It was not within the first fifteen minutes of my logging on that I heard the news from the (former?) !leahbasskitten, a friend of mine on Pownce. It was nothing but a sad face and a link to this rather disheartening post by Leah Culver, for sake of brevity this is but a section of that post;

We have some very big news today at Pownce. We will be closing the service and Mike and I, along with the Pownce technology, have joined Six Apart, the company behind such great blogging software as Movable Type, TypePad and Vox. We’re bittersweet about shutting down the service but we believe we’ll come back with something much better in 2009. We love the Pownce community and we will miss you all.

This came up just after I had thought that morning of ways to integrate Twitter into my own Pownce account, as Twitter had a plethora of external programs, some of which would allow me to post via SMS. Also, it was the few days after another friend, Neha friend asked me which I use more, Twitter or Pownce, and why that was.

I use both with Ping.fm. I much prefer the Pownce interfact and community and layout, but I use Twitter and all its mad gadgets. I prefer Pownce on its own, but Twitters’ uses

For months I have been praising the usefulness of Ping.fm, a service I got into a closed Beta a while ago that lets you post in an excess of 15 different services. But really, I used it for Twitter and Pownce, the extra were a nice bonus. In the back of my head, I was looking for a simpler method, and I guess this really does do it.

The aforementioned uses of Twitter are far from a mystery to anyone, I may cover them in a later post, but if you are wondering I am sure you can Google yourself a few dozen. The popularity of Twitter, and thusly the API, made it a very good idea for anyone with an idea to stick with, the ample audience.

So, it is on this day I remove myself from the Ping.fm bots and stop with my terrible netiquitte. Today I go from a former “Twitter is stupid”ite to a perma “Twitter is stupid”ite.

As Neha said in he reply to this fiasco, “I know that Leah will be a great addition to SixApart, and will create some social networking tool that is ever spiffier for all of us.” it will still not be the same. Pownce had the niche market that Digg used to, and Twitter never did. Perchance I was just lucky, but during my months on Pownce I met some really cool people, a majority of which are now pleading for some form of adequate replacement.

On my way out, I leave you with some links to websites for the troubled Pownce’r, hoping to keep in some contact with those we once did; Poll: Pownce Exile - Where To Next? and teh similarly named FriendFeed room, PownceExiles.

My sister was attempting to convert so-many-cups to so-many-milliliters for her class gingerbread house assignment. As I do to most questions in life, I advised her to ‘Google it’, she said she knew and I went back to wating spoonfuls of Nutella. Half an hour later, she asked me for some help with this conversion website she found, I felt ashamed that so many useful features (unit conversion in this case) were strickly of Nerd knowledge.

Like Google and Twitter, Remember the Milk is a website which fools the users with its deceptively simple interface as to how damn useful this bugger is.

As was exposed on my MacBook post, I got one, as as a nerd I just had to try every little thing out. This information tidbit applies only once in this article, so fret not John Hodgman. Since, and most definately not because, I got my Mac, Google has done some really great things with their GMail serivce — and I use the Graffiti theme.

And for the sake of laziness and for the fact that the list I half wrote was nothing but a crappy version of the official one, these are the applications I use for Remembering my Milk.

	Remember The Milk for Gmail Now you can manage your Remember The Milk tasks alongside your emails. Available as a gadget (with Gmail Labs) or Firefox extension (connect your tasks with your mail, contacts, and events in Gmail).
	Offline with Google Gears Use Remember The Milk offline (requires Google Gears browser plugin).
	Remember The Milk for Twitter Add new tasks to Remember The Milk, interact with existing tasks, and receive reminders — all via Twitter.
	Remember The Milk for Google Calendar Use Google Calendar? Now you can manage your Remember The Milk tasks from within Google Calendar.
	iGoogle Gadget Manage your tasks from iGoogle. Review upcoming tasks and add, edit, complete and postpone your tasks with this handy gadget.
	Netvibes module Manage your tasks from Netvibes, with handy features such as searching your tasks with Netvibes in-page search.

