My computer’s health diet

For technophiles like myself, the most persistent obstacle we face is the turnover of technology. Innovation is a predator and its prey is whatever the current standard is. Like a resilient case of Herpes, the turnover of technology is a problem that technophiles face that will lie dormant biding its time and then one day it will reveal itself and greet you like a familiar foe. Technology that was cutting edge will become obsolete and I find it most apparent when it comes to my own PC.

My desktop has been through countless upgrades; program purges, defrags and reformats so that its capabilities will always be able to accommodate my ever growing needs. Needs which increase in hunger as something new pops along which requires a more stable, more powerful platform. The way in which I care for the performance of my desktop is something I’m quite proud of.

In contrast many of my friends, have an innumerate number of problems which plagues the health of their computers and it pains me every time whenever I have to borrow a friend’s laptop, that I’ll have to slay waves of pop ups that’ll rudely nudge you to schedule in some tender loving care for the computer.

Whether it’s a reminder to update a piece of software which has never been utilised in the life of the computer, a request to backup all of a computer’s memory to Iomega ZIP disks (yes this has happened) or a prompt to update a piece of spyware disguised as anti-malware. The vast majority of these issues I encounter on one off occasions and issues which my friends have to face every day are completely avoidable.

So while jotting down the list of my most valuable applications that protect my computer from these problems, I also felt inclined to include my favourite applications even if they were recreational because I feel that maximizing the capabilities of what a system can do, is just as important to the life of a computer as staving off its obsoletion. What I love most about the list I wrote down? All the programs are free!

Spybot S&D

The greatest fear that users have for their computers is malicious software getting onto their systems, messing everything up and causing havoc. A program which hogs up all the resources of a system or prevents it from performing desired functions will just evoke a reaction of doom and gloom. It’s why anti-malware software is deemed and agreed upon as essential for any system. The big problem though is that most commercial anti-malware software is based on a subscription model and not everyone has the luxury to dole out cash every year to keep a subscription running where you don’t witness the results. Without an improvement to your system, users aren’t even sure if the antivirus software is even necessary and then that’s where the repeated pop-ups come up that remind you that your computer is vulnerable to a sea of malicious bugs which will end the world unless you break out your wallet and hand over your money.

Well here’s my solution, Spybot Search & Destroy. A free, popular spyware and adware removal program with a badass name that runs on Windows. Ever since I installed it, I have never had unwanted programs appear that try to trick me into installing more fake programs that will cannibalise all of my information or programs that appear that I never recalled installing. This is the first application which I install on any new and clean system. I keep a setup file on my backups as obviously to get at it I need to access the internet however without a direct address to the site (and even then), my computer will already be vulnerable.

The only downside is that it slightly encumbers the resources on your system and that now and then it will prompt you any time a program tries to alter your computer’s registry file which includes whenever you intentionally want to install a program. This is however a rare issue and a petty one at that. Also the program’s footprint is far smaller than any of the other anti-virus programs I’ve used and the alternative to run a naked computer on the internet would be far more problematic.

Spybot S&D GB-EN site:

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

Also see: Trend Micro’s “HouseCall” site, a browser based anti-malware scanner.

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/uk/

WinDirStat

Anyone who’s run out of hard disk drive space will encounter the problem of trying to locate where their most bloated files are. Window’s own capabilities to locate the big boned files and folders; I find are woefully inadequate. WinDirStat provides an elegant solution. It will in a relatively short space of time scan through a targeted directory and provide you with information of where and what proportion of your disk space is being occupied.

Armed with these statistics, you’ll be all the better informed of where and what to get rid of and before long your hard drive will be a lean, mean, memory storing machine.

WinDirStat site:

http://windirstat.info/

Firefox

Firefox isn’t new and I’m sure many people reading this blog will be reading it using a Firefox browser. The great thing about Firefox which I love the most though is the wide variety of add-ons. To be honest I don’t see much difference in function between Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome. None of them are handicapped in their capabilities compared to the others and to me they’re all equally as useful. However some were made more equal than others and for me that’s where Firefox stands out. It’s the community add-ons which you can incorporate from skins, to toolbars, video players and little scripts. All of a sudden your browser can be customized to become your browser. On mine I have the ‘NASA Night Launch theme’, various video player plug-ins, the invaluable BlockSite and probably my recent favourite add-on, Flashblock which replaces Flash objects with a button which you click on if you want to view them. This severely saves on system resources and prevents a lot of annoying adverts.

Treat yourself a bit, go check out what add-ons you can put to your browser to make internet browsing that little bit more fun.

