Wednesday, April 7
Five most influential geniuses.
Who do I think were the top five geniuses in history who (and this is important) contributed their gifts to humanity in a very significant way? After all, there are closet geniuses who go mad or die in anonymity, the depths of their understanding of things never to be known. And then there are great contributers to humanity, like Edison and Bell, who to me while obviously extremely bright individuals, don't rate up there with the "top shelf" geniuses*.
In fact, true, pure genius coupled with the appropriate circumstances of birth, the right temperament to get their ideas out, and generally to not isolate themselves in their own island of insight would seem to be a rare thing, with one not in any way implying or needing the other. That's what makes this list so special. Here they are, for me. And not in any order, that would only make me tear my hair out!
Isaac Newton
Albert Einstein
William Shakespeare
Charles Darwin
Leonardo da Vinci
You'll notice my list isn't politically correct. All five are white. There are no women. There are three Brits (what are the odds?), one German, and one Italian. All Western Europeans, in other words. And three are outright scientists, one is a man of many trades including what we now call science, and only only is a master of humanities (writer) and not a scientist at all.
Still, I stand by them.
Is cultural bias a factor is my determination? Oh, without a doubt. I speak English and four of these five did too. I was brought up indoctrinated in Western concepts about science and literature, and my choices reflect that. That women seldom had a chance to make a truly large impact on society is one of the great tragedies of history, but that's how it happened and I can't change it, even if I do deeply regret that is was so. The same goes for non-Western peoples in general. I know relatively little about China's long, glorious and tumultuous history. I know about Sun Tzu. Similarly, I don't know as much about other cultures whose peaks have already come and gone, nor do the fickle pages of history. We are looking through a lens, darkly, and there is no way to be "fair."
But here you'll get many an argument, and many good ones. The person I had the most trouble leaving off the list was The Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, for I believed he did truly change the world in as profound a way as anyone who has ever lived. Buddhism is a hugely influential philosophy (I refuse to call it a religion) which has had an enormous impact in India, China, Southeast Asia, and nowadays all over the globe, as it grows and gains favor in Europe, the United States, and just about everywhere else. But was The Buddha a genius? That is my reason for ultimately leaving him out. He was almost an anti-genius, in the sense that he had to unlearn everything he had learned as a well-educated prince and get back to the very seed of what it means to be human, what existence means or rather, how to unask that very question and simply live. In this way, he enlightened himself and millions of others, but in our rather narrow view of 'genius' in the West equating to great thought and ideas, he actually deliberately moved away from that paradigm entirely. For "genius" as a concept inherently implies a dualism within human beings - some must be smarter than others. That is anathema to The Buddha's vision that we're are all waves on one big ocean, parts of a whole, not things in and of ourselves, separate from existence, but part and parcel of it. Existence itself is unity and since one cannot get outside of it, it can never be understood. The act of even trying to "understand" is actually folly and self-deception, and true contentment comes when the Self lets that idea go and then ultimately, lets the Self go as well.
THEN, depending on your bent, there is Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Pascal, Descartes, Lavoisier, Hammurabi, Imhotep, Homer, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Aristarchus, Archimedes, Democritus, Heraclitus, Nietzsche, Camus, Galileo, Von Neumann, Turing, Cantor, Leibniz, Euler, Riemann, Hilbert, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Schumann, Bach, Debussy, Mohammed, Lao-Tzu, Thomas Jefferson, Rousseau, Paine, Roger and Francis Bacon, Chaucer, Fermi, Feynman, Flemming, Goddard, Watson & Crick, Goedel, Hubble, Keynes, Salk, Picasso, Gutenberg, Adams, Hamilton, Adam Smith, Lincoln, Marx, Mandela, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Gates, Ford, Mao, Schroedinger, Heisenburg, Bohr, Boyle, Preistly, Maxwell, Mendeleev, Gordon Moore, Tim Berners-Lee, and even some of my own personal favorites, Isaac Asimov, JRR Tolkien, Sylvia Plath, Nikola Tesla, Steve Jobs, Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, Arthur C. Clarke, Edward O. Wilson, Martin Rees, Bob Marley, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Drake, Thom Yorke, Morrissey, Robert Smith, Brendan Perry, Paul McCartney, and John Lennon!
As you see we could keep going on like this endlessly. I inevitably left off dozens or hundreds of equally brilliant or influential people, some of whom might be amongst your own personal icons. I know I gave short shrift to religious figures. There's no doubt they influence many, many people (the Pope, for example), but are they geniuses? I say no. A few - Thomas Aquinas comes to mind - come close to being extraordinarily bright and influential. Yet how to tell who is "smarter" than another, or who had the most true impact, rather than just riding the crest of a wave whose time had come, and receiving the most credit. And notice I still didn't name any women (except Plath). This was deliberate, because there have been lots of great, brilliant, influential women, and to mention any few of them (like Marie Curie, Florence Nightingale, Ada Lovelace, Margaret Sanger...) would be to do a disservice to them all. So I leave that long list out, just because making more and more lists isn't getting back to my point.
My point is, we live in a world dominated by Western thought, technologies, and lifestyle, whether we like it or not. Yes, China is on the rise, but largely because it has Westernized itself economically and somewhat socially. Japan certainly has become a 'Western' nation since WW2 in everything but geographic location. Islam and Catholicism sadly have the Middle East and Africa living largely in medieval conditions, surpressing any great thinkers or doers that may arise from there. And Latin America has had its share of great leaders (Simon Bolivar for one), but has always struggled with poverty, political upheavals, and the inability to unite to form a true continental identity, the way America's "Manifest Destiny" triumphantly and tragically did for North America. Great Britain led the way for the colonization of most of the world in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, with France, Holland, Spain, Portugal, and Germany playing their parts, and thus in a sense "Westernized" nearly the entire globe in some way. "Idea-flow" certainly went more from Europe into the third world than the other way around. And in the 20th century, especially the latter half, it was the United States who ascended and exported its culture to the rest of the world, and continues to do so to this day (much to the dismay of many).
So, in this climate, it's not a question of cultural relativism or who would be such-and-such in a hypothetical "fair" world. It's a question of looking at the real world as it is, the only one we've got, and deciding which figures in history have, by dint of their extraordinary original ideas and their successful application to and propagation within society in general, contributed the most to that world which we now inhabit, physically, culturally, socioeconomically, philosophically, and in every other way.
And my contention, though I've a supremely open mind on the subject and would love to hear YOUR lists, arguments for and against my choices, and so one, is that the five people I named above have "netted," if you will, the largest totals of pure genius + extraordinary impact with regards to their continued influence on our modern lives.
Any takers?
---
*Nikola Tesla did in my opinion, but he didn't have the same kind of impact as did Edison did at the time due to being somewhat blacklisted by that man; although he did invent radio (though Marconi used to get the credit), X-rays (though Roentgen still gets the credit), radio controlled devices, alternating current (AC) power (the kind used throughout the world; batteries use DC or direct current power, which cannot be transmitted far), and many, many other things that are still not appreciated to this day because he seemed also to have no head for business, unlike Edison, and failed to patent many of his inventions. He was pretty true to the stereotype of "the absent minded professor."
