Tech Madness

Want to know how to drive an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist technology nerd crazy?

 Release a new version of software, and then create a dumbed-down tutorial which doesn't explain all the new features.

Sometimes iTunes can be so infuriating! Today I spent several hours trying to figure out how to drag and drop a playlist from my iTunes library into my iPod. Yea, I know this makes me sound like an idiot, but Apple's newest version of iTunes, 11.0.1.12, is significantly different from their older versions. iTunes is extremely simple if you just choose to let iTunes auto-fill your device, but if you like to do things manually, things get a little more complicated. I like to do things manually because I would prefer if all the music from my iPod wasn't deleted by accident. Auto-fill runs this risk. I would rather watch and control the process so that I know everything is going where it is supposed to go.

Technical know-how is something which comes easily for me. In many ways, technology is a lot like science. All the pieces are complex, and everything fits together to form a complete, well-functioning whole. It is interesting, engaging, limitless, and I love everything about it. This is why this problem with iTunes bothered me so much. I think the reason I was so obsessed with it for the most part was because iTunes is so simple. 

If you encounter a problem involving theoretical physics which you don't understand, you will likely just walk away. But if you encounter a problem involving simple elementary concepts which is baffling you, it is going to drive you crazy! This is the same thing I was experiencing. 

I have the utmost respect and confidence in the technical developers at Apple. After all, they have consistently created hardware and software which is useful, cutting-edge, and functional. Because of this, when I found a popular feature missing from the newest version of iTunes, I assumed that it was still present, and I just needed to find it. 

Finally, after hours of tinkering and surfing through forums I stumbled onto the answer. That moment when you have conquered a problem which has been plaguing you is one of the most rewarding moments known to man. I smiled, and everything was better. Poof! The problem was gone! (Just as a side note, here is a link to the forum post where I described the problem and then later posted the solution: link)

I then went back to posts of other people who had the same problem and told them the solution. I could imagine others finding the solution which I labored over for hours and feeling that same joy. What a wonderful way to spread joy! 

I suppose maybe my obsessive need to find solutions could be considered unhealthy to some. After all, I shunned everything else I had planned to do today in order to find an answer to my problem. But the way I see it, doesn't every advancement in society, every improvement in human culture require someone with an unhealthy obsession to find the answer? Ingenuity comes out of necessity, and every great success has beneath it a mountain of backbreaking work, and a circle of people who were just obsessively determined enough to keep working where no one else would. 

I propose that obsession is not a problem that should be cured, but instead, it is a tool which must be controlled and shaped. 

Happy New Year!!!!

A year ago today, I wrote a blog post at approximately the same time of day as this post for the purpose of welcoming 2012 and reCAPPING 2011 (yes, I know that pun was awesome). One of the main points I talked about in that post was how I usually learn things the hard way, and my resolution was simply to see an improvement between 2011 and 2012.

Now the percentage of people who are in their 20s in America who actually follow through and report that their new year's resolution was a success is a decent 39%. (Statisticbrain: New Year's Resolution Statistics) This percentage was actually higher than I thought that it would be, but the percentage drops steeply as those surveyed approach their 50s. According to statisticbrain.com, the percentage of people in America over 50 who keep their resolutions is less than 14%. (Statistics were calculated from 2011 data)

I'm happy to be among those who can report a successful new year's resolution. Actually, 2012 has been one of the best years of my life. (Although it is closely tied with the year when I was nine years old. That was an AWESOME year!)
2012 was a year of growth, achievement, and memories. I cannot quite put into words how grateful I am for the successes and triumphs I experienced in this past year. 2011 was a disheartening year. A year of failure, betrayal, and personal shortcomings. It is very hard to watch the people you love give up on you, and it's hard to see the disappointment you've caused others. But even more than these things, it's hard to explain how it feels to disappoint and give up on yourself. I was walking a fine line. A line where I had the choice between giving up, and improving. Fortunately, along with terrible eyesight and bad teeth, I also inherited from my family tree an unconquerable stubborn will. I was only a child when my family first noticed my bull-headed stubbornness. Maybe it was the way I doggedly learned to walk on stilts, or maybe it was the complex system of pulleys and tree limbs I used to launch trash bags into a dumpster, but at some point during my childhood it became painfully clear that I was a wild child with a temper and an aversion to the phrases "no" and "you can't". If my parents weren't equally as determined as I was, I'm sure I would have turned out differently.
There are so many factors which come into play when raising a child, and there are so many things which can go wrong. Children are environmental sponges, and each child is like opening Pandora's box. Human personalities are all different, and you can never tell what kind of a personality a child will have. Genetically, the odds could be tipped against you from the beginning.
But I'm getting off-topic. My point is not to promote my personal sentiments about having children or pro-life versus pro-choice. On the contrary, my point is to say that I have a very unique combination of personality factors. These factors make me very successful now, but all of these specific traits in one person presents a very contrasting inner atmosphere, and this can be very chaotic for an adolescent. I struggled with how strange I was in my own eyes. I knew that I had different opinions and viewpoints from the majority of my family and peers. I felt like an outsider in my own life.

