Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Evolved Social Networking
April 04, 2006

Firas started asking questions about social networking, and I was going to write a little but ended up writing a lot. So I moved it here. Here we go:

The issue that I see with existing social networking sites is that they all exhibit the problem you’re discussing. That is, after you’ve created this network of friends (and who knows why you’ve bothered to do this in the first place) there really isn’t any point other than accumulating more “friends”.

Some of the sites are targetted toward a specific purpose, like recruiting or seeking work. But I don’t see many of the more popular social networks doing anything like this. It’s as if the whole point is to say you know more people than anyone else.

Part of the problem is that social networking has turned group topology upside-down. Traditionally, you join groups with common interests, then gather friends with those interests. In the new social networking model, it seems like joining a group is ancillary to adding more friends to your list.

Am I Dead?
April 03, 2006

I am not sure. I’ve had the strangest month of days in recent memory. Between jury duty, this crazy sinus infection, the trip to Houston, and the time change, I’m not entirely sure which way is up. I’ve found myself asking, “Food? Is it my feeding time?” And that’s just weird.

I’ve been horrible at updating the site over the past couple of weeks, primarily because I haven’t had both the time and the inclination. I’ve also been sitting on an offensively large pile of email since I finished jury duty, and I’m not even sure where to start whittling it down. Hopefully, I’m able to remedy all of that somehow.

Today, though, I wanted to talk about my trip to Texas. I always like getting to go places on work’s tab, and this wasn’t an exception. If it wasn’t for the nose congestion, it might have been a better trip, but it still wasn’t too bad.

I Wanna Be an Astronaut
March 27, 2006

As I grew up I held a great fascination for space. I have a fond childhood memory of using my telescope to look into the night sky for the moon and planets on a very frosty winter evening.

Time progresses, and this fascination starts to work its way through many other interests. I wrote a game in elementary school that used space as its backdrop, with alien worlds and their inhabitants as scenery. I grew to love science fiction, reading classic works of Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Jules Verne. Space cartoons were my favorites, like Star Blazers and Voltron.

I tried to convince my dad to build me a space ship. My brother and I had some panels set up in the basement with paper taped to them, and many sophisticated drawn instrucments scattered about them. We were expert pilots.