3.30.2007

Lights...

I love doing stage crew.


Yeah, it's a short one today. Just thought I'd relay that.

3.29.2007

Are you preparing for the future? You should be. Until now, the world has been at little more than a standstill. I mean it. Things are bad now, but they will get worse. As grim as it may sound, ask yourself when you get up tomorrow, "Where do I want to be when the bomb drops? Who are the good guys? What side do I want to be on?"

Yeah, those are some pretty dark questions to ask yourself early in the morning, but the truth is more than clear. Something must change, and you don't know that the "good guys" are going to be the ones to make the first move.

Paranoid? Yes. Cynical? Damn straight. But this is your world, and you're stuck in it.

3.23.2007

I swallowed a rainbow...





I just wanted to share this amazing bit of poetry with you. A simple presentation may be misleading when it comes to the deep messages found on each page of this "book." Give it a browse. Read. Think. And most of all, enjoy.

The title is the link.

On a side note, I love transparent backgrounds in images. Unfortunately, I'm too lazy to upload the version of this image I made that has a nice transparent background, and Blogger apparently doesn't appreciate the alpha channel in PNGs. So be it- ugly as sin, but the function is still there.

3.21.2007

Zero

No post today. Well, this is one of those self-negating posts. Sometimes you've got to destroy something to create something new. Thus, this post, through its destruction, creates a brand new art form of both existance and non-existance. That's right. What you're looking at is an intangible representation of the idea of "zero." Thank god I didn't invoke the part that makes your eyes explode in your head. You should thank me.

3.20.2007

四十四死老虎石


Some people will spend years studying a language in a classroom. Day in and day out they memorize vocabulary and do their homework. All those years amount to very little in a real-life conversation. If you want to learn a language, stick yourself in the country where it is natively spoken and become immersed in it! A classroom education is a good basis, but full immersion is the only key to a solid acquisition of a foreign language.

Mobile Blogging

This is a picture of my computer. Share the love. What do you spend most of your time sitting on? Some people say I type really fast on my phone and I thought I'd try mobile blogging for a change. It's kind of hard to do this, but I'll have to give it a try another time...

3.19.2007

CNN: The Layman's Gateway to the World

So I'm watching CNN. That's my first mistake. As of late, I've taken to turning on this awfully conservative news channel once in a while for a good laugh. I can't help but laugh at every headline I see, and the report that follows it usually makes my day.

Allow me to make a few examples out of the headlines as they scroll by:

  • The Google Phone. What a load of crap. This reminds me of the rumors that were going around about two years ago about Google secretly designing an operating system that would kill Windows, OS X, and *nix in one fell swoop. I had quite a time posting in the comments of the reports I read about it, trying to explain why Google has no interest in writing an operating system. That's another story altogether, but the point is the same. Why would Google every have any interest in actually releasing their own phone? They're not a phone company. They're a services industry. Google has never released a tangible piece of commercial hardware to date (though they did have a spam filter for businesses that flopped due to its price), and the idea that they'd make their breakthrough with a mobile phone gives me a headache. What is this report really? Well, in the report just made, they associated the "Google Phone" with Apple's iPhone. The reporter said, "[in comparison to] the Apple iPhone, June, $500." That's right. This isn't a report about a Google Phone, this is just more word-of-mouth advertising for the iPhone. This report can't just come out of left field though, so what could Google possibly be cooking up that spawned this buzz? My guess is as good as anyone else's, but here's a stab: a JAVA application to be run natively on cell phones that utilizes their services (e.g. Google Maps, Google Base) in its own environment, outside of the limited WAP browser that most cell phones sport nowadays. This sounds like a gem. But a phone? Come on!
  • Mandatory Ultrasounds for Potential Abortion Patients in South Carolina. Yes, you read that correctly. Someone, somewhere in South Carolina thought it would be a good idea to tack on yet another requirement for a woman who is already making a hard enough decision to have an abortion. Now, I may be biased for this one. I'm Pro-Choice (or Anti-Life, as I like to say), and think that if a woman decides not to go through with a pregnancy, she should have the full right to do so. Its her choice, its her body. But someone thinks that its their right to toy with her emotions even more, and force her to watch and ultrasound of her unborn fetus. Scare-tactics galore. Also, there's one more question that needs to be asked: "What do we do about pregnant women who are blind? They can't see the ultrasound. Will they be unable to get an ultrasound within the state of South Carolina?"
  • (From the ticker at the bottom of the screen) Internet attackers are increasingly using targeted emails to swipe credit card information, an Internet survey released today says. More fear mongering for your grandparents. First of all, I'd like to call the studio and ask them one question: "Can I get a source? Or will that Internet survey's producer remain anonymous, forever buried beneath the mile-a-minute headline ticker at the bottom of your feed?" This is a practice called phishing, and has been around since people realized just how dumb other people are when they start using a computer. Honestly, this problem isn't on the rise anymore. Email service providers are wising up. People themselves are slowly realizing to look at who sent the email, something that can stop 75% of all phish mails in their tracks. This sort of social engineering based attack is on the decline, and while it may never fully disappear, is not on the top of the list of problems we should be focusing on.
Do you see what I mean? CNN is guilty of so much fear-mongering and omission of the truth that I'm surprised they're still operational. The problem is that the majority of people (oh yes, THAT majority) lack the basic thinking skills to question what's being fed to them as they sit in front of the screen. They perpetuate this filth by tuning in for hours, boosting the ratings and jacking up the prices of advertising on the channel.

