Outward L👀king
I’ve been looking to put my thoughts down for a while
This blogger thing sounds promising…. we will see
http://www.nyunews.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/12/09/4399264e25c89
So now you know, Coke really is evil.
Coca Cola in Columbia had their union organisers murdered. After refusing to give in to demands of a third party investigation, New York University has decided to remove all Coke machines from its campus.
The Art of Change: Breaking a Habit
An article about procrastination that I found through 43things.com
http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/international/bbc.html
I have heard this before, but I had never really read into it till now. What most people take for granted around the world is a liberty that most Britain’s don’t have. Free TV.
You see, whilst I adore the BBC media coverage and documentaries, there has been a governmental clause from day dot that the public pay for a license to contribute to the cost of running a radio/TV station.
Fair enough, the pay for use system does have its advantages. Less ads, arguably better content and less skew from the interests of big business are some examples. But the problem is what happens if you don’t watch TV, or rather you choose not to watch the BBC related programming.
TV Licenses in Britain earn a great deal of revenue for the BBC. In order to enforce the collection of licenses, a TV Licensing agency manages the collection of annual dues and uses various techniques to tell whether the occupier of a house is using a Television set or not. There are large fines for not owning up to having a TV & much like car registration, when a television changes hands, be it from a dealer or the 2nd hand market, then the change must also be noted and the new owners must get a license also.
The problem seems to be that if you don’t own a TV, or choose not to watch it, you are consistently asked every 2 years, to prove your non-use of the TV. It appears that simply stating that you don’t like TV isn’t enough, rather if you have a TV just for watching DVD’s for arguments sake, you must get the set neutered by an electrician such that it cannot pick up TV signals.
I have not heard of such a thing anywhere else in the ‘free’ world. Whilst most governments seem to be concerned about censorship to the media as a whole, the UK appear to be forcing you to watch their censored view.
My view of the BBC to date has been that their news is much less biased than most local news so that is one plus, but the fact that you are suspected of TV watching until proven innocent seems rather strange. Mainly because Britains have let their government get away with it for so long shows what can happen when leadership is let to go unchecked and unquestioned.
http://www.bravia-advert.com/
This TV ad has been on for a week or so now. Thousands of coloured balls bouncing down a hilly street. 
At first you don’t know what its for, something techy looking and I thought it was a printer commercial. As it turns out Sony has an ad for their newest TV. But while all these balls are bouncing down the street, there is this an acoustic soundtrack in the background and its very catchy…. I’ll say again, that amazing soundtrack in the background is extremely amazing. Metaphorically something inside me wants to say, “the song resonates across many planes of existence, drawing upon a common purpose we are all trying to rise up to.”
So with my new found fanaticism, some web research brings that Sony has dedicated a website to this commercial, which explains the making of it and most importantly, the track that’s played in the background.
If finding the website almost instantly wasn’t co-incidental enough, finding the artist Jose Gonzalez web presence, shows he is playing a show in my city in 10 days time.
After listening to Jose Gonzalez’s Myspace site with Dee, it is unanimously decided that we go to the Northcote Social Club, Nov 29. Here is hoping for a hot night out with a few drinks chilling out to this guys tunes.
Can’t capture enough the feeling that this guy has left. For myself, who is normally into metal, this acoustic act is a unique unexplainable deviance. But I know that I’m good at overtalking things up, lets see how he actually performs. 😉
Age of Empires III has a demo out
Reading through the requirements, I almost had everything, bar the 64MB graphics card.
Knowing MS, the game would run like crap on the ‘base’ system reqs anyhow, but being able to shoot a character and have the force of the blow push them off a cliff was the clinker that got me to a thinking… time for an upgrade.
Whilst on the topic of addictive megalomaniac games, I liked the marketing ploy for Civ 4. They’ve created civanon.org, a site ala insert name of your addiction here) anonymous with tips for people trying to avoid that ‘one more turn’. The video on the site has the classic stereotype addicts at a civ 4 anonymous meeting, along with swearing grandmothers, an infamous political leader discovering the joys of the Latin language used by the Ancient Romans and some guy called Sid ;-). Go check it out if you’ve played the game.
Its worth noting that Civ 4 *does* run on this little icarus of mine.
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
This is the most intruiging read. For two hours, I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
A well formed story that encapsulates all the problems with how the world is running out of oil, and that everything connected to it, is facing collapse. Along with (what little) we can do to avoid it.
The writer looks at the various solutions being promoted and those ‘environmentally friendly’ ways which actually use more energy to produce it than to actually generate it.
