One of the things that bugs me most about games such as Neverwinter Nights 2 Gold
and the Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir Expansion isn't that, like so many other applications and games, that it asks me to register.

What bugs me is the way that it always chooses Internet Explorer to register with. The default browser on my systems is Google Chrome; it used to be Seamonkey but the separate processes in separate tabs makes Google Chrome my browser of choice. So when I go to register or visit any site from an application, the application should launch the my default browser - not Microsoft's default browser.

Whether intended or not, and whether damaging or not, it is a matter of control. I modify my computer systems to suit me, not some corporate interest. Don't launch a browser that another corporation wants you to launch, launch the browser that your customer wants to launch. { Read more }

One of the things that irks me most is when people purposefully make it difficult to be understood by the majority of people who encounter their communiques. Much has been written about the 'downgrading' of language on the Internet - but that's not my focus here. My focus is on literacy.

If I write, "I ain't got no good English", anyone who speaks English can understand the implicit joke. And that joke is that the sentence makes sense and is understood despite the fact that schools teach that the sentence isn't proper English. We know what it means. But if you toss that same sentence at someone who doesn't speak English well, they may not understand. And the role of communication, for those who need reminding, is to communicate. With whom does one wish to communicate? { Read more }

There's a familiar story about a mouse hitting a button, maybe red, to get dosed with cocaine. It does so, consistently, in preference to food and sex.

I prefer to think of the button as being a mouse button. And instead of cocaine, there's the Internet. Some mice have a simple mouse manufactured by an elitist fruit company, but the vast majority of mice have a Swiss knife of a mouse. It's got a minimum of 3 buttons, and one of them scrolls content up and down on a receptacle that, no matter how large, always seems too small. In fact, if there was a way to crawl into the receptacle I imagine the problem with these mice would be short-lived.

But that's the Internet. Publishers are driven through by the number of clicks their content gets and - sometimes - even the quality of the clicks if that makes any sense. Thus, publishers typically cut their content into smaller pieces so that the mice have to click through more links to get their doses of content. Each click is some revenue for the publisher. Click. Click. Click. And the majority of the mice, even hearing the urban legend of how they are just revenue streams for publishers, continue to click no matter the quality or quantity of the content. Click. Click. Click. { Read more }

A friend of mine mentioned a need to decide between financial independence versus poetic calling not too long ago. Those sort of decisions haunt me. Either/Or. One or the other. But why not both? People are quick to point out that the world is not black or white - and yet these same people will say that Barack Obama is black (or more politically correct, African American). But Barack Obama is of a white mother and black father. Since when did not being white mean being black? As far back as I can remember, actually. And when did not being Indian make me white in Trinidad? Same logic, different perspective. In a world of ANDs our categories thrive on ORs. Why can't, for example, Barack Obama be both black and white? The fact is that... he is.

And why can't my friend follow a path of financial independence AND a poetic calling? A long time ago, a boxer with a 12 string told me that one day I would have to choose whether to follow my poetic side or my engineering side... and that worried me for years since he said that the longer I waited the less I would be able to do. But it is possible to be both. The only thing that holds people back is... 'other people'. Even on the web, tags and categories limit content and viewing to those interested in those tags and categories - but the web, mimicking life, is much richer than categories and tags. Something can be funny AND serious, something can be artistic AND solid engineering. The reason we do categorize is because we only have limited time and want to find what we wish - which comes down to us seeing what we want. And that isn't always real. { Read more }