In fact, true, pure genius coupled with the appropriate circumstances of birth, the right temperament to get their ideas out, and generally to not isolate themselves in their own island of insight would seem to be a rare thing, with one not in any way implying or needing the other. That's what makes this list so special. Here they are, for me. And not in any order, that would only make me tear my hair out!
Isaac Newton
Albert Einstein
William Shakespeare
Charles Darwin
Leonardo da Vinci
You'll notice my list isn't politically correct. All five are white. There are no women. There are three Brits (what are the odds?), one German, and one Italian. All Western Europeans, in other words. And three are outright scientists, one is a man of many trades including what we now call science, and only only is a master of humanities (writer) and not a scientist at all.
Still, I stand by them.
Is cultural bias a factor is my determination? Oh, without a doubt. I speak English and four of these five did too. I was brought up indoctrinated in Western concepts about science and literature, and my choices reflect that. That women seldom had a chance to make a truly large impact on society is one of the great tragedies of history, but that's how it happened and I can't change it, even if I do deeply regret that is was so. The same goes for non-Western peoples in general. I know relatively little about China's long, glorious and tumultuous history. I know about Sun Tzu. Similarly, I don't know as much about other cultures whose peaks have already come and gone, nor do the fickle pages of history. We are looking through a lens, darkly, and there is no way to be "fair."
But here you'll get many an argument, and many good ones. The person I had the most trouble leaving off the list was The Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, for I believed he did truly change the world in as profound a way as anyone who has ever lived. Buddhism is a hugely influential philosophy (I refuse to call it a religion) which has had an enormous impact in India, China, Southeast Asia, and nowadays all over the globe, as it grows and gains favor in Europe, the United States, and just about everywhere else. But was The Buddha a genius? That is my reason for ultimately leaving him out. He was almost an anti-genius, in the sense that he had to unlearn everything he had learned as a well-educated prince and get back to the very seed of what it means to be human, what existence means or rather, how to unask that very question and simply live. In this way, he enlightened himself and millions of others, but in our rather narrow view of 'genius' in the West equating to great thought and ideas, he actually deliberately moved away from that paradigm entirely. For "genius" as a concept inherently implies a dualism within human beings - some must be smarter than others. That is anathema to The Buddha's vision that we're are all waves on one big ocean, parts of a whole, not things in and of ourselves, separate from existence, but part and parcel of it. Existence itself is unity and since one cannot get outside of it, it can never be understood. The act of even trying to "understand" is actually folly and self-deception, and true contentment comes when the Self lets that idea go and then ultimately, lets the Self go as well.
THEN, depending on your bent, there is Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Pascal, Descartes, Lavoisier, Hammurabi, Imhotep, Homer, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Aristarchus, Archimedes, Democritus, Heraclitus, Nietzsche, Camus, Galileo, Von Neumann, Turing, Cantor, Leibniz, Euler, Riemann, Hilbert, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Schumann, Bach, Debussy, Mohammed, Lao-Tzu, Thomas Jefferson, Rousseau, Paine, Roger and Francis Bacon, Chaucer, Fermi, Feynman, Flemming, Goddard, Watson & Crick, Goedel, Hubble, Keynes, Salk, Picasso, Gutenberg, Adams, Hamilton, Adam Smith, Lincoln, Marx, Mandela, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Gates, Ford, Mao, Schroedinger, Heisenburg, Bohr, Boyle, Preistly, Maxwell, Mendeleev, Gordon Moore, Tim Berners-Lee, and even some of my own personal favorites, Isaac Asimov, JRR Tolkien, Sylvia Plath, Nikola Tesla, Steve Jobs, Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, Arthur C. Clarke, Edward O. Wilson, Martin Rees, Bob Marley, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Drake, Thom Yorke, Morrissey, Robert Smith, Brendan Perry, Paul McCartney, and John Lennon!
As you see we could keep going on like this endlessly. I inevitably left off dozens or hundreds of equally brilliant or influential people, some of whom might be amongst your own personal icons. I know I gave short shrift to religious figures. There's no doubt they influence many, many people (the Pope, for example), but are they geniuses? I say no. A few - Thomas Aquinas comes to mind - come close to being extraordinarily bright and influential. Yet how to tell who is "smarter" than another, or who had the most true impact, rather than just riding the crest of a wave whose time had come, and receiving the most credit. And notice I still didn't name any women (except Plath). This was deliberate, because there have been lots of great, brilliant, influential women, and to mention any few of them (like Marie Curie, Florence Nightingale, Ada Lovelace, Margaret Sanger...) would be to do a disservice to them all. So I leave that long list out, just because making more and more lists isn't getting back to my point.
My point is, we live in a world dominated by Western thought, technologies, and lifestyle, whether we like it or not. Yes, China is on the rise, but largely because it has Westernized itself economically and somewhat socially. Japan certainly has become a 'Western' nation since WW2 in everything but geographic location. Islam and Catholicism sadly have the Middle East and Africa living largely in medieval conditions, surpressing any great thinkers or doers that may arise from there. And Latin America has had its share of great leaders (Simon Bolivar for one), but has always struggled with poverty, political upheavals, and the inability to unite to form a true continental identity, the way America's "Manifest Destiny" triumphantly and tragically did for North America. Great Britain led the way for the colonization of most of the world in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, with France, Holland, Spain, Portugal, and Germany playing their parts, and thus in a sense "Westernized" nearly the entire globe in some way. "Idea-flow" certainly went more from Europe into the third world than the other way around. And in the 20th century, especially the latter half, it was the United States who ascended and exported its culture to the rest of the world, and continues to do so to this day (much to the dismay of many).
So, in this climate, it's not a question of cultural relativism or who would be such-and-such in a hypothetical "fair" world. It's a question of looking at the real world as it is, the only one we've got, and deciding which figures in history have, by dint of their extraordinary original ideas and their successful application to and propagation within society in general, contributed the most to that world which we now inhabit, physically, culturally, socioeconomically, philosophically, and in every other way.
And my contention, though I've a supremely open mind on the subject and would love to hear YOUR lists, arguments for and against my choices, and so one, is that the five people I named above have "netted," if you will, the largest totals of pure genius + extraordinary impact with regards to their continued influence on our modern lives.
Any takers?
---
*Nikola Tesla did in my opinion, but he didn't have the same kind of impact as did Edison did at the time due to being somewhat blacklisted by that man; although he did invent radio (though Marconi used to get the credit), X-rays (though Roentgen still gets the credit), radio controlled devices, alternating current (AC) power (the kind used throughout the world; batteries use DC or direct current power, which cannot be transmitted far), and many, many other things that are still not appreciated to this day because he seemed also to have no head for business, unlike Edison, and failed to patent many of his inventions. He was pretty true to the stereotype of "the absent minded professor."
Thursday, April 1
No title.
