For the last three nights, I stayed up till an average hour of 5am…working. In fact, working on the finishing touches for the site design which, unless you’re reading this in an RSS reader, is now before your eyes. So you’d better like it. Anyway, the reason this is somewhat noteworthy is that there’s no technical reason I had to do this. Well, a while back I decided to switch servers, which is about a week-long process, and so I set myself the goal of going live with the new design on the day that I’d have to cancel billing for the old server, namely yesterday. It was a somewhat arbitrary goal, but one I knew I would probably need if I was ever going to get stuff done.
Monthly Archive for January, 2006
Since around October, the relentless marketing machine at Apple had been hammering away at the (admittedly thin) walls of my financial restraint such that, a few weeks after Christmas, I decided I absolutely needed a new iPod–a video one. My then-current 60gb iPod, with a color screen and the ability to show photo slideshows just wouldn’t cut it anymore. So when I got back to California, I began once again a charming love-hate relationship with craigslist SF. You see, however much I knew I needed the $399 video iPod, I knew that I should be able to get it cheaper. A few days of monitoring craigslist via keyword RSS confirmed this, and I was flooded with ads for new-in-box video iPods, all between $300 and $380. Of course, a large portion of these are scams, and a larger portion are sold within 25 minutes of being posted (supply of unopened and unwanted iPods was high because of recent gift-exchange-based holidays having occurred, so the prices were pushed very low). Nevertheless, a few days and many failed deal attempts later, I found someone willing to meet me somewhere in the east bay to trade a still-shrinkwrapped 60gb video and agent18 case for a price which, when all was said and done, would save me about $100.
Continue reading ‘iPod Culture and the Weight of Consumerism’
After over a year of building characters and wandering around the World of Warcraft, I’ve decided to cancel my subscription. The trouble with these massively-multiplayer world-immersive games is layed out in the following set of claims:
- A monthly subscription is expensive.
- The game is designed in such a way that, after an initial phase, the entertainment it provides is exponentially related to the amount of time you put into it.
- In order to get the maximum value out of the game, in terms of both money and entertainment, one is forced to play a lot.
- Playing massively-multiplayer games a lot can be intrinsically unhealthy if in a person’s lifestyle it precludes other more important activites. It is also potentially addictive, and can be unhealthy in that way as well.
Now, I haven’t been playing in an unhealthy way–in fact, I haven’t been playing at all. My decision to quit is more a financial one, and also as a result of the dilemma above, which shows that to get the desired amount of entertainment, one must choose effectively to be unhealthy in some way.
That being said, my visits to Azeroth (the fantasy world in Warcraft) were indeed fun and provided many hours of enjoyment, particularly when I was able to play alongside my brother and sister. Such cooperative play was made all the more meaningful in virtue of the fact that I live across the country from them and had no real other way to hang out. I will retain many fond memories of our quests, guild drama, and laughing at the plethora of idiots that occupy any online community (but particularly gaming communities). So here’s to Telarian, Telariz, and Tsarmina!
Telarian and Telariz surveying the snow plains below Ironforge
In my 2005 recap entry, I mentioned that about a year ago, some of us in Palo Alto got together and threw some ideas about forming a spiritual community down on paper. Those ideas remained in that uncollected form during the following year while we began to work through them. A few weeks ago, I had some time and motivation, so I recast them into a short paper–a sort of bare-bones introduction to the kind of community we have been trying to instantiate here. I thought it might be an interesting discussion-starter, or even just an interesting read for some of you. Here it is:
Many of you will have already heard about this via e-mails from me or Dan, but if not, check out this site that we made for an expedition of sorts this spring:
I have a tradition (since 2000, I think) where, sometime in the first week of the new year, I drive to see the sunrise at Cocoa beach. I like to spend a few hours watching the beautiful scene, giving myself time and space to pray, meditate, wander around, and generally get centered for the upcoming year.
This year, T-Bone accompanied me to Cocoa, where we were greeted by an absolutely amazing sunrise, replete with a flock of gulls that would zoom and flutter about, putting on an amazing show:
But then, a few minutes later, we saw this:
Look at the middle-left of the image: that’s right! A shark was cruising through the water, not 30 feet off the beach (notice the pigeon for scale). Actually, there were two sharks, though I only got a shot of one. The fins were only above water as the waves would break over them, so it was hard to get a good view. Was this shark a sign of some kind? Was God warning us about something?
Later on, not realizing that if two sharks were a sign of anything, they would surely import “DON’T GO IN THE WATER!”, T-Bone and I took a swim in the ocean. What could be more relishing than being able to go in the water on January 2nd? It was a bit cold, but quite bearable and refreshing. And, as we have now proven, shark infested. Unless, of course, one of you is a marine biologist and believes the picture is actually of a dolphin.