Firefox:

www.mozilla.com

Firefox Add-on site:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

Rainmeter

A brilliant hybrid of practical and recreational, form and function; Rainmeter is a desktop customization platform. This is a lot different from changing the theme of your Windows. Rainmeter changes your static desktop into a hub of interactivity and a brilliant facet of Rainmeter is the numerous gadgets (skins) you can compile together.

Rainmeter essentially acts as an interactive overlay for your desktop. On mine I have a large skin which displays the date and time on my desktop as well as numerous little tools which include information on my network traffic, how much of my computer’s resources are being used and quick links to some of my most used applications. Everything looks gorgeous, slick and it always impresses people when they see it.

I haven’t personally indulged in everything which Rainmeter has to offer which includes an RSS reader and Twitter feed however I’m sure in the near future I’ll get around to searching for those and educating myself in their use.

Rainmeter isn’t without its flaws though. The bare UI has left much to be desired and you’ll frequently have to navigate a complex Jenga of right-click hover menus and text based settings which can be intimidating. The results when performed correctly however are truly spectacular.

Rainmeter:

http://rainmeter.net/RainCMS/?q=About

Spotify (Free)

While not an essential piece of software; as mentioned in a previous blog post, Spotify truly offers a vast library of music which no single (or chain) of record stores can offer. At your fingertips will be all the music you can consume and barring the occasional advert, it’s all free.

The library at your disposal is not just limited to tracks either. Spotify comes equipped with tons of information about artists. A feature which I find remarkably useful is the “related artists” links when I feel that my appetite in a particular genre of music just isn’t quite sated. You can add that single track you love from an obscure artist to an already comprehensive playlist. And once you’re done you can then share your collage of music with friends on Facebook who can conversely subscribe and have a quick link to your mini-masterpiece. This also performs a fantastic function for when you’re at a friend’s house and you want to listen to your playlist(s).

On more than several occasions I have formulated the perfect concoction of tracks for a particular event such as for a Poker evening or themed party. I couldn’t handle having to queue up tracks on Youtube on request or be limited by the confines of the library which was available on my iPhone which may or may not have had the ideal mood music. Spotify offers a simple and refined solution to both problems.

Spotify:

http://www.spotify.com/uk/

Msconfig.exe

Now unlike the other programs and tools on this list, msconfig.exe is one which every Windows user already has. Do some research on it and you’ll realise that it’s quite a powerful program.

The Microsoft System Configuration Utility (MSCONFIG) is a tool that can help you troubleshoot program related problems with your OS via a small and to the point interface. Although intimidating at a glance, even a fair understanding of MSCONFIG will be able to help you cull those annoying start-up notices you get from various programs and even customise which programs you want to boot-up when you turn on your system. A useful hour or two spent on educating yourself about MSCONFIG has the potential to near enlighten your digital experience when using Windows. Not a bad option when that hour would otherwise be spent wasted watching the X-Factor.*

The downside however is that MSCONFIG is as previously mentioned a powerful tool and when utilised clumsily can cause a whole mess of problems. Many items which you may deem as essential to the everyday running of your computer are perceived as optional by Windows and you might accidently turn off a process or service that is required by your applications to function sooner or later. So do a hint of research on what you should or shouldn’t turn off. It’ll be worth it.

Discovering the existence MSCONFIG has just made the boot-up process remarkably smoother. No more notifications to update oft-unused pieces of software, or intensive programs that run in the background during the whole operation of my computer that I only need to use them for 5 or 10 minutes.

MSConfig Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSConfig

Honourable mention:
Steam

This is a much more niche program when compared to others and is targeted directly towards the gamer inclined demographic, so if you have no interest in PC games, there will be little here of interest.

Steam released by Valve Corporation is a digital distribution platform. It’s a very simple concept which feels incredibly foreign the first time you use it. On Steam you can buy video games however instead of paying for delivery of a disc via good ol’ van and stamp or braving the hostile outdoor environment** to get to a retailer, the Steam client will download the game straight to your computer. Not only that but wherever you log onto the internet and have access to the Steam client, you can download and install your game. Gone are the days of having to keep a disc in your disc tray or carrying around with you books of CDs and DVDs. Now it all comes right through the wire (or air even!).

While the digital distribution aspect of Steam is the meat of the client, the garnishing really tops it all off. Through the Steam platform you become part of a community where you can add each other, befriend fellow gamers both in and out of game, chat with them, invite them to play other games in your mutual libraries or compare stats for bragging rights. User formed communities’ spring up for fans of certain games and forums are provided to really get your nerd on with other fans.

The Steam client also provides you a portal to gaming related news specific to the games that you buy and will automatically patch your games for you. The arduous task of having to navigate the internet for the specific patch for a game with the specific version number is all handled for you by the trusty Steam platform. You don’t need to worry about whether you need to install a series of incremental patches or a big beefy patch or whether whatever it is that you’re downloading is even legitimate!