I want to do all I can do
Become what I can become
I want to stay active
Learn as much as I can
Feel my muscles stretch
Stay up and just enjoy where I am
Without ceaselessly drawing plans
I want to master many things
While realizing the path never really ends
I want to have friends that mean a lot to
This once-shrunken, fearful heart of mine
I want to open up to my divine nature
And find enthusiasm in dreariness
Ecstacy in pain and suffering
Or maybe just a good massage
And someone to hold wrapped in a blanket
On a winter solstice, beneath the blackness
Of a meteor-torn sky
In my dreams I fly, but real life
Affords anyone the chance to soar
I want to play tennis again
Feel the wind in my hair and hear the sound
Of the pummeled ball, or grab a rebound
I want to arrange the world around me
So that I feel calm and not harried
I want to carry a smile on my face
That makes other people feel good inside
I want to try to succeed more than
Succeed at whatever I try
Because that kind of life is a lie
Which leads into corners full of bones
Of long-forgotten geniuses and heroes
Which now, nobody knows
I want to read and play games
And make money to buy simple things
And do honest work and feel it
At the dog-end of the day
To let generosity of spirit be my guide
To letting these hesitant feelings
Inside my body, to puff out my chest
Not with arrogance but with
Can-do competent satisfaction
And the feeling I have fear on the run
To not worry about every little thing
Under that too-bright sun
Inside each quantum of every moment
I want a place to be; a hot meal to eat
And just want someone to say once,
That I was a true and reliable friend
And that they thought about me today.
Become what I can become
I want to stay active
Learn as much as I can
Feel my muscles stretch
Stay up and just enjoy where I am
Without ceaselessly drawing plans
I want to master many things
While realizing the path never really ends
I want to have friends that mean a lot to
This once-shrunken, fearful heart of mine
I want to open up to my divine nature
And find enthusiasm in dreariness
Ecstacy in pain and suffering
Or maybe just a good massage
And someone to hold wrapped in a blanket
On a winter solstice, beneath the blackness
Of a meteor-torn sky
In my dreams I fly, but real life
Affords anyone the chance to soar
I want to play tennis again
Feel the wind in my hair and hear the sound
Of the pummeled ball, or grab a rebound
I want to arrange the world around me
So that I feel calm and not harried
I want to carry a smile on my face
That makes other people feel good inside
I want to try to succeed more than
Succeed at whatever I try
Because that kind of life is a lie
Which leads into corners full of bones
Of long-forgotten geniuses and heroes
Which now, nobody knows
I want to read and play games
And make money to buy simple things
And do honest work and feel it
At the dog-end of the day
To let generosity of spirit be my guide
To letting these hesitant feelings
Inside my body, to puff out my chest
Not with arrogance but with
Can-do competent satisfaction
And the feeling I have fear on the run
To not worry about every little thing
Under that too-bright sun
Inside each quantum of every moment
I want a place to be; a hot meal to eat
And just want someone to say once,
That I was a true and reliable friend
And that they thought about me today.
My amazing mom.
I can't begin to thank you enough for everything you've done for me, so I'll just be quiet for once. I love you!
Wednesday, March 31
Ants are dumb.
I left a cup of Mountain Dew on my desk overnight (why didn't I finish it? that's a rarity), and after I was safely in bed, a little corps of ants snuck over the rim of the cup and fell into the sweet nectar, to their doom.
This is the same short-term thinking - or maybe utter lack of thinking - that leads countless other insects into pitcher plants and venus fly traps, seals on the Farallon Islands to leave the safety of their rocks and "go for a swim," roaches to check into roach motels, flies to "investigate" spiderwebs, and me to drive to Safeway to get a case of Mountain Dew.
Like I said, ants are dumb.
This is the same short-term thinking - or maybe utter lack of thinking - that leads countless other insects into pitcher plants and venus fly traps, seals on the Farallon Islands to leave the safety of their rocks and "go for a swim," roaches to check into roach motels, flies to "investigate" spiderwebs, and me to drive to Safeway to get a case of Mountain Dew.
Like I said, ants are dumb.
My rating system.
I have a rating system I've come to use when discussing just about anything worth rating. It went through many iterations before I settled on my current, simple one.
It may seem pretty harsh to some people, but the world has become used to rating everything they like "5 stars" and stuff they don't as "1 star," with the middle ratings seldom used. This is unfortunate, as "5 stars" now tells me almost nothing about a book, CD, or film except that to that person, it didn't suck. And if something gets 3 or 4 stars, instead of thinking, "ah! better than average!" I now think, "what's wrong with it?"
But let's back up. First, in any rating system, there's the question of granularity. Just how many gradations are needed to rate something? Well, that's a subject that deserves a treatment all its own, but in general, I believe five is enough. There are situation where more gradations, say ten, would avoid the dreaded "three and a half" syndrome, but as a rule I don't think human beings are very adept at placing things into ten boxes meaningfully (never mind more). Five seems convenient - it's the number of fingers on the hand you're not holding your baby, cat, or miniature dog in, and it's easily grasped by the mind (who psychologists say can store roughly five items in its cache, otherwise known as instant or ultra-short-term memory, like being able to identify groups of objects immediately by their shape; think of small group of stones or blocks... it's easy to tell how many are in a group without counting, up to five, at which point it gets much harder or for some people, impossible (again, without counting)). Five also provides what is in my mind the minimum number of gradations necessary for any sort of meaningful rating. Two (good, bad) is too rudimentary, as is three. Four is just weird, to me. There should be some central point (this may be one of the few occasions in which I favor odd numbers over even). And as I described, after five I believe you start to get too much complexity and diminishing returns. What exactly is the subjective difference between a book that earns a 7/10 versus one which rates 8/10? That's too granular.
So, we've settled on five. Now I want to do my part to re-normalize the whole endeavor and get 3 back to being the true middle, and push everything down a bit so that anything less than 5 doesn't automatically connote suckage, and so that all five numbers have a distinct meaning. Particularly, I want to reserve 5 for things that are truly great, not just things "I like quite a lot." Maybe 4 can be the new 5. It's a bit like the Michelin star system, only not THAT harsh. If you are a restaurant or hotel and you get any Michelin stars, you're pretty awesome. Three and you're world class. My system won't be like that any more than it will be like the Amazon system, in which the overall aggregate rating for nearly every product with a sufficient number of reviews is 4.
Without further ado, here's what I feel is a logical system. Think of stars, bullet points, numbers, tiny clown heads, or whatever you want - I'll just use numbers to make it easier.
1 - Skip it
2 - Mediocre
3 - Average
4 - Good
5 - Excellent
Though, I've gone a step harsher at times (just to be a contrarian) and leaned more toward this:
1 - Bad or below average
2 - Average; mediocre
3 - Good; worthwhile
4 - Very good to excellent
5 - An all-time classic
The problem with this system is that it makes 2 average, which is weird. It does have one good thing going for it though: it reserves 5 for the truly great things; an honor which should only be handed out very occasionally (like for The Empire Strikes Back or Hamlet). You ever see those reviews on 'zon where people say "I wish I could give this SIX stars! It's changed my life!" Well, usually they're wrong, and while I don't recommend a six-star system for Amazon (it would take less than a week before every started using it casually, and if a prospective buyer didn't see lots of 6-star ratings, they'd think "What's wrong with it?"), I do however think there is some merit in a "transcendent score," if you will, a holy 6th star that must not be given out unless the item being reviewed is truly one for the ages (like Krull), and not just for that year, or that week.
