creeva

New Feature - Comment On Photos In The Photo Album

creeva@gmail.com — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:37:20 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

One thing that always annoyed me about my photo gallery is that to leave a comment you had to login to flickr. This is all fine and good, but I wanted a bit more of control over those comments instead of sending you to another site. I finally found that I could “hack” the plugin I was using to use Disqus, the same commenting engine I’m using on the rest of the site.

Does this mean you will actually leave any comments? I don’t think that will change too much, but the overhead and change was so small I had to do it. So if there was any pictures in the album that you wanted to comment on, now is your chance. Something small, but a new feature to end the week on.

The Freaking Mile Long Pier in Huron

creeva@gmail.com — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:25:00 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Image from here

The stupid mile long pier. It’s located in Huron, Ohio and at the end of the pier is the Huron Lighthouse. Growing up in Vermilion, Ohio there wasn’t much to do that we didn’t do on a regular basis. One of the odd-ball things we did was go out to the mile long pier. The official name wasn’t the mile long pier, but it is supposedly a mile long - so the local nickname stuck. For some reason the trips were a bit more frequent once I managed to get the woman who would one day be my wife.

My wife always enjoyed the mile long pier, except when she managed to get to the end of it she had to use the restroom. This almost always made it a pain since as soon as we made to the end of the end of the pier we immediately had to turn around and head back in most occasions. When a group of us wanted to head out there we started making her use the restroom at the Riverview Bowling alley just up the street from the pier.

It was one of those places that youth go and hang out in groups. Usually the minimum number of people we took was three, but I can think of a couple times it was almost a dozen of us. Climbing from rock to rock to make it to the end of the pier. Since most the time it was in the evening or close to it, we watched the sunset down. Otherwise we just headed out and stared into the darkness that was the water of Lake Erie at night time.

Was it a fantastic experience, not in anything that I say that you must do. It was a time period where the friends and the memories make it important. Too many times the pier started off as a springboard for other activities. Whether it was friends in high school or friends from my early twenties. It was a gathering spot of sorts. Eventually I’ll get around to heading back and taking some pictures - for now it has to exist solely in memories.

Consolidated Categories

creeva@gmail.com — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:40:56 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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Yesterday to help ease navigation around Creeva.com I consolidated my categories. I went from over one hundred to just having twelve. I used categories kind of like tags, but not really. I was using them for specific organization methods, but over time that becomes unwieldy - especially when certain categories are not relevant or used any more. So yesterday was a big consolidation that literally took hours.

One side effect I noticed that alot of old articles managed to get re-crossposted. I’m not sure why since nothing I did should have called that function in wordpress, but it did. It honestly is as much of a pain for me the author as much as you the reader on this different sites. Hopefully though you will find it easier to navigate different categories around the blog. I also added a ton of tags yesterday so articles should link together better and keyword search should be stronger.

Moved to a New Commenting Platform

creeva@gmail.com — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 03:09:37 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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Originally Published at Journey To Get Paid in this article.

So a couple weeks ago I moved all of my blogs over to the Disqus commenting platform. So far so good. The best thing is that I now have an offsite backups for all of my comments. I had held off using any commenting platforms until they could sync back to the local wordpress database.

I backup all of my blog posts in e-mail and google documents, but there hasn’t been a good offsite backup system for comments until now. If I loose my blog or migrate to another platform Disqus (supposedly) will be able to sync the contacts back correctly.

Check them out, and leave a comment to test it.

Originally Published at Journey To Get Paid in this article.

Blogging For Hire

creeva@gmail.com — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:40:24 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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Originally Published at Journey To Get Paid in this article.

We’ve all thought about it. Why don’t I try one of the services that pay me for each post I do. I only have to write about something I know nothing about and make it seem convincing. Yeah, right. There is more to it then that. I’m not going to call out all services or their designs, but at the same time, they are bunk.