The crème de la crème of the Steam platform though is the Steam sales. Often the good folks over at Valve Co. will feel generous and just slash games up to 95% off. The prices on Steam adjust itself and games will get cheaper over time just like how they do in a retail store. Currently on Steam is their Winter Sale and for 21 days they’re offering unheard of discounts. If I thought I had a large backlog of games I wanted to get through last month; If only I had known what was to come. The list has now tripled itself in size with all the indie games at bargain prices I got and various publisher packs on offer. This is even with restraint! I could have easily bought 5 times the number of games that I have, I just had to draw a line somewhere. Of all the downsides to have, this is a very nice dilemma to have. To be offered too much for your money.

*Apologies to the creators of X-Factor. I do not mean to slight your obnoxious show in any way.

**Research done on the internet has revealed that The Outdoors contains various dangers which include avalanche, bears (BOTH the Polar and Grizzly variant!), Poisonous Jellyfish and venomous insects. Most alarming of all is that The Outdoors also contains a 1.392 x 10⁶ km wide burning ball of hydrogen which has been known to be the culprit of uncontrolled nuclear fusion reactions causing numerous cases of cancer.

Tron: Legacy Review

Taking a well established cult classic and updating it for a younger generation with matured technology is quite possibly one of the more ambitious tasks for a film director to take on let alone one who’s most acclaimed work was a minute long video game commercial (See: Gears of War – Mad World commercial). Although hiring a video game commercial director for the hotly anticipated Tron sequel could possibly have been the right choice for Disney Digital 3-D.

The video game world is subject to a savage gauntlet of scrutiny by the masses. Clues from trailers and announcements are mercilessly picked apart and from their carcasses critics are prepared to extrapolate and pan a development studio before they’re given a chance to showcase the fruits of their labour. Video games are the new titans of digital entertainment when you consider; the day-one global box office sales of Avatar, $27m when compared to the day-one European and US sales of marquee title Halo: Reach at $200m. A lot rides on the marketing campaign of a blockbuster video game title, so when Joseph Kosinski’s works (Gears of War’s “Mad World” and Halo 3’s “Starry Night” commercials) were not just well received but highly praised by the masses on the internet, Disney took notice and decided to apply his skills to a major-studio special-effects laden film.

As a result, Tron: Legacy looks fantastic. The world of “The Grid” in Tron is about as close as you can get to a video game so Kosinski hasn’t changed his style much and although a risky approach to directing a feature film; you can definitely see the benefits. The aesthetics in the digital world of The Grid is incredibly difficult to describe in words, the world is lush yet Spartan at the same time, vivid yet monotone. Kosinski had to fabricate an entire world to look so unique yet functional as if it had all been designed by a single person. He said “Everything inside Tron world had to be designed. And it had to be built either physically or on computer. Everything from the city plan down to the smallest detail of a lamp post. You can’t just buy stuff off the shelf and put it in the movie. Everything has to be tweaked and built from scratch”. Perhaps that is why when I watched the film; I bought into this digital world immediately. The architecture, the uniforms and the various items all glisten, gloss and pulse with a seductively sleek intimidation.

The movie sounds brilliant as well with a musical score by the electro duo Daft Punk. Rather than be a showcase for an upcoming album, Daft Punk have kept in the forefront of their work that this is a score for a movie. The traditional horns and strings of the movie are thus woven in with synth tracks and punctuated by powerful basslines that make the visual spectacle tingle with life. Daft Punk wield a symphony orchestra like an artist to a brush and in addition to their own digital magic, the duo have been able to form grand overtures to sombre soundscapes to pulse racing tracks which draw you into Tron’s digitally mystical atmosphere.

That is unfortunately where the forte’s of Kosinski’s experience exhausts itself. The dialogue in commercials is extremely limited and their impact when applied to Tron is the same. Most of the dialogue seems to have been crafted with the intention of being a one-liner; however without a thorough body of execution, the sewn together one liners fail to strike with poignancy.

The main character Sam Flynn played by Garett Hedlund is the worst offender to this diatribe. His introduction builds up to have potential however as the movie goes on, I feel more and more willing to lower my standards. Initially he comes across as a hacker whizz with a rebellious robin hood like complex however when he’s thrust to be the hero of a digital world, he is nerd turned meathead. His character refuses to employ wit and cunning which is only made more apparent when in contrast to his support characters.

Jeff Bridges does his best to prop up Hedlund. As star of the original Tron, Bridges reprises his role and delivers a strong performance of a character that has atrophied in recklessness yet gained strength in wisdom and patience. In a role that demands Bridges to play several iterations of himself, Bridges remains a convincingly real anchor in a digital fantasy. On occasion, “The Dude” from “The Big Lebowski” creep in however they do provide a good humorous reprieve from the dark and savage world of The Grid.

