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pacific14586 (10:25:27 PM): And you can learn boring bass guitar, and be a musical coder!
pacific14586 (10:25:31 PM): And we can start a band!
pacific14586 (10:25:35 PM): Metatallica!
I just made that up.
Almost as good as Randall Munroe's Riot Prrl.
Computers suck. Well, sort of. Computers are pretty cool. Operating systems suck. Let me elaborate.
Windows is functional, but has the user-friendliness of a small killer whale. All my programs work with it, and developing is the easiest I've seen (next to web development)...but they really need to make use of smooth transitions, alpha, rounded edges, gradients, and overall cool live effects.
Mac OS X is beautiful, elegant, and consumer-perfect. It even has the applications you need. It is, however, choked down by good design (at times), and crippled in the sense that there is no possibility of upgrading your hardware. You sort of have to wish that the new processors WON'T come out, so you aren't stuck paying thousands of dollars for a new MacTop (Newly coined phrase; quicker.).
Linux is like a choose your own adventure DVD. There are hundreds/thousands of combinations, and nobody really uses it. Well, not enough people to make it compatible with the programs I like. (Games, visual compilers, et cetera.)
Why do computers suck so badly? You'd think after over 20 years, someone would've fixed something about them. They all have the features I want, but I'm not booting three operating systems to get what I want. Can someone please write up an operating system that looks good, is easy to use, works the way it should, is compatible with everything, open-source, and upgradeable? Currently, it seems like Microsoft is in a great position to do this. Vista crashed and burned...please tell me Vienna will be better. If it is, I won't lose all hope in the personal computing world.
Why don't I seem to fit in? It can't be for lack of friends; I have plenty of those. Most of them are quite close. So why do I feel so distant? Not always in a bad way, though...on the contrary, standing out as a math and computer expert can sometimes be quite rewarding and fun. My main problem, I guess, is not being a geek. I hate it when people using that term to describe themselves without ever having earned it. I've become somewhat territorial about this term, albeit slightly insulting. I feel as if the past year spent learning advanced math and programming mean nothing in the face of pretentious jocks who wish to stand out from the crowd by labeling themselves as geeks, when, in reality, the extent of their geekiness is adding a bold tag to their MySpace pages. The question isn't what I'm feeling; that's jealousy and pride. It's WHY. That's actually pretty stupid. I completely know why. Jocks are athletic, popular, and all-around admired people. Geekiness is the last thing I have left. With that taken away, I'd be an average, plain, non-muscular teenage boy, whose main interests would concern Family Guy and girls who I'd never even get to know (Thank you, social stigma, for making it transitively uncool for people to talk to me!). Programming and math give me not only pleasure, but a reputation as the, quote-unquote, "smart one". If a popular, good-looking football player labels himself as a geek, people believe him, because he's a jock. And, being a jock, girls are "impressed" with his pseudo-intelligence. Meanwhile, I'm using my real computational intelligence to code something similar to MySpace, itself. Girls aren't impressed with that; why would they be? They're barely impressed with the muscleheads' knowledge of HTML (which they mostly learned from me). It's the six-pack that draws them in, and keeps them in. They just need some form of useless intelligence to justify a meaningless teenage relationship; to tell themselves that they're not shallow. That they're compassionate beings. Are you? Are you, really? If you really are, I'd be glad to get to know you. Until then, I'll be waiting. I'm good at that.
Ever wondered to yourself if you were a noob? Let's start. (Note that these are all real example of Second Life players. I am currently taking these screenshots directly from the client.)
1. Groups/affiliation.
30% of who you are is affected by those who you affiliate with. If your group list looks something like this -
- you're probably a noob. This includes all groups with the words "crazy", "retard", or "pimp", as well as all groups that include a Tilda, exclamation point, asterisk, ampersand, more than/less than signs, or carets.
2. Typing/grammar.
Probably one of the stupidest things to do is introduce yourself to the world of Second Life with this kind of typing.
[19:21] ******** ******: i appolgised we hade a haa haa and he still has some grudes agenst me but im cool
I am 94% sure that is Russian.
3. Skills.
It's okay not to have any skills. But it's easy to get them. If you come into Second Life ready and willing to learn a new skill, I applaud your attitude. If you come into Second Life and use the excuse "im tired" for anything you can't do -
[19:16] Sean Marsi: Why can't you spell? [19:16] Sean Marsi: Or type correctly? [19:16] ******** ******: im sleepy
- and have no intention of learning how, why come into Second Life in the first place?
4. (And last.) Exaggerating technical skills.
As I said before, it's fine if you don't have a lot of skills. But please, please, don't pretend you do.
[19:25] ******** ******: i know ur IP number i can tell it to u right now [19:25] ******** ******: 32647486527047 [19:25] Sean Marsi: Ummm [19:26] Sean Marsi: That's not even a valid IP address [19:26] ******** ******: ya it is
Go ahead and look that up on DNS. See how many URLs you get.
That concludes my four main classifications of a noob. These are OPINIONS ONLY. Feel free to argue. I really don't care.
So, after about 45 minutes of removing keyboard keys, and cleaning beef stew out of them (I guess I deserved it; I switched around some keys on a school iBook G4 on Friday. :P), I'm ready to post. It's not so much of a post as a request, actually. If anybody reading this knows a 13-17 year old user interface programmer, please leave a comment. I'm looking for one. I'll post more later, but I've gotta run.
-Lane