They don’t want to be black listed for spamming themselves so they are calling you out to do it for them. Normally you would get anywhere from 2.50-5.00 for the privilege of doing this for them. So for 5.00 you’ve lowered your integrity. I can understand if your blogging about cruises or vacation providers if you have a travel blog, if you have a personal blog though it’s kind of transparent.

Looking through the benefits and pitfalls of getting in bed with one of these services, I would recommend becoming an Amazon Affiliate - at least there you can make residual income on a blog post that should add up to more then 5.00 for the right item.

Originally Published at Journey To Get Paid in this article.

More Web Statistics - Why Are They Going There?

creeva@gmail.com — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 05:36:28 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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Originally Published at Journey To Get Paid in this article.

How do you use your web statistics? I’ve written that alot of people that visit my site need updated browsers and computers, but mostly I’m curious on where they going. They are browsing around my site, but not to the content I want.

The content that is most read is the articles that don’t have much depth or they are social network invites. You take what you can thought. It is surprising watching how people found your site and what they are reading. I recommend checking your web stat software regulary.

Originally Published at Journey To Get Paid in this article.

Have You Replied To Your Commenters Today?

creeva@gmail.com — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 05:30:41 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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Originally Published at Journey To Get Paid in this article.

They (don’t ask me who “they” are) say that to grow a blog you need to create a social environment around your blog. This theoretically will make people want to come back and read your blog again and again.

I’m not going to discredit this theory, but at the same time it’s not the complete picture anymore then saying Myspace is one of the greatest web sites in the world because of the traffic it generates. Beyond social aspects you also need good content. Not all of us are good content providers, heck most of you probably hare my stuff. That’s fine, no one is forcing to read it. However commenting is part of the equation.

Every time someone leaves a comment on one of my blogs I do my best to reply within twenty four hours. This shows that someone is reading their comments and takes an interest in them. I take an interest in each and everyone of my readers, though some of them don’t care enough about me to actually leave a comment.

So have you left or replied to a comment today?

Originally Published at Journey To Get Paid in this article.

Rebloggers - Why Are There So Many of Them?

creeva@gmail.com — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 05:04:39 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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Originally Published at Journey To Get Paid in this article.

I don’t reblog very often. When I do it’s mostly because it’s something that really interests me. However even sites like Gizmodo or Lifehacker will take stories found somewhere else and write another article about it. This in and off itself isn’t much of an issue.

The issue lies in the fact that Lifehacker wrote about someone else’s article, in turn someone else writes about the Lifehacker article, then another person writes about that article. Instead of original thought or words there are huge amounts of people that are regurgitating information and creating a buzz. The problem lies in the fact that the original author often times do not get credit, the credit goes to the large sites. This is a great misfortune since the only way to find out where the true information comes from is by chasing link through link. That is if the chain of attribution is intact during the whole line along the way.

If you are a reblogger, please write something original. I would say write something original most of the time. Put your words and voice into someone else’s story, but also tell one of your own.

Originally Published at Journey To Get Paid in this article.

The Crossposting God Series Part 8 - Using A Lifestream to Keep Track of Your Crossposts

creeva@gmail.com — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 01:13:08 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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In part 8 I was going to write about crossposting to blogger, but that’s been delayed for the time being. I’ll get back to that subject as soon as I get a chance. Let’s move onto monitoring your crossposting.

Some people may have noticed that on my lifestream there seem to be duplicate posts. This is because I’ve been working on adding all the RSS feeds from all the services in one trackable lifestream. The benefits are that you can see and track how long information takes to get from one site to the next. This also allows you to see where your crossposting is failing. For example I’m noticing that my posts going to pownce are not getting through so when I get a chance I’ll look into what is actually causing that.

Lifestreaming all of our sites into one endpoint site that you can control and maintain allows all the little maintance to happy at a single glance. We all know that crossposting is usually best effort delivery. Not everything shows up in all the sites, but that happens because your not actively maintaining those sites and sometimes things just go wrong.

By having a single stream of all of your sites you are not bogged looking at RSS items for every site all together. If I put all my feed items in google reader then it would take me an hour each day to get through all of them. Having a quick glance allows the information to be singled out in a daily quick view.