The stand out performance in this film however is provided to us by Olivia Wilde. The introduction of her character leads us to believe that she is a stereotypical “badass chick” however the perspective of her character swiftly shifts to one of a mega-geek. In the world of Tron however, being a typical mega-geek is par for the course. Wilde’s character instead finds fascination and fantasy from printed books and stories of sunrises as opposed to computers and the nocturnal. Any time she enters the screen a spark of delight ensues not only because Wilde looks bewilderingly stunning in the Tron aesthetics, but also because she delivers a refreshing character that is quirky and full of substance. Unfortunately her appearances are limited and not nearly enough time is spent developing her character.

The plot is nothing spectacular by any stretch. The premise is set down very quickly and continues in a very straightforward manner that may have come from necessity. A chase scene or CGI panorama ensues most scenes of meaningful dialogue leaving little time to actually form any complex attachment to the storyline. I would have loved to have gotten a heavy dose of the lore and background on the world of Tron however most of the lore had to come extrapolated from the original film and the viral marketing campaign of Tron: Legacy. When watching Tron: Legacy I definitely realised there was a lot more than meets the eye however I think those who haven’t watched the 1982 original may be at a disadvantage as Legacy provides a lot of fan service.

The best bits of Tron: Legacy for me boil down to the best bits from the original. In particular the gladiatorial arena fights were a fantastic highlight. The combat scenes could have easily been twice as long and twice as numerate before they got tiring. Instead much more time is spent on flyover panoramas of The Grid and the set ups for one-liners. There are only so many times when you can press a button to wow the audience until they begin to get jaded and Legacy skirts that barrier far too often.

Unfortunately that is the greatest downfall of Tron: Legacy. The sparks of fantastic ideas fade away far too quickly to have any true substance. Whether it’s a fascinating character, light cycle-based arena combat or the history and lore of The Grid; the portions of the film we’d love to know and see more of are smothered by either incomprehensible or cringingly predictable plot points.

With a bit more work on the characters and a few more editorial passes on the script. Tron: Legacy would have been a film that stood alone on the summit of CGI feature-filming. However its downfalls leave it as a stunningly beautiful, yet deeply flawed blockbuster that is honestly very enjoyable but lacks depth. Similar to a video game commercial.

The Cinema experience

The geek in me really wants to go see the upcoming film Tron: Legacy. I never saw the original Tron beyond a few minutes here and there however the footprint it has left on modern cinema is kinda gigantic when you consider it was the first film to utilise CGI. Obviously a film was going to incorporate it eventually, however Tron didn't just add in CGI, it was fundamentally CGI.

The hype with behind Tron: Legacy, isn't what you truly expect film hype to be. Our TV screens aren't saturated with trailers and London buses aren't all plastered with Tron panels (although that would be kind of cool). Instead the hype is more like the world's worst kept secret, it's gigantic, you know it's there and those who are into the sub-culture of films and digital culture will tell you it's quite possibly one of the biggest releases if not the biggest this winter. However ask someone who isn't quite tech savvy or up to date with the latest cinema listings and they'd give it a fair nod and then tell you that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1 would be the largest and they're probably right.

It's remarkable how selective the advertising campaign is for Tron but I love it that way, appeal to those who'll enjoy it thoroughly and give them the feeling of greater reward for it.

Now this viral marketing has worked on very well on me and makes the geek in me want to fight the nerd in me. The nerd in me will want to crunch the numbers of going to the cinema and attempt to validate it. Afterall I'm sure whatever feature I'm going to view will be available on DVD or Blu-Ray for a lesser price and I'll also have the ability to re-watch it countless times over along with the special features. The geek in me however throws all this overrated logic and wants to just get my fix of sci-fi chic and get lost with some escapism for a few hours. So how is it that for some reason, going to the cinema is validated despite it making a meagre amount of sense to?

As a kid going to the cinema as I recall use to be this fantastic adventure, an entire evening that surrounded this one event. I would rock up to the cinema, spend a good 15 minutes gawking at the array of TV screens all showing the same trailer and then purchase my tickets and refreshments before killing time on an arcade machine nearby with some friends till the screen became available and the attendants let people in. I'd then go in, for 15 more minutes to half an hour of commercials and trailers and then the feature film would play. At the end of it I'd be in a daze because my mind was swallowed up whole by the film, all that would be left of me would be this zombie of a being wandering around with my friends till my mind decided to check back in.

