Everything In Between

In an effort to allow some semblance of a unified site, I’m hacking WordPress to my liking so that I’ll be able to quickly and easily update things here and keep on keepin’ on writing. Basically, this means things are going to be up in the air for a while. Not like that’s anything new around here, but the point is that they’re not supposed to be up in the air, and that’s what I’m trying to create for myself.

This is actually a slightly bigger project than one might expect, and so I won’t be surprised if I miss a few things. If you’re so inclined, please help by letting me know when things don’t work. A broken link, a broken form, news feeds not working for you, heck, even a typo. It all really helps me out. Thanks!

For now this basic design will work, and I’m in the process of making the site database-driven. I’m sort of working from the top down, though. I still haven’t finished the stylesheets for the project, and I’m also finalizing what kind of XHTML I’m going to output. Ideally, I’d like the site to use several stylesheets with the same template at once and so this complicates the markup issue slightly. Also as far as stylesheets go, I’m aware of a few problems in some browsers, so those will have to be worked through as well. Honestly, though, it’s mostly fine in most browsers, and that’s mostly okay with me. There are other issues to attend to.

First, though, I want to make sure the system is working properly. For instance, if you’re trying to recieve newsfeeds via SharpReader then you won’t be able to access any of my feeds. I’m still trying to figure this one out so the best thing I can say would be to use a different newsreader for the time being. You might consider Bloglines, which is web-based so you can use it on any computer. Currently, I suspect the SharpReader problem has to do with how strict it is regarding charset encoding but that’s just a wild guess since I really haven’t had a chance to dig yet.

Well, I took the plunge and finally upgraded updated my laptop to Windows XP Service Pack 2. Had a good laugh at the “…we strongly recommend that you back up your system…” message first, though. The whole process took nearly four (4!) hours to complete, but all in all nothing really went wrong.

One extremely bizarre thing, however, is that I lost all my Firefox bookmarks. Didn’t even try to figure that one out; I have backups.

I rather like the new Security Center that comes with SP 2. At the very least, it makes me feel a little better. There’s also a far better-looking Wi-Fi interface which makes connecting to and from wireless networks a whole lot easier.

It still broke Nmap, though.

This has always bothered me, though I don’t know why it bothers me to such a (possibly) unreasonable extent. Furthermore, I am convinced that it is an absolutely foreign concept to females. Someone, please, prove me wrong. I would much rather think that I am neurotic and am behaving unfairly. That way, I could at least work on improving the emotional situation for myself. So, at the risk of raising a bit of controversy, here’s my whining and griping for the day.

The “Dating” Situation

There is a glaring disparity in the way men and women use technology to attract members of the opposite sex for any and every purpose imaginable. This is most apparent in the romantic realm and so that’s what I’ll be discussing, but it doesn’t end there. Everything that follows applies to any situation in which gender is an issue, including platonic social networking. That fact especially is likely one reason why it upsets me even more so.

1. There are many more men than women using the Internet as a means to a social networking end, like dating. Available females who are publicly advertising themselves as available are so few and far between when compared to the male population of the same that the disparity is partially simply one of numbers. With so many men to choose from, women need not try very hard to attract one (or many). Contrastingly, with so few women available, men must work much, much more to interest and attract the woman.
2. Furthermore, and this is true even of a real-life situation in a bar, club, or at Starbucks, men are far more likely to approach a woman to express interest in her because this is what is expected of them to do. Should a woman do this, it is more likely to be considered surprisingly “forward”. In other words, women are expected to “bait and wait”.

The cumulative results of the online “dating” situation are as follows:

• If you are a woman:
  1. You are inundated with propositions, welcome or otherwise. In an online setting, this means instant messages, emails, posts, or other things that make your computer go “beep!”
  2. You spend most of your time sorting through these propositions, deciding with a justified split-second choice whether or not to give this particular suitor the time of day. Tools exist especially for this purpose, such as the automated reply.
  3. You don’t need to set up a particularly engaging profile or otherwise advertise yourself as available.
• If you are a man:
  1. You need to ensure that your profile is unique and engaging enough to sit and read through. Despite this, the chances of it being read through are minimal anyway.
  2. You need to actively monitor the situation, seek opportunities, and act on those opportunities quickly. You will need to spend a lot of time browsing profiles and sending messages. If you can manage it, you need to be available to talk with directly. You are expected to pursue.
  3. Your messages and conversational skills need to be way above par. You must be an excellent conversationalist, a good listener, and a quick typist. In short, you must be engaging.