So I've come to amend my system to this final, spectacularly clever one, which I will now use in all future blogs and any reviews I may write up:
0 - One of the worst things ever
1 - Awful; Skip It, Please
2 - Very Weak to Below Average
3 - Average Fare; Par For the Course
4 - Above Average to Very Good
5 - Excellent; Get/Read/See/Hear It!
6 - An all-time classic
For most items, you can pretend the 0th and 6th "star" don't even exist. Getting a rating of 5 is NOT a slight at all, nor is 1 to be considered a step above anything - it's still awful. That's why I don't want to call my system a "7-star rating system." Because really, it's not. The frequency distribution for say, a thousand items reviewed at random ideally should describe a bell curve with the highest level at 3, lower levels at 2 and 4, and an even smaller but still decent number of items scoring a 1 or 5. On the other hand, 0 and 6 should only have been assigned to a few items each, if that (below what a true bell curve would predict).
Basically I want to make room for Tolkien to surpass other 5-star books I love and for things that have actually shaken me with how horrific they are (like anything by L. Ron Hubbard) to be tagged somehow below the ordinary turkeys we come across and just stop reading or playing, or walk out on. The 0 and 6 ratings give me a special way to do this. If I use symbols, I may even use a completely different symbol for them. Imagine one through five bullet points for the regular scale; a 0 may be represented by a hollow-point (white like a O rather than filled in with black), and a 6 may get a little circled 'C' for "classic" (something like a copyright symbol, but obviously not exactly like one or I may confuse people).
So in essence it's still a 5-star system but with the seldom-to-be-used option of a pitchfork and a harp on either end for when the thing being reviewed just begs for it and the usual system simply won't do. Actually, I kinda like the pitchfork and harp idea :)
What do my thousands of readers think? Is this a good system? Makes sense? Too much ado about nothing? I'd be interested in your comments, as always. Even suggestions for symbols!
It may seem pretty harsh to some people, but the world has become used to rating everything they like "5 stars" and stuff they don't as "1 star," with the middle ratings seldom used. This is unfortunate, as "5 stars" now tells me almost nothing about a book, CD, or film except that to that person, it didn't suck. And if something gets 3 or 4 stars, instead of thinking, "ah! better than average!" I now think, "what's wrong with it?"
But let's back up. First, in any rating system, there's the question of granularity. Just how many gradations are needed to rate something? Well, that's a subject that deserves a treatment all its own, but in general, I believe five is enough. There are situation where more gradations, say ten, would avoid the dreaded "three and a half" syndrome, but as a rule I don't think human beings are very adept at placing things into ten boxes meaningfully (never mind more). Five seems convenient - it's the number of fingers on the hand you're not holding your baby, cat, or miniature dog in, and it's easily grasped by the mind (who psychologists say can store roughly five items in its cache, otherwise known as instant or ultra-short-term memory, like being able to identify groups of objects immediately by their shape; think of small group of stones or blocks... it's easy to tell how many are in a group without counting, up to five, at which point it gets much harder or for some people, impossible (again, without counting)). Five also provides what is in my mind the minimum number of gradations necessary for any sort of meaningful rating. Two (good, bad) is too rudimentary, as is three. Four is just weird, to me. There should be some central point (this may be one of the few occasions in which I favor odd numbers over even). And as I described, after five I believe you start to get too much complexity and diminishing returns. What exactly is the subjective difference between a book that earns a 7/10 versus one which rates 8/10? That's too granular.
So, we've settled on five. Now I want to do my part to re-normalize the whole endeavor and get 3 back to being the true middle, and push everything down a bit so that anything less than 5 doesn't automatically connote suckage, and so that all five numbers have a distinct meaning. Particularly, I want to reserve 5 for things that are truly great, not just things "I like quite a lot." Maybe 4 can be the new 5. It's a bit like the Michelin star system, only not THAT harsh. If you are a restaurant or hotel and you get any Michelin stars, you're pretty awesome. Three and you're world class. My system won't be like that any more than it will be like the Amazon system, in which the overall aggregate rating for nearly every product with a sufficient number of reviews is 4.
Without further ado, here's what I feel is a logical system. Think of stars, bullet points, numbers, tiny clown heads, or whatever you want - I'll just use numbers to make it easier.
1 - Skip it
2 - Mediocre
3 - Average
4 - Good
5 - Excellent
Though, I've gone a step harsher at times (just to be a contrarian) and leaned more toward this:
1 - Bad or below average
2 - Average; mediocre
3 - Good; worthwhile
4 - Very good to excellent
5 - An all-time classic
The problem with this system is that it makes 2 average, which is weird. It does have one good thing going for it though: it reserves 5 for the truly great things; an honor which should only be handed out very occasionally (like for The Empire Strikes Back or Hamlet). You ever see those reviews on 'zon where people say "I wish I could give this SIX stars! It's changed my life!" Well, usually they're wrong, and while I don't recommend a six-star system for Amazon (it would take less than a week before every started using it casually, and if a prospective buyer didn't see lots of 6-star ratings, they'd think "What's wrong with it?"), I do however think there is some merit in a "transcendent score," if you will, a holy 6th star that must not be given out unless the item being reviewed is truly one for the ages (like Krull), and not just for that year, or that week.
So I've come to amend my system to this final, spectacularly clever one, which I will now use in all future blogs and any reviews I may write up:
0 - One of the worst things ever
1 - Awful; Skip It, Please
2 - Very Weak to Below Average
3 - Average Fare; Par For the Course
4 - Above Average to Very Good
5 - Excellent; Get/Read/See/Hear It!
6 - An all-time classic
For most items, you can pretend the 0th and 6th "star" don't even exist. Getting a rating of 5 is NOT a slight at all, nor is 1 to be considered a step above anything - it's still awful. That's why I don't want to call my system a "7-star rating system." Because really, it's not. The frequency distribution for say, a thousand items reviewed at random ideally should describe a bell curve with the highest level at 3, lower levels at 2 and 4, and an even smaller but still decent number of items scoring a 1 or 5. On the other hand, 0 and 6 should only have been assigned to a few items each, if that (below what a true bell curve would predict).
Basically I want to make room for Tolkien to surpass other 5-star books I love and for things that have actually shaken me with how horrific they are (like anything by L. Ron Hubbard) to be tagged somehow below the ordinary turkeys we come across and just stop reading or playing, or walk out on. The 0 and 6 ratings give me a special way to do this. If I use symbols, I may even use a completely different symbol for them. Imagine one through five bullet points for the regular scale; a 0 may be represented by a hollow-point (white like a O rather than filled in with black), and a 6 may get a little circled 'C' for "classic" (something like a copyright symbol, but obviously not exactly like one or I may confuse people).