That's gone now. I don't know what happened but the cinema has now become this kind of disgusting place where people are shuffled in and out like cows while we're milked for money. I'll rock up to a cinema, go in and perhaps don some 3D glasses that make me look like I belong in front of an 1980's computer. After that I'm immediately out, a slight daze but mostly just disappointed that my £10-15 of cash was just burnt in the space of two hours. What happened to cinema!?

The film studios must be realising they're losing a grasp on digital entertainment. Afterall Avatar, the most successful film tallied up $27m day-one at the global box office however Halo: Reach, a marquee console title managed $200m on it's day-one sales. I suppose the fading allure of the cinema itself is why advertising campaigns for specific films have gone off in a whole new way with our daily lives being bombarded with trailers and billboards. It must also be why they're so persistent with making 3D cinema become a pervasive part of our cinema going experience. They want to offer something no one else can.

Now I don't want to knock 3D cinema too much, I believe it has it's place but a lot of films seem to add very little to justify the mark up in price. The best two films I've seen with 3D are Avatar and Jackass 3D. The former because it was integral to the "experience" which it actually was, everything seemed vibrant and I was sucked in while my zombified self went on to infect others by word of mouth how brilliant the film was.

For Jackass, it wasn't a gimmick. It just enhanced what we loved. A lot of films have a storyline and lore you want to get lost in, 3D just distracts away from that when all you get is a flying rock going towards you, one second your in the world then you get shocked with "Oh hey look a rock!" and then your left scrambling for a second to get back into the plot. With Jackass it was more like "Oh man he's about to get hit in the nuts" and then it's "Oh hey look a rock!" followed swiftly on by "Oh man! Did you see that rock hit his nuts!?" It was just a part of what the film was about, not a gimmick thrown in.

So 3D can work, but more times than not I've found it disappointing. So what else could justify the extortionate cost of going? The refreshments? They're almost worse than the film itself. I experienced a world changing revelation in my first year of university, freshly inserted into central London. I walked through Leicester square on the way to university to see a pallete stacked with foam peanuts contained within cellophane. I thought, wow...someone's office cubicle is going to get owned.



This is not what happened. Instead upon further inspection, the foam peanuts turned out to be pre-popped popcorn. There it was just sitting there in all it's un-fresh stale glory. Now, I know I shouldn't be too freaked out by it all and that you can do whatever you want with food so long as all the numbers add up well, stuff like carbs/calories/fat/protein/vitamins/carcinogens etc etc. Should all the numbers add up to make something edible and not detrimental to my health in a catastrophic way, I'll be cool with it. But there was something nefariously wrong about having pre-popped popcorn as opposed to popcorn popped on-site. Maybe that's just a personal gripe, but in any case I highly distrust cinema refreshments now. I really don't want to know the journey the cinema hot dog takes...

So what is it? Why do I still want to see Tron in the cinema? The seats are comfy that's fine but I'd never pay to sit in a seat for just 2 hours no matter how comfortable it is...Maybe if it was super special comfortable and super "satisfying"? Moving on, the last true ace up the sleeve which cinemas have over home viewing. The screen.

This is what it's all about really, a titanic screen that you could even view the Titanic in! I never figured it to be a big deal but the big revelation came to me in the second year. I was invited around to a friends to watch Iron Man featuring Robert Downey Jr. Directed by Jon Favreau. I knew this household had an adequate TV, it was a 28" CRT if I recall. Ok so it wasn't quite like my 32" flatscreen LCD HDTV...But I was willing to put aside my pride for the social aspect of the viewing (back to this in a bit).

When I realised that we were going to watch Iron Man instead on a 17" Laptop screen, a bit of me died that evening. Really? We're going to put it on the coffee table and cram around the couch? This is not the way films are meant to be watched! I got physically angry, all my muscles tensed and my blood pressure was strong enough to crush submarines. This is what cinemas have over every other form of viewing, a collosal screen. I still to this day don't know what it is about having Chris Pontius' wang all in my face in all it's 5 metre majesticness but the experience was just better by having it on a big screen.

Does my head really value all the tiny bits of detail? I suppose so, that way I don't get irritated by missing the little things.

Hollywood, here's a tip to help out your cinemas. Make them bigger, louder, longer. I want to truly get my money's worth. 3D only if you can really make it integral to the experience, so incorporate it from the screenplay to the editing. I'd like to have a 120 arc curved screen at something like 40m tall and 90m wide. That's right. I want to leave the cinema partially deaf with a sun tan and a dose of radiation that gives me a healthy green glow in the night. The size of the screen is what draws us in, play at that!

