I feel like I’m a social butterfly who has been caught by some mean pudgy kid and put in a jar at times . When in certain situations with people I don’t know, I am completely useless until someone breaks the ice. One word is all it takes then I am perfectly comfortable talking about whatever to whoever. It’s really annoying and I try very hard to change the fact, but for some reason, something keeps holding me back.

   This is especially true when it comes to girls. When I want to approach a girl I get completely in my head about it and psych myself out, and no matter how much I try and convince myself to just say hi. I see myself coming off a creep or weird. This is true with both genders, when I see someone who is really interesting and someone I think I would like to get to know better I just can’t bring myself to go introduce myself. Every way I see it happening in my head ends badly.

   It’s not the fear of rejection, it’s not a fear at all, it’s just the feeling of coming off as weird to the other person. From that they get a false sense of who I am. I guess the fact that people judge based on the first impression is what scares me. 

Breaking my arm when I was 6. It was 2 weeks before grade 2 started and I was at camp playing on a jungle gym. I was laughing and having a good time. Sadly the good times came crashing down when I slipped off the money bars and landed on my right wrist fracturing it. Was in a cast for the start of grade 2.

   Over the past 2 years or so, we have been seeing big pushes to making cloud computing available and affordable to most countries/households. If you are unclear of what cloud computing is, or the cloud in general here is a quick run down.

   The cloud is a nickname for the internet. It represents something that can not be seen, touched, tasted, smelt or heard but is almost always there. A more technical explanation of the cloud is: information/programs being stored on a server elsewhere in the world that you can access at any time. Currently the cloud is being used for many things including: movies, music, games, data, and entire operating systems. Usually to get involved with a cloud based company, you need to register with one that has one of the services listed above that you are looking for. Some of them are free, some of them you have to pay for (thus is life). When using the cloud, instead of files/programs being stored on your computer and taking up your precise hard drive space, it is stored on a company’s server allowing you to access it from usually any internet enabled device anywhere in the world. This has many advantages and disadvantages which I will talk about in a bit.

   Some good examples of companies that have embraced the cloud are: Google, Onlive, Dropbox, Spotify, Netflix, and many others. Google is probably the most well known of these companies and their integration of the cloud is very similar to that of dropbox. Google offers a service called Google Drive, which gives you 5gb of storage on their servers for you to store ANY kind of file you want. You can also install Google Drive on any number of computers which will create a new folder appropriately called “Google Drive”. When you drop something into this folder it is automatically synced into the cloud, and then synced locally on any machine that has your Google Drive account associated to it. Dropbox offers the same kind of service as well. Google Chrome works with the cloud to, just like Firefox, they take all your settings and associate it with a sign on ID. When you sign onto the browser in another location, it brings all your settings and personalization along with it. Very handy in deed. These are all round useful tools, however you still need to be able to have a large enough hard drive to store all the information being synced. Onlive, Spotify, and Netflix have choosen to approach the cloud from a very different angle. They have each taken an area of entertainment (games, music, and movies respectably) into the cloud. With these three services it doesn’t matter how much space your computer has left, or if it’s a $200 netbook or a $1500 power house of a computer. Onlive for example, which allows you to play games in the cloud, can bring AAA games to any internet enabled computer and the user is able to play them at the highest graphics settings. This is possible because the game isn’t being played on the users computer, but rather on Onlive’s servers and then the picture and sound is being streamed to your computer. Your mouse/controller movements are then sent back to Onlive and the character on the screen reacts accordingly. Netflix does the same thing but with movies, and Spotify the same thing with music. With these 3 applications you have access to hundreds of games, thousands of movies, and millions of songs, all with less disk space than Microsoft office.

