doublexgeeks

I promised Haikus, so here they are! Enjoy!

There are from Technoped, and are specifically computer related!

Error so complex,
Far beyond your conscious mind.
Send to Microsoft?

Behold the fear, rage
of a URL mistyped.
Pop-ups engulf me.

Behold the fear, rage
of a URL mistyped.
Pop-ups engulf me.

How about these from Tomifobia?

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.

You step in the stream,
but the water has moved on.
This page is not here.

You step in the stream,
but the water has moved on.
This page is not here.

And the best source for geeky haikus, ThinkGeek!, not to mention their sweet contest!

WITH ALL CAPS I TYPE
LOUDLY I YELL EVERYTHING
I FEEL IMPORTANT!

jIba’ Quo’nos-daq
qeqtaHvIS tIQqu’ lurDech:
tlhIngan Haiku!
Translation:
I sit here on Quo’nos
Practicing the ancient tradition:
Klingon Haiku.

I hate dungeons, but
I guess beauty’s in the eye
of The Beholder.

I have stumbled upon another repository of geek fashion apply called FashionableGEEK. Many of the products featured on this site go beyond general geek and get into the realm of…. strange. It’s still a good way to kill a few hours, and there’s certainly stuff that fills me with WANT!

Not much needs to be said about this one! The background makes it even more epic.

This one is amusing just because it’s so strange. There’s nothing to get, but yet your brain can’t stop trying.

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator
You got that right.

One way to prevent ninjas messing with you is to prove you are stronger than them. Just beware of ninjas seeking vengeance.

Zombies. ‘nuff said.

And my new favourite super hero!

Sappy Mr. Clean Ass! I mean, Happy Winter-een-mas!

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve been busy planning for this great holiday. I have even started having dreams about it!

So. Winter-een-mas. When most people see this word their first reaction is… confusion. How do I pronounce it? What does it mean? Why does that guy have no pants?

Winter-een-mas is a holiday created by Tim Buckley who does the webcomic Ctrl-Alt-Del. It started as the offshoot of one of the characters dive into (further) madness, but soon took on a life as its own. It became a time to celebrate games and those who play them. To quote Tim “Video games allow us to do things, go places, see stuff, that we couldn’t do in real life. They can be an escape from reality, a release after a long day, a fun activity with friends, or just an enjoyable way to pass time. They give us a lot of entertainment. So why shouldn’t they be celebrated?”

Video games and gamers have gotten a bad rap in recent years, with Jack Thompson playing no small part in that. We’ve been portrayed as violent sociopaths with zero social skills and no life. With statements of his such as “If some wacked-out adult wants to spend his time playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, one has to wonder why he doesn’t get a life, but when it comes to kids, it has a demonstrable impact on their behaviour and the development of the frontal lobes of their brain.” get into the media, it’s easy to turn the tide against us.

But this couldn’t be further from the truth. The vast majority of gamers are normal. They hold normal jobs, have normal conversations, and have normal home lives. Yes you get idiots who take things too far, but you get that with everything (ever see a fanatical model train enthusiast? Now those guys are scary). We’ve been holding Winter-een-mas events for a few years now, and they are among some of the most fun, friendly, and most social people around.

And that is the intent of Winter-een-mas. A time for gamers to get together and celebrate the thing they love, without harassment from those who don’t understand. To show people that gamers are good people. If you want further proof turn your eyes to Childs Play.

Ok, all fine and good, but how do you pronounce it? In the creation of Winter-een-mas, Ethan (the insane character) wanted the holiday to take up all of the season of evil cold, but his sense was prevailed upon and he reduced it to one month, with the majority of celebrations happening in the last week of January. The name originates from the winter-long holiday, where it would go over Halloween and Christmas. Get the idea now?

For official holiday information visit Wintereenmas.com

My posting this week has been crap, busy + sickish + … lazy makes for a quite time. I’ve been quite busy preparing for Winter-een-mas (if you’re in the Newfoundland area check us out), as well as usual school crap, and lovely bureaucratic red tape.

So lacking any creativity on my end at this moment, here’s some plugs!

Yea… I’m not really sure either? Anyway, the real plugs.

From Twilight
Written by a friend of mine, it defines an interesting read. Yea, there really isn’t any other way to describe it, but interesting doesn’t really do it justice. Bookmark for sure!

Convention Fans
Very well written look at geek conventions; from information about the cons themselves, costuming, tips and tricks, and more. If you have even the slightest interest in science fiction or anime, you’ll need to visit here.

You’ve Got Maille
I’ll admit, it was the cute title that first interested me in this blog. I’m also a closet maille lover, and fully intend to start maille knitting when my time and budget allows. Until then, this blog is full of pics, ideas, and really cool stuff. Be warned, it might be slightly addictive.

The Girly Anti-Geek
Now you might ask, why on earth would I be linking a blog with this title? (And upon double checking the URL, I noticed that she link me!.. on the 19th. I really have been out of the blogging circle a bit.) Anyway, many of us wish to be geekier, in the sense we can figure out why the hell that light is flashing, and why is my phone making that noise! It can be frustrating when your techier friends make technology seem as simple as breathing, but have no fear, The Girly Anti-Geek is here to remind you that knowing how to tell time in binary ISN’T normal.

Decided to take the weekend to RELAX. Seems to have worked a bit, my energy level has improved. I did run across a cute quiz that I’d like to share: What kind of geek are you?

My result? Code Geek!

What can I said? I love taking these types of things. I don’t really agree with the result, but I guess it does fit me. My major geek is web design, which is kind of like programming? And I often with I could program… everything to do boring repetitive tasks LOL! I was famous for having a ton of stuff programmed on my graphing calculator in high school, and even now I have a few things on it. Such has one for keeping track of Yu-gi-oh scores but we won’t get into that!