Recently in the United States, Dallas Texas a new stadium opened and in it? A 1080p 60yd long HDTV

I want 4, one for each wall of my new "brain-melter" room

The only other aspect that endears me to the cinema going experience is definitely the social aspect. This is something else curious. I loathe people who talk to me during films. But I still want someone there. Is that childish? Yes but so is asking rhetorical questions. At the end of the film though, that nod on to each other that you had a good time does add some value to the cinema experience.

For a few hours going to the cinema is a fantastic time to create a shared experience, it's fantastic for friends and dates alike. I haven't met anyone who really hates going to the cinema although I know they exist as I've heard people on the podcast gripe about it. But I think it's more of a dislike of strangers in cinemas. Which I feel is in an immature way somehow validated. When you need to cross someone to get to your seat you do think, "Damnit...why are you such an obstacle, why are you here? My life would truly be better had you not existed." Whereas if someone crosses you it's more "Damnit...why are you such an obstruction, why are you here? My life would truly be better had you not existed."

Rude strangers aside, the cinema really is a reliable outing option if costly. At the end of the day, for me I still love going to the cinema, I love trying to grasp on to that childhood experience of having an adventure, making an entire evening of going to the cinema and coming out amazed and caught up in the tale I had just been told. For several hours my phone's off, no one can reach me on Skype/Facebook/email and any work that I had is going to have to take a time out while I let it all run away from me. I'm disconnected from everything that tires me and I celebrate a well told tale with friends. That's the cinema experience.

LINK DUMP:
Tron Legacy
60yd long HDTV
The inconvenient truth about cinema popcorn

Access versus Possession

The Internet as it stands today forms the bedrock of modern civilization. It is the ocean we all now swim in, we travel across the internet searching for that precious resource which is information. We import and export information daily and it is the battlefield for ideologies, opinions and data. The conflicts which exist on the internet no matter the magnitude of the implications spur on creative solutions, refined thought and is a proud beacon for the society that interacts with it. A new conflict however is arising which goes against the nature of materialistic possession.

With services such as Spotify and OnLive which offer collosal libraries of entertainment for a subscription, we are seeing a shift from possession to access. My record collection including digital purchases over iTunes will never rival the towering amount of music which is available through Spotify. If Spotify had a physical library of CDs (or even Vinyls), acres of land would be required to store all that information. Not to mention that if such a place existed, it would take a prohibitive amount of time to search which disc I wanted to listen to.

Subscription services such as Spotify rely on Cloud technology, the information is out there on the internet as opposed to your hard disk drive. Rather than storing terrabytes of information physically on location, you can stream everything you want, someone or something else does all the heavy lifting for you, all you do is pay some money and voila, that collosal database is now available for your listening pleasure.

This manner of trading seems to violate everything we're taught as since kids. You pay money, you get something in return. That something is now yours and has it's own value which could appreciate or depreciate. Subscription models turn that upside down. You pay money for nothing to own, the value of what you gain is consistent and will not respond to market pressures (your subscription) the actual content remains in the hands of the service providers. Yet somehow you will have more than everyone else who doesn't have a subscription, the amount of entertainment you gain for such an amount towers over any amount of physical media one can ever own.

Access looks to triumph possession. It's a good deal for the people running the service as the value of their assets will grow as more subscriptions come in and it's a good deal for the consumer as you now have at your fingertips the collective works of hundreds of thousands of artists.

Now subscription models do have their obvious downsides. You only have access, you can't really muck about with the content you have access to. You own a subscription not a record. If a service was to discontinue service, you will be left with nothing and that is a driving fear. You need internet access to utilise the service and internet isn't freely available everywhere whether the obstacle be monetary or physical (Wi-fi signal).

A lot of these fears are however put to rest when you consider how robust the internet actually is. A lot of people now have access to broadband internet. Established businesses such as Spotify will continue to operate so long as their's profit to be had until the next big thing comes to knock it off and when compared to retail stores, the threats to the business seem quite far off.

So for now it seems as if services which offer a subscription to vast libraries are the new establishment. However it's hard to deny how engrained the nature of owning possessions is to our natural spending habits and it's a robust system that's been in existence for as long as trading has occured.

For now I'll view access services as an incredibly attractive experiment, one which I will subscribe to over filling a CD rack with albums.

The value of entertainment

I find myself continually thinking about numbers these days. During poker I'm working out odds and keeping track of bets while as well watching my friends' reactions for tells which make their cards transparent. I go to sleep and I run through the numbers of when it is I should actually fall asleep according to the street schedule of when work starts, when the beeping dumpster truck goes past emptying bins of bottles making an avalanche of clangs and also the time when that hotel across my road begins it's clockwork heavy drilling and hammering. Adjusting my sleep cycle accordingly so I'm in my deepest sleep then. I won't be turning into Hugo Reyes anytime soon and reciting 4 8 15 16 23 42 anytime soon but this number crunching does seem to have value.

