I basically gave up television because I lost the ability to filter out advertising – likewise radio – in favour of the Internet where you can block whatever you want (whatever you want) and not have to reach for the ‘mute’ button every twelve or so minutes.

Now that I’m subjected to flash banner ads staying away from the Internet is starting to seem like almost a better idea. That is, staying away from the parts of the Internet that allow flash banner ads. I highly doubt there will be any ads in the Discworld MUD.

Today I was talking to some of the Chinese kids at work about the MMOs they play when one of their (not Chinese, some kind of New Zealand flavour) girlfriends turns around and goes, “Well, I doubt you’d know the game because it’s all in Chinese characters and they speak Mandarin and you wouldn’t understand it.”

WHY, THANK YOU, GIRL-I-TRIED-TALKING-TO-THIS-ONE-AWKWARD-AND-NOT-VERY-MEMORABLE-TIME. I GUESS NEXT TIME I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT ANYTHING YOU’LL ASSUME THAT I WANT TO BE AN INTRINSIC PART OF IT. MAYBE I’LL BRING UP “THE BEST WAYS TO BREAK-AND-ENTER” OR “WHERE DO YOU HIDE YOUR SPARE KEY?”

Yeah, I might do that tomorrow.

In other news, I fixed the Covox chipmusic post so the player actually plays the song now. I thought it worked before, but whatevs.

But this is far into the future. Before this can happen virtual reality needs to win the hearts and minds of a young generation, who will learn to use VR for entertainment before they use it for anything functional, and their parents, who will fund the younger generation. In the same way that I started playing games on computers before learning how to use a computer to study, the younger generation will start gaming in VR before they start working in VR. My parents paid for the first computer in the house and now I pay for the computer that I use. Just like computers et al (personal mp3 players, console gaming systems) the VR product will make its way into households and handbags worldwide.

In order to get everyone throwing money at companies for VR-based products, some flagship, pioneer companies are going to need to make some pretty significant and powerful branding decisions. VR will need a catchy, easy to say and easily understandable name like, “iPod.” Apple were pretty smart when they coined the term and nothing else has really come close. I own a Sony NWA-3000 – I have for about four years – and to this day I haven’t figured out anything to call it shorter than, “mp3 player.” Generally I default to “iPod” the same way Americans call every facial tissue “Kleenex.” Different brands are going to call their different VR products different things, although this sentence is pretty vague and also fairly obvious, this will happen. What seems pretty clear to me is that the verb “virtualise” is going to be replaced.

Why? “Virtualise” is a four-syllable word. This word is too much of a mouthful to be used everyday in every situation unlike “iPod.” But before I go into that I will define what I consider “virtualise” to mean: In this context, “virtualise” is the process that an existing medium (be it television, painting, sculpture, social networking, social interaction, workplace organisation or law enforcement) goes through to become part of the world of networked virtual reality. You can say that an MMORPG like World of Warcraft or Second Life are “virtually reality” but you can not say they are “virtualised reality” if you take “virtualise” in context.

What the first few companies are going to spend billions of dollars doing is convincing the world that “virtualise” is not only one syllable too many, but that it is too literal a word for so virtual a process. I propose the verb that these companies will settle on will be “realise.” This verb is readily linked with virtual reality and it is also a verb that has many meanings. “Realise” is easy to associate with “virtual reality” as it is the verb form of the noun “reality.” In English, we already take it to mean: comprehend; make reality; make realistic; to obtain and; to achieve. One could realise that by realising an ambition to realise a realisation of Victorian society one can realise a great sum of money and subsequently realise a dream of realising wealth. Understand?

In the same way we accept this word has many meanings we will accept the new meaning. Once we have assimilated the language our realisation will be complete.

The message of the future is:

“Realise Your Dreams.”

Apart from Frosty the Snowman, all of the flight attendants were super-cute and pretty helpful and even joked to us when we took thirty minutes to get off the plane.

When we were in Australia I saw a flight attendant say to his colleagues, “Don’t worry – I’ll translate.” as he walked over to a Chinese man wearing all-white Air Maxes who was having problems with his baggage. He then put on his version of a Chinese accent and spat broken English at the Chinese guy.

Nothing else interesting has happened – Google haven’t indexed any sweeter images so I don’t have anything to post ):

Please remember that if you are using PLURALS to use the word ARE.

I would give a more technical explanation of this but they don’t teach grammar at high school in New Zealand and at University they expect you to already know about grammar.

That is all.

P.S. Have you guys seen our favicon.ico? Look! There it is next to the URL bar / on the tab bar! I drew it! It took me ages! (It sucks!)

Although this isn’t the best example, this is the reason that people need to pass a basic literacy test each time they post a status update on fckbk. I know I am not perfect (as the RSS readers will know from the previous post) but at least I don’t think spelling is “something that you are taught in primary school that you need never think of ever again,” which is evidently the mantra that most of the people on my home page chant between bouts of destroying the English language in favour of: WAT R U DOIN ON THE W/E? I HEARD YOUR GOIN TO TOWN?.

I searched around my settings for a bit but I didn’t find shit! I am pretty annoyed about this and can’t help but think it may have something to do with my IMAP configurations in Alpine, but I don’t see how the capitalisation on Alpine can affect Google’s webmail interface.

Long story short: mad, so here is a little daemon.

I the last two fools who commented on this thing copied the spelling of “assassin” from the first fool. Not withstanding their horrible spelling and grammar they fail because they were cheating. Normally I would be cool with cheating but they managed to take the wrong answer and that kind of stupidity cannot be allowed to spread. The second person gets an F- for being extra retarded.

I found this on C4′s poor excuse for a website.

I was broswing Wikipedia while I write chapter two of my CLit and guess what I found?

Anyway – this is some filler (rly?). Hopefully I’ll get a real post up sometime this afternoon.

EDIT: Evidently I didn’t get a post up.

Posting health notices while unqualified to do so harms society. From 2003 to 2006 workplace incompetency caused 654,965 deaths in Iraq (reference). LOL I’M BEING TOPICAL CIRCA ALMOST THREE YEARS AGO. Anyway, how did this make it onto a cigarette case? Who was in charge of screening this?

Perhaps it was this person NOTE: this is the top result when you search “preganant” on Google.

i am nt evn shure wut dis meens. i thnk he is talkin bout shoes. whatevr else he is tlkin bout is ne1s gess.

altho it myt b apr0p1at3 to txt lyk dis (borderlyne) it is def not smart 2 be all cummnt ppl on the internets lyk dis.

Unless you are trolling. Is this guy trolling? Did I get trolled?

ZACH – 0
TROLL – 1

WAT WAT WAT WAT WAT