	Dashboard Widget for OS X by Yoel Inbar Yoel Inbar created a cool widget that displays your Remember The Milk tasks on your Dashboard. Mark tasks as complete with one click.
	Deskbar module by Sebastian Pölsterl Sebastian Pölsterl developed a cool Deskbar Module for GNOME users that lets you add and manage your tasks.
	IMified The folks over at IMified have made it possible to manage your Remember The Milk tasks via instant messenger. Review your lists and add tasks via IM.
	Mind Like A Sieve Yahoo! Widget by Graeme McCormack Graeme McCormack developed a great widget that allows you to view your tasks in a flexible display, and complete and postpone tasks with a context menu.
	Quicksilver plug-in by Brian Moore Brian Moore created a handy Quicksilver plug-in that allows you to quickly add tasks to Remember The Milk.
	Tasque by Boyd Timothy and Calvin Gaisford Tasque is a very cool simple-yet-powerful task management tool for GNOME that integrates with Remember The Milk.
	Twit2RTM Dashboard Widget for OS X by Takashi Nomura Takashi Nomura created a handy widget for sending direct Twitter messages to RTM from your Dashboard.

Now, for what I know of, this step is only for the Mac, or at least anything with iCalendar (so the Mac). Although I am sure there is a myriad of Calendar programs that sync with atom feeds, your iPod does not sync with any of those. If you cant find the sync menu for your iCalendar, I borrowed this link from, again, the Remember the Milk website;

iCalendar

From the iPod > Contacts > Calendars section you can select to sync your iCal with your iPod, which then gives your iPod Calendar section an actual amount of use.

This post took way too long to write and re-write, so I wont bother with an ending, bye.

In ways that traditional print media was never able to, new media has used blogging and online communication to encourage journalists and other independent writers. This international digital phenomenon has given the reader choice as to what information they flood their minds with, as barriers have been torn down between nations. And besides being told news from an international basis, communication has become a most necessary aspect of modern independent journalism, giving both sides of the conversation insight on audiences interests, while also keeping journalistic motive with less a hindrance on creativity.

At the turn of the century, the newspaper was created in attempt to combat an informational ‘space bias’. When British colonies first found home in Canadian provinces (western especially) the entire extent of information, the world of those settlers did literally exist within a few dozen acres. In the late 18th and early 19th century, with the industrial revolution, worlds grew exponentially. Cities were situated around the, then new, Canadian Railway system, wherein the industries were within a convenient distance of its workers homes.

With the Railway, came communication between the workers that travelled, first vocally and then in written prose. That being said, the type of communication differed municipally and federally and paper was just that much easier to ship. With availability constraints such as these, there was never much choice and back then, there was never much knowledge of choice; worlds had expanded dramatically, but in comparison to the modern day information, it was still extremely limited. Receiving outdated updates on provinces on either side of you was, in retrospect, nothing but a glimpse of the upcoming global neighborhood soon to be catapulted a vast by technological advancements.

The year between the creation of the World Wide Web (circa December 25, 1990) by Time Berners-Lee and the Internet-age of lately has been often likened to the years the CPR was developed (1881-1885). With information in such an expanding and transportable form and especially with technologies like that of RSS (Real Simple Syndication) the collection has become even simpler. Opinions are made and sold internationally, wherein Journalistic integrity would writers against a code of conduct designed not to offend anyone, and that is where technology shows its most poignant, yet controversial affect on the world of independent journalism. There are legions of intelligent, rebellious and respectively entrenched writers all around the world.

In August 23, 2005, the United States of America was hit, especially New Orleans, with the record breaking and tragic assault by hurricane Katrina, reaping an excess of $80 billion US dollars in damages. One of the most criticized and a controversial subject about Katrina was the infamously horrible governmental response, taking at least 1-2 days to help anyone.

Three years later, China was hit by the nineteenth deadliest earthquake in human history; the Wenchuan Earthquake. Before Katrina received any help, there was a myriad of ‘on-site’ reporters covering the story. Likewise, Wenchuan had even more passionate coverage, but not from representatives of some major news conglomerations; homes that had Internet connection sent the world’s largest assembly of independent journalists of all time.

The Webster definition of a Journalist is, “[the] conductor of a public journal, or one whose business it to write for a public journal”, and in this case, Twitter.com was their public journal. Robert Scoble, one of the most popular users on Twitter.com has an excess of 38,000 followers; each of those followers would then be sent any updates he posts. Not only is he popular, he is well respected, he is a well written man with followers that expand more than just a fan base.

It was through his Twitter account that he pointed to posts made by first hand survivors, on the site of the Wenchuan Earthquake. A writer online does not need worry about what people think, at not least in the sense of a professional Journalist abiding by their conglomerates ethical guidelines. Save for specialized distributions, local journalism stays local and is read thusly. Not only would the on-site independent reporters not have nearly as convenient a means for informing the masses, the information, were it ever published, would never be nearly as up to date. The Internet has created a low bandwidth form of live media accessible by anyone around the world.