There are some clear advantages to having these kinds of services, the main on being: you don’t have to go out and buy an expensive computer or a big hard drive to store everything any more. You can buy a cheap laptop/netbook and in some cases a tablet and have your personal entertainment and important files with you everywhere you go. Another advantage is that because this is all stored in the cloud, you never have to worry about your computer crashing or losing data. If you need to restore your computer for whatever reason, you just need to install the applications again and all your data will sync right back up with your computer like it never left. Lastly, we live in a world where everything is instant, we have instant messaging, instant data, instant directions. If I wanted to a see a video of a kitten sleeping I can find that in about five second. Before these companies came along, if you wanted music/movies/or games you had two choices, you either go out and buy a physical copy and then copy/install it onto your computer or you find somewhere to download it. Both required a fair amount of waiting depending on what you were trying to get. With these services there is no need to wait, everything is instant. I want to watch that movie now, I want to listen to that song now, I want to play that game now. What’s better then not waiting…imagine…instant pizza delivery…

    There aren’t just benefits to consumers here, these services also benefit the people making all this content. Onlive and Spotify have free options, meaning you can register for free to try out the service. If you choose to subscribe for $10 a month you get UNLIMITED access to ALL this content, and you are supporting the people who make the content. 

    With all these pros there are definitely some cons. The biggest con being that with all this information at your fingertips, it has to come from somewhere, the internet. As I’m sure since you are reading this now, you know that the internet is not free, nor cheap. I’m not sure how it works in the rest of the world but in Canada we have bandwidth caps. This means that we have our allotted amount of bandwidth we can use. If you are like me who streams everything over the internet, you reach that number pretty quickly. Bandwidth caps and more importantly, the prices we pay for going over these caps are what is keeping this so expensive for the consumer. 

   The future of cloud computing is a very interesting one and one that I hope will eventually take over. We’ll have instant access to all the newest releases, up to date news, and have our most important files always backed up. Imagine only having to go out and buy a 200 dollar computer, and all it does is connect to the web, because that’s where everything is stored and run. You don’t need to learn about the newest hardware or specs and you don’t need to update your computer when it gets out of date. The only thing stopping this kind of world from taking off is that of the internet providers. If they don’t start allowing unlimited bandwidth and cheaper rates people will end up spending more money on things they will need to replace. I fully support the cloud and think it’s the logical next step for computers to take. 

This is a coffee table made out of K’nex that me and a friend made for our apartment a couple years back. We think we did a pretty good job on it. It’s still sitting in my basement now being used daily.

“Don’t put to much information on Facebook, they sell your data to other companies” is something I swear I hear on a weekly basis. I have no idea if this idea is brought on by the media or by hearsay; all I know is that it is a greatly misinformed idea of Facebook. 

  Facebook makes a majority of it’s money the same way another big tech company, Google, makes most of their money: through advertising. Instead of selling your info out to other companies which then get to choose what to do with all that personal info. Facebook allows people to advertise on their website. This means that Facebook gives the user the companies info, instead of the other way around. When creating an ad on Facebook (which anyone can do) you set which kind of demographic you want to target with your ad. You can say you want your ad to be targeted to white males who live in Iqaluit, Nunavut who like Rock Music and are between the ages of 50 - 75. Facebook has created the perfect advertising website while still keeping all of your data safe. At no point does the company who posts the ad above see any data from any specific user, they only see how many people would see their ad. What this allows advertisers to do, is to target exactly who they want to. Instead of advertising on a general website where the site owner doesn’t know how old you are or what gender you are they can now target exactly the audience they need. This means only females see ads for feminine products, or Americans only see fourth of July sales. If you are able to target exactly the group you want without the need of interviewing anyone, you are more likely to make a sale. Ads better targeted at the user are also better for the user because they may discover something new that they didn’t know about before which could potentially change their lives in some way.

  Google does all this with their searches but without nearly the details Facebook has. Google takes what you search for and gives you ad relevant to you, much like how Facebook does ads with your data.