Currently I’m using the wordpress lifestream plugin to handle my lifestream page. It gives me the benefit of having a daily summary post generated automatically. This allows me to have a permanent archive of all of my daily archives that I can go back search and vault away in my own life vaulting fashion.

Life is good. Maintaining and monitoring in a single glance - that’s great.

Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series:

The Crossposting God Series Part 1 - The Introduction

The Crossposting God Series Part 2 - Vox

The Crossposting God Series Part 3 - Live Journal and Derivative Sites

The Crossposting God Series Part 4 - Entry, Distribution, and End Points

The Crossposting God Series Part 5 - Myspace

The Crossposting God Series Part 6 - RSS Feeds to Crosspost

The Crossposting God Series Part 7 - Where Can You Post By E-Mail?

Sharing Information - Who To Share It With

creeva@gmail.com — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 01:15:24 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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First and foremost I don’t believe there is such a thing as sharing too much information. That being said I want to control what I share, I also want to be aware of what is being seen, searched, and digested. I will happily write about anything and everything in my life, even to the annoyance of friends, family, and of course readers who have to put up with my inanity.

I dislike however background checks, interview questions that deal with your personal life outside of work, and assumptions based on the findings of those two things. What I do outside of work as long as it’s not illegal is none of our business. It is my life and if it has no bearing on our company or business sector, then buzz of. If you are so concerned about it subscribe to my RSS feed, I’m sure something on that subject will eventually arise.

During background checks I’ve been ask who my neighbors are. I don’t know I’m not the neighborly type. I don’t hang outside with a beer and play the “get to the know the neighbors routine” - just because they live in a geographic location adjacent to me doesn’t mean I want to know or hang out with them. I’m a picky person on who I waste me time. The ones that I do waste time with have some degree of amusement or I gain something from it. My neighbors are not these people. The simple answer is that maybe if I got to know them they would be. That’s the rub and catch-22 now isn’t it.

The reason I’m writing about this is the fact I was talking about a background check with someone via e-mail the other day and she said that I shouldn’t worry about it, that her life is more interesting then mine. She may be right. That’s the not the point, I’m pretty in control and aware of what I write online, how I share, and how it’s reused. Check out my lifestream page for m activities pulled and duplicated from many different services. I spread my dataphonic seed across the blogosphere.

I’m aware and to an extent I’m in control. It’s when information is forced from me in which I take issue with and will clam up.

New Lifestreaming Plugin I’m Using.

creeva@gmail.com — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 03:36:49 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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Some people may notice that on my lifestream page it has a new look and feel, it also has a whole lot more stuff in it. I’ve transitioned to a new lifestreaming plugin, previously I was using the “Simple Life” plugin. The new plugin is is called “Lifestream“. It allows me to put in more RSS feeds then I was previously able to with “Simple Life”, it also performs a daily digest post (which has allowed me to stop using the twitter plugin I used to use to pull in my digest of tweets). There is one bug with the digest posting in the fact that it does a double post.

For creeva.com this is easy to fix. I just go in each morning and remove the duplicate post. However the people feeling the sting are the ones that I crosspost to. There is absolutely no way I’m going to go everywhere my data replicates and track down and clean out the duplicate posts. I have been in contact with the plugin author and he is aware of the issue. He did some massive updating last night, let’s hope this got corrected. I was also kind enough to hide these daily posts from the front page of the blog. I didn’t want to make it seem that all I did was do daily updates of myself. I’m not that vane to broadcast on the front page of my blog. There is a link at the bottom of my lifestream to direct you to my lifestream archive.

The other thing to notice is the multitude of items. It makes me look like an internet posting maniac. Ok I am an Internet posting maniac, but not as much as my lifestream shows. I thought it apt to try to get information on where my stuff is being posted and pull in the RSS feeds from here. This will allow readers to see everywhere I crosspost to how frequently they are updated.