In the 1940s the radio was the main form of entertainment inside a North American family home, it was during then that classics like War of the Worlds captivated (and frightened) audiences. When the late 1950s came to be, so did the television, and as that replaced the radio for its family entertainment hub, the radio had to evolve as well.

Historically, and even during the late 2000s, television is an incredibly non-interactive media. People watch news, they watch the weather expectations and they watch and read American history be made democratically. But that is all there has been, it is a one-way media, even a live video is delayed by a few seconds or so. Even newspaper, which was later denoted by radio as the sole information resource, is in itself, an entirely one-way media; it is a collection of text, printed en masse, on usually recyclable material, it does not talk back in any way other than providing a reader padding for a wet bench.

Barack Obama, the current President-elect of the United States of America, used the Internet to bridge the gap between printed (both on paper and tape, digital or non) and the reader itself. Although it is almost certain he had representatives Tweeting on his behalf, it gave voters and fans, even internationally, increased interaction. It was through this interaction that Obama grew an enormous following among the younger generations – those who had grown up online.

Barack Obama was, however, far from the first public outlet to approach the masses through this technology, but not much earlier than newspapers such as The Province and its comment page, where articles getting more attention are given more time on the website. The website Digg.com, headed by the now internationally praised Kevin Rose, is what is called, and started the trend of, socially contributed news aggregation websites. A trend adopted by the likes of Yahoo and AOL/ Time Warner, where users would ‘digg’ submitted news stories, the stories with the most ‘diggs’ would be given front-page exposure.

In no way could the website be heralded towards the apparent murder of print media, but instead this idea has been applied to print media as well. The aforementioned Twitter is thought of as the original micro-blogging applications; a service for users to update their status with 140 characters or less. This was originally an incredibly niche market, targeted towards the more nihilistic groups. But as the way with any new technology, it evolved. Behind print media are writers, so traditionally, the mission for independents has been to find a publisher; the audience would follow.

That has been reversed, where the publisher (sites like WordPress, Blogger, Vox, etc) blogs are one of the most commonly found and abandoned form of website on the Internet. Twitter and services alike were pushed to their respective ends, finding every which way this service could be of use, and in regards to independent writers, has become a very critical form of advertisement. Neha Tiwari has worked for companies like CNET, Revision3 and was an employed blogger for News.com, Crave and Webware. During an interview, she commented on, as a both a professional and personal blogger, the importance of this form of interaction;

As far as using connections to get read, I never really did that. I have some people on my blogroll, and know I am on some of my friends’ blogrolls, but that’s it. I also promote my blog via Twitter, Pownce, and Facebook, which I think help people find their way to my site.

The Internet has magnified the importance of actual quality reporting, and not just the funding behind it, it may be hard to get noticed, but even blogs on free servers can become an international hit.

Newspaper has been, and will forever be, profit based. The main reason that publishers strive for superior journalists and more original ideas, stories and points of view is to attract the eye of the reader to their paper, as opposed to that of the competitor. Newspapers like Vancouver’s 24hours and Metro are the two leading daily newspapers, and although they do carry a more personal feeling to them, their audience is, especially in Vancouver, very broad and bring with them very different opinions.

With opinions come confliction between parties and unrest amongst the media, and that is why, save for the few, self-warning opinionated columns, the entire paper must follow a generally objective point of view. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does explicitly say that a Canadian is “[guaranteed] the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrable justified in a free and demographic society,” thus giving someone the “right and freedoms” to express whatever they wish to, as long as it is “within reasonable limits [of the law]”. Blogging has allowed an entirely self-monitored system of self-opinionated prose.

With technology and the Internet, the entire concept of a community has been re-aligned, no longer a victim to a ‘space bias’ wherein a certain town had more access to news than the other (with a few exceptions). Community now is less a collaboration of those living in close proximity, but has evolved into a truer sense of like minded people. As do people of a specific country tend to commune similarly, the Internet has allowed people of a specific interest to commune likewise. It does seem fitting that, generally speaking, as the Internet is a very non-tactile idea, so are the passions most online communities are based on.

