

I realize now that when I'm awake and positive, I can actually get my brain to work. No shit, eh? I remember very little of last weeks classes, but I think I'm absorbing more this week. And when my brain is working, all these ideas just keep pouring out like my subconscious was saving them up or something. Boo-ya! I'm in a good mood, even though I'm a little bit behind on my homework.

I've also been reading "Fortress America: on the frontlines of Homeland Security" by Matthew Brzezinski. I'm only about two chapters in, but it's pretty good so far. He's a good writer. Well, he a journalist, so this is what he does; but I still think he's good.

Anyway, that's all for now

Oh, and I still can't wait to try those DDR pads.