I absolutely loved The Death of Superman. Its probably my favorite DC Comics arc of all time, and apparently Cartoon Network is showing the movie version on July 12th! I’m totally pumped! Check it out at 9PM.

Thats right, we’re finally on FeedBurner.  What took us so long, you might ask?  I’m not going to give the whole story, but it does involve a militant army of penguins.  Hopefully, the change won’t affect you beloved readers (aside from bringing more in, at least).  Leave a comment or two if it does.

Russia’s already getting into the spirit of the Olympics, and theirs isn’t even until 2014!  Introducing Federation Island, Russia’s We’re-More-Awesome-Than-You Olympic project.  Its an entirely man made island chain about to be constructed off the coast of Sochi, Russia.  The island will house 25,000 people in 10,000 incredible apartments and villas.  Picture beach side resorts and man-made forests.  I’m really looking forward to my own private island, personally.

Federation Island

Or, How A Hotel Full of Anime Fans Made My Day

One of the nice things about being on my own for a while is that I finally have a chance to step back and look at myself.  I’ve always thought that self reflection is a good thing, but when I’m at school or with my family, I don’t really have enough time to do it.  You see, the first little bit of self reflection that you do is always painful.  You’re dealing with your worst flaws straight up front.  If you only do that sort of first stage of self reflection, you start to really dislike yourself, which becomes another thing that ends up on the top of the list.  Its a negative feedback loop, if you will pardon a slight pun.

The nice thing is, once you get beyond that first layer of disgust, you can actually get some work done.  I’ve found, at least, that when you realize that your flaws are normal, you finally start working on them.  I’m sure I’m not going to make fans with this next story, but I’d like to share it anyways.

A good friend of mine flew in yesterday to attend Anime Expo at the LA Convention Center.  I picked her up at the airport and we hung out around the hotel she was staying at for a while.  The hotel was literally crawling with anime fans of all ages.  Anime-tards are very high on my list of people to not associate with, so I wasn’t too comfortable walking around the hotel.  After a while, I said goodbye to my friend, and drove home.  As I was driving, an interesting realization came to me.  The anime-tards that I saw that day, for the most part, were not as smart as I was, not as socially apt as I was, and didn’t quite smell as good as I did.  However, despite these things, every single one of them was ecstatic to be in that hotel, simply because they were going to Anime Expo.  It made me see that despite some of the things I don’t like about myself, there are plenty of things about me I should be happy with.  That one realization has opened up a whole new world for me.  I’m still a flawed human being, and there are still many things that I would like to change about myself, but at least I have some things I can model the rest of myself from.  Its almost as if feeling angry at myself about these things was preventing me from fixing them.

If you’ve read this far, I commend you.  There will be no tech news in this post.  There will be no jokes, no rants, no stories of Nerf guns gone wrong (that’s probably my next post, actually).  However, I will offer some insight, for those willing to listen.

Don’t get lost in self-pity.  Don’t get angry at yourself.  Don’t ever feel that you need to change yourself immediately.  Before you can do anything to change who you are, figure out something about yourself that you like.  Be at peace with yourself.  Learn to love yourself, even if it’s just some small part.  Then you can modify everything else to fit the scheme.

My brother has recently become obsessed with all things Nerf, and I’ve got to admit, I may have picked up the habit as well.  It also doesn’t help that I’m working at a company where proficiency with foam weaponry is not only the norm, its required.  Before coming here, I picked up a Nerf Maverick, a six-shooter pistol kind of gun with decent ranges.  My problem is, I’m never satisfied with decent, especially when my brother has a single shot pistol that can shoot 10 times as far.  So I bit the bullet and opened the sucker up.  The results are beautiful.  Stock, the Maverick can fire 20 feet.  Now, it easily shoots 40, with any dart imaginable.

Oh yeah, and I can play Russian Roulette, too.

I’ll have pictures tomorrow, but for now, check out the mods I tried:

Foaminator 3000

Dropclip Mod (I only used the clutch modification from this, which allows me to shoot tag darts easily)

Russian Roulette

Sony just revealed a new OLED panel thats 0.3 millimeters thick. All the photo’s I’ve been able to find aren’t that great quality, so they probably can’t do the screen quality any justice. All I can say is that I’m really impressed that they’ve worked OLED technology down to such a ridiculously small scale. The only thing I’m not excited for is the price tag.

Via Gizmodo

Since the annaversary of Diablo 2 is less than a week away, I find it interesting that Blizzard has changed their homepage to a very cool looking splash screen.  Let the rumor mongering begin!  The main question is, if they are foreshadowing something new in the Diablo universe, will it be just another installment of Diablo, or perhaps their elusive “Next-Gen MMO“?  I’m rooting for the former, if only because a Diablo MMO would probably suck me in more than WoW did.

I’ve been working on Total Disorder’s design.  This is a modified version of Blueflower by Mu.  I’ll probably have a real design done by the end of the summer, but I’ll be testing out parts of the new design here.  Let me know what you think!

Though the Internet is most certainly changing the way we think, wouldn’t call it even remotely fair to imply that it is “making us stupid.” Its certainly an easy thing to say, especially when one regards some of the more insipid and utterly ridiculous contributions that people have made. One doesn’t need to go much further than YouTube to see what I mean. However, it’s these poorly edited YouTube videos and silly pictures of cats with misspelled captions that offer justification for the source of Mr. Carr’s frustration. The amount of content on the Internet is immense, so much so that one could never see everything the Internet has to offer. As a result, savvy web crawlers have developed a technique of finding the choice bits amongst the gristle of content. By skimming an article or web page for its core ideas, readers can quickly decide which content is worthy of their dedication, and which is not.

It makes sense that skimming would frustrate Mr. Carr, considering the fact that his job is to write, but saying that skimming makes us stupid couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, by allowing us to filter out the bad information, skimming leaves us more time to pay attention to the more important content that we encounter, which means we can learn more from it. Also, it allows us to visit more content, exposing ourselves to more ideas than possible through traditional media such as books. In essence, in an age where information is effectively limitless, the technique of skimming allows its users to maintain both breadth and depth of knowledge, combating the natural drive to become lost in the sea.

Mr. Carr makes a very common statement towards the end of his article when discussing Google’s ambition of creating an artificial intelligence. I find that many people are repulsed and sometimes even downright afraid of the idea of using computers to augment our mental capacity. Mr. Carr attempts to downplay his own personal views, practically challenging the reader to call him a Luddite. Unfortunately, his distaste in the idea of an “ectopic brain” of sorts smacks very heavily of Luddism. One uses technology because one gains personal benefit from it. I can think of no more useful piece of technology than a seamless interface to the huge database of information that is the internet. It would make perfect sense, as well, that this interface would come in the form of an artificial intelligence that could intelligently search for exactly what you are thinking of at the time.

As the world continues to transition into the Internet Age, one must expect to see changes in culture as well as intellectual thought. Mr. Carr references several instances where a new form of technology has changed the way people think. He also references several famous rebels who fought against (or at the very least complained about) these changes. Most people today will regard these rebels as behind the times and poorly informed. Ironically enough, as he references them, Mr. Carr seems to join them in their Luddism; destined for afterthoughts indexed by Google.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?