As John Keats said “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”, and science is known as the pursuit of truth, so shouldn’t science be beautiful? The fact is it can be! Many early scientists believed that they would know that they had come across the correct answer because it would be beautiful.

Of course what a scientist considers beautiful might not be the same as what Joe Public would think, but there is some overlap. I had a prof who like to talk to her fungal cultures like they were children, but we won’t go there. One area of overlap is celebrated by the Material’s Research Society’s “Science as Art” contest.

ALL of these were taken with Electron Microscopes!

So it’s that time of year again, classes are starting to get into the swing of thing, youtube channels are being rediscovered, and flash games become more interesting than ever. This term I’m taking 7 classes, so in addition to my normal geeky activities; I have a lot of school work on top of it. Luckily I’m taking fairly geeky courses, so they will hopefully help provide me with material.

I was debating whether to talk about my philosophy course discussion from today (I can’t see you, so do you exist?), but decided to go with the first discussion posting for my 2D Graphic design course.

Using a flash program similar (identical?) to this one found at JoyStiq we had to create a Mii of ourselves for our introduction post. My computer courses are all distance ed, so I think this is a great way to put a face to each student! Certainly encourages interaction.

I had a hard time getting my Mii to look like me, but this is what I can up with!

Well I didn’t know about this, so I’m going to assume that many of my readers didn’t either!

I was in the bedroom working away at the computer, while my boyfriend was in the living room studying and watching TV. I knew he was watching Star Wars, so why was I hearing Miss. Piggy?! I kept listening, and it was definitely Yoda speaking, but now that my brain had made the leap, it sounded identical to Miss. Piggy!

I mentioned this to a friend on MSN which lead to a look on Wikipedia. And that’s when this tid bit made itself know…

Miss Piggy and Yoda ARE the same person! Or rather, the same voice actor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Oz Frank Oz, mostly know for his work with the muppets voicing Fozzie Bear, Animal, Sam the Eagle and, of course, Miss. Piggy also voiced Yoda in the Star Wars series!

That’s right. Even Lucas himself is quoted as saying “actually the illegitimate child of Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy.”

The family reuniting?

My excuse for no post last night was I was playing Guitar Hero: World Tour to all hours (sorry upstairs neighbours!) However I was still thinking of this, and actually had an interesting thought that maybe I could get some feedback on. This is all out of the sketchy depths of my memory so there is no warrenty for accuracy!

We never actually had the original Atari, but I have these mental images of two kids sitting about 2 feet away from the TV playing their whatever. NES and SNES wasn’t much better for getting away from your TV either, the controller cords are only a few feet at best.

Second gen, the range extends a bit. Me and my brother could play PSX sitting on the couch… assuming we had the system sitting in the middle of the room. Of course this often lead to people tripping over the cords so most often we were still sitting on the floor.

Along comes the third gen and cords suddenly explode in length, assuming it isn’t wireless. You could stretch from one corner of the living room to the other almost with some for GH!

Assuming that this is true, and the cord length has been increasing with time, why would this happen? Why were gamers suddenly too good to sit on the floor?

I have two ideas:
1) Gamers have aged. We have learned that couches and chairs are much more comfortable, and there’s no one yelling at us to stop trying to eat and balance a controller at the same time.
2) Ever try sitting two feet away from a HDTV? You can’t see anything! As TVs have increased in size and definition, you have to sit further away. Therefore cords have had to get longer.

Remember the old cell phones from the early 90s? We all laugh at them now, especially compared to “phones” such as the iTouch. Cell phones aren’t the only technology that was through an awkward I-am-too-portable stage - so did laptops! I wouldn’t put any of these on my lap (might break something, like my femur) but they did pave the way for our slim books today.

Released in April of 1981, the first portable computer - the Osborne 1 - came on the market. With 64K of RAM (because who would ever need more than 64K, right Bill?), a 5” monitor, and two 91K drives, this thing was as portable as say… my sewing machine dipped in concrete. It did have a handle though, which make it easier. 24.1 lbs light, it cost $1,795 USD - about $4,000 today. You certainly would look sharp walking into a meeting with this thing though!

A year later they released an updated version which featured a few upgrades, such as a twisted cord for the keyboard. I’ve seen a working model of this version, and I’ll take that keyboard over a laptop one any day. The 5” screen on the other hand, not so much.

As the second Osborne 1 (yea, figure that one out) was being released, others were getting into the portable market. The Kaypro II had a number of distinct advantages over the Osborne, weight not being one of them. It had an all metel case, which while allowing for a larger screen (9 inches), it was 26 lbs.

It also has the honor of having been used by Arthur C. Clarke, as he kept in touch with Peter Hyams. Peter was the director on the movie adaption of “2010”, and Clarke was in Sri Lanka.

Released in 1984 the Commodore SX-64 “Executive” featured a color screen (everyone else still were using monochrome), and a much smaller price tag. 23 lbs and $995 this was designed for a much more casual user.

The Osborne was not the heaviest of the portables though. That distinction goes to the IBM Portable PC 5155. At 30 lbs it does have much higher specs, as well as a much higher price tag. In 1984 it cost $4,225 (almost $8,000 today)

Ok, it’s not the heaviest, nor the most expensive, but I don’t really count the IBM Portable PC as portable, despite its self-proclaimed title. At 55 lbs and no handle, it wasn’t easy to move. It also cost almost $20k in 1975. A 5” monitor and 200k tape for storage, this wasn’t doing much other than sitting somewhere for extended periods. However it did spark those down the line, so credit where credit is due.