5 posts tagged “geek”
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What TV show(s) will you be watching this season? Why?
Submitted by ducnly.vox.com.
First, it should be pointed out that i don't "watch TV" in the traditional sense; which is to say that i don't sit down in front of a television in order to watch specific programmes on a regular basis. While i do, in fact, have digital cable service, it's really more of a casual convenience than a way of life.
Instead, i tend to use BitTorrent to obtain episodes of whatever serial i happen to be interested in. There are 3 major advantages to this system:
1. No commercials
2. No commercials
3. No commercials
Beyond that, i can watch episodes whenever i like, and i can easily access programmes from past seasons; the latter point is important, given that i don't actually watch TV, so i'm often years behind on popular serials (such as 24, for example - i only recently finished season 3).
So what am i watching this season? Here's the rundown, in no particular order:
- The Ultimate Fighter
- Battlestar Galactica
- Rome
- 24 (season 4 ;) )
- Nip / Tuck (assuming a new season happens)
That's it. Any more television than that, and i'm quite sure my brain would rot. Even that amount is borderline too much - i think i'd actually prefer it if Nip / Tuck doesn't happen right away...
If you could write a book about anything, what would it be about?
Physics and philosophy, my two favourite topics that start with "ph". This one is sort of a trick question (trick answer?) though, because i've already started to write this book. I've got about 3 or 4 chapters done - real chapters, not that Dan Brown bullshit - unfortunately those are the same 3 or 4 chapters that have been done for the past 2 years...
I suppose i lost the.. i don't know what. I suppose i just lost the drive to keep writing. I reached a point where it became very difficult to crystalise the ideas i had in my head, and when the writing stopped being fluid, i just gave up. I know, i know, quitters can't be winners or whatever, but man, writing is hard work!
Perhaps i'll pick it up again someday. Perhaps pigs will grow wings and bomb the Whitehouse, too.
(re-posted from my LJ)
One of the things that i really like about LiveJournal is the threaded comment system. You can have normal bulletin-board-style interactions, where the parties involved are notified of responses, and the flow of the conversation is both obvious and natural.
[rant]
This,
in fact, is one of the major reasons why i can't stand MySpace - the
blogging interface is ass, and the comment facility is worse.
Unfortunately, Vox uses the same sort of asinine guestbook-esque
commenting system as MySpace (and other blogs).
When i leave comments in other people's blogs, i don't know if i've received a response unless i go and check manually. Furthermore, a long string of disconnected comments to a particular blog entry doesn't help anybody - it's impossible to follow a conversation easily, and is nothing but a hamper to real communication.
LiveJournal, despite its faults, got this right the first time. It's unfortunate that SixApart didn't choose to implement this excellent methodology with their new endeavour.
[/rant]
But all is not lost. Vox does a lot of other things well - things that i find myself wishing that LJ had. The concept of "friends" isn't as black and white, and the ability to easily tune access to content based on group permissions is spot on. Furthermore, they've taken a page from MySpace and made it easy to upload and integrate all sorts of media (which is cool).
I also really like their (lord help me, i'm about to type this fucking phrase) Web 2.0 (aah, unclean) approach to UI design. I haven't fully explored all that can be done with the templating, media embedding, and so forth, but it seems both extensible and functional - a difficult combination to attain.
Take a picture of something under construction.
One of the rooms in our server complex is currently being rebuilt. These are ridiculously expensive stacks of metal and silicone that will - eventually - go back into the server area.
Among this pile of machines lies our Battlefield 2 server. I suspect that by the time everything is put back together, a new game will be out that we'll all obsess over; possibly Battlefield 2142. :)