Personally, I found the part about plastics and electronics relying on oil to hit home the most. My job & home life depends on computers and electronics and even if I ride my bike to get around, I will still be faced with no job, no money to buy capital (more electronics) to re-invest and try to earn money, and whats worse, no food… no life.
For those that send out petitions to officials to lower the price of oil, I think this read will help you identify the causes of why the oil is so high in the first place, why it won’t go down, why the politicians you are writing to don’t have the ability to fix it and most importantly why you haven’t actually heard anything about it in the media.
Yeah, yeah, scaremongerer I am being I know. But being informed is at least a little bit better than being kept in a dream. That said, the writer sites a plethora of sources throughout his article which show that not only is there more reading you should do and that he is not just full of it, but that the energy companies and governments have known about this for a very long time and have ‘workarounds’ that don’t have anything to do with technological breakthroughs or better efficient ways to use oil (actually, not much to do with oil at all) to solve the ‘problem’.
Hopefully I haven’t corrupted or biased an anti-opinion with my view up here (ie scared you away). I suggest you read this guys article with an open mind and follow up the links presented. Even if you are still of the mindset that we will have affordable oil for our childrens generation, at least you will be able to site sources from here to support your opinion…. albeit demonstrating an amazing degree of tunnel vision at the same time.
Good luck and have fun. I sure did. 🙂
Edit: Updated the link to point to the homepage, rather than the 2nd page of the guys article.
So a redundant blog is awakened? Why?
It’s time to regurgatate what I have learned to you all out there. Regurgitating knowledge is the best way to remember it. Hopefully if I’ve learnt something, then you will learn it to.
The other reason is this site has had no content for aaaaagggeeeeeeessssss. Just some happy snaps of bands I have seen in the past.
We’ll see how long we go before we forget about this blog stuff again.
…. 20 seconds and counting….
Intent
So, like when I first started Outro, I do have some goals for this place.
Originally, Outrospective was to be
Although I did learn Flash, I really didn’t have the time to invest in it. As I’m older now I’m starting to appreciate the more simple things (perhaps why I opened this blog again instead of reinstalling dreamweaver) and I don’t need to push an artistic prowess. I recall Tool’s dissectional web page as some form of inspiration to stay away from a normal web interface & perhaps from time to time I’ll play with some navigational aids as I go along, but overall I’m not a web designer. I know some very good ones and they’re in a different ballpark from me.
I still have the need to do something different than the norm, so that’s where the content comes in. The ramblings about the world will stay as well. Perhaps as Blogger has a comments system, I’ll activate that and see if anyone wants to talk 🙂
So, if Outrospective.org isn’t going to be the Flash covered fiesta that it was originally meant to be, what do I want to put on there.
The plan is to make it a repository of info I’ve collected from uni and work. Mainly it’ll be a lot of stuff to do with computing, but I’ll also put some personal stuff about bands I like, experiences and those thoughts that keep going through my head that make me, me and you, not me. If I care enough, I’ll discuss wordly issues, only if you’re good. 😛
And so, here I guess is the site map v0.1. It doesn’t appear that Blogger supports tables but we’ll give it a shot anyhow.
Computers – man, this is the hardware bit, but it covers mobile phones, routers etc
Software – stuff I’ve come across that I think is useful
Networking – I’m definetely no network hack, but I do love my router and news of what happens in the land of online
Mobile – I have an E1000 that I’d like to hack, and other related things about bluetooth nes and working on the road.
Programming – this will have to have subsections, and subsections in those subsections
Java
J2EE
EJB
Hibernate
…
.NET
C#
SQL
WebDevelopment / Web & Application Serving
Brain – stuff I want to regurgitate from my computational nueroscience class
The Home Cooking Channel – maybe, though I’m not much of a rehasher of recipes
Animal Welfare – here is a box of soap, here are my views on eating carcass of dead creatures
Music
Tool
NIN
Cog
Society – things bother me in this world. One of those things is how the low socioeconomic group of society seem to be stuck there, what they do to themselves, what the government does to them. I’d like the world to be a bit different, turn the tables
Procrastination and the battle with time management
I’ll add to this as I go along
And with that, I say thanks for the read. Hope you and I can both keep our attention long enough to the end
1hr 45 mins and counting
And this is the 2nd post. It’s interesting to see how conservative one can be
Well this is the first blog.
If you are going back thru my history, you may as well stop here. There is no point trying further to find older blogs.
Of course I could change this at any time.
Put me in my place, then again, this is my space!