Call it Quits

I usually don't get very personal on here, but since this news is applicable here I figured what the heck. Over the past year or so, certain events have led me to re-evaluate my presence online and as a part of the general blog/social network community. This is really what the web has turned into. It's no longer just about going to static websites to find out information about stuff. It's all about participating, sharing, and being a community. As a result, people have begun to move away from the old traditional means of networking. This means that instead of making a phone call we send an instant message. Instead of sending a letter we send an E-mail. And the widely accepted substitute for a quick get-together is video chat with Skype, iChat, MSN, et cetera.

All of this should not be news to anyone who reads this, since the so-called "internet age" has already affected the way all of us operate. While all these current communication methods enable us to get certain things done much quicker than we did decades ago, some things just weren't ever meant to be performed in such a perfunctory manner. The quick and easy communication mentality has become a real detriment to existing friendships and relationships because the personal touch has been drastically diminished. Sure, current web technologies allow us to send pictures and videos of ourselves to personalize a message, but there is still a disconnect - an impersonal layer of abstraction known as cyberspace, the intertubes, the www. The physical handoff is not there.

Another biproduct of this whole social network known as the web is our shifting attitude toward privacy. Everyone wants some degree of privacy in his or her life. No one wants to get hourly visits from strangers at the doorstep, or to have all their vital personal information painted across the front side of their house, apartment, dorm, or vehicle. But if the stuff I mentioned above about your life and communication migrating onto the internet rings true to you, then privacy should take on a slightly different meaning.

Now, your "place of residence" is your blog or facebook page. It's where people go to get access to you. They leave messages for you, on your comments section or in your message inbox or on your Wall. Your "vehicle" is equivalent to your web browser, which takes you to where you want to go online and also carries identifying information about you via the use of cookies and scripts. Both your online "residence" and "vehicle" do indeed have your personal information plastered all across the front. The difference here is that anyone can easily take that information and use it for ill, but at a much safer, concealed distance compared to, say, burglarizing your actual house or car.

Sites like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and even Google are designed in such a way that entices and encourages people to share and participate, as I mentioned before. Because these services make such activities very, very easy to do, its users (us) tend to be much more cavalier and less cautious than we otherwise would be. Sure, there are privacy settings and privacy policies, but the bottom line is that a) a skilled hacker can jump in and grab and sell your info to the highest bidder, b) Facebook's fiasco in February over whether Facebook can keep your personal info forever (even after deleting your account) as well as what the company has the right do with your information is really telling, and c) the ultimate truth of the Internet is that everything that is ever placed online stays online forever. With the right tools and skills, anyone can render public all your private letters, conversations, opinions, thoughts, photos, and videos.

Anytime you sign up or register for anything online, they require you give them your e-mail address, and if it's more important, they get your credit card number. That's fine in general, but years of online activity and dozens of registrations later, you've realized it's impossible to keep track of whom you've given out all that info to. People end up knowing more about you than you'd be comfortable telling your best friend.

All of this just makes me really uncomfortable. I feel that our move to a more mechanical, robotic community platform built upon inherently insecure foundations (read: the 20-year old World Wide Web) is much too 1984 / I, Robot for me. Where's the meaning? Where's the humanity? Though the temptation and convenience is so great to continue using this blog and things like Facebook or IM as means to communicate, the damage has already been done and the best course of action is to stop the bleeding now before it gets any worse.

I hereby announce that I am quitting this blog, I will be leaving Facebook, and ceasing the IMs. I will be eliminating all but the most essential computer/online activity. I will keep this up for the next week or so just so you can read it, but after that, it's over. I want to thank all 5 of you who have read this blog and the dozens who have been online "friends" with me over the past few years. I have appreciated the time, but it's time to return to my roots. I'll see you all in the analog world, somewhere, some time, wherever you might be.

This is my final post.

Signing off now.

Goodbye.

Make a difference.

Support a fantastic, worthwhile cause! Any amount is appreciated. Donate to the American Pharmacist Association at the University of Maryland's Dance-a-thon! Please act quickly. Deadline is Friday, March 27.