For instance one of the number crunches I do which has made the most impact to me is spending. How much value can I get out of how much money? My friend said that we should do bi-monthly poker games because £5 may be too prohibitive for a weekly event. Then I thought to myself, how much more prohibitive is it really compared to other forms of entertainment? For £5 buy-in we'll usually play a game of 4 hours. Now lets compare this to some other forms of entertainment.

Poker: £5 for ~ 4 hours, (£1.25/hr)
Foosball: 50p for ~10 minutes (£3/hr)
Cinema: £12 for ~2 hours (£6/hr)
A beer: £3 ~ 30 minutes (£6/hr)
A big meal: £10 ~ an hour (£10/hr)

So poker appears to be a fantastic investment in terms of having a really great evening with a few friends, kicking back and talking about who's more badass, Stallone vs Schwarzenneger. Not to mention the opportunity of winning the pot! Everything else seems to be quite extortionate considering. The cinema not including popcorn or refreshments or that it could be a 3D show which would make it about 150% the price. Is it really worth it to see something on the big screen? How much of a true event is it? A meal at say the Hare & Tortoise while pretty nice, really does hurt the wallet. Not including tip of course. Now where's the point in this? Well let's run down a few of my larger purchases.

Playstation 3: £330
32" HDTV: £300

Now with £660, I would expect compared to poker that I would gain £528 hours of "entertainment" I've had this setup for my entirety of university and assuming I use it for about 4 hours a day, not accounting for holidays and also DVD binges or co-op marathons, that's 4,380 hours. That's 15p per hour! OUTSTANDING! I know I've not included DVDs or Games but now when I factor into it, some games I have easily invested over 100 hours. Typically RPGs or sports games. A game I use to play feverently, Dragon Age: Origins I have registered on Steam as 208 hours. For £25 that's not too bad. Lump in games like Fallout 3, Empire-Total war, Civilizations 4 and 5 and Metal Gear Solid 4 etc. I feel overwhelmingly proud by my spending on entertainment.

Video games these days are being churned out at an incredible pace, so much so that the back log of my "I WANT IT!" games upsettingly makes me consider myself more of a hobbyist than a true gamer. In these wallet-strapping times however that's not such a bad thing anymore. A game like Assassins Creed Brotherhood which is a single player action adventure game will have to be quite meaty with content for me to part ways with my £40. However a 4 year game such as Gears of War for less than £8? Yes please!
I also never use to be a fan of casual games but then I realised that with the price of a retail game I could fill my iPhone with apps!

Other grandiose spends such as my phone, my guitar+bass+amp+bass amp, my computer even...I crunch the numbers and compared to everyday activities these are bargains. Ultimately I find that the biggest leaks in my funds come from social fillers. Expenses which typically seem luxurious and grandiose turn out to be bargains and weekly necessities could easily be dispensed with. So does this mean I should spend large more and spend small less? It seems to violate our natural instincts but can these numbers lie?

For the next month for sure, I will begin an experiment of not drinking, not eating at restaurants, no cinema and no pub games. Hopefully these savings I make can contribute towards the value games at the back of my backlog of games. When out with my friends I'll have to rely on my charming personality and sharp wit to keep entertained, I wonder if I'll have any friends at the dawn of the new year?

The internet, it's kind of a big deal, or is it?

If you're reading this you are part of an exclusive club. No I don't mean being a reader of this blog (which will hopefully become less exclusive as time goes on), I mean being on the internet. If you're on the internet you've likely got this preconception like I have that this interactive platform is arguably one of the greatest inventions of all mankind among the greats such as the wheel, electricity, the longer lasting light bulb and of course Led Zeppelin IV.
However it may be a bit of an eye opener to realise that less than 200,000,000 people have access to the internet. Now that's a lot of digits to work out so let me put it this way. That's less than 3% of the global population. It's incredibly slanted how distributed internet access is and it seems near criminal that this is the case.

The internet in my eyes is this glorious platform that should be benefited by all of mankind. When you have vast libraries of information free for everyone that can access it, I think that this is a shining beacon of the ingenuity of humanity. People sharing information, discoveries, opinions and art to the rest of civilization. However it appears that entire continents are left without illumination. Is this right? Should access to the internet be a human right?

In recent news, the principle of net neutrality has come under attack. Net neutrality is essentially the principle that the internet should be a free and open forum without restriction from internet service providers or governments. If two people subscribe for access to the internet then the two should be able to connect to each other at that level of access. ISPs are now considering introducing tiered access to create artificial scarcity. Those that can afford a premium level of service will be granted more bandwidth to provide and access content and only others on the same level of subscription will be able to access that content. So say Google subscribes to this philosophy, all of a sudden everyone has to pay more to have access to Google. If not then alternatives will have to be looked upon, alternatives which won't have the bandwidth to accomodate the large amounts of traffic that Google servers are capable of handling. Can you handle search engines which take 5+ seconds to search as opposed to the millisecond responses you get with Google?

