Nancie's Web: Computer Stuff

Showing posts with label Computer Stuff. Show all posts

11/08/2012

Social Media: Dealing with Personality types

Chat bubbles (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I've been on the internet since 1996 when I had bought my phone, ordered a phone service and signed onto AOL. In those days, it was easy to cancel AOL. I had later switched to "Together Networks" which was half the price of AOL. I had no trouble cancelling it.

The first "social network" I had joined was a chatroom owned by MSN. It was free at the time and I met a lot of interesting people then. Some occasional troll would come on and we would all jump on them. They would eventually leave. In a time where it was mostly intelligent people who owned their own computers were chatting. We had a lot of interesting discussion. Some arguments did arise, but it was rare that you would see the useless "You're an idiot" "Nuh-uh, you're an idiot" type of argument.

Then there was ICQ and some community chat room where your Avatar would show up in a "Room", a 16x16 bmp avatar that you could design in paint and upload. I completely forgot the name of the chatroom because I would look it up to see if I can still download it, even if it's for nostalgic reasons.

ICQ was the first VoIP I used. But I didn't chat too much on there. That's when I started to notice a lot more, shall we say, not so intelligent people signing on. They weren't necessarily trolling, but assumed that every woman on the internet was only for sex chatting. Sexting was common long before it was called "sexting".

I joined Modblog in 2005. It was like Myspace, only better. Unfortunately, it was sold to an incompetent company and it died, as the bugs were not being fixed. I still miss that site and I bet it would have been what Myspace is if it stuck around.

People were still pretty civil then. As a matter of fact, I'm actually friends with one them on facebook - the same guy who quite socialist from England. If you don't know me well enough, my views more align with the libertarians (with maybe a few exceptions), so you can imagine what kind of discussions we would get into, but at the end of the day, we were still internet friends.

Then came YouTube. This is when I saw most of the haters. Granted, I may have not been on websites that had many haters, or I have been "lucky" enough to not encounter many, but on YouTube, it was the worse I've seen. It bugged me, but not because it was offensive or it hurt my feelings, I actually have a pretty thick skin, but it bugged me because I could not believe that people were intentionally looking like idiots in text. I didn't even think it was possible to look like Not only did they look like idiots, but they seemed to be oblivious to the fact.

I got used to it and moved on. I became more patient with people who really couldn't see what I was trying to say, after all, without facial expressions, or body language, or even tone of voice, you can't always get what a person is saying. I got used to the haters, too. I've come to realize that they're more than likely kids who are not allowed to even express their anger at home, so they do it online under the "safety" of anonymity.

I'm also a lot more patient with people who don't grasp concepts. It sometime drives me crazy when I see a post that could very well pertain to them. Knowing their mental capabilities, I usually don't say anything. When I do say something, they usually don't respond, but my comment stays, so maybe, just maybe, they'll come around.

So now, I have one more personality type to deal with... Willfully ignorant people who are proud of the fact. These are the people who when losing an argument will delete all of the comments, then post something to the extent of "I decided I don't want any negativity on my blog/forums/wall/comments so I deleted the post - then proceed to continue with a comment that invites negativity.

Just a FYI: If you think I'm talking about you... you aren't the first one who did this.

It's akin to someone putting their hands over their ears and saying "lalalalalala! You are just so that why you are not agreeing with me". I have the least amount of respect for these people as it's something I would expect from a child (that's not mine, of course). It's difficult to treat them with respect after that.

And yet, there's that possibility that they might come around, which is a lesson I haven't learned yet, as of just recently, I stopped treating someone who did that just that with respect and called him out on my facebook post. I apologized to him about doing that, but I still have no respect for him. None. However, that does not excuse my actions. I shouldn't have called him out, but not because he didn't deserve it (maybe he did, or maybe he didn't) but it does reflect on me as someone who has been working on self control and as a Christian.

I could blame it on the pregnancy. After all, hormones have a way to make it even more difficult to resist temptation to act out on an emotional rampage.

Whatever my "excuse"... He unfriended me. So any example I have to set, any possibility to open his eyes, at least through my posts, won't be there for him to see, all because I let my emotions get the better of me.