We’ll see if this is the magic bullet for my life vaulting.

My Parents and the Sex Talk

creeva@gmail.com — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 02:33:18 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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The sex talk, it’s something teenagers dread and so do parents. I think I was a pre-teen the first time my parents tried to broach the subject. I had already been aware from enough TV shows were a parent attempted to have a sex talk with their child that it was not a good thing. I avoided it like the plague, just not wanting to deal with it.

The first time my parents were watching the show Dallas and we’re all aware how much sex is shown non explicitly on prime time soap operas. My parents were discussing and wondering if I understood what was happening and if it would effect me. Now I’m not going to say I understood completely, but I knew enough to understand where this conversation was headed and I didn’t want any of it. I replied that they were just going to bed and getting ready to fall asleep. That was the first time I avoided this conversation.

It was a tight end-run in sixth grade when I scored the highest in class on a sex education test. Actually it was more a genetics test, but I got both the extra credit question correct, plus 100% on the test - this brought my score to 106%, the highest out of the whole 100 students in the sixth grade.

Over the following years I mastered avoidance of the subject, until the week before I was going to leave for college. My mother sat me down and started to explain sex to me, at this point in time why bother. I realized for some reason my avoidance tactics were not going to work this time. I told my mother point blank, “I don’t want to talk about this, I lost my virginity three years ago and I don’t think there is anything you can tell me.” That shut her up, she mulled around and I went back to my day of packing.

Now I have ot start planning down the road how I’m going to talk to my kid about sex and when. I understand the avoidance tactics so they won’t be able to pull that one. Of course if it was only my decision I would let them learn the same way I did, school gossip, school education, and practicing it themselves. Sadly I’ve already been told it isn’t going to work out that way.

Drafts I Don’t Need No Stinking Drafts

creeva@gmail.com — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:34:47 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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I’ve found that I don’t work well with draft posts. I stare and stare at them and can’t get the effort to actually finish the post. So if I do a draft it just stares at me, mocking me, wondering why I can’t finish it. I punish myself and beat myself up over it.

Recently I’ve worked around this by writing weeks in advance. If something timely comes in tat I want to write about, that doesn’t stop from writing about it then. I do know that I have future posts waiting in the wings that will be automatically published. By doing this it forces me to focus on the writing at the time, instead of coming up with an idea nd pushing it off to a later a date.

Can you work with drafts?

If so how do you stay and clean out those drafts regularly?

Original From: Drafts I Don’t Need No Stinking Drafts</p>

Do You Know How Your Significant Other Will Vote?

creeva@gmail.com — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 01:43:23 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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I can say that so far as I know, my wife agrees with me in this election on my reasons for non-voting. However no matter how we discuss the elections there is no real way to know what the other person is truly thinking. In the 2004 election we debated and discussed the election to death and thought that we both knew who the other wanted in the election.

In that November we were watching the election results and talking about our candidate, but as the results came in one of us was happy the other upset. What?????? How can this be? We were watching OUR CANDIDATE. The candidate we had BOTH been behind the previous months. The election didn’t go the way at least one of us wanted. Miscommunication? Maybe. Unless you have a lawn sign out though that your spouse put up and you agree with, don’t take it for granted, it’s all in the wordings and in between the lines. Sometimes you miss the forest for the trees.

Twitter Updates for 2008-08-13

creeva@gmail.com — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 05:01:13 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Creative Commons Attribution: ….. Read More Tags: flickr, photos, Picture, Video Related posts Web Wande.. http://tinyurl.com/5vtv6x #

Creative Commons Attribution

creeva@gmail.com — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:13:52 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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I quite a few of my posts I use photos from Flickr that were uploaded with the Creative Common’s license. Every single time I do I add the “Picture from here” link back to the original image. This is important. I release most of the stuff I write, the video I take, and the photos I upload with a Creative Common’s license. I believe as long as I get the attribution, this is all I need.

Creative Commons is important, it’s the closest thing to getting objects into the true public domain as we can without proper copyright reform. I just thought I would share with all of you why the “picture from here” is listed under alot of my images.