So in essence it's still a 5-star system but with the seldom-to-be-used option of a pitchfork and a harp on either end for when the thing being reviewed just begs for it and the usual system simply won't do. Actually, I kinda like the pitchfork and harp idea :)
What do my thousands of readers think? Is this a good system? Makes sense? Too much ado about nothing? I'd be interested in your comments, as always. Even suggestions for symbols!
This is pretty cool I guess.
http://buzz.blogger.com/2009/12/blogger-integrates-with-amazon.html
Basically, you can embed pictures of (or links to) Amazon products in your blog, and if people click them and buy the products by that means, you can potentially earn a little money. I say "potentially" because I didn't read all the fine print. People have been doing this for years, but now it's easy and official on both sides. In fact, I suppose you could rearrange your site for maximum product pushiness and essentially become a shill for Amazon. But I think the wise (?) people of the Net would catch on and probably stop frequenting your blog.
But I guess if you're an author or someone else with a product to sell and which happens to carry - which means pretty much anything - you'd might as well make a little extra money while you're at it. It's smart for Amazon because it reduces the number of authors who like to sell directly from their site (as well as through Amazon and other outlets), as that allows them to make more money by eliminating a middleman. This will cause them to rethink the hassles of having their own online store and handling monetary transaction and customer complaints and just give all the business to Amazon. It's smart for Blogger as well because it's another feature they can tout that they're competitors don't offer and paired with "AdSense" gives them another way to attract bloggers who are looking to make a buck.
As my blog is not designed to make a buck, I could care less, but I still thought it was interesting. Boy, Google (owner of Blogger) has gotten their little fingers into just about every facet of our lives, haven't they? Who'd have thought a free search engine would, in ten years, turn into the world's most powerful Internet company and a major force in our lives? They're even venturing into phones and other physical products now. How long till we see a gCar competing with an Apple iCar?
The real butt of that joke is that despite probably outspending both companies and trying for decades, Microsoft still has no clue about how to move beyond a desktop OS, corporate email, and desktop productivity applications. It was instructive how rapidly and thoroughly Gmail kicked Hotmail's ass, surpassing it in users in less than a year, after Hotmail had been around at least a decade. Yahoo hung on a bit longer, but it too has 'jumped the shark' as they say. Google just seems to own everyone they come across.
Except Apple - so far. The erstwhile friends/competitors are beginning to overlap on ideas, the first major one being phones, and so far the iPhone has held off the NexusOne by a pretty decisive margin, but Google is relentless in the way Japanese businesses are. I'm sure there will be a NexusTwo, Three, and so on to keep the pressure on Apple to stay ahead. All of which is a good thing. I do like Apple, but even more, I like a great product. My brand loyalties don't extend to sucky, out-of-date products. Except Windows, I guess :-S But that's more a monopoly situation than a choice. For my budget, unless I was to live in the Linux microsphere, there's really no alternative.
Once I have the money though, I'll get a spiffy new Mac and that will be that. Or will Google have an even better and sleeker computer by then? The future is a dark glass, indeed.
Basically, you can embed pictures of (or links to) Amazon products in your blog, and if people click them and buy the products by that means, you can potentially earn a little money. I say "potentially" because I didn't read all the fine print. People have been doing this for years, but now it's easy and official on both sides. In fact, I suppose you could rearrange your site for maximum product pushiness and essentially become a shill for Amazon. But I think the wise (?) people of the Net would catch on and probably stop frequenting your blog.
But I guess if you're an author or someone else with a product to sell and which happens to carry - which means pretty much anything - you'd might as well make a little extra money while you're at it. It's smart for Amazon because it reduces the number of authors who like to sell directly from their site (as well as through Amazon and other outlets), as that allows them to make more money by eliminating a middleman. This will cause them to rethink the hassles of having their own online store and handling monetary transaction and customer complaints and just give all the business to Amazon. It's smart for Blogger as well because it's another feature they can tout that they're competitors don't offer and paired with "AdSense" gives them another way to attract bloggers who are looking to make a buck.
As my blog is not designed to make a buck, I could care less, but I still thought it was interesting. Boy, Google (owner of Blogger) has gotten their little fingers into just about every facet of our lives, haven't they? Who'd have thought a free search engine would, in ten years, turn into the world's most powerful Internet company and a major force in our lives? They're even venturing into phones and other physical products now. How long till we see a gCar competing with an Apple iCar?
The real butt of that joke is that despite probably outspending both companies and trying for decades, Microsoft still has no clue about how to move beyond a desktop OS, corporate email, and desktop productivity applications. It was instructive how rapidly and thoroughly Gmail kicked Hotmail's ass, surpassing it in users in less than a year, after Hotmail had been around at least a decade. Yahoo hung on a bit longer, but it too has 'jumped the shark' as they say. Google just seems to own everyone they come across.
Except Apple - so far. The erstwhile friends/competitors are beginning to overlap on ideas, the first major one being phones, and so far the iPhone has held off the NexusOne by a pretty decisive margin, but Google is relentless in the way Japanese businesses are. I'm sure there will be a NexusTwo, Three, and so on to keep the pressure on Apple to stay ahead. All of which is a good thing. I do like Apple, but even more, I like a great product. My brand loyalties don't extend to sucky, out-of-date products. Except Windows, I guess :-S But that's more a monopoly situation than a choice. For my budget, unless I was to live in the Linux microsphere, there's really no alternative.
Once I have the money though, I'll get a spiffy new Mac and that will be that. Or will Google have an even better and sleeker computer by then? The future is a dark glass, indeed.
Tuesday, March 30
Meta's Word Challenge
Ok, I made this one significantly easier than the past one since I got complaints. Also, I kept it to 10 words. BUT, it's not multiple choice - that would be too easy. Instead, provide a synonym, a short definition, or use it in a sentence which demonstrates you understand the meaning. Begin!
01. Livery
02. Affable
03. Felicity
04. Contiguous
05. Plethora
06. Taciturn
07. Enigma
08. Complicity
09. Bellicose
10. Esoteric
You'll note there are no chemistry words this time.
Good luck!
Sade makes the most of her minimalist lyrics.
Morning Bird
How could you
You are the river
Poured out of this life
How could you
You are the morning bird
Who sang me into life every day
Fly away?
You are the blood of me
The harvest of my dreams
There's nowhere I can find peace
And the silence won't cease
Nothing's quite how it seems
The ghost of my joy
Won't let me be
If you set me free I will not run
I will not run
I will not run
You are the river
Poured out of this life
How could you
You are the morning bird
Who sang me into life every day
Fly away?
You are the blood of me
The harvest of my dreams
There's nowhere I can find peace
And the silence won't cease
Nothing's quite how it seems
The ghost of my joy
Won't let me be
If you set me free I will not run
I will not run
I will not run
(Sade Adu)
Monday, March 29
This post is for Hans.
Hans, Dennis wanted to post something to you.