Up until, but still very much the case still, the Internet was controlled, as is any computer, but a collection of key presses. These keys all represent and output appropriate letters on the screen, as are the basics of any language. Over the years there has been a plentiful array of different marketing techniques, some assumes the message clear and some asking for more attention. The latest and longest lasting technique uses information it has acquired (in most cases) to more effectively advertise towards its target. The blog was originally a way to communicate online in a form that would not be extremely bandwidth intensive. That has worked and it has worked well, but in the wake of the decreasing cost of bandwidth, video content came back to the media.

One of the most effective and sometimes nostalgic forms of independent journalism is the Podcast. Nostalgic in the sense that talk radio is back, independent in the sense that anyone with a half-decent computer, or at least access one, can make their own news casts, radio shows, talk radio shows, virtually anything. Instead of new media replacing that of the old, we are experiencing a specialization of documentation. Freedom has been well known as a creative necessity, and with a new outflow of information the Internet is enticing and exciting a new generation with the original, non-capitalistic approach to an age-old idea.

So no, I digress. For years there have been pointless claims of the obliteration of formal journalism with the cracking open of the apparently infinite chasms of the blogosphere. In closing, Neha Tiwari said it very well;

I think there is a constant struggle between the “amateur blogger” and the “graduated from J-school at Columbia writer.” In a strange way, I think the relationship can be symbiotic–both tell a [different] or diverse part of the same story. Even in traditional media, there [have] always been pundits or experts in the field; this goes back to the ideas hatched by Adorno at Frankfurt School over 50 years ago.

Go ahead and ask me wh I enjoy my school. My answer will be as positive as it is biased. I went in a while ago, asking about my classes and the like.

“So, how is your laptop?” the disability assistant asked.
“Its falling apart” I answered.
“Want a new one?”

I would write my response, but decided to spend more time explaining that doing so would be an ironic waste of time, as the answer would be horribly obvious.

Okay, fine, I said yes. After much delaying, I did finally get my not-as-alluminum-as-thought MacBook. Aluminum looks better than plastic, but plastic looks better than nothing at all.

When I first accidentally (I had my Twitter account synced with my Facebook status at the time) told me FB friends that I was getting a MacBook, I was greeted with less than gratious greetings. But screw that.

I am a nerd, I am a geek and I am a loser, everyone knows this. I spend a lot of time on my computer, more than I spend not on my computer. I know what I want and I know how to do it. In my past few years on my HP Pavillion dv1000 with Windows XP SP2 on it, I came to realize that of the things I use my computer for, I have not seen any particular exclusivity on the PC. Namely; I don’t play PC games, and of the ones I am looking forward to (StarCraft II and Diablo III) they are all going to be on the Mac. That was when I chose to articulate and ponder the option of a Mac I was given on that fateful day after class.

Over the past while, I have become more interested in Micro-blogging services, and on one (Pownce) I met a friend, referred to as either !leahbasskitten, @leahbasskitten or just plain Leah. She is a Mac fanatic, and it was from her that I got a closer look at OSX.

So I have decided to compare the programs I use on Windows and their Mac countperparts, hopefully convincing my friends that this was not just a blind choice.

Skitch – this is a great little program, letting you take snapshots of a desktp or even the included webcam, caption it and upload to a Skitch server. This program intruiged me because for the initial same reason I was using the clunky imageshack.us progam on Windows. Imageshack let me upload either a desktop or a program window. Skitch lets me clip any portion of anything I want, and then caption it and then upload it.

Adrium – after giving up on the, although useful Digsby social-network-IM-service-micro-blogging program, I reverted back to Pidgin, something I also used when in Linux. Neither are as nice as Disbgy, but niehter take 500mb of RAM. Adrium is 90% Pidgin, or rather, Pidgin is 90% Adrim. They even have the same icon. Adrium just does what the plugins I installed wer supposed to, but didn’t do well. Ie: Facebook IM.

Quicksilver – when I showeod my friend the program I still adore, Colibri, she noted it was exactly like Quicksilver. Up until the day I installed it, Quicksilver was never anything more than the bastard child of Magneto and the bastard brother of the Scarlet Witch. It runs just like Colibri, but admittedly (which] is odd in the case of a MACOSX comparison) doesn’t look at good as the Windows one.

I am also at a bus stop right now and an old Chinaman just sat down, he is about 55+ and is wearing a toque with a skull and crossbones made out of glitter.

Finder – this would be the Mac version of Windows Explorer. It is actually less a Mac thing, and more just a standard UNIX thing. For thosoe using Vista, UNIX is whats different between Explorer in XP and Vista. I just like it, I got used to it with Linux, but still cant admit favour in either direction.