Netflix Streaming…..I Love You

creeva@gmail.com — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 02:39:32 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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A couple years ago we removed cable from our house. We didn’t watch anything really besides Law & Order and it’s spin offs. Law & Order was not worth $80.00 per month. While we’ve gotten our TV fix from either Netflix or legal streaming from teh major networks something was missing, Law & Order. We were both always annoyed that Law & Order was not on NBC’s website, but endured. We could have received Law & Order disc by disc from Netflix, but that would have been a pain in the butt.

Recently we discovered that Law & Order is available for streaming from Netflix’s site , we are on season 4 of SVU - thank you Netflix for bringing back the normal TV fare to our lives.

So I’m a Webmaster for My First Non-Profit

creeva@gmail.com — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:16:42 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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So I’ve taken over the position of webmaster for the VCMA (Vermilion Community Music Association). This is going to start a new series as I’m going to use them as guinea pig’s for what I’ve felt non-profits need to do to survive and thrive in the web 2.0 world. They are not a big organization, and I’m sure I received this position for my background and not my witty personality.

I’ve been working on the site for a couple of weeks and here is what I’ve found so far. They had a private member’s section on the old site to share files and personal data. This section was password protected, but the username field was just a front, as long as you nkew the password anything you put in the username field was accepted. Since I’m a security engineer, this just wasn’t going to work for me. I’ve ranted before the illusion of security and how illusionary security wasn’t worthwhile at all anyways. The other problem was that their member page “password protected” section was just a javascript that rewrote the “HTTP GET” to a file named a combination of the requested page plus the password. So if the page was index.tml and the password was “password” the ending HTTP in the “HTTP GET” command would be indexpassword.html. Since it was still a plain text file without any encryption on it, in theory it could still be spidered and stored by google, thereby completely undermining any security it was giving them.

I’m working on a better and more secure solution while maintaining the balance of ease of use. I don’t want to burden them too much on the security side. I’m sure some of the older members would blink at me with a blank stare if I handed them secureID tokens to access their newsletters.

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The next thing I discovered is that code each web page by hand, ugh. There was no way I was going to maintain each HTML manually and hope for any semblance of style and continuity between pages (an issue they had in the past). They had been using FrontPage and offered to buy me a copy. First no, no and no - currently I’m using Linux on my main computer (Ok I dual boot into XP and between WoW and Netflix streaming I don’t get into Ubuntu as much as I should), so Frontpage was out. They were insistent at first that this is how it was done, I however readjusted things. I moved them to Wordpress which I’m not using as a blog but rather as a CMS (Content Management System).

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I manually migrated the data from the old HTML files, I spent hours converting the front page data to be “clean” data that i can migrate and copy paste anywhere. I was a dumbass though, I should have just copy and pasted the text into notepad or a generic text editor, then I wouldn’t have had all the background crap. This is my nore to myself to now be stupid next time. I added images and a javascript navigation menu, but essentially the page was just a cleaned up (easy to maintain now) version of what they already had.

Now the next step is to migrate them to Google Apps for their member related information……

Somehow I always end up volunteering for Vermilion non-profits, now if only I could get one of them to pay me……

My New Method for GTD Should Appeal to Inbox Zero Geeks

creeva@gmail.com — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 03:31:29 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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I get distracted when I get home from work. I’m easily amused and have the “Ooooooooooooooooooooohhh Shiny” mentality type of distraction. I don’t deny it. I don’t exactly revel in it either. By the time I actually get around to doing some of the things I need to get done, it’s late, I’m tired and cranky. If I put things off until the weekend we end up doing stuff and getting involved (”Is that a shiny over there?”) and so things once again get overlooked. I’m not sure I would actually sleep if I didn’t know for certainty that it helps save my job and my marriage. So what can I do about it?