From the site:

APhA Dance-a-thon needs YOUR HELP!
This 13-hour dance marathon will take place March 28-29th, 2009 from 8 p.m. to 9 a.m.
Please consider sponsoring the American Pharmacist Association - ASP at the University of Maryland as we raise money for the American Heart Association to foster chronic disease awareness. ALL proceeds go to promoting events which increase awareness about chronic diseases.

The fundraising goal for this year is $5000. Please help us meet our goal!
Any amount is welcome, small or large, although a minimum donation of $10 is suggested. Thank you in advance for your generosity!

http://www.gradconsult.com/index.php?p=1_4_APhA-Donations

Koobface and more security

One or two of you know that I'm a bit of a security nut. With the Web becoming a bigger and more popular place before our very eyes, it's becoming more and more of a breeding ground for malware. Just to review, malware is the current catch-all word for bad stuff more specifically referred to as viruses, spyware, trojans, worms, keyloggers, and adware.

Unfortunately, our increasing use of social networking sites like myspace, twitter, and facebook has changed our attitudes toward what the Internet is really about. Let me get this straight. I love facebook. I love that it allows me to keep in touch with people hundreds of miles and several years away. I'm just saying that because of places like facebook, we've grown accustomed to freely clicking on things to find out what's going on in our social circle.

Enter Koobface. Koobface is a "worm" that infects your computer and your facebook account. It uses your account to send phony messages to people on your friends list. The message typically says something like "hey check out this crazy video taken of you last night!" or simply "you look awesome in this video." It links to a fake YouTube page, telling the unsuspecting user that in order to watch this video they have to update their Adobe Flash Player, on which Youtube runs. This is the downfall of the malware victim. He or she clicks to update Flash, and ends up downloading and running a piece of crap malware.

Koobface is not new, nor is it the first instance of malware or hackery on Facebook. But it certainly is dangerous. Once infected, it is recommended that one at the very least changes one's password. Remember, these fake messages are sent under the name of the person whose account is infected, without that person's knowledge.

If you receive such a message, delete it immediately and help your friend out by telling him or her what I just told you; they have been infected. You as a recipient are not infected if you simply receive the message. You'd actually have to go through the process of clicking the bad link and installing the fake Flash Player in order to be infected.

The virus affects Windows users only, though if you're running virtualization software like Parallels or VMWare or VirtualBox on your Mac the copy of Windows on the virtual machine can get infected. If you're on a Mac your facebook account itself can also be infected, if your account has been exposed to an infected Windows machine.

This leads to a general point about security. Antivirus (or more appropriately, antimalware) software, can only do so much. You are your own first line of defense in protecting yourself from online dangers. Use common sense. If you get an e-mail message that matches the description above, it's likely the same kind of deal. Don't click!

The thing that really gets people is the fact that these messages often come from people they know and like. You'd be more willing to click a link from a friend than from some random shmuck named Landey B. Shellward, right? Just remember that a message from a "friend" can still be suspicious and dangerous because it is SO easy to spoof a sender's name.

You may be curious about what others are saying and what people have seen of you that you don't want them seeing. But if you were home studying last night and someone claims to have a video of you at last night's wild party, don't be stupid. Don't be the cat that curiosity killed.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

Kindle App

I first mentioned the free Kindle App for iPhone in this post. At the time, I had downloaded it but had not tried it out. Today I got some time to play around with it on my iPod Touch, and here's my report.

As I said, the app is free. When you turn it on, you get the Kindle "splash screen" showing a person sitting under a tree reading a book. At the top it says "Amazon Kindle" and at the bottom it says Kindle for iPhone, with Whispersync. More on that later. When I entered the app, it showed me the "Home" screen. This is where the books are, though it didn't come with any books. This list can be sorted by Recent, Title, and Author. On the top right there is a "Get Books" button. I had assumed that it would take me to a mobile Amazon.com store where I can buy books, but instead it showed me a small page saying "Get the best shopping experience by visiting www.amazon.com/kindlestore on your Mac or PC. You can also use Safari on your iPhone to buy books." Well, I wanted to get the whole mobile experience on my iPod Touch, so I avoided going on my computer.