Widgets – Mac did em, then Google did em, then Yahoo and Vista did em. In noo particular order. Much as with the MP3 player, I am not sure if Mac invented the idea of Widgets (or its various names), but they did it best. Now, the iPod is a strange case, because the popularity of the system has squeezed out any sellability from any other companies variation thereof. But I digress, Widgets are just better done, and this is entirely due to the fact they are put straight into the OS, and not outside of it.

ecto - Be it well or not, I have been blogging for a while, and in doing so, have tried a few (dozen^pi). Windows Live Writer was seen by most tech-heads as the flat out best blogging software out there, as well by I. After a bit of research, I fell upon etco, a blogging program that has even more supported platforms, a nicer layout.

This is what I was trying to say on this posts intro; I really dont do much more than (not doing my) homework, blogging, Internetz, stealing music and stealing movies that aren’t even in theaters yet. There are many, but particularly emeek77 on YouTube, are convinced the apparent vast superiority of the Apple computers, even in gaming, apparently. I admit this, and I really don’t give a crap. The aforementioned are a list of programs I use every day, both in XP and on OSX, and that is generally all that I use it for. Its cleaner, its neater, the keyboard feels great. On of the smallest but favorite features is the MagSafe connector; it holds the power cord with a magnet (thus the Mag part of the name) so it will pop out if someone steps on it. But really, the main reason I love this thing is that, without spending much time on OSX prior, the GUI is layed out the way I would anyways. It is just damn pretty.

I have only spent about 5ish hours on my Fallout 3 copy, a combination of school and my brother playing it as well have encumbered my playingability. But shit-damn, its amazing, and it looks fantastic.

Now, by no means am I saying this is the most attractive and graphically insane game ever, Gears of War would be a good comparison as it shares the same gritty theme as Fallout. But Gears is no where as utterly massive as Fallout 3, it has been heralded as being thrice the size of the already-way-too-big game Oblivion. Part of the beauty of this game is, as was the case with their previous blockbuster Oblivion, how damn big it is. You can spend hours and hours just… traveling around this post-Apocalyptic USA, offing Ghouls and retarded Fire Ants and never find an invisible wall. And this is why the Fast Run feature (also from Oblivion; takes you to any city you have been to before). I know this because I am currently lost.

I find that non-linear games, in too many a case, turn very linear when you start playing. I mean, wasn’t that a huge selling point of the GTA games? For whatever reason, my friends and I ended up doing the same stuff. What I really like about Fallout is that although my brother and I are at the same level, our games are entirely different. However as reviews have said, its missing a lot of the gritty stuff from Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, and I haven’t seen any Molotov’s yet, wtf@that.

The V.A.T.S. system (aiming at specific parts of a target) is awesome, when I first saw the video on IGN, I thought it was a really cheap way to do FPS, but they didnt mention the AP in that video. It is kinda how I feel about, in Tales of Vesperia, where you can skip the post-battle dance or setting your entire team to AI - its a fast and simple way to take out the random flying bugs or dogs that chase you around without feeling ‘cheaty’

Its Oblivion II with pretty good FPS to it, just-as-bad jumping and some really annoying glitches and, most of all, a great long-range system. When I played Oblivion as someone other than a Mage, my brother was surprised, and as was Oblivion just had a horrible FPS system. Especially for an RPG/ Adventure type game, the FPS system is spot-on.

Sometimes my right stick wont work, or my right buttons wont work, or I cant get out of 3rd person. Be that as it may, as glitchy as I do find it, the saving works around that pretty well. I am not saying it is perfect, and I am not saying a save-anywhere save system should be used in the stead of glitches, but considering the grandiose world this game presents, and how much of it works flawlessly, and how much damn fun it is, I shall excuse these glitches. For the most part, they do not interfere with the actual experience, and so far they have all shown up after Auto-saves. But can you imagine the elephantine task of debugging a world that would take the better half of your wifes entire pregnancy to walk through? And I mean straight, no pee breaks no nothin’.

And there are far too many good games coming out now, I have yet to get far in ToV, then Fable II is being gotten soon, and THEN the new Portal game (XBA) and Web of Shadows.  My 360 is becoming a strain on my attention receptacles, it is not fair.

In my closing, this is a damn solid video game. I recommend you getting it ASAP.

