How The Internet Forms Us

I made a fun little basic Flash app that counts down from 3 and then takes your picture via webcam. If you don't have a webcam, then you might get errors as I don't check for that but should.

Anyways, so I stuck it in my forum signature on Neowin, just for fun to see how many pictures I would get. I ended up getting a shirtless guy just messing around. I thought it was pretty funny, but then it also occurred to me what the internet makes us do.

Many web comics I have seen hit on this subject, and basically all say being anonymous and having an audience ends up for some pretty stupid or pretty funny results.

This all goes back to our need to have people think of us in a certain way. In real life you have a set of standards that everyone has to conform to to be "socially acceptable" and usually to maintain friends who don't mind being seen with you. Sure there are exceptions, like being friends with that one guy who would go streak through the halls and then you just stand back and laugh. However, actually hanging out with this guy you might be a little worried he would do something that could be potentially trouble causing.

This is where the internet comes in. Basically, there are no real "rules" and you can be whomever you wish. Anyone at all, have fun, do anything. Everyone is a bit different online, and some are much different there than in real life, so you get completely different sides of people. When all of these changes from people are added up, you usually get a more idiotic, but potentially very funny atmosphere.

However there is a downside to all of this. With the internet becoming more and more important, people also look at what you do online when applying for a job, so if you have something seriously bad up there and it is related to you, guess who isn't getting the job.

Oh people, what are you going to do?

Blogger/Blogspot

I used to be totally against using this service as I always had thought oh I can just install whatever onto my own server and such. However, when I moved away from where my parents hosted stuff, and all I had was GoDaddy's Free Hosting. It did a good job but when trying to use blogging software, or really anything with many pages and wasn't custom written to comply with the ads on the free hosting, then it would mess the CSS up completely.

I had wanted to start a blog, yet was waiting for the perfect domain name to buy hosting for and well it ended up being that some sites had dates wrong for when things expired so I didn't end up getting the domain I wanted. I didn't have any other immediate ideas for names, but still wanted a blog. So after someone posted a link to a Blogger blog, I decided I would set my own up.

I found out that I had an old blog from long ago, with nothing on it of course. So I removed it then created this one. Everything is really easy to use, and you can even have it go to a specific domain if you wish. It really is a nice bit of the web, and I would completely recommend it.

By the way, if you have GoDaddy Free Hosting and wish to remove ads, just use this code below, although GoDaddy won't like that I told you so your hosting could be removed, but I doubt it as well it hasn't happened yet to several people I know. (Put into CSS area).

#conash3D0
{
display:none;
} 

Thing-ist

You would think being a right-handed, white male that you would instantly (at least our history classes and media tends to tell us) that you are the best. You are the brightest. You have the best future anyone can possibly hope for.

True? Well you won't ever be looked down upon, however you will not have nearly as many scholarship opportunities, and actually you can't say anything at all that even may be slightly -ist (sexist, racist, etc).

My mom raised me to think that girls are better, she went to say they can do more and their brains work better. While it is true that our brains work differently, I would not say one is exactly better than the other. So all that stuff about "Well if we only had a woman in the White House, then everything would be better!" Uh, not really, essentially you are the same, just there are different areas of strengths and weaknesses but as a whole it would just be different not exactly better.

There are so many double standards, it irks me. If you (as a white guy) say anything that could remotely be deemed racist, someone will call you out on it. However, take a look at what happens if they say something, not much happens.

For sexism take the current topic about Apple removing all content 'degrading to women' from the App Store. Women said various apps were degrading women. Okay, maybe that is true, however did they take off any apps of guys degrading themselves? Nope.

Feminists also irk me. Actually, just about any group that says "We are better than the rest" irks me. KKK, Feminists, Black Panthers, it all comes down to can't we all just get along? "Obviously because you have something that dangles you are a moron, however I will still use my body to get me a job." People will claim this is just simply to "make job hiring even", but is that really true? Do women need to go and show some leg to be considered equally? I don't think so, in fact, anyone who tries to do that sort of thing, male or female I wouldn't hire simply based on that.

I dream of a world where in children' eyes there are no lines to discriminate and everyone can just get along.

Psychology - Why Freud Was Wrong

In Psychology class we are told about how we have a Subconscious and Conscious which control everything we do in one way or another.