Either way, whatever the reasons, and whatever the results, there were several years with varying levels of turbulence as I battled adolescence. 2011 was one such year.

This is why I went back and read the post I wrote one year ago today. I wanted to see the change. My expectations where mild. I simply wanted 2012 to be a better year. And a better year, it has been. I rocked another school year, learned to admire who I am, acquired a substantial movie collection, made new friends, reunited with family, and on 12/31/12 I danced Gangnam style with several million other PSYched Earthlings. (Side note: Psy's performance of Gangnam style [which you can view here] was epic on a global proportion.)

Overall, 2012 resolution achieved. And 2013's resolution? Non-existent, I've decided to give myself a year off from resolutions. I am honestly just so freakin satisfied with 2012, I can't think of anything upsetting enough to make a resolution about.

Terrible Movies

There was a time when simply sitting in front of a screen to watch a movie rendered me speechless. Everything I saw on the screen was magical, and I loved every second of it. I don't have any memories of watching a truly terrible movie from when I was smaller. I guess it just comes with childhood.

Often times when I revisit a precious memory from my childhood I notice that it is significantly less charming the second time around. We visit our childish Narnia and find that the fields are smaller and itchier, the trees are less exciting, and the mythical battles which used to be so prevalent seem to have disappeared (This is by no means an insult to Narnia, a suggestion that Narnia is for children, or that adults would find Narnia to be lame. Narnia is a real place and if you're telling me that Narnia isn't real or that it's lame, then life is not worth living anymore....sorry, I had to do that, I'm very protective of C.S.Lewis.)
We can't spend time mourning the death of our childish viewpoint. Although the world looses a lot of its charm as we grow older, it also looses a lot of its fences. We learn as we grow that every single human who is born on this planet gets a chance to make their dreams a reality. Growing up gives us more freedom, and the journey for self-actualization is an exciting one! Although we learn that life can be cruel, we also learn that life can be exhilarating. Those childish lenses were a beautiful and glorious thing! But we can never return to a moment we have already lived. Every point in life is a new stage, and although wonderful things from the past have to die, their place will always be filled by new wonderful things.

I was reading something online a few days ago, and I found this photo which basically summarizes all knowledge in the universe.

This last category, the things that we don't know that we don't know is the single most motivating mystery on planet earth. These things cannot be comprehended. It is our job to find them, and bring them into one of the other categories. When I read this summary of human knowledge, I immediately associated it with stages of life.
We cannot predict what a new stage of life will bring, that's what makes them so terrifying. They are an unknown unknown. Some may argue that they should be a known unknown because we are aware of our own ignorance. However, I would like to suggest that they are an unknown unknown. Although we are aware of our ignorance, it is not the ignorance which brings us terror. It is what lies within the ignorance! It is the actual constancy of this next stage in life. If a terrible car accident will occur in a week from now, and it will leave you paralyzed from the waist down, there is no way that you can have knowledge of this event. It is an unknown unknown. An unknown unknown does not have to be some revolutionary concept like another dimension or a new element, in this case, the unknown unknown simply exists because of time.
We must continue onward, because this is the only way we can bring something that we cannot comprehend into something which we can quantify.
The unknown unknowns are the things which bring us terror, but once we have conquered them, they will also bring us power. Time is not our enemy, it is our puppet-master. whatever we are handed tomorrow, we will have to take without argument. It is simply the way that life as we know it exists.

Some people see the unknown unknowns of life and are paralyzed by them. But the way that I see it is this: if you cannot change what is going to happen to you tomorrow, why should you waste the known knows and the known unknowns of today worrying about the unknown unknowns of tomorrow?

By their very nature unknown unknowns are.....unknown. We cannot be angry about their nature any more than we can be angry about the sky being blue, or gravity holding us down! Enjoy today! Let tomorrow be tomorrow.

Hulu+ or Netflix THAT is the real question Shakespeare!

If you're like me, you love the fact that for only $8 a month, the internet now offers you a plethora of entertainment. Whether it be a delightful full length movie, or a breath-taking plot twist on your favorite show, Netflix and Hulu+ now provide us some really affordable options. There's only one problem.