The suffix at the end of the modern age of Internetz, 2.0, was originally coined as the second version of the Internet. But alas, it has been taken, not in a chronological sense, but in the speed of which time apparently passes, I even read of the apparent Web 3.0 coming up soon.  This speed, it seems, is effecting even the media on the Internet.

Paul Boutin of Wired Magazine is one of that ideas RSS subscribers.  Except it doesn’t have a feed, its just a bad pun.

“Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.”

Paul Boutin @ http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/16-11/st_essay

The original idea behind blogging was the simplicity behind it, most everyone (even a few monkeys) were able to easily type and publish their own commentary, “part of that simplicity was a lack of support for pictures, audio, and videoclips” claimed Boutin. Take any look at the currently thriving blogs and you will see that is no longer the case.  Blogging was a recycling of old trends, as radio was replaced by television for similar reasons.  Unlike The Buggles would have you believe, however, video did not kill the radio star, it just had him slim down a bit and move from family rooms to their minivans.

But what do you wake up to?  What do you not wake up to?  What do you smack every morning, only to smack it again in 8 minutes?  For this questionnaire to work, if we remove spouses from the equation (and annoying birds/ children) we are left with the answer: radio.  Video is an ironically horrible killer.

I use that example because I like the song, its catchy, poppy and covered more often than Britney Spears is not.  I do agree that blogging will not stay a dormant idea, as was the case of radio and theatres, but similarly, they are going nowhere.  As with the move of radio from family room to car, movie from theatre to family room, blogging is just going to specialize itself.

As with most ideas, especially Interweb ones, blogging has been done to death.  LiveJournal was the first one I remember hearing about, and looking back on my old (and since deleted) accounts, I thought myself actually retarded.  To a pre-teen, blogging was just a rant and a rave and a tear-fest about how horrible their parents are, and either ridiculously long diatribes, or short, mid-tear posts of gloom.  But really, near the end, LiveJournals were either abandoned or just a painful spam of few-sentence rants.  The idea of a micro-blog was ripe for the picking, and although I am sure they were not the first, Twitter really got the cheese roll of that idea some mad speeds.

But that is how the Internet seems to work.  The idea of blogging has been, for the past few years, overused, and in the past fewer years the idea has been specialized and socialized.  You ever watch movies based in the past?  Say, one of the bi-yearly racial-issue-football movies?  Or even so, the war movies?  Back in those days, radio was the form of communication and media.  But then TV came out and took the majority of the radio market, and what did it do?  It specialized itself, and moved the radio into a commuter media.  Micro-blogging is the specialized turd-blogging.

Twitter — which limits each text-only post to 140 characters — is to 2008 what the blogosphere was to 2004. You’ll find Scoble, Calacanis, and most of their buddies from the golden age there. They claim it’s because Twitter operates even faster than the blogosphere. And Twitter posts can be searched instantly, without waiting for Google to index them.

This argument reminds me, but with a little bit more credibility all of the * killers.  But alas, Digg is still around, the iPod is still around, Firefox is still around.  And y’know what?  Blogging will never die, just like how Newspaper never died.  It changed, not died.

I like this poster, and for reasons other than the fact looks like bacon.  Although, to be honest, bacon does deserve its own column.  If you doubt me, go and have some bacon and you will agree.  That reason would be located, in blue letters, above the strips of greasy awesomeness; OBAMA.

Although I am very much a fan of ‘08AMA, that is not even where I am going with this, though I do find McCain to be a bloody wanker.  You would have to have the current brain activity of the late Christopher Reeves to be unaware of the Design for Obama team, you could even almost call it a movement.

Canada just came out of a $290M waste of an election, giving Stephen Harper nothing but a ‘mightier minority’.  Living as close as I do to the States, I saw, first hand, the difference in Canadian and American politics.  Or, as ‘first hand’ as a Canadian (American, but more awesome) possibly can.

Historically, Canada and the States have had a few years between each form of media, be it radio, newspaper or television.  The Internet arrived, en masse, about a decade ago, but it was during George Bush’s 8 years that the face of North America (be it, the world) received the but end of the mallet of the Internet(z) - and this time, Canada arrived just as soon as the States did.

Being the Internet-nerd (actually, just an all around nerd) I have sat a foot and a half away from the single most Internet’d debate in the history of the world.  Yes, there are technological differences between now and then, but it goes beyond that.