}:8)
"Hi Hans! Since you're learning about the world now, my friend Paul and I thought we'd help you out a bit. Here are some real animals that big people see everyday outside. Since you're an indoor cat, though, you'll probably never get a chance. Just trust me, though, they're real."
}:8)
"Hi Hans! Since you're learning about the world now, my friend Paul and I thought we'd help you out a bit. Here are some real animals that big people see everyday outside. Since you're an indoor cat, though, you'll probably never get a chance. Just trust me, though, they're real."
"Well that's all for today, but I may have some more pranks lessons for you soon. Don't bother asking anyone else about this stuff, they can't be relied upon to tell you the truth. Have a good day!"
-Dennis
The content of this post does not necessarily express the views of the site or its owner.
Sunday, March 28
Battle at Meta's window sill
There's a big furry spider and an equally big furry bumblebee at my living room window, in the area between the window and where the drapes hang.
Rather than do the usual brutish human thing, I think I will let them fight it out for themselves. The winner gets to go outside, unharmed.
Rather than do the usual brutish human thing, I think I will let them fight it out for themselves. The winner gets to go outside, unharmed.
Lucy Lawless playing a cylon.
From the recent (but now ended) "reimagined" Battlestar Galactica television series. Er... Why did humans want to kill the cylons off, again?
This explains a lot.
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than in actuality; by contrast the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to a perverse result where less competent people will rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
— Bertrand Russell
Friday, March 26
A cup of tea.
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"
"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"
Blogger earns a stay of execution.
Blogger is making some major improvements in their design layout tools, which will do even more of the HTML/CSS for you and gives you more "out of the box" designs to choose from. I don't care about the new available templates so much... but critical things I've wanted - like a wider main area to embed wider videos and larger pictures in, seem like they will be easy to do soon, as well as specifying default fonts in a less limited way and lots of other good stuff.
Check out the video here:
to see what the new design features will allow you to do. Nothing you couldn't do by hand-writing the CSS, or doing it in Dreamweaver or something and pasting it in, but hopefully the code will be more optimized if Blogger does it all itself (maybe - I haven't been at all impressed with Blogger's code efficiency - if you can even honor it with that word - in the past). I'm already a version behind (I can't use any of the current templates or any widgets, like newer users can, for example), so I would just archive my current blog and make a clean start with a brand-new look and new features.
The old blog wouldn't go away - the new one would have a slightly different address is all and would link back to this one, just as this one would link forward to the new one. It would just cease development. And I wouldn't use their canned backgrounds and title designs, however nifty - since lots of other people are bound to use the same ones. I'd still design my own logo from scratch in Photoshop, as well as a background pattern or motif and foreground color/texture, to give it its own personality. HTML 5-style WebFonts would be the ultimate feature for me, meaning anyone could see my pages as I designed them, regardless of whether they have the fonts I used installed on their machine or not (kinda like PDFs)... but I dunno if Blogger will support this feature or not. Maybe not for awhile yet... But maybe I can hack it in anyway by altering the style sheet. I don't care if I lose IE users by doing this, they can all go dive into a pool with no water anyway.
So, looks like a lot less work than I thought since this will get me 2/3 of the way to where I want to go. Now I just need free or very cheap online storage, so that people can actually download (legal) videos, songs, documents, game patches, PDFs, photo albums, and other files from my site; HD video is progressing and more and more stuff on YouTube, Vimeo and elsewhere is appearing in higher resolutions, which is good - let's hope most videos stay embeddable so us bottom-feeders can have access to them; Controls for streaming audio and video are out there as well as the source material (some things which are illegal to serve as a download, like music, is legal to stream - I'm reading up on the precise laws currently), and I have a pretty good idea of which ones I'm going to standardize on; Likewise with polls, quizzes (yes, hosted, served, and auto-graded quizzes handled by a 3rd party service but embedded in my pages and still private and free from ads should take the place of my ad-hoc quizzes that are presented and graded different seemingly each time. This will save ME time, and make the process more fun for everyone. I can even include little pictures or have answers start to disappear over time... there are lots of fun possibilities), graphs to illustrate my points when I'm ranting about something, possibly collapsible screen elements, dynamically re-sizable photos, or LaTex-like math scripts (math 'fonts') presented correctly as text and not simply a graphic element, for those times when I want to accompany an explanation of something with an equation or a string of symbolic logic (been wanting math scripts for years...);
I'd like to set it up so I won't bump into blog technology limitations for at least another 5 years, about the length I've had THIS version of my blog up. 5 years is a pretty long time when stuff changes so quickly.
I was thinking about moving to WordPress, MovableType, or some other more robust blogging host, even attempting to host it on my own and make it completely unique, so it would be truly anarchic in spirit and not a plug for Blogger or any of the "free" or "nearly" free hosts out there - but money considerations, my own recognition that I don't finish a lot of things that I start, and these new improvements to the flexibility and appearance (and hopefully "hard" capabilities) of Blogger will probably keep me on it for the next 5 years. Blogger you lucked out!! I was going to abandon you.
My prediction for the next couple months...
One member of my family, who frequently posts to this blog, will find himself buying an iPad somewhat despite his own best sense, but will love it. And a year later, when newer models are out, he will vaguely wish he had waited but then shrug his shoulders and either upgrade or continue to use his original one, since it will read books and do most of what he need pretty well and be fun and cool to use. My confidence in this prediction: 85%.
My other prediction: Adobe Flash will hang on for quite a few more years, but it will go from being the dominant way to serve of video and lightly-interactive content to just a small player in the next year to two years. Despite the image you would have formed in your mind of mighty Flash vs its many small market-share competitors, and how HTML 5 is doomed to live in limbo for many years because of politics coming from Redmond, there are lately signs that the tech press are all wrong and HTML is rapidly gaining favor in many key areas of the Net - especially site which fancy themselves as residing in the so-called 'Web 2.0' space.
For example, YouTube is already offering (in beta) nearly all their videos simply converted from Flash to HTML 5 plugin-free video, and will soon be rolling out the option to use either, or, more likely, will detect what your browser is capable of and will run what it thinks will work best on your machine. This is a huge win for the HTML 5 crowd - As we all know YouTube is a dominant force on the internet. And guess who owns it? Google! And Google makes the Chrome browser, which fully supports HTML 5.
Apple, for it's part, supports HTML 5 in its Safari browser and is betting a lot on the iPhone/iTouch/iPad OS's ability to parse HTML 5 but NOT Flash (which they say is outdated technology as well as slow, buggy, and a CPU hog, all of which are true), and being able to get away with it without losing too many prospective customers over it. It could improve battery life, real-world performance, and help (like YouTube) to clear the way for HTML 5 by having a semi-large user base using devices that require HTML 5 for video (no work on weather Apple will in turn ditch QuickTime plugin support! Just kidding, they'll never do that, and besides, QT offers H.264 MPEG-4 compression decoding, so it's a different animal to Flash. Flash only runs its own proprietary files. QT does that too (.MOV) but is rapidly becoming more of an HD standard - just go to Apple's movie trailer page and see all the 720p and 1080p content that is available, and all of which runs great on QT. So no, QT will not be going away, just as support for WAV files, MP3s, WMV, and DivX aren't going anywhere. Unlike all those standards, Flash was never meant to play movies or music videos; it was originally designed to playback animation, like a GIF image on steroids. It's been overworked for years, and it's end could well be night.