Both services have features which I love, and features that I hate! I LOVE the commercial free service Netflix flaunts, but Hulu has a significantly larger selection of shows! However, another downside of Hulu is that there's only the most recent season of any given show available. For example, I missed two seasons of one of my favorite shows, but I can't catch up on Hulu because I will have missed an entire season! That's no fun!

Anyway, my point is that I wish I could just kind of mesh the two. It would be so great to have the commercial free/ all seasons experience of Netflix, but with the selection and interface of Hulu+.
That's what I want for Christmas Santa! Come on now!

Apocalypse Eve, My New Favorite Holiday

So let me summarize. It's been an eventful night. My celebration of Apocalypse eve consisted of a long apocalypse movie marathon which is still going on as we speak. I have a collection of 6 apocalypse movies, and my goal is to finish all 6 before the day is over (assuming, of course, that the apocalypse does not happen, which is what I believe will happen today).

So why celebrate 12/21/12, you might ask? Well for me, this day is a significant historical landmark. This day has been an event of interest for centuries. It is, in essence, the 1 year birthday of the Mayan calendar. In another way, this is also kind of the death of the Mayan calendar. Either way, I thought it would be interesting to treat it as a holiday. It is sort of the Y2K event of the two-thousands.

I am delighted to report that the night has been a smashing success. This has been, without doubt one of the best nights of my life. I felt like I was celebrating history, in my own kind of geeky way, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I dove into the suspense, gasped with the heroes  and celebrated the victories. I let myself into every moment, as if it was happening from a window of my room, and the result was humbling and exhilarating.

I have seen many different apocalypse movies tonight (and also, as a bonus, I can now spell apocalypse correctly 100% of the time). Many of the more widely known apocalypse movies I have already seen. I am, after all, a huge movie nerd. I was aiming to watch new material instead of re-watching things I've already seen, so I went shopping and found a value pack with 6 apocalypse movies. I was sold.

The first movie I watched was "2012: Supernova". It was the least impressive of the movies I watched tonight. Mostly, I felt like the whole thing was too easy. I mean, by no means is a supernova a boring catastrophe, but pretty much all the things the team needed just kind of magically appeared. It seemed like they were too prepared for a phenomenon which is traveling at light-speed. How did they manage to detect it in the first place? The movie was all-right, but not impressive.

The next movie, "Storm" was a little more interesting, but still left things to be desired. The "natural disaster" was not one at all, but instead was a storm which people manipulated in order to direct and strengthen it. It was an interesting concept, but not really an apocalypse.

The third movie was one of the very best movies I've seen so far this Apocalypse Eve. It is called "Catagory 7: End of the World". Despite the melodramatic title, the movie was amazing!

There were just so many plot twists and parallel plots all happening at the same time. The characters were engaging, and I liked them immediately. Because of this, I was drawn more deeply into the plot. The movie was extremely long. It had two parts. I liked that there was just the right balance of complete and utter destruction, and joyful salvation. There has to be enough destruction to make the movie feel like the entire world really could just disintegrate. However, there also needs to be a long-shot plan which results in some sort of victory. This movie had all of these element, balanced perfectly. I genuinely applaud the directors of this film, it was truly well done.

Needless to say, after the previous masterpiece, the next movie had big shoes to fill. I was worried that all the rest of the movies would be downhill from there. However, the next movie was equally as good. So good, in fact, that I can not decide which I like better, the third or fourth movie in this marathon. The title is "10.5 Apocalypse". I think that perhaps both the third and fourth movies in this marathon were directed or produced by the same person or company. Both movies have the same sort of balanced parallel plots and engaging characters. Also, both movies have two parts, making them both extremely long.

Anyway, 10.5 Apocalypse was different because it featured a sort of chain event catastrophe sequence where each catastrophe was partially caused by the previous one. Also, only in this movie did I see such a wide variety of destructive forces. In most of the movies, one or two focused things cause the apocalyptic event. In this movie however, there were earthquakes, volcanoes erupting, sinkholes forming, tidal waves smashing, volcanic acid eroding structures, buildings collapsing, and at one point, there was even an impending nuclear accident/fallout which would kill millions. Overall, just when I thought that the suspense couldn't get any stronger, something else would happen which would push the whole situation higher. Great movie! Great movie indeed!!

The fifth movie might possibly be the worst movie I've ever seen. The title "2012: Doomsday, didn't seem too much different from the others. But it was comically dramatic, the acting was terrible, and the plot was heavy and laborious. The entire movie was also filled with this overly dramatic background music which made every scene just as sickening as the last. It was crammed full of mismatched religious traditions and prophesies. The goal never seemed worth the amount of drama required to reach it. For example, the brave trek featured in one part of the plot was all so that a statue could be returned to a temple. The statue looked like it had been made hastily and then covered with gold spray paint. It was.....pathetic. Anyway, you can't win them all. On to the last film.