Television makes you stupid. It's been scientifically proven that the brain shuts down when someone sits in front of a TV.
Books have been written about it, one of my favorites being Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. Let's face it. Television should be the last place you go to learn facts about the world around you.

3.18.2007

The REAL First Post

I wanted to make my first post an introduction to what you, my beloved reader, can expect to find in future posts. I had a whole post written out in my head that went greatly into detail about why I chose this moniker, among other things. But I changed my mind.

I'll give you the short for the moniker. A gecko is a small reptile known primarily for its ability to scale walls and trees as well as its ability to change colors on a whim. So where's the importance in this? Because I've always been fascinated with them. They're beautiful creatures. They're ever changing, and quick to adapt. They're myself, animal-fied. I am adaptable to nearly any situation, and find it effortless to disguise myself, in words, in appearance, and in expression.

The random part? Well, I'm a very random person. I may make a post about kittens one day, and then come back kicking and screaming about the piss-poor conditions the IEEE has set up for mobile devices the next day. I suppose it serves more as a warning than anything else.

Now, the fluff is out of the way. I've explained myself. The reasons behind me feeling as if I needed to do so, I cannot describe. Perhaps it stems from a fear of criticism-- but then what the hell am I doing writing and posting on the internet? I've chosen to remain anonymous for many reasons, but largely because the current conditions don't exactly allow me to reveal who I am behind the opinions I hold. Sure, I've shared this URL with friends, but only those I trust most. Any comments made about my identity will be promptly deleted, and the IP banned. I don't choose to stay anonymous out of lightness. I do so out of necessity. I think I've made myself clear.

Now, why did I make this blog? I needed a place to simply exist in raw form. But there are, of course, more reasons than that. I want this blog to be a challenge to you, dear reader. I want to force you to think, to feel, and to listen. Too often have I remained silent about the injustices I see in the world with my clear view. That will cease to happen. I desire logical, rational debate and discussion. Sure, there are countless blogs out there about the war, technology, and bitchy software developers complaining about the big MS. I am not a soldier. I am not a designer. I am not a developer. I am a jack of all trades, ace of none. But I feel that I can stand out from the rest because of a desire to cut out the fluff and get down to finding real solutions.

Another objective I have for this blog is to allow people to simply explore another person's life from the inside. Yes, I could have made a LiveJournal to do that. But the format does not fit properly as a means for what I am trying to achieve. Perhaps I will discuss this more in a future post if readers don't understand what I'm talking about.

If I have inspired you, good. If I have bored you, go back to playing Halo 2. But the challenge remains. Let the world hear you cry. Let the world hear you laugh. Let the world hear you scream.

Just make sure they're listening.