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Things I have tried with little or no success:

Wall Calenders
Sticky Notes
Todo Tasks in Outlook
Todo Tasks on Google
GTD sites
Web Calenders

Nothing so far seems to work for me - I’m mundane blind. When there is a shiny I don’t even notice the mundane.

Like many geeks, corporate types, etc. I live and die by e-mail. This is something I greatly increased in focus when I was a consultant. Now I can handle literally hundreds of e-mails a day, and I can’t stand a cluttered mail box. I normally use Gmail’s interface just through a browser, but I’ve been known to dabble in POP3 and IMAP access (the insanity!!). Mostly though I just use the web browser. It’s the same at work, home, and on the go. The one thing I hate most about my mail box, is when it get’s full. I hate a cluttered inbox, I hate coming back and seeing more then one page of e-mail waiting for me (which does happen if there is some strange reason I don’t check my email for two days).

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So I stumble on the idea of combining these two things, hatred of e-mail clutter and a need to get motivated and GTD, so now I’m email my tasks to myself (and now Xie has joined into the game). The first thing when I went down this road is to send myself a daily list of tasks to do, well I tried that once in the past and that doesn’t seem to help. Neither do reminder services, since I easily dismiss them.

The format I use when I mail myself is TODO (task) - this forces me to stare at it every time I look at my e-mail. I’m hoping it will succesfully burn the task into my brain. When I actually complete the task it get’s archived, thereby saving me space in my inbox. Too many tasks and it will roll over to a second page, I would be highly annoyed if that happened. So essentially I’m going to be GTD by annoying myself.

Meh.

But it may work.

Visting Commentors Sites

creeva@gmail.com — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 01:22:21 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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I randomly go through my commentors and visit their sites and profiles. This is more out of curiousity then anything else. I’m curious who they are what they are interested and what they write about. In most case they are not much different then myself. They are geeks, or lovers of crossposting, the occasion security geek.

While for this post I don’t really have a point, just an observation. “They” say to make your blog sticky and interesting you build up a community. You interact with your commentators and make sure you comment on their posts. I’m just curious how many of the bloggers actually read what their commentators have written that fall outside the realm of their own door step.

Fighting Spammers on the Starsofintrepid.com MediaWiki

creeva@gmail.com — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:15:30 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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I was informed last week that the Stars of Intrepid Wiki I had setup to save the history of the Intrepid server from Star Wars Galaxies had a sudden influx of gold farming spammers. I went and checked it out and Daethe seemed to be on top of taking care of the edits. Over the weekend however more of this popped up, so I went hunting on how to block spam on a MediaWiki installation. I found this article which gave me some options, and I think I implemented about all of them.

We’ll see how it goes and if I’m on top of it now.

I’m Looking for Ikaruga

creeva@gmail.com — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:58:44 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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I’m on the video game hunt again. This time for Ikaruga for either the Gamecube or Dreamcast system. I want the original packaging - manual is optional but completely preferred. Until I find it enjoy some Youtube clips:

Are We Slowing Evolution With Our Health Crazes?

creeva@gmail.com — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:23:54 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

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There is always a new health craze that will make us live longer, be smarter, procreate faster, etc. etc. The question I have is this truly the right thing to do. It seems kind of selfish to me. For example pregnant women these days can’t smoke, can’t drink alcohol, can’t drink caffeine, can’t change litter boxes and that’s just the tip of the icebergs. They also must take vitamin after vitamin to ensure a healthy pregnancy. I’m not saying it’s wrong. I am also not saying it’s something that should be change. I am saying however it’s selfish.

We may be enhancing and increasing our own lives and the lives of our immediate offspring, but what about a few more generations down the road? While the old saying goes “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” isn’t the opposite also true then “What ever makes it easier makes us weaker”? As a species evolution, hardship, and adversity is somethign that gets passed along genetically and our children hopefully evolve because of it. If every mother was a crack addict doesn’t logic tell us that generations down the line that eventually babies would be immune to crack, all we need is that mutant gene to crop up and bang no more crack addiction 2000 years from now.

