Happy As Kings

Running like the Red Queen: keeping up with technology

I think this blog would be more appropriately named "Running like the Red Queen," but I worry (at probably the mildest level of worry a person can have) that it would mess up the blog's URL or tinker with my all-but-nonexistent identifiability statistics with search engines.  Someday I may do it because, as time goes on, keeping up with things by running, runnning, running, and then running some more, seems a more accurate metphor for modern life than being happy as a king, ie, enjoying the richness of experience of the world.

The tech-item inspiring this blog post -- both to express omg, look at this!, and to complain about red-queen-running -- is a scanning app used to copy keys.

The App I Used to Break Into My Neighbor’s Home, Wired.com

Such services also enable jerks like me to steal your keys any time they get a moment alone with them. Leave your ring of cut-brass secrets unattended on your desk at work, at a bar table while you buy another round, or in a hotel room, and any stranger—or friend—can upload your keys to their online collection.

Burglary-for-dummies is another feature of 21st century life that the crystal-ball-gazers of the 1950s and 1960s never envisioned -- or, if they did, they didn't let on to the rest of us.  The Jetsons may have had a robot maid, Dick Tracy may have had a wrist-radio, and Disney may have shown us space travel, but any computers ever used in the visions of the future were always HUGE. Transistor radios barely fit in an actual pocket, so getting a computer that small? Unreal!  Smart phones for teens? Tablets that are cameras? Apps?  Nobody saw those coming.

So now a new worry is someone copying the house keys and walking right in. Running to keep up, I'd say a hasp and a Master lock (the kind kids have on their wall lockers) would do the trick, but then bolt cutters would be a simple workaround.  Next on the list (runnning faster) is a front door combination lock, but one's own short-term memory fritzes, and a resultant lock-out, would be as worrisome as thinking someone has scanned the house keys. It all seems to boil down, in one way or another, to a humorous personal axiom that has decorated many cross-stitch project: the hurrier I go, the behinder I get.

Run, Queenie! Run!

Tropes vs. Women in Video Games

Anita Sarkeesian, creator of the Feminist Frequency vlog and pop culture critic, has started a project called "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games."  I'm probably the last person to be commenting on gaming culture as the extent of my gaming experience is Wii bowling with my grandkids (I've broken 200).  Despite that weak-to-nonexistent credential, I'm peripherally aware of the culture and I try to pay attention to the ways culture-in-general affects the way we think and our relationships.  Because of that, I'm interested in Ms. Sarkeesian's project.

[time passes]

Okay, I've lost a half-hour scanning background on Anita, gaming, and opinions on Anita's proposed opinions.  As with nearly everything, it would take a complete turnaround from what I usually research, and a shift to focusing on video gaming, for me to gather enough information in order to have even an elementary understanding of gaming culture.  If I want to make any progress of my own, I'll have to leave this as just another link to boost rankings and get back to my own work.

Good luck to Anita and I look forward to seeing the Google alert announcing the debut of the series.

Photoshopped propaganda

The last few days on Facebook, I've seen pictures people have either been acclaimed by the people who have shared them, or the person felt the picture to be an embarassment.  The thing I feel these pictures have in common, is that they were digitally manipulated.  Unfortunately, we have so many things to watch out for that closely examining images is just something else to put on the to-do list.

The giveaway in these pictures is the pixellation and differences in background shading.  Copy and paste the full-size images into a graphics program and increase the size of the image.  See the pixels?  D'you figure someone's playing you?

I find this one funny, but it's still been worked.

 

I find this annoying.  The intent of this image is that homeschooling parents and kids are numnutzes for not being able to spell their own 'name,' and the numnutzes are supporting Governor Perry.  I don't support Governor Perry in the least, but I find this connection to be offensive to both of us.

 

I hope this young man lived.  Whether he did or not, putting any tattoo on his body and using it for propaganda is disgusting.

 

This one puts out the vibe that the sign is hanging on a building or barracks in a combat zone -- it just has that look.  I seriously doubt (but could be wrong) that this sign would be allowed.  Officially proselytizing isn't condoned by the regs.

Air Force reviewing all ethics training,  14 Aug 2011, Air Force Times

The Air Force is reviewing all training materials related to ethics, core values and character development after more Christian-themed course work surfaced.

The problem isn't with the content, per se, it's with undue command influence on personal beliefs.  Servicemembers swear to protect and defend the Constitution, not a specific religious viewpoint.

 

Now if you think I've got hold of the wrong end of photo manipulation and am just annoyed at the messages in the above images, here's another example, one I hope makes readers laugh:

Click on the image, copy it, paste it into the graphics program and enlarge it.  See the pixels around the penguins and the cymbals?  Manipulation.

We all probably see images similar in tone to these images, and may nod in agreement with them, feel irritated, or laugh; that's normal.  But once you think about it, please, do take the time to see if someone's playing you and playing to your confirmation bias.

Remembers Benjamin Franklin's advice:  "Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see."

-------------

Note:  I found out that the photo of the injured soldier is authentic.  I'm assuming the pixellation of his tattoo came from whoever publicized the version of the photo that I saw, and that that image had the tatoo 'sharpened' for legibility.  I was relieved to read that the young man survived.

Golden State: Golden State Column: Whose Internet is it?

'It all' starts out 'smooth,' and then grows into a fractal garden.

Link: Golden State: Golden State Column: Whose Internet is it?.

The link to "Who Owns Your CD/DVD Collection?" is paradoxically enervatingly fascinating.

How long before someone tries to own the air and levy charges for each breath (and greenhouse debits for CO2 emission), and the sunlight warming your house in winter is taxed as income? 

(credit the first thought to Robert Heinlein [The Moon is a Harsh Mistress], and the second to an elist comment yesterday about how public education should be taxed as income)

Conductor?  I'd like to get off now.

Turn it off

I knew I was right.  Turning off computers not-in-use is a point of view I've maintained for some time, along with the opinion about shutting off automobiles if they aren't moving in any particular direction.

Listen to the old homilies such as "Waste not, want not."

(No, I'm not a curmudgeon because I'm getting old.  I've always been this way.)

BugMeNot.com

Link: BugMeNot.com.

"Bypass Compulsory Web Registration:" Keep spam at bay.

Comment spam

Comment spam showed up, so all the comments are now moderated.  That means I'll see them before they show up on the blog, and I have to give them my USDA stamp of approval before they see the light of day.

The management regrets any inconvenience this may cause.

Raised By Chaffinches: Clean up now

Link: Raised By Chaffinches: Clean up now.

Go ahead, click on it.  It isn't one of those cruel sites that scream and scare you.  Promise.  (I hate practical jokes)