Monthly Archives: February 2009

Feb 04 2009
Technology

CreepyStalker ™

Thanks to Paulo for the inspiration of the new more descriptive name for Google Latitude.  It’s location sharing, using your phone and best approximation via cell tower triangulation, or the GPS built into your phone.  It’s neat in theory, yet a bit clunky and a little bit awkward on my not so fast phone.  So now you, too can find out where I am.

With my permission, of course.  Although now, it seems less functional and just something to people will have to think about when they’re having extramarital affairs.  Although ATM withdrawals and credit card statements are perfectly capable of providing that same information, although not in real time.

It is strange, because signed up for it with nary a thought, and yet I hesitate at the thought of joining Facebook.  I guess with Latitude, I could always turn off my phone or sign out.  But Facebook seems like a persistent invasion of privacy, even though I know I can set privacy options to hell and back and not ever log in.  I talked about this with Lori, briefly, about a possible government subpoena of Google’s records.  I had to think about it for a while.

Google already knows who my friends are, what I’m searching for, who I’m talking to, who I’m emailing, when I’m doing these things with which friends, what personal documents I edit, and now, they know where I am.

Besides, if the government wanted my location, they can just get the cell tower info from the telcos anyway.  Hell, they may already have it, now that I think about it.  And the more I think about it, the more I realize that we gave up our privacy a long time ago.

It’s just that the internet makes the loss more immediately felt, more apparent.

You know, when you get a gazillion spam messages the next day.

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Feb 03 2009
Technology

What to do?

I’m so focused on digital right now.  But I’m still trying to figure out what to do with this box of photographs.  It’s sitting, almost forgotten in a banker’s box in a closet.  There are developed pictures and negatives, but without any sort of metadata, they might as well be images from an alternate reality that I’ll never really know.

Like an imperfect mirror, I’m looking at a strange reflection of a life I once knew.

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Feb 02 2009
Uncategorized

Assistance Required

“In all seriousness, I’m waiting for you to bring that up to the counter, and the register girl to take one look at it, at you,  and then shake her head, ‘No’ and then slide it back across the counter.”

He scrutinizes the chart on the back of the box.  I’m relieved when a salesman finally approaches us.

“Do you gentlemen need help?”

“Yes,”  I say and point at Homer.  “This man needs lots and lots of help.  Preferably yours.”

Twenty seconds earlier.

“So, what do you think?”  He says, holding up the plastic container.  “Large?  I mean, the chart on the back seems to indicate that I’m right on the border.”  He points to the location on the chart.

“I think,” I say, taking a step back.  “That this is a very personal decision that every man needs to make on his own.  Or get your wife involved.”

Thirty seconds earlier.

“Seriously, I think I may need a codpiece for the costume this year.”

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Feb 01 2009
1 Comment
Games

Roll your own

I have a box of books from my mother here, and it’s mostly filled with Choose Your Own Adventure books.  They’re really interesting, mainly because they’re written in the second person.  That is, they always address, “you.”

Which is of course, similar to how Interactive Fiction has to be written.  They are games, in a way, although in book form.  It’s like a puzzle, but really written so that you’ll be encouraged to try different paths.  Of course, being a paperback book, you inevitably end up on the same path every now and again.

There are the straight up, “Choose Your Own Adventure” but I also had a few of the “Time Machine” books where you went back in time to observe or repair the past.  Of course, if you went back to observe, you always ended up having to repair the past anyway.  Looking at the Wikipedia entry I realize now that those books are old.

I know people younger than those books.

But they’re fun reads, and it’s nice to be able to revisit them, although the plots are simplistic and they’re sparse on details.  A lot of the “choices” wind up on the same two or three paths.  Of course, the same complaints can be made about video games today.  No matter what the medium, the ability to give an interactive participant real choices with real consequences is always going to be limited by the story they are trying to tell.

And ultimately the story is what is going to make me put up with these artificial choices.  As long as the story is compelling, I will overlook being railroaded into one or two paths.

Of course with video games, there’s the added impetus of whether or not the game is fun or not.  Books have the equivalent of whether or not it’s fun to read, but considering these have all been written for around the fifth grade reading level, they’re not so engaging anymore.

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