Fortunately, this page provides a link to the Amazon Kindle Store, which will open in Mobile Safari on your device. The Kindle Store is simply a section of Amazon.com dedicated to selling eBooks for the Kindle device (and now for the Kindle iPhone app as well). There doesn't seem to be a mobile-optimized version, so there's going to be some zooming and pinching. Generally not a bad experience though. Not wanting to spend money at the time, I just started looking around, and managed to find a couple user-created "lists" on the left column of the page. These lists happened to be lists of free Kindle books. I was soo there. Currently, the Kindle versions of Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson and Blood Engines by T.A. Pratt are free, so having heard of them recently I figured I'd buy those books... for free.

Keep in mind that you need an Amazon account to even use the app, and of course to buy Kindle books. Your existing Amazon account will do; no need to get a special Kindle account. I clicked "Add to cart" on one of the books, and it said "you cannot buy this item with a cart, please visit the item's info page to purchase." I thought that was odd, but it didn't stop me for very long. On the book's page there's a Buy Now with 1-Click button, which I promptly tapped. The next page I was presented with said something to the effect of "thank you for purchasing this book. It will be sent to your iPhone/iPod Touch the next time you open the Kindle app." Isn't that cool? It knew I was going to use the eBook on my iPod because I'd logged into my Amazon account when opening the Kindle app earlier. I bought both books mentioned above for a total of $0.

So I went back to open the Kindle app, and the Home screen showed an Activity icon, and after a matter of seconds, both books that I had purchased appeared on the list. I picked one randomly, Red Mars. The reading interface should be fairly familiar to those who use their iPod touch or iPhone for looking at pictures. Each page of the book is a screen on your device, and you swipe left to go to the next page and swipe right to go back. Tapping the screen brings up some onscreen controls, including a progress slider, which 1) indicates how far you are and 2) allows you to slide to go directly to a certain part of the book. You can also create and access your bookmarks from here, as well as choose 5 different sizes of text. Great for those who can't read smaller text as well. One neat feature for owners of multiple iPhones, iPods, and/or Kindles, is the sync feature, which gets your current page and synchronizes your reading progress across all devices. So if you use your iPhone on the go but read your Kindle when you go home, when you get home your Kindle will be on the right page.

This is the extent of my testing. It's just a very brief first impression. So far, it works. I don't know if I really plan to do a lot of reading on my iPod, but the fact that the option is here in the Kindle app, along with others such as Classics or Stanza, really improves the versatility of the device. I don't plan to get a Kindle any time soon, but Amazon made a great choice in making this app available to those like me. After all, they will be making money on book sales.

iDracula Screen Shots

Here are some screenshots of iDracula, as promised. I'll try to get some that are more representative of the action.

Just starting out


Werewolves


Game Over Screen

Senior Day Part 2

Oregon head coach Ernie Kent has complained that his Ducks have had to play UCLA for 4 of UCLA's last 8 senior days. On Senior Day, the home team is all pumped up and ready to play, and the crowd is doubly into it. Kent was right to be concerned, because despite some early struggles, UCLA came out on top, 94-68 over the once again hapless Ducks.

Here are some notes for the statisticians in all of us. This was Darren's and Alfred's 138th game played as Bruins, setting a new school record for games played in. They also set a record with 116 career wins each. It was Josh's 130th career start. These records are near-impossible to beat, since this number of games participated in sort of requires that a team make deep tournament runs in consecutive years, as UCLA has.

The team let Oregon kind of hang around early in the game, unable to put them away quickly. Slow defensive rotations, often the fault of Nikola Dragovic, let to many made 3-pointers by Oregon. Some dude named Drew Willey on Oregon made 18 points, solely on 3's. Oregon led by as many as 5 points, but the Bruins got it together toward the end of the first half, to take a 7-point halftime lead. They never looked back after that, and again Josh had a field day, scoring 28 points, including 4 three-pointers.

Unfortunately the 3-year streak of winning the Pac-10 title was broken because Washington got more conference wins. Darn WSU. Anyway, the final Pac-10 standings, after tiebreaker rules are as follows, and they determine the conference tournament seedings.