The final movie in this marathon was simply named, "Apocalypse". This movie, although it seemed like a blockbuster in comparison with the last one, was fairly strange. The apocalypse mentioned in the title was less of a natural disaster, and more of an inter-terrestrial terrorist attack. The terrorist was a mentally ill woman with a fetish for word play and puzzles. The vessel was an ancient spaceship which everyone assumed was abandoned. There were some charming things about this movie, some of the characters were engaging, but overall this movie isn't one I'll watch again.

So there we have it. I have officially watched somewhere between 10-12 hours of apocalypse movies, and it is now close to noon on 12/21/12. Happy apocalypse day everyone! I'm going to go get some sleep!

Apocalypse, an extremely difficult word to spell

We've all seen those films. Where the solidity of the earth fails, earthquakes open up great chasms in the ground, entire continents shift and protest. The sea rises up and smashes the statue of liberty, the fire rains down from the clouds, and hail the size of cars smashes buildings. Fires are everywhere, electricity fails and phones are useless. Cities fall into the sea and planetary poles shift. Suddenly, icy cold is descending on the people and no one can escape.

Apocalypse. A great force of nature which would render our planet lifeless and barren. Why do I write about these things? Well, as I write it is currently past midnight on December 21, 2012, a date widely believed to signal the end of the world.

These prophecies supposedly originated from the ancient Mayans, who created an elaborate calendar system which, of course, was not indefinite. The Mayans wrote that the end of the calendar signaled the beginning of a "new age". This statement is clearly ambiguous, but nevertheless, for centuries it has been widely believed that the world would cease to exist past 2012. When I say widely believed, I am not saying that the majority of people believe it, but only that as far as apocalypse prophesies go, the 2012 prophesy seems to be the most significant doomsday prophesy.

I do not claim to be an expert in Mayan culture, nor have I extensively studied the subject, however, I am one of the people who do not believe 12/21/12 signals the end of the world. Perhaps I am just one of the great gullible masses, and a massive meteor really is plummeting toward earth to wipe out humanity. After all, in the movies, the people who see the truth are few and they are ridiculed. The majority of people go about with their lives until the very last second when the world is crashing down and they realize that they were wrong.

In reality, and excuse me for being callous, but I honestly don't care. What am I doing tonight? I'm watching just about every apocalypse movie that was ever made, just for the fun of it. My viewpoint on life tends to be a very liberating one. I figure that if I'm going to die, whether it be old age, freak accident, murder, or act of nature, I'll just deal with that when I get there. Why worry about every possible crisis? There are so many different things that can go wrong, it's amazing! My legacy is that I'll deal with every crisis once I can clearly see it, and I'll do my best to advert catastrophe when I can, but I'm honestly not going to loose any sleep over it.

Look at it this way. If I'm going to live in a house, there are some important things that I can do to keep myself safe. I'm going to put fire detectors in every room and keep them well-serviced. I'm going to map escape routs and make sure I know how to get out of my bedroom window. I'm going to put a security system in the house, not cut corners, and a good, healthy pit bull never hurts.

I'm going to wear my seat belt when I drive, and never drive intoxicated. The point is, I'm going to do all the routine things which can keep me and the people I love safe, but when it comes to everything else, I'm just not going to worry about it.
If a random bolt of lightning strikes a wire which runs into my house, in through the walls, into my room, through my socket, into my laptop's cord, and electrocutes me through my ear-buds  there is absolutely nothing I can do about that. So why worry about it?



When it comes to things which I have no control over, I would say the most obvious of these is nature. We see every day what happens when nature grows restless. Tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes, tsunamis; these are all natural disasters which strike suddenly and without prejudice. If you ever wanted a power which recognizes equality, it would be nature.

These disasters devastate poor and rich alike, killing whoever can not scramble to safety. Another factor which makes these killers effective is that every one of them is a little different. There is an air of unpredictability which makes escape risky and flawed. Overall, if there is anything which I cannot plan for, in any way shape or form , it is a natural disaster. And the apocalypse, if it ever does occur, would be the mother of all natural disasters. For all we know, the entire planet would disintegrate. Where do you think meteors come from? They are pieces of something.
My point is that an apocalypse event is something which, by my nature, I simply do not feel the need to worry about. If it happens, it will happen, and I will deal with it them.