Caffeine itself used to have teh effects of a harsh drug. We have so much caffeine in our systems these days it’s considered nothing to our bodies, we’ve built up an immunity to it’s effect for the most part. I know that a few months of no-doz and vivarin inspired nights got me to the point that I needed a whole box to even effect me at one point (no I don’t do caffeine pills anymore mostly since it’s a wast of cash over the last decade). Bodies build up immunities and we pass those along to our children.

There is one point in time where we can become selfish however, this is after procreation. After we have passed along our damaged genes to our children and they learn how to deal with them, they in turn can hopefully gain strength from them and turn them around, then they pass them on to their children and the cycle begins anew. When we have our kids and get past the age where we can have children, then we can become selfish. This is where the evolution cycle is a moot point, unless of course your donating sperm, eggs, or DNA to be passed down to future generations. Once we are no longer passing down genetic material there will be no evolution happening and it will stagnant. Since we don’t need to necessarily die sooner, it then is allowable from an evolutionary stand point to extend our lives with whatever health craze is in existence.

I may come off as cold and not caring because of this post, and I know I hold the same selfish for my child as does everyone else. It is selfish though, it holds back our species from evolving against these problems. So I may say that this is part of the solution, but in the end I’m just as much of the problem.

I swear hearing what my parents endured with toys that their generation must be immune to lead poisoning - only their generation didn’t pass it down to ours.

Will We Ever Buy Used Hybrid’s With The Same Assurances As Gasoline Cars?

creeva@gmail.com — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:24:41 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Picture from here

I was wondering today what the car market will be like in 10 years once hybrids as used cars become more common then they are today. I’m sure by that time the foundation technology that hybrids are built on will be rock solid, but what about from the used car perspective?

We are used to checking the brakes, transmission, and even how the engine sounds (I’m assuming if an all electric car is making any noise that’s a bad sign), but hybrids have some unique issues that need to be addressed. The first being the computer. The computer in a hybrid is much more complex then even the most advanced consumer sports car. Regulating battery charges with the use of gasoline isn’t rocket science, but you can’t figure it out on an abacus either. What sort of diagnostic tools will the average consumer need to check out the hybrid the guy is selling on the side of the road?

The other issue that is a larger problem then the computer that the consumer may or may not have input into, it’s the problem of the batteries. How will consumers be able to verify the battery age? How will they be able to verify that the battery are actually completely operational? What if the batteries take charge but your total usage of them is about 10 miles per tank of gas? If you are getting poor mileage because of the latter scenario would it even be a savings in gas? Hybrids running off a gasoline only aren’t necessarily the efficient side of the equation, they receive their benefits from the batteries, the batteries aren’t up to snuff you will be using more gasoline then buying a normal gasoline powered small car (batteries aren’t light…yet).

I also would like to see batteries at Auto Zone or some such store so we can actually do maintenance and change the batteries ourselves. Once this becomes the norm, maybe we’ll see User settings such as change the batteries every 60000 miles for optimum performance. Until all the things are in place and the tools exist for a user to do a complete diagnostic (we need something similar to a checksum to verify that there has been no tampering or custom mods done to the car which may or may not cause issues) I’m not going to trust used hybrids.

Aren’t we suppose to make new technology more reliable and efficient? There is still some gaping holes in the hybid deployment.

The Twitter Spam Battle In Myself

creeva@gmail.com — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 05:32:30 GMT

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Picture from here

I’m a twitter addict. I’m not going to be apologetic about it. I love twitter. I’ll be happier when the rewrite occurs and it becomes a stable messaging platform. The problem I have is balancing the amount of tweets I do with the number my real life friends are willing to read.

I really want to tweet every song I’m listening to, every image I upload, and every piece of digital property I touch and interact with. I don’t though since that could generate hundreds of tweets on some days. My friends won’t stand for it. So I use things like a filtered RSS feed to alert my followers of new blog posts, and I actually do interact with it (unlike some services).

I’m not asking for a cookie, I’m just having a random rant.

See you all on Twitter….tweet…tweet