And outside of Adobe, I don't think anyone would mind seeing the last nail smashed into its coffin lid. I've got a nice, capable computer and a very good internet connection, yet some of the simplest flash apps on Facebook, if they aren't coded very carefully (i.e., don't clear their stacks or perform garbage collection right when I'm balancing a marble on a wooden surface, causing the jitters) are frustratingly almost unplayable on certain browsers with certain version of the Flash plugin and you can't always just fix the problem by updating to the latest of everything. Like video drivers and beta browser versions, sometimes the newest build out there is worse than a previous one, forcing you to try to match your setup to that of the guy who developed the game. Commercial games never use Flash, and that should tell you something.
So while I love Adobe for Photoshop and many other products, I feel that Shockwave and Flash are yesterday's tech and should be phased out quickly to let other, better performing standards onto the web to do their thing. Go to Vimeo or a site like that and compare the quality (at the same filesize) of one of their newer music videos, say, to a Flash-bound video on YouTube, and you'll see exactly what I mean.
When even Apple (a long-time bed buddy of Adobe) and Google (who may have the largest collection of Flash files in the world with their YouTube and Google Video services) start to badmouth flash and hype HTML 5, it's probably time to listen. And as a wannabe web designer, I'd rather learn HTML 5 and CSS period than have to also learn yet another product/plugin. No one's saying HTML 5 is the solution that will do everything - you still need style sheets, you still need OO-programming languages to do any serious forms which require that data be stored in any kind of backend database, and so on... but for simple video decoding, live drawing (think playing squiggles against another person online), and even music playback of common file formats (which ones? That's still being hashed out), why not roll that into HTML and let the browser do it rather than farm it out to a plugin that every user is going to have to install anyway?
So a few toes get stepped on and Adobe loses this battle. They never made a lot of money off flash to begin with. I'm sure they can get by quite nicely on $1500 bundles of their graphics apps and even more money for all the training they offer, books they sell, and so on. They didn't even invent the technology: Macromedia did. So please, Adobe, stop complaining and work with other web companies to migrate Flash out of the internet, and replace it gracefully with the much better video implementations that other companies offer. In the interest of the consumer, and to engender goodwill, if nothing else. We're not asking you to abandon Photoshop or Dreamweaver.
My other prediction: Adobe Flash will hang on for quite a few more years, but it will go from being the dominant way to serve of video and lightly-interactive content to just a small player in the next year to two years. Despite the image you would have formed in your mind of mighty Flash vs its many small market-share competitors, and how HTML 5 is doomed to live in limbo for many years because of politics coming from Redmond, there are lately signs that the tech press are all wrong and HTML is rapidly gaining favor in many key areas of the Net - especially site which fancy themselves as residing in the so-called 'Web 2.0' space.
For example, YouTube is already offering (in beta) nearly all their videos simply converted from Flash to HTML 5 plugin-free video, and will soon be rolling out the option to use either, or, more likely, will detect what your browser is capable of and will run what it thinks will work best on your machine. This is a huge win for the HTML 5 crowd - As we all know YouTube is a dominant force on the internet. And guess who owns it? Google! And Google makes the Chrome browser, which fully supports HTML 5.
Apple, for it's part, supports HTML 5 in its Safari browser and is betting a lot on the iPhone/iTouch/iPad OS's ability to parse HTML 5 but NOT Flash (which they say is outdated technology as well as slow, buggy, and a CPU hog, all of which are true), and being able to get away with it without losing too many prospective customers over it. It could improve battery life, real-world performance, and help (like YouTube) to clear the way for HTML 5 by having a semi-large user base using devices that require HTML 5 for video (no work on weather Apple will in turn ditch QuickTime plugin support! Just kidding, they'll never do that, and besides, QT offers H.264 MPEG-4 compression decoding, so it's a different animal to Flash. Flash only runs its own proprietary files. QT does that too (.MOV) but is rapidly becoming more of an HD standard - just go to Apple's movie trailer page and see all the 720p and 1080p content that is available, and all of which runs great on QT. So no, QT will not be going away, just as support for WAV files, MP3s, WMV, and DivX aren't going anywhere. Unlike all those standards, Flash was never meant to play movies or music videos; it was originally designed to playback animation, like a GIF image on steroids. It's been overworked for years, and it's end could well be night.
And outside of Adobe, I don't think anyone would mind seeing the last nail smashed into its coffin lid. I've got a nice, capable computer and a very good internet connection, yet some of the simplest flash apps on Facebook, if they aren't coded very carefully (i.e., don't clear their stacks or perform garbage collection right when I'm balancing a marble on a wooden surface, causing the jitters) are frustratingly almost unplayable on certain browsers with certain version of the Flash plugin and you can't always just fix the problem by updating to the latest of everything. Like video drivers and beta browser versions, sometimes the newest build out there is worse than a previous one, forcing you to try to match your setup to that of the guy who developed the game. Commercial games never use Flash, and that should tell you something.
So while I love Adobe for Photoshop and many other products, I feel that Shockwave and Flash are yesterday's tech and should be phased out quickly to let other, better performing standards onto the web to do their thing. Go to Vimeo or a site like that and compare the quality (at the same filesize) of one of their newer music videos, say, to a Flash-bound video on YouTube, and you'll see exactly what I mean.
When even Apple (a long-time bed buddy of Adobe) and Google (who may have the largest collection of Flash files in the world with their YouTube and Google Video services) start to badmouth flash and hype HTML 5, it's probably time to listen. And as a wannabe web designer, I'd rather learn HTML 5 and CSS period than have to also learn yet another product/plugin. No one's saying HTML 5 is the solution that will do everything - you still need style sheets, you still need OO-programming languages to do any serious forms which require that data be stored in any kind of backend database, and so on... but for simple video decoding, live drawing (think playing squiggles against another person online), and even music playback of common file formats (which ones? That's still being hashed out), why not roll that into HTML and let the browser do it rather than farm it out to a plugin that every user is going to have to install anyway?
So a few toes get stepped on and Adobe loses this battle. They never made a lot of money off flash to begin with. I'm sure they can get by quite nicely on $1500 bundles of their graphics apps and even more money for all the training they offer, books they sell, and so on. They didn't even invent the technology: Macromedia did. So please, Adobe, stop complaining and work with other web companies to migrate Flash out of the internet, and replace it gracefully with the much better video implementations that other companies offer. In the interest of the consumer, and to engender goodwill, if nothing else. We're not asking you to abandon Photoshop or Dreamweaver.