Scary times are ahead indeed. But will ISPs be wrong in doing this? The internet is quite possibly the most socialist platform you could imagine. Stuff for free flying around everywhere and as soon as an advertisment pops up, immediate outrage from the community. Paying to use a service? What nonsense! But how else are companies meant to run their services without sponsorship? Having to sit through a 30 second ad on Spotify for free access to the entire Spotify library for free? Outrageous. That sponsor ad on your Facebook page making it look all cluttered? Unacceptable. An ISP charging for companies that hog up precious bandwidth? Insane?

Now I'm not saying that this money driven way of running a service is right, neither am I saying that companies should operate under the thumb of the masses and be taking in a minimum sustainable amount while all revenue is reinvested into making services free and faster. It really is the only way that the internet is going to be able to operate unless someone else can think of an alternative method.
If everything should be free for everyone, then should we not focus on getting that other 97% of the world access as opposed to keeping our fast streamlined service to ourselves? The internet as it is cannot handle the 3%/3% of the population operating at once, how will it handle the wider world?

So does the internet become an exclusive clube of the have versus the have nots? Will it become run into obsoletion because ISPs are unable to bring in money to grow infrastructure? Perhaps this internet is not as robust as we think?

Dog move over, gadgets are mans new best friend

Robots can be faster, smarter, stronger, more resilient. But will human beings ever truly accept robots into their lives like a loved one or even a pet? When you look at our attachment to our gadgets it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to imagine that the bond we share with our phones is akin to a loyal companion, a companion which is far more handier, easier to manage and cheaper to feed than a dog. Unless your dog is like my friend's dog Jet, who can hunt truffles, a dog is essentially another tennant in your household which can't pay rent. Yet for some reason the attachment one has to a loved pet will far exceed the attachment to a phone.

Your new smartphone however is a gateway to a much wider world. At your fingertips you can have access to the largest library of data that mankind has ever witnessed, you can contact friends and associates further than anyone can shout to even beyond the curvature of the Earth and better yet, you don't even need to deal with the lag caused by the speed of sound travelling through a medium. You can play games, watch videos, listen to music and even work on these devices. The maintenance of such a handy companion? Just needs a charge on occasion. I don't even need to take it for a walk!

Yet, call me crazy (but more likely others), pets still have their appeal on people. Why is that though? I spoke to a few friends and the winning argument is that their "cutesy wutesy". Now...before I completely disown my friends on account of their gooeyness, let's look into this for a second. If cats and dogs have somehow been able to invade our homes, eat our food, take up our shelter and have us steward for them, then surely they're doing something right? Is being "cutesy wutesy" the key? If it works for pets, can it work for robots?

Opening case: The Tamagotchi, since 1996 has sold over 70,000,000 units. 70 MILLION! For a small device with a few rubber buttons and a monotone LCD screen, that's fairly impressive. I confess even I had one and it was glorious! I paid more attention to it than the family fishes! I was pretty bummed when it ran out of batteries but I think the impact was lightened when I collected my 150th/150 Pokemon.

In a fantastic "Robot/People" Art piece, Kacie Kinzer designed the "Tweenbot" (Pictured above). With a few charming touches that made it appear incredibly cute, cheerful and vulnerable, the Tweenbots were able to get from one end of New York city's Central Park to the other. With no reliance on AI, these robots which progressed at a constant and linear direction when left to their own devices, were able to complete their odyssey relying on "Ahh" power. That is the compassion that passer bys had to this barely animate object with a flag sticking out asking for help, with no expectation of a reward. All it had was a smily face drawn on it and immediately we are drawn in! At it's non-existent projected will, passer bys aided the little Tweenbot to it's destination. Even when I look at the tweenbots now I just think "Man that thing's just so cute". I DO feel compassion for it! I want the little thing to get to its destination. I don't know why and a part of me really doesn't care, I just feel there's an overwhelming satisfaction to be gained. I think Pixar definitely capitalised on this when they created Wall-E. A film where for 3/4 of it there's no dialogue.

Being cute just might be the key to have our devices/robots be invited into our everyday lives as a treasured companion. Ultimately one day I would want a dog robot designed to the image of Gromit who could build inventions for me. The best of both worlds!

Link Dump:
http://www.tweenbots.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamagotchi
http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/disney/walle/trailer_large.html

Skype

Me: I should be a writer
Beckett: Yeah
Me: Meh, begin as a blogger