Think as you may, but I strongly believe that 9/11, whichever side you are on of the issue, has helped the pseudo-Democratic nation to the south of us.  Even now, there is a urban myth that, at once, Green Day did not suck.  They actually existed before American Idiot (such an aptly titled, self-biographical title, don’t you think?), and although historians of years to come will formidably disagree with me, it was once true.  But, this is a digression; with American Idiot came a nation of ridiculously retarded Emo-crats.  And with their not-even-pseudo-political stances, teenagers of years past grew up.  It has been 5 years since Billie Joe Armstrong started touring the world with his balls in hand, and if perchance, even a tenth of those Emo-crats keeps a lewd interest in politics, that is (5,000,000/10) 500,000 new voters.  Of course, that is assuming that they are of age now to vote.  Imperfect math?  Yes.  Point made?  I damn sure hope so, because that took a while to get the numbers for.

And what do Canadians get?  We got damn signs and a debate or two.  Oh, and Jack Layton made some crappy cartoon ad and hired someone to play some mad Jenga.

The thing is, a poll of a few weeks ago showed that more Vancouverites gave a crap about the American election than the Canadian one.  There are many a reason, but especially in direct comparison to bi-partisan debates in the States, arguing for a majority in a quint-partison debate seems pointless and a waste of time.  Basically, Canadian politics just don’t matter as much as American, and we know this.

Whether you voted Liberal, Conservative, NDP or Green, or will be voting either Republican or Democrat - do so with the vigor of the Obamaniancs.

Because honestly, I cant write anything else lately… and I am not even kidding, it has been damn horrible!  I am an extension whore, I operate my own, private, Firefox Burlesque parlor actually. It has been doing good, albeit a tad cramped. You may remember, but a while ago I also ran out of ideas, and also released a first serving of Firefox Extensions. Last night, actually, my good friend Leah S and it came to the conversation of extensions and how few she actually had. I then realized how massive my collection was… again!

Ubiquity (http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/)

This, my friends, is actually the single most amazing thing in the three universes I have been to. It is simple, it is powerful and it is light. Ubiquity is, essentially, a Terminal box inside of Firefox, with a near-empty Kernel that you write yourself. And by that, I mean you can search their database for tools you don’t have to write yourself. It is in near-past Alpha stage, so I assume the database will have better search tools later on, but it is totally worth it if only for the Ping.fm and Facebook status commands.

autoHideStatusbar (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1530)

“autoHideStatusbar is a Firefox extension that hides the statusbar. The statusbar is shown back when hovering a “sensitive zone” with the mouse and can be shown back when a page loads or when hovering a link, according to the preferences. Additionally, a statusbar icon and/or a toolbar button can be used to quick enable/disable”

Organize Status Bar (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1759)

“This extension will enable you to organize your status bar icons. You can now rearrange or remove any item (icon or text) in the Firefox status bar. If your status bar is full and cluttered like mine was, give this a try.”

Personal Menu (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3895)

“After installing Personal Menu, “Menus Toolbar” is available in Toolbar Context Menu, and you may hide it to save the space of browser. Then you may open Personal Menu Option panel to gather all useful commands into “Menu Button”, and pleace it wherever you want; or you may add the items you want in Toolbar Context Menu.
When Menus Toolbar is hidden, although you may add “Bookmarks” and “History” inside Menu Button, it become inconvenient to access them. Therefore, here are also “Bookmarks Button” and “History Button”. You may also set what happens after you middle / right-click on them, like open Bookmarks Sidebar after middle-clicking Bookmarks Button, and Undo Close Tab after right-clicking History Button.”

I remember that time, like days of lore. To be honest, I do not even recall signing up for it, but well blogged was the day I received my invitation to round 3 of the World of Warcraft closed beta - right before Hunters and mounts were introduced, and the level cap was in the 30s.

I dare not claim my excitement had nothing to do with the “closed beta” portion of the game at the time, regardless, fun was had. But by round 4 I had totally forgotten about the game. After my near-half-year stay at the hospital, I was excited again (possibly an effect of amnesia?) for the land of Azeroth. It took me a few weeks of hard-grinding for me to realize that paying for 6 months, up front, was a disastrous waste of money. And as cheap as it may make me sound, I hated how paying that monthly fee gave me the constant feeling I was wasting money not playing it, feeling obliged to get bored somewhere else.

Guild Wars just didn’t work, some account problem.