It's just one more personality type I have to deal with and learn from.

I better learn fast.

1/19/2012

SOPA (#SOPA) and PIPA (#PIPA)

I don't have much that's worth anything on my website, although, I hope that soon, I will. Currently, all of my content had been licensed under the Creative commons Attribution license. Pretty much, if you use my content (if I ever post anything useful), then all that I ask is that you link back to me.

However, if PIPA passes, I may just use Copyright. For those who know me, this may come as a shock, but there a reason... If I see as so much as a pixel of my content on any of these PIPA supporters websites without my permission, I will bring them down.

To be honest, I doubt that will ever happen as my content, at the moment is useless. But I honestly think other website content owners do the same. Perhaps by having their sites take down, the proponents will realize the idiocy of their websites - maybe.

I may post a "pre-permission" page where it can be used for non-commercial use - i.e. copied to a forum in a discussion, or something. Not sure how I will work this out. Hopefully, it won't come to that.

8/24/2011

Burn, Baby, BURN!

We lost two of our desktops today. Out of all the desktops, it just HAD to be the one that contained hours and hours of old home videos that I had digitized from VHS cassettes. In case you aren’t sure what they are, they’re the things that we used way back when there weren’t CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray, SD cards, thumb drives, or even cheap desktop computers.

Desktops back then costs thousands of dollars, and had a whopping 128K and used what was called “floppies”, which looked kind of like a giant floppy SD card. Later came the slightly smaller version that was actually plastic – but I’m getting way off the subject here. If you want to know what a VHS cassette was, click on the link above. It’ll take you to a Google images page, so you’ll know what they look like.

My husband dug out his hard drive reader and tried it on the third Gateway, which didn’t seem to even know what an external hard drive was. Neither one of us wanted my youngest to hound him and me (mostly me, of course) about using the computer. His laptop is so old, you would think it played VHS tapes, so we use the only computer that was running, could read an external hard drive, AND no one was using (as in I was busy doing housework), my laptop.

We moved the files onto my laptop and then proceeded to move the files onto our terabyte book drive. Unfortunately, for some strange reason, anything more than 4GB was more than the drive can handle. This means, that I will be taking the video and cutting it up into pieces.

New problem, my hard drive is full. Well, almost. But it’s full enough that editing the 4GB video won’t happen, unless I free up some space. Movie Edit Pro 17 Plus (the video editor I use) is non-destructive, which means, that not only the entire 4GB file remains intact, but Magix will create another file with all the edit info. In order for me to edit all of the larger files (ranging from 4GB to 11GB), I have to work on the smaller files first.

So, I burned one DVD already and found that it wasn’t as tedious as I thought it was. As a matter of fact, it was quite fun. So now, after I finish this blog, I plan on doing another.

As long as nothing else goes wrong.

1/12/2010

I have an IDEA!

I've been listening to the expanded and improved 4 hour work week audiobook - and boy has it been improved.

For one, he answers a lot of the critics' questions. The second thing he does is have a lot more resources to look up. Unfortunately, it's difficult to keep up with all the links mentioned in the book in audio format, so I either have to buy a hard copy or listen to the book a "million of times" to make sure that I get all the links that interest me.

I would LOVE to implement some of the principles in that book, with just one problem. When I mentioned it to my husband, laments about the houses he cleans out and how all of them had some sort of home business. Read: he's not going to spend ANY money getting a home business started.

This means any expenses, including virtual assistants, are out of the question. So now what?

Well, not all the principles cost money, like eliminating stuff. So that's the first thing I'm going to do. Using free services like craigslist and freecycle to eliminate the majority of stuff.

Perhaps this house won't feel so small.

The other thing is to actually make money. My father always said, "It takes money to make money" - or does it. I have found some interesting free sites that I think I'm going to use to make some money at home - without spending money - at first.

I won't say what it is now, because it's still in the design faze.

Until then...

7/16/2009

Twitter Hacked?

I was too sick to get anything done (including recording videos), so when I was coherent I decided to use my laptop. Yes, the "media fast" is over early, and I have nothing to show for it. Not even a second of a video. Bummer,

But that's not why I'm writing this. It turns out that Twitter was hacked yesterday. As soon as I found out, I went to my account to change the password (my first instinct). Then I came across the company blog. Supposedly, the user accounts weren't hacked. Really? You expect us to believe that?