   Another way Facebook allows companies to reach out to it’s users it by letting websites use the Facebook cookie that is stored in your browser from logging in. A cookie is just a line of text that the website sends to your browser and your browser stores it. These cookies are totally harmless and are usually encrypted. In the case of Facebook, the browser is storing your user ID which is linked to your profile. When you visit a third party site that is separate from Facebook, you may notice on the side there is a box full of Facebook users that “like” that site. That is not a creation by the site using data from Facebook to figure out who has liked their site. For name’s sake since I don’t know the technical term. We’ll call it a widget. This Facebook widget is offered by Facebook to third party sites and comes in a variety of customizable options, much like ads. The site puts it what they want visible there and then Facebook handles who shows up there. The most common use of this is where a site want you to “like” them so they show other users, sometimes your friends who have also “liked” them. All the widget is doing, is running off of Facebook’s site and displaying information in the widget. Much like a widget on your phone runs it’s own little program and you can move it where ever you want. The widget decrypts the cookie that your browser has stored on Facebook’s servers and then displays the information directly from Facebook. At no point in time does the third party site ever have access to the data being passed through it, just the kind of data. This feature can be turned off by the way. You can do this by: going to privacy settings > click “Edit Settings” next to instant personalization > and click the check box at the bottom. 

   At the end of the day, Facebook is pretty harmless. Yes it keeps your data after you delete your account, yes sometimes when they put in a new feature it is automatically enabled. They do all this so that their brand can grow. Remember, they are still a business at the end of the day who are looking to grow their revenue. It is a free site and if you ever have a problem with something they are doing, either contact them or stop using the site. No one is forcing you to use the site and no one is forcing you to put your information onto Facebook. If you don’t want someone seeing it, either change your privacy settings, or don’t put it on Facebook. There is no point in complaining about something that you are using by choice.

    Spotify is a music streaming service that was started in Sweden back in October of 2008. Ever since it’s release it has been changing the way we view paying for and listening to music.

   Much like it’s movie counter part Netflix, Spotify allows it’s users to stream music over the internet to their computer and/or phone. The only major difference between the 2 is that Spotify allows users to register for free. (I’ve only ever used the USA version of it, so bare with me if all my facts aren’t 100% accurate) When you register for a free account with Spotify you are allowed to stream their 13 MILLION song database, any song, any time. Every so often however, you have to listen to a 30 second ad. That’s a small price to pay for 13 MILLION songs! Think of this like a Pandora on crack. Instead of only being able to move forward on an endless setlist. You get to create and share your own play lists with friends and listen to what ever song you want, as many times as you want. The only real downside of the free version is that you can’t take it mobile with you. 

   In order to take music with you on the go, or have your music available offline you need to get a premium membership which costs $9.99 a month. That’s 10 bucks a month for access to 13 MILLION songs both online and offline, anywhere you can take your phone. That’s a crazy concept to think about. In what would buy you only 10 songs on iTunes, would get you 13 MILLION songs on Spotify. The price seems more than fair to me, and I’m happy to support a company that is willing to push the music industry in this direction.

   In order to use Spotify, you need to download their media player app. I know right off the back you are probably thinking “ooohhh i don’t want ANOTHER crappy media player that either has to many settings or to few settings”. Trust me when I say this is where Spotify really shines compared to other music streaming services. The ease it takes to not only discover new and awesome music but share it with your friends is super easy. It’s always easy to just shuffle your entire music collection and go through it all. As well as create your own playlists which are just as easy to share with your friends as songs are. It’s super light weight as well and uses less CPU than iTunes which I found was slow at switching songs or organizing them. 

   If I had to change one thing about Spotify it would be that they should add a very light weight internet player that I can log into when at a friends place. Being in a country where few have even heard of Spotify it would be nice to log in and have my music without the need to download the app. 

   Being a person who has a large music collection, just under 20,000 songs, Spotify is a very welcome and very hassle free solution to finding and sharing new music with your friends. At 10 dollars a month, it should be a no brainer at this point that it’s well worth the money. If you haven’t checked Spotify out already it’s about time you do. It’s free after all!!!

This is my first tumblr post. Don’t totally know what I’m going to do with this yet, all I know is that it is going to be AWESOME!!! Short stories? Articles? Opinion pieces? Reviews? No idea yet. I’m sure I’ll figure it out if I just start writing stuff down.