Sara’s Weblog – ATEC 3325

A couple of weeks ago my room mate and I adopted a pet bunny; we were very excited. We adopted the rabbit from a shelter about an hour away in Heath, TX. It was really less of a “shelter” and more of a woman’s house who had too many rabbits. Our rabbit is sooo cute, she has the most adorable ears that sometimes lop over. She’s a mix between a Holland Lop and a New Zealand; she’s pretty big for a rabbit. The woman we got her from was calling her Rosa, or Rosey, but my room mate and I weren’t really fond of that name. It took us over two weeks, but we’ve finally come up with a new name for her: Sergeant Truffles. We usually just call her Truffles.

I searched the web for a story relating to this, and couldn’t find much; but then I remember I’ve had a semi-personal experience with this very topic.

My junior year Xanga was very popular at my high school…until one of the Vice Principals started browsing student pages and getting them into trouble for pictures they were posting on Xangas. So, if you there were pictures of you, say at a party holding a “red cup,” on any student’s Xanga you got a call to report to the office. This certain vice principal also notified your parents and shared with them what was going on.

The whole thing was blown out of proportion, I found it extremely stupid. I had a close friend call me in a panic to delete her entire Xanga because the vice principal found it and was about to show her mother some rather incriminating pictures.

First of all, I think the school didn’t have any right to punish students for what they posted online. One, because these events didn’t happen on campus; and two, no school clubs or groups were involved. Secondly, the kids were stupid to post drunken pictures of themselves online; don’t post something you wouldn’t want everyone to see.

I actually found interesting article about businesses limiting what their employees could post online about themselves in blogs, profiles, or other sites. This is becoming increasingly common in fields where employees have a personal site displaying a portfolio or professional work.

So, Microsoft has begun a new line of commercials to combat the popular Mac ads.

The first in this new series were ads featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld, and honestly, they were bad. They just didn’t make sense and I didn’t understand the point Microsoft was trying to make. Also, they were extremely long.

Shortly after these first couple of Gates and Seinfeld commercials aired, Microsoft began airing another line of commercials that I actually thought were very well done. These begin with “PC” saying that he’s been made into a stereotype, and then a very diverse group of people from around the world and across a range of professions proclaim they are PCs. I thought this was a clever idea, because even though the Mac ads are amusing, they do negatively stereotype PC users. I thought Microsoft came up with an appropriate response.

And just to throw it out there, I’m a PC.

I think McCain is trying to appear like he really cares about the economy; he cares so much that he must put his presidential campaign on hold to fix this crisis. What? McCain has nothing to do with fixing the economy, the only thing he can do is vote, and it won’t take him a week to vote. I feel he’s made some bad publicity decisions this week. Bailing on Letterman at the last minute did not turn out in his favor either, especially since he didn’t return to Washington “immediately” like he said he was going to.

Previously I mentioned some second-hand reviews of Spore, but now that I have played the game myself, I can tell you how I felt about the game.

Overall, Spore is pretty fun, especially Creature stage. However, the design flaw in Spore is that if you get stuck, like I did, there’s not much you can do about it; which means you just wasted a lot of time. The game was really fun for me until I hit Tribal Stage, where I was constantly under siege by other tribes and unable to retaliate. The game gives you the option to be a an herbivore, an omnivore, or a carnivore; I choose to play a social herbivore and found that path to be more difficult than that of an aggressive carnivore. As a social creature, I was supposed to befriend other tribes to help me, but never succeeded in this because I was always under attack by another tribe, and had to stick close to my home base.

Spore is fun if you choose the right path, which I feel defeated the point of the game because it takes away the customization of your creature. Ideally I feel that more than one model of creature should be successful.

This wasn’t the most accurate week to understand how many hours I usually spend online. I two projects due that kept me pretty busy all week.

On a usual morning the first thing I do after getting out of bed is to turn on my computer. I spend about 10 or 15 minutes checking my email, Facebook, Digg, the weather forecast, or whatever else I feel is important for me to know before I leave my apartment for work or class.

As soon as I return home, I jump online and usually start wasting time. This week, from Tuesday Monday, I probably spent 8-10 hours online. Normally, I would spend two or three times that many, as I play a few games online or stream television shows.

I felt that the documentary Growing Up Online was fairly well made a put together, but it showed the down-side to the internet. The people they chose to interview, for the most part, were somewhat on the extreme end of the spectrum. For example, a lot of kids get teased online, but very few committ suicide. Another example is the girl with the eating disorder going online to pro-”Anna” sites. She just as easily could have found a site to help her move past her anorexia.

As for PTO mom, I think she is very out of touch. She reminds me of Ted Stevens in way, she knows very little about the internet and yet she feels very strongly about how much control she wants to have over it.

Is this for real? Has Spore finally been released? For me, Spore had become a pleasant-sounding dream; something that sounded nice, and I hoped for, but never thought I would see in my lifetime. Now that Spore is finally out, does it live up to the hype? I can’t say for myself, because I haven’t played it yet, but so far it has been fairly well received. IGN gave it an 8.8. The thing that really impresses me about Spore is that the whole thing is procedural, even the music; which means some content is created by the user based on the choices they make as they move through the game.
I don’t have Spore yet, but I am planning on picking up a copy in the near future.

I found it interesting that a few days after I wrote about my experience with Google’s new web browser, Chrome, the German government told its citizens not to use it. According to the article, German government feels that through “email and search, Chrome gives Google too much information about users…and that it should be avoided because it is still in beta.”

A little extreme? I think so. The author of this article believes the real reason behind Germany discouraging citizens using Chrome is because “it’s a big American company that’s so popular it seems like a monopoly.” Who knows if this is true or not, but I think it’s a little ridiculous that Germany’s government would tell its people to not use Chrome.

Here’s the original article: German Government Tells Citizens Not To Use Google Chrome

This week Google launched the Beta version of their web browser, Chrome. My first impression: fast, very fast. It’s also very simple and easy to use which makes for quicker browsing with fewer distractions. The default homepage of Chrome has very convenient links to the web pages you visit most frequently (much like Opera), which is very handy. It has tabbed browsing like Firefox and uses the same key commands, which makes transitioning to this browser very easy. Chrome has also made it almost effortless to import the user’s bookmarks and history from Firefox.

Even though I am very impressed by Chrome, I still prefer Mozilla Firefox. I’m a Firefox junkie, and I have the coffee mug and t-shirt to prove it. I love the level of customization Firefox allows, and the vast array of themes, add-ons, and extensions. The simplicity of Chrome made me like there were some pieces missing; however Chrome is still in beta so I’m sure there will be many good changes in its future. One thing I really love about Mozilla Firefox is that it is Open Source, I think that’s a very good thing. I’m not sure if Google made Chrome open source, I found contradicting information on that issue. Like Mozilla, Google made Chrome free, which is one reason I really love both of these companies, they make their products avialable to everyone.

I think Chrome is off to a great start, but for now, I’ll stick with Firefox.