Life is such a fragile and beautiful blessing. The more I learn about science, the more intricate and interconnected it becomes. In fear of sounding like a granola hippie, I'm going to go ahead and say...........we should celebrate life. I don't mean that we should all go outside in the rain and soak in the positive energy or some nonsense like that. (Although if that is your method of celebrating life, there is nothing wrong with it I'm sure) I'm just saying that for right now, how about we all just take a minute or two to soak in the world. Breath the air and love that it is around, feel the ground and love that it is strong, absorb your controlled environment and love that you're not outside (which in my case would be bitterly cold, extremely windy, and unpleasantly damp.) Love where you are, and leave the world to go forward, wherever it is destined or fated or just decides to go.

Human 100-300 pounds

Earth 5, 973,700,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms (estimated number calculated by this source)
(1 kilogram= 2.2 pounds)

Conclusion? Sit back and enjoy the ride, nature wins every time.

The Nerd Arsenal

One evolving aspect to my skill portfolio is my growing technical knowledge. Having technical know-how can be so rewarding, and as I've grown more proficient, I'd like to share a few things that have aided my journey into the world of nerdness.

I think one thing that every geeky sort of person can agree on, is that having some sort of cloud to play with is extremely helpful. Now, my goal is to eventually find a cloud service where I can backup all of my photos (over 200gb) and one which will also back up my laptop in real time. I'd like a solid cloud backup option which doesn't charge increasing amounts of money as the storage needs increase. These cloud services do exist, I just haven't yet committed over the money needed to begin this endeavor. However, while I work up to this eventual goal, my cloud service of choice has been Dropbox. 

Dropbox is a fantastic free cloud service which will easily fulfill the needs for a small, highly adaptable cloud service. One of the reasons that I love having Dropbox is that with the compatible app found on my smartphone, I can now transfer files between my laptop and phone without worrying about cables. 

Another fantastic geeky necessity is an external hard drive. Mine is a two terabyte drive, which might be overkill for the less ambitious storage seeker, but for my needs it has been amazing. One thing to keep in mind with all forms of digital storage is that if data is left alone for a very long time and it is never accessed or modified or moved, it can become corrupted. An external storage device is not foolproof data storage, alternate backups should also be made. 

One of my favorite devices that every budding tech-savvy person should have is a decent quality SATA cable. I prefer a USB to 2.5 cable because of the obvious ease in compatibility, but other alternatives are just as effective. It is so nice to be able to access hard drives directly instead of relying on operating systems or software. This can be especially helpful if the laptop operating system is in a crash cycle. It's nice to be able to get all of the data off of the disk and into another location where it can be scanned for viruses. 

The next necessity for smooth technological tinkering is a solid antivirus software. It doesn't really matter if it's free, you just need to search for which free antivirus software has received the highest ratings for the current year. This is your best bet for an antivirus program. I like to have an antivirus and malware both running on my system. They overlap a tad, but I've never had a virus, so I'm not complaining. Also, you should have an antivirus program running on your computer whether or not you have consistent internet connection or not. I don't care if you don't have wifi, the reality is that having an antivirus program running on your computer is not going to hurt anything, and you should be cautious about having an exposed system regardless of your wifi situation. 

Another wonderful thing to have is some sort of operating system bootable device, CD, or DVD. I have a windows 7 ISO image on a thumbdrive, and it has saved me many a heartache. Which just for clarifications sake, an operating system ISO image is essentially a miniature operating system. It is what you need to install an operating system on a blank harddrive, or to fix a defective operating system. It is the same thing that you buy in a box at a store like Circuit City or Best Buy. Also, just to be clear, having a bootable ISO image of an operating system is in no way illegal. If you buy the operating system online, the file you download is an ISO file. 

The next thing I'd like to mention is called a VPN protocol. This service, provided by a large number of companies for a monthly or yearly fee, is basically the next step in internet security. The concept is complicated, but to simplify, a VPN protocol is essentially an internet "tunnel". The service provides you with a large number of servers that you can connect to. These servers are located world-wide, and have IP addresses to match. When you connect to a remote server using a VPN service, all of your internet activity will be conducted from the location of the server to which you are connected at the time. Web trackers, and web sites which gather information from the computers that visit will now be gathering data which says you are in a different location. Not only is your physical location protected, but your computer is protected from remote access. You essentially "hide" behind a remote IP address, and your ISP cannot track your internet activity. The users of this service used to be limited to individuals who have shady things to hide, but as internet security has become a bigger issue in this day and age, VPN protocols are becoming widely known in businesses and among everyday internet users as a valuable safety and privacy tool. 

This is my list so far of different things which I have gathered which make my life easier every day. They're just nice to have around. I certainly will be adding to this list, but this is what I have so far.