Monday, March 22
abseiling
stumbling around in a dream
or maybe waking from one
it's hard to tell anymore
i don't remember any of this happening
but around me is evidence of days
spent miserably abseiling
down some kind of precipice of madness
and failing to gain any purchase
but now i'm on another rope,
and look across at the yesterdays
that don't feel familiar at all
and i wonder where I go
when I'm sliding down that wall
Sunday, March 21
Saturday, March 20
Snoozy Boy
Apparently my mom's cat Hans likes to sleep as much as my cat Jackson does.
What a cute little guy. I want to be a cat.
Wednesday, March 17
A quick computer video questionaire...
I'd like to assess my guests' video-playing capabilities. Why? Because when I move to a new and better (ie, more flexible and functional) blog format sometime this year, I'd like to have the ability to include High-Definition video clips instead of being limited to the small YouTube ones I use now.
I appreciate you taking just a few minutes, if you can, to answer these 10 questions, to the best of your knowledge. If you don't know something, don't worry about it - There's an "I don't know" option for pretty much every question. Just do your best; any info is better for me than nothing at all.
So if you would, please answer the following questions about your current computer.
1. Operating system - I use:
a) Windows 7
b) Windows Vista
c) Windows XP
d) Mac OS X (any "cat" version)
e) Linux (any "flavor")
f) Other (please name if you know)
2. Media player - For video (music may be different), I usually use:
a) Windows Media Player
b) Quicktime Player
c) VideoLan player (VLC)
d) Windows Media Classic
e) RealPlayer
f) Other (please name if you know) or more than one of these
3. I can play files using the following extensions/filetypes (list all you know that work):
a) AVI
b) MPG (or MPEG)
c) MOV
d) WMV
e) MP4 (or MKV)
f) I don't know about any of this
4. My computer has the proper codecs to play/decode (list all that apply):
a) Divx
b) Xvid
c) H.264
d) Quicktime
e) WMV
f) I don't know about any of this
5. I prefer videos in an aspect-ratio (width to height) of:
a) 4:3 - old standard for television; most close to "square"
b) 16:9 - the majority of newer widescreen computer monitors use this
c) 16:10 - I have a Dell monitor!
d) 1.85:1 - many feature films use this, especially comedies and lighter fare
e) 2.35:1 - most "epic" films use this widest of all ratios; Panavision invented it
f) I have no idea or no preference (or I want to leave an explanation)
6. I use this size monitor for my computer:
a) 14"/15" (upgrade!)
b) 17"/19"
c) 20"/21"
d) 23"/24"
e) 27"/30"
f) other
7. To surf blogs and watch video on the computer, I typically use:
a) A desktop computer
b) A laptop
c) An iPad (coming soon)
d) An iPod or Zune
e) A mobile phone ("smartphone")
f) I'm not sure (or comments)
8. My computer (CPU, Videocard, etc, as a whole) can smoothly play back:
a) 360p video (everyone who can watch youtube can handle this)
b) 480p video
c) 720p video
d) 1080p video
e) Even higher than 1080p
f) Check here if you're not sure about the higher resolutions - try all three...
9. My primary computer monitor is:
a) Standard (older style, more nearly square, like an older TV)
b) Widescreen (like newer HDTVs)
LAST QUESTION!
10. My normal screen resolution is:
click here and report what it says! (if you're on your own computer now)
---
The more feedback I get, the better I will know what kind of target machines to design for. It's always a balancing act between wanting the biggest, highest resolution video possible while still allowing nearly everyone with a reasonable computer to play it back smoothly, without freezing or stuttering or just showing a blank.
I like 720p wide format (6:9 or so) for most general video clips (maybe a wider format for movies), as it seems like a good compromise between high quality and still reasonable size. But I won't force that on people if few people's machines can handle it. Although, any computer purchased in recent years should have no problem. Technology has progressed rapidly, as usual.
Thank you!
I appreciate you taking just a few minutes, if you can, to answer these 10 questions, to the best of your knowledge. If you don't know something, don't worry about it - There's an "I don't know" option for pretty much every question. Just do your best; any info is better for me than nothing at all.
So if you would, please answer the following questions about your current computer.
1. Operating system - I use:
a) Windows 7
b) Windows Vista
c) Windows XP
d) Mac OS X (any "cat" version)
e) Linux (any "flavor")
f) Other (please name if you know)
2. Media player - For video (music may be different), I usually use:
a) Windows Media Player
b) Quicktime Player
c) VideoLan player (VLC)
d) Windows Media Classic
e) RealPlayer
f) Other (please name if you know) or more than one of these
3. I can play files using the following extensions/filetypes (list all you know that work):
a) AVI
b) MPG (or MPEG)
c) MOV
d) WMV
e) MP4 (or MKV)
f) I don't know about any of this
4. My computer has the proper codecs to play/decode (list all that apply):
a) Divx
b) Xvid
c) H.264
d) Quicktime
e) WMV
f) I don't know about any of this
5. I prefer videos in an aspect-ratio (width to height) of:
a) 4:3 - old standard for television; most close to "square"
b) 16:9 - the majority of newer widescreen computer monitors use this
c) 16:10 - I have a Dell monitor!
d) 1.85:1 - many feature films use this, especially comedies and lighter fare
e) 2.35:1 - most "epic" films use this widest of all ratios; Panavision invented it
f) I have no idea or no preference (or I want to leave an explanation)
6. I use this size monitor for my computer:
a) 14"/15" (upgrade!)
b) 17"/19"
c) 20"/21"
d) 23"/24"
e) 27"/30"
f) other
7. To surf blogs and watch video on the computer, I typically use:
a) A desktop computer
b) A laptop
c) An iPad (coming soon)
d) An iPod or Zune
e) A mobile phone ("smartphone")
f) I'm not sure (or comments)
8. My computer (CPU, Videocard, etc, as a whole) can smoothly play back:
a) 360p video (everyone who can watch youtube can handle this)
b) 480p video
c) 720p video
d) 1080p video
e) Even higher than 1080p
f) Check here if you're not sure about the higher resolutions - try all three...
9. My primary computer monitor is:
a) Standard (older style, more nearly square, like an older TV)
b) Widescreen (like newer HDTVs)
LAST QUESTION!
10. My normal screen resolution is:
click here and report what it says! (if you're on your own computer now)
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The more feedback I get, the better I will know what kind of target machines to design for. It's always a balancing act between wanting the biggest, highest resolution video possible while still allowing nearly everyone with a reasonable computer to play it back smoothly, without freezing or stuttering or just showing a blank.
I like 720p wide format (6:9 or so) for most general video clips (maybe a wider format for movies), as it seems like a good compromise between high quality and still reasonable size. But I won't force that on people if few people's machines can handle it. Although, any computer purchased in recent years should have no problem. Technology has progressed rapidly, as usual.
Thank you!
Monday, March 15
Sunday, March 14
Indrid Cold.
I may be away from my blog for awhile. I need to get some help. Please don't worry about me, but maybe send me a nice thought if you get a chance in your day.
I love all my friends and family. Take care, until we talk.
I love all my friends and family. Take care, until we talk.
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