Put simply: when a man and woman begin talking online, the woman is appropriately not invested, while the man knows that he’s at least somewhat fortunate just to have the conversation.

How it affects me:

My girlfriend is already part of several online social networking services like Friendster and orkut. Actually, I invited her to orkut. As is typical, she gets literally dozens of offers and messages all the time from guys on these services and, comparatively, I get none from anyone. And, yes, I’ll freely admit to being somewhat jealous of her for this. (Wouldn’t you be?)

Moving on however, it is sometimes incredibly difficult for me to feel secure because of all this. That’s what really bothers me — and it doesn’t have anything to do with my girlfriend. I am not the jealous type, I am not controlling or restrictive, and I am not a paranoid psychotic. Nevertheless, the fact remains that it is far easier for a woman to find a man than it is for a man to find a woman, and that fact is utterly unnerving when it is prominently presented time and time again as random men propositioning my girlfriend in all sorts of ways.

To her credit, she is very affectionate and does a wonderful job of reminding me that she loves me. That’s something I need every so often. In fact, as I wrote this entry she said so more than five times. I really don’t have much fear of being subverted by some random guy she meets online. Quite to the contrary; I’ve been her biggest supporter when it comes to striking out to make a social network independent of my own. Like I said before, I’m in no way controlling or restrictive, and I am proud of that.

Still, there is this nagging feeling of…bitterness, maybe, at the situation being so utterly one-sided. Currently, she discovered someone who I’ll call John, and has spent more than five hours talking to him over AIM in the last two nights. I’m not worried that I’ll lose her to John; I’m jealous that she can meet people so effortlessly because she has boobs and I can’t because I don’t.

Ladies, you just don’t know. And I really don’t think you understand the gravity of the effect….

As another note, consider the following excerpt from an IM conversation with a female friend.

…in little stuff, my gmail invite off [gmailswap.com], I posted total BS about my eternal gratefulness or some such thing. But I put in there I was female and got [a gmail account] almost instantly.

(Emphasis added.)

On the up side to the whole thing, my afore-quoted friend did point out that this isn’t something which causes women to fall into lovely, fairy-tale-like relationships. Men who proliferate this trend by being deceitful are in for a very short fling at most. (Or so I hope. Every woman out there, it sometimes seems, needs to start developing more self-esteem, and fast. And not just the outward facade of being cool but true self-acceptance and emotional self-reliance.)

Come to think of it, I think this may be why there is so much dishonesty online. Men have been backed into a corner. We don’t have the power to change this anymore; try to fight it and you simply won’t get the girl. Some (read: plenty) thus resort to lies which they justify as "embellishments". It should also be noted that I don’t believe women are under any obligation to give up this power on principle. In fact, if I were a woman I would be taking advantage of this as much as I could. One of the really annoying things, however, is that some women don’t seem to understand that this isn’t a right. It’s a situation of circumstance. A situation that sometimes frustrates me to no end, and scares me at other times.

But all is well and good when my sweetheart comes to bed, kisses me gently and tells me she loves me. I am lucky to have her love, and don’t for one minute think that I ever forget that.

I’ve joined the Google craze.

Many of you have probably already heard of Gmail, Google’s Webmail service that’s not yet open to the public. I was lucky enough to get invited to get an account and I have to say, it is leaps and bounds above the competition.

The 1,000 megabyte storage capacity is just the beginning.

The biggest usability improvement I’ve seen in Gmail is the ability to archive old messages and literally have them "disappear" until you want to find them again. This takes a bit of explaining to properly understand. Let me start over. This is how I used to work with my email:

1. When I get a new email message, I would first look to see whether or not it should be filed in a special category. This process is at first time-consuming but eventually can be automated with filters and/or rules.
2. Then, after reading the message, I would decide whether or not it is important enough to save. If so, I would need to file it manually and save it someplace on my hard drive. There are two major disadvantages to this necessity:
   1. Once saved, it was difficult to find again after some time. I don’t really remember titles as well as I remember the content of the email, and all these old saved emails are just files on my computer somewhere which means I’d need to remember their filename.
   2. If I was on my laptop or away from home, I wouldn’t have any access to my old emails unless I kept SSH running on my home computer, and then I’d need to log into the computer remotely anyway. That’s a hassle.

