A Call To Arms

Recently I wrote a MySpace blog mainly directing the masses to continuing reading my blog, but come here to do so. Also in the same blog I issued a call to arms. What was stated, in essence, was for people to not only look at available blogging options beyond the tired realm of MySpace, LiveJournal, and Xanga, and realize that there are some seriously powerful alternatives out there (such as blogger). In addition, I mentioned RSS in the blog as an ability to “subscribe” to blogs instead of using MySpace’s user only way.

Now I realize that people who are not oriented to all that the internet has to offer may not understand what RSS is. I charged those who live in the shadow-lands of the AOL/Internet Explorer era to emerge from their caves and figure out what the world has to offer. The charge was simple. Figure out what this stuff is and use it.

For example: Yesterday I told my girlfriend (who uses Mozilla Firefox per my recomendation) to upgrade to Firefox 2.0. She then informed me that I had to do it.

“What?” I stated, confused. This is a one click option provided by Mozilla.com, whats the hang up.

“I don’t want to mess something up.” she said.

Well, my girlfriend is a smart cookie. She picks up on things very well, but her attitude is a kin to that of many wary people who are still probably using whatever version of IE that was previously installed on their POS Dell or (god forbid) Toshiba PC.

This mindset is some what confusing to me. When will people learn that the world is moving digital and virtual and 90 other different kinds of ways all steming from the high speed internet, web 2.0, open sourcing, and ever increasingly more powerful OSes.

So I issue yet another call to arms. I would like to charge everyone who still uses the triditional IE on a PC to consider their options. I would like to ask that people start looking into RSS feeds, widgets, and open source applications.

I’m not trying to sound like a computer nerd, this sort of stuff is what the savvy business professional will need to know to streamline their work flow. More importantly, this stuff just makes life easy.

Still need more convincing, how about another example:

Internet Explorer: Full of bugs and safety issues, at most a catch-up browser
Firefox: Safe, secure, innovative

Hotmail: Dated, filled with spam, limited options
Gmail: Constantly improving, auto-saves e-mails, holds multiple gigs worth of memory and offers a search for old mail items you would like to revisit.

Microsoft: Loose OS, buggy, simple, good for gaming and math, boring
Apple: Very tight OS, extremely intuative, excited & knowledgable community, great for music, pictures, movies and other creative stuff. In a word, amazing

Get the picture? These traditional “standards” are only doin more harm than good. New innovative technology is the only way to go.

Want to make the switch, but need more info? Comment on this blog and let me know what you need. If don’t have the answers I know people who do.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to subscribe via RSS

The Merits of an "All-Nighter"

So here I am, its 7:52 in the AM and I have been awake since 10:00 AM yesterday. I am sitting at a terminal at my office at the Pacer, UTM student newspaper, and I am writing a blog. First off let me say that this has above all been a relativly depreciating experience. According to sources within my family, who will remain anonymous, my father would pull “all-nighters” all the time in his college days. Well, friends and random readers, this is my first.

Due to procrastination and general apathy for school yesterday I was faced with the daunting task of writing a proposal of 1,000 words, editing said proposal, writing a 6-8 page paper about a topic that I still currently unsure as to the context of the question posed, and studying for a test. I faced this yesterday. My decision was clear at the time (then again as opposed to right now almost every thing was more clear yesterday than today) that I should pull an all-nighter in order to finish all that I needed to do.

This couldn’t have been a bad idea right? Most historical men of genius would rarely sleep. I was just following in their footstep. However, I am not a man of genius. But I completed all my tasks within the time frame and even had some time to spare to record this event in my blog, provided to me by the people at Google who constructed Blogger.

The most interesting part of my night/day was things that I did in my semi-hysterical, sleep depraved state. Me and my co-worker Will York (who btw has just made the comment “Sleep is for the week.”) made a late night video recording the sad terrible things that we were doing in the wee hours of the morning. These things include for me the aforementioned school work and for Will some sort of French homework about farming. If you are interested in seeing this video please log on to Will’s website, willyork.com.

So, in sumation, I would like to stress to all that are reading that the all-nighter is more harmful than helpful. Use your time wisely, manage it, and stay on task so that you can lay your head down at night and get much needed rest and revitlization for you mind, body, and soul.

As for me, I will now proceed to vomit because my body is exsisting off of caffene and nicotine. I will then go to my 9:00 class, try not to pass out. Then I will go to my 10:00 class and take a test that I am not prepared for (even with late night study). I hope everyone else has a wonderful day.