Webster defines it as this:

1 : perceiving, apprehending, or noticing with a degree of controlled thought or observation

It basically is everything we are currently aware of at any given time.

Now for Subconscious:

1 : existing in the mind but not immediately available to consciousness  

It basically says everything that we are not aware of but still effects us (what our Psych teacher told us). Also, apparently we can regularly call anything from this using some sort of association, or as Freud thought, dreams.

Why Freud Was Wrong:

I believe we can't have a system defined as above since:

1.  Anything that comes from subconscious can become conscious through association, hypnosis, etc.
2.  If subconscious can easily become conscious, then are you still not at least semi-aware of it?
3. Dreams, often determined as symbols for our life make no sense when looking at an Autistic person. Typically, they are horrible or can not perceive symbolism. So, what would their dreams mean? If they can't process symbolism then what accounts for their dreams? Obviously it is not strictly symbols, although things throughout the day do appear in our dreams.

My Thoughts:

I think of the mind as a three part system, such as follows:

• Bottom or 'Bio Level' - Everything your body automatically does that is regulated by brain that you can not control. This would include heart beating, senses, stuff like that.
•  Middle or 'Vault' - Essentially what Subconscious is, but you can access it, pull up old memories which would be triggered by a phrase or whatnot. Also items such as breathing and blinking would fall into this category as you can actively decide when you take in a breath if you so choose. Things from this level constantly get pulled into the top-most level, it is just what makes us up and adds to how we handle situations. You might not be aware of it, but this area could still effect you even if it wasn't completely in the top-level, but more resided somewhere in the middle and top due to current situations. Fits the term 'in the back of your mind'.
• Top or 'Awareness' - Everything you are constantly aware of at this point in time, what is currently called 'Conscious'.  Everything here directly effects what our choices are and how we act.

Today's Subconscious and Conscious definitions to not work for the mind as there is more there, and again, if the Subconscious can be pulled at any time into the Conscious then you somehow know about it as people say 'in the back of your mind'. I only hope someday there is someone who agrees with me, but as of now I only expect people to not want to challenge all they have been taught. That is another thing, people really don't like change, unless it is their idea. I try to keep an open mind for all, you should too.

Visual Dictionary

After watching the great movie Wall-E and seeing the scene where the Captain of the ship goes to his computer to analyze the dirt found on Wall-E, then finds out is is earth and he says "Define Earth". Then you see these pictures fly up of "Earth" and various plants and such, then a definition is read to you.

I found this concept very interesting, and had not seen anything before that had both a picture and definition, or more so multiple pictures. In researching I did come across a visual dictionary by Webster, which is solely images and the word, but it didn't tell you text wise what exactly was to be looked for. Of course looking at patterns in the images that come up you can find some sort of definition, but I wanted more. 

I got my hands on the Google Search API (very useful by the way, and it has great documentation) and went to work. I found out the Webster Online Dictionary also had a page that was strictly the definition, so no need to do all this web scraping.

I still have yet to come up with a name (Any Suggestions? Don't say 'Pictionary') but as of now it is just a little toy I made. Have fun using it, the people I have showed it to enjoy it.

Alan Cone's Visual Dictionary

A New Beginning/There Is A Spy!

I've had blogs in the past, sure. However I was much younger then and really didn't have anything to write about. Now I feel I have a better view on the world and wish to share that with everyone, as well as fun objects I find across the web.

I thought I would start with this interesting story I heard about in class (ironically), then went to look for more on it.

PHILADELPHIA – The FBI is investigating a Pennsylvania school district accused of secretly activating webcams inside students' homes, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case told The Associated Press on Friday.

Crazy isn't it? If anything screams "Big Brother" then that is it. Also, just makes you a little weary of your own webcams, even if it does have an indicator of when it is on. If this happened to me, I would be pretty perturbed as what I do at home is my personal business, and I will tell the world as I wish to. However, if someone spies on me without my consent then I have a problem. And that is the other bit, if the parents had given consent of some sort (although I doubt that would likely happen), then at least it wouldn't be as inexcusable as what they did here, turning on every webcam in their school system.

They claimed they were looking for a missing laptop, if that was in fact the case, then why couldn't they remotely only turn on that laptop's webcam? Why would you waste all your resources on all the webcams, including looking at each one, versus the much quicker task of simply turning on the one that was lost.

The things these days, am I right?