Okay, maybe it's true. But I'm not taking any chances. My Twitter account will have a new password, anyway.

Anyway, according to the news, the hacker just guess correctly on an employees account, where he use the email to get all of the security passwords by guessing the right answer to the "security" question, then use those to get all of the confidential documents.

I saw this coming from a "mile away" and answered all of my security questions wrong. At least wrong enough that none of the info that I spew out on my blogs or other social accounts can be used as an answer, but correct enough for me (using my logic) to remember them.

As for passwords, I won't exactly tell you how I come up with one, but it does involve the site name and many different bits of info from my entire life. So far, even though I had been threatened with hacks - no one has hacked any of my accounts. Note to hackers, I don't mean it to be a challenge. We all know you are so good at what you do and you do benefit the society as a whole (please don't hack me).

My longest password is more than 20 characters and I have a lot of accounts. So barring a "back door" attack, I hope that I'm secure enough... Speaking of which, I'm better change my twitter password.

7/12/2009

Upcoming Media Fast

Tomorrow (Monday), for five days, I will not be online. There are a lot of projects to get done and I thought it would be a good idea to enlist the family. Not only that, it's a good way to teach the kids that there are more to life than computers, TV, and Video games.

Another benefit will be that I can't use Facebook, or Twitter as an excuse to stay up late. I would certainly be going to bed earlier. It will definitely be a good time to reset my internal clock. Go to bed earlier, get up earlier.

There are two exceptions. 1. I'll be using my camera to record the week and 2. I'll let the two youngest watch some DVDs on rainy days. Perhaps I'll finally be posting real video blogs, although I do plan on finishing the "Meet the family series" first.

I do have some interesting plans that I do not want to reveal yet. It's a surprise!

5/25/2009

I'm back finally

So, for an entire week, we went without the computer or TV and I've learned 2 things:

1. Old habits die hard and
2. There are withdrawal symptoms that may include: shaking, nervousness, sweating, doubling clicking your breakfast, and mindlessly watching 2 birds and a squirrel fight over the dog's food.

The first day was difficult, I woke up to find that my son was asleep the downstairs downstairs on the couch and the TV was on. He had awaken sometime in the early morning and turned on the TV. Fortunately, it was Sunday. We weren't home all day, so the opportunity to forget about the media ban.

During the week, the kids had rediscovered their toys that they hadn't played with in a while. I was able to spend more time with Nathan at night, since neither one of us were on the computer.

My husband worked on the cabinet finally. He got most of it done, but we are waiting on some hinges. We decided to replace all of the cabinet hardware in the kitchen, but the type of hinges we needed were hard to find. So for now, there are two gaping holes where the cabinet and drawers are going to be.

Unfortunately, On Thursday, it rained, so I put in a couple of DVDs for the two youngest. I made sure it was the really cheesy kid's shows that only the two youngest like. The others did art projects on the kitchen table. One even glued their art project TO the table. On the bright side, I learned that school glue (even the generic brand) comes off fairly easily.

That night, on my husband's night off, he broke the ban and logged onto Fark. At least he remained off during the day.

The best part of the entire week was that Nathan, my oldest son, the one who was the most addicted to the computer, asked to have a media ban for a couple days each week. I thought that it was a good idea, so every Friday and Saturday, we will have a "Media ban". One day to catch up in housework, the other for a "Family day".

We shall see how that turns out.

11/18/2007

Mutant Cold Virus and a dead computer

For more than a week now, I've had this awful cold. It's not so bad now. I seem to be getting over it. It didn't help that I came across an article about the mutant cold virus. If that's what I had, I can understand why it would kill someone with a weak immune system.

Anyway, my laptop finally died Friday. So now I don't have a laptop. This means I have to share my computer with my husband and I won't be able to quickly look up something that I've seen somewhere.

Not to mention that if I have an idea for a flash design a modification to my website, I can't act on it immediately. I have to write a list.

I was supposed to redesign my whole website too, including this blog. Expect changes to take place soon, though. I just don't know when yet.