That was many moons ago, many a ‘coons age, if you will. I have seen the rise, the fall and the lack of either from various MMORPGs, but the MMO market seems not one that is easily shifted (considering the hours and money invested into their level 70 Gnome with a Paladin’s mount). Lord of the Rings, a beta I was invited to, but didn’t bother too, seems to have taken the MMO fanbase community that isn’t playing WoW - no doubt helped by the license backing it. But that was really it. Star Trek and Stargate MMOs are in the works, but save for the respective television shows, I could not care much less.

It was an article on Kotaku a while ago.  It brings something never before seen in the MMO genre: something never before seen in the MMO genre.  And that was a colon there for a reason.  MMOs have been a less released form of the FPS genre lately, especially the plethora of WWII ones - the same damn thing.  Rune’s actually addresses some of my qualms over the genre, be it the fact that only high-level players’ outfits match (its not gay, okay?) and being stuck in a single character-class.  When I read that alone, I was interested, the Rune system sounded really interesting, as well did the multi-class one - I hated being stuck with one style of game play, especially for how long MMO accounts last.

But then I read how Runes will bring a better social aspect to the game.  Be it a personal living-space, a la Fable; Server wars and Guild wars; Dynamic Dungeons; as well as the apparent ‘dress dummy’;

By far the neatest function of player housing in Runes of Magic is the dress dummy. Place it in your home, equip it with a set of armor, and then with the click of a button you can swap out your equipment with what the dummy is wearing. Perfect for those who consistently change primary classes, as well as anyone who has ever played a WoW druid. You can set up as many dummies as you need, and the same functionality works with wall-mounted weapon sets.
— Mike Fahey @ Kotaku

Oh, and it’s damn free.  Although it makes me wonder how they plan on making money, be that as it may, its still damn free.

The thing with authors, they can get really damn good before their first published novel.  In retrospect, I feel bad for waiting the months I did for Austin Grossman’s debut novel, “Soon I Will Be Invincible” to come on paperback.  It is the first novel in a while (and I read a lot of novel), that I read through as frivolously as I did with this one.

A few years ago I actually had a girl in my bedroom.  There were 20 seconds spent between the time she entered my room and the time she, on her exit, called my a bloody nerd.  I really like superheroes, and I really like books, and I really like having 30+ posters and 200+ holes in my drywall - a portion of my posters are used to cover up the holes from other posters.  Naturally, my friend at the bookstore (Black Bond Books) recommended this to me.  Naturally, I bought it.

It took me 2.5 chapters to notice the two different icons rotating through alternating chapters.  The ray gun denotes a point-of-view from the hilariously-stereotypical villain, Dr. Impossible; wherein, the eyeball denotes the cyborg-heroine Fatale. It is a really well done use of two different point-of-views, their connection is not mysterious at all, a la Lost, but are very nicely placed.

Soon I Will Be Invincible doesn’t so much play with the clichés of superhero comics as bathe in their pulpy froth.
— Austin American-Statesman

I have tried my own, but this quote really does describe this novel to a tee.  I described this book to a friend as a well written B-movie in superhero form.  They aren’t pulling any a Deadpool here and talking to the reader, but the characters acknowledge and sometimes argue about their character cliches, even while being interrupted mid-evil-scheme monologue.  It is almost Heroes-esque, in the sense that we see more of these lives and the group dynamics than we would in a regular comic.

Take an example from CoreFire, the main super-hero in the book is an all-American, straight A student who got his power saving his writer girlfriend.  His myriad of powers are listed in Wikipedia by a link to Superman’s powers; invulnerable, superstrong, superfast, he can fly and he possesses Heat- and X-Ray vision.  Wherein Mr. Mystic, the resident magician, also found his powers on a trip to Tibet, a la Dr. Strange.   By far, Doctor Impossible was my favorite character in the story, as it just brought a hilarious side to supervillainy.

The novel is a homage to comic books, featuring a mad genius supervillain, Doctor Impossible, who suffers from “Malign Hypercognition Disorder” (”evil genius” syndrome).
— http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Grossman

But it was during a discussion with a friend regarding the odds of Peter Petrelli regaining his body, I think I got the idea down.  Stories are nothing to do with the beginning or the end.  In the case of Peter, the idea is not just that he gets out, it is how. In the case of The (New) Champions, it was not a story of a bunch of archetypal meta-humans and superpowers, it was the personality behind them.  As is the case with this genre in general, a good comic is not about the power in itself, but the power is used to add a more grandiose quality to the telling.