1) Washington
2) UCLA
3) Cal
4) Arizona State
5) Arizona
6) U$C
7) Washington State
8) Oregon State
9) Stanford
10) Oregon

Remember, the Pac-10 tourney now includes all 10 teams, with the 7th seed playing the 10th seed and the 8th seed playing the 9th seed in the two "play-in" games on Wednesday. Washington plays the winner of the 8-9 game and UCLA plays the winner of the 7-10 game. This means the Bruins play Washington State or Oregon. History tells us that Oregon will lose horribly to WSU, so UCLA will likely have to play the Cougars again.

For a printable version of the bracket, including game times, find it at the Official Pac-10 conference tourney page or download my version here (Updated 3-11-09).

Go Bruins!

Senior Day

Yesterday (3/8) my dad and I went to watch the team's last home game and last regular season game of the year. Naturally, it was Senior Day, so we got there early to watch the pre-game festivities. We didn't get there early enough to see the Super Shot, however, which was moved from its usual place at halftime to make room for the special halftime show. More on that later. But apparently this kid, whose name unfortunately eludes me, managed to make the half court shot, securing himself free tuition for a year at UCLA. Kudos.

The next thing that was different about the afternoon was that rather than running out of the locker room at the northwest corner of Pauley Pavilion to the sound of the public address and the band, they walked stealthily out from the southwest doorway. They even fooled the band leader and security guards.

The players all gathered, standing near the Bruin bench, with Coach Howland at half court. Apparently there were six seniors associated with the team. The first to be saluted and to walk out to center court with his parents on either side was some dude whose name also eludes me. Sheesh. The second was Spencer Onishi, head student manager this year. I've always wondered what the student managers were in charge of doing. He and his parents got a hug from Howland.

The next one was James (aka Jamie?) Diefenbach, who has been with the team on and off as a walk-on but presumably a starter on the volleyball team. He got a huge cheer from the crowd because the crowd loves the benchwarmers.

The first starting senior to be honored was Alfred Aboya, and it seemed like an eternity for the P.A. guy to list all Alfred's accomplishments. Alfred's parents had flown into town this past Thursday and saw their son play basketball for the first time. And they reportedly saw LA traffic for the first time as well, and were thoroughly freaked out by it. About Alfred though, what can I say? Grad student pursuing a M.A. in public policy and the most improved player in the conference. Without Alfred this year's team would be very bad. The crowd was amazing. Everybody was on their feet, and if the Aboyas had any question about Alfred's value to the team, they needed only to listen to the uproarious cheering and screaming and chanting in support of Alfred.

Next was Darren, with his track star parents on each arm. I will miss him but won't miss the media's continuous rehashing of that tired fact. Oh well. And of course Josh followed, with his parents as well as some extra family members in tow. This whole ceremony elicited some of the most intense cheering I'd seen in Pauley in a long time, likely because it was the biggest Senior Day in a while. I heard some of the team staff was tearing up a little. These guys will be missed after this season ends, wherever it ends.

Getting back to the thing at halftime, the 1969 championship team was honored, though many of those involved could not attend. Some of them were represented by their sons. Kareem was there of course, and he and co-team captain/former cohost with Chick Hearn, Lynn Shackleford, accepted an honorary award on behalf of Coach Wooden, who is currently in the hospital recovering from pneumonia. We all wish Coach a speedy recovery. Kareem also received an award commemorating the 40th anniversary of his Naismith Player of the Year award in 1969, the first time this award was offered. Wow, Kareem is so awesome that his awards themselves have awards.

Other members of that team, including star guard Sidney Wicks and assistant coach Denny Crum were in attendance. Just think: when this stuff was going on, I was -16 years old. Though I really don't know too much about these guys, I do understand the importance of them and their accomplishments. These two ceremonies really made the afternoon doubly special and unforgettable. That and Josh's second consecutive career high in scoring (28 after getting 27 on Thursday) and Diefenbach's 2 points.

Ah, what a day. In my next bball post I will talk a bit about the game and do a little Pac-10 tourney preview.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]