The Google-way™ of emails is much more intuitive:

1. Get a new email, read, and respond. If it needs a special marker, such as being a "Business" letter, I can apply a label to it right there and then.
2. Archive it to clear it away from my Inbox.
3. Should I ever need to find it again, I can search for it by content. For example, if I need to find an email about an old client project, I simply type the client name and presto. Google’s search takes care of the rest.

To be honest, this was very difficult to get used to during the first week or so. I found myself constantly trashing emails out of habit instead of archiving them. It was also difficult to see how big a convenience the "search, don’t sort" methodology was because I didn’t have that many emails to begin with. Now that I’ve been using it for a while, I rather like it and see many benefits over using POP3 email client programs.

In essence, Gmails benefit can be summed up in the following sentence: Gmail makes the computer organize and store my information, while all I have to do is call it up when I need it. As I said previously, this is far more intuitive.

I’m still debating setting up a few email forwarders to funnel all my work-related email to a Gmail account. I still want clients to contact me through my own email address, that is, my maymay.net email account. By setting up a forwarder to my Gmail account, I can direct all emails sent to maymay.net over to Gmail. Then I can set my reply-to address at Gmail to my maymay.net account, and voila…transparent email changing! I’ll test this Gmail thing out for a while longer before I do that for real, though.

I found a ten dollar bill on the street just now! No, really, was walking home from Saint’s Alp Teahouse and on the street, in the middle of an intersection, was a folded, crisp ten dollar bill. Maybe it’s karma from advocating free Internet access for all, or perhaps from spending a great night out with my girlfriend and her ex. Ten free dollars, though…boo yah!

Oh, or maybe it was for fixing the site navigation on this blog. I noticed an unusual number of HTTP 404 errors coming up in my logs and this blog was the reffering page. Oopsie, my bad.

Philadelphia has the right idea when it comes to Wi-Fi. According to an article by the Associated Press, Philadelphia is considering a plan which would effectively make its entire 135 square miles one huge Wi-Fi hotspot. The city would either offer this service for free or for a nominal fee much cheaper than the exorbitant rates charged by most ISPs these days. This has to be the best move I’ve ever heard of by a municipality regarding Internet Access.

Among other things, this will enable all the city’s residents, wealthy and poor, to have access to the world’s most elite resource for information and knowledge. I see this as one way to help shorten the increasing gap between the rich and the poor in our society. Knowledge is power, and nothing is more beneficial in today’s world as free access to that knowledge which the Internet can provide.

According to the same article, New York is considering something similar, but their plan is reported to involve leasing municipally-owned space on city lamp posts to companies like Verizon or T-Mobile. Presumably, these companies would then put Wi-Fi APs on top of the lamp posts to extend their subscription-based "hotspot" services to the entire city. I haven’t found a news source to confirm that yet, but I can’t imagine the plan being any different.

So what’s wrong with New York’s idea?

Simple: it’s just as greedy and elitist as the "hotspot" idea was to begin with. I have a wireless-enabled laptop that I bring with me all the time. I’m almost never without it anymore. The problem is that its usefulness is severely limited because I don’t have a subscription to any hotspot service. Frankly, I don’t have the money to spend on it. I’m not rich, and I already pay for a cable Internet connection via Road Runner. I paid for my computers, both of them, and I paid for my wireless router at home. (Technically, I believe that’s actually a violation of Road Runner’s terms of service, which just goes to show you how greedy they really are.)

The Internet should be free. Currently, I’m writing this entry from Saint’s Alp Teahouse on Bleeker street. They offer an 802.11g Wi-Fi network for no charge. They’ve actually got a lot more money from me than they would have otherwise because of it, too. I come here to work, to read the news, and to blog. Plus, the tea is great.

I sincerely hope Philadelphia officials go forth with the plan to offer free Wi-Fi city-wide, because if they do other major cities who are planning to charge for the service will be pressured to reconsider. It will also put a heavy strain businesses which have made their livelihood based on offering access to the Internet for a fee. Free government-supplied access to the Internet is a step in the right direction for all.

As an afterthought, this whole thing is making me very interested in the infrastructure that is necessary to maintain such a network. In San Francisco, I know that there is quite a strong movement in which ordinary tech-savvy citizens have set up their own free wi-fi networks across neighborhoods, and I am wondering if something similar exists in New York. I’d be interested in setting up one of these networks if it’s at all feasible. If anyone has any information on this, please let me know. Maybe we can get something started. :)