Jeremy's Blog

Multiple-state existence found in ordinary plants

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:05:00 +0000

Photosynthesis (plants turning light into food) turns out to be evidence of multiple-state existence, according to a recent article in Wired.

From the article:

The analogy I like is if you have three ways of driving home through rush hour traffic. On any given day, you take only one. You don’t know if the other routes would be quicker or slower. But in quantum mechanics, you can take all three of these routes simultaneously. You don’t specify where you are until you arrive, so you always choose the quickest route...

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:37:00 +0000

In 2010, the first signs of artificial intelligence were discovered growing in a closet of discarded electronics. Somehow the inorganic material had self-organized into a living body with a mind of its own.

Thought challenge for my friends

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 13:19:00 +0000

Aristotle drew a distinction between 'essential' and 'accidental' properties. Essential properties are qualities that something must have to be what it is, and accidental properties are attributes that a thing happens to have but that it could lack.

One's rationality, according to Aristotle, is an essential property of being human. One's hair color, by contrast, is merely accidental. Hair color is how they are; it's not essential to who they are. A chair is essentially something you can sit on, be it accidentally made of wood, metal, or plastic.

So, my friends, what are essential properties that make you who you are? What are qualities others consider to be essential in you, but you feel are merely accidental?

Apple iPad's calendar is broken

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:07:00 +0000

So the reason Apple's iPhone and iPad refuses to include Flash is (according to Jobs) "The world is moving to HTML5". Absolutely, but WTF year do you think you're selling your product in?

Crazily, a not-so-insignificant portion of the population is still using IE6 (around 15 to 25%). IE8 supports some HTML5, but is missing many of the key features that would make programming an app in HTML5 a viable proposition. Who knows when IE9 will be released. Did I mention that people are still using IE6? Even large web services such as YouTube are just now experimenting with HTML5 versions of their web applications. Their video player is broke in my (updated) version of IE8. Even if all the browsers supported HTML5, these applications would need to be rebuilt to use it.

Where's the rush? Over 99% of computers have Flash Player installed. Over 80% have the latest version. There's no real incentive for application developers to invest the resources needed to rebuild applications in a virtually non-existant HTML5. It's not like there's a Y2K bug that demands it be done now. Indeed, "the world is moving to HTML5", but if in 2020 there's the full adoption that Flash enjoys today, like right now, that would be very surprising. Don't underestimate the laziness of the average web user in upgrading. IE6 was released in 2001 after all. Nine years later it still has (conservatively) 15% of the market.

Refusing to include Flash leaves huge holes in the web. Most videos, games, and rich media on the web are delivered through Flash. That's why Apple's iPhone user's have been complaining for years. They've been missing a huge part of the web on the device. Many were somewhat resigned to the lack of Flash, because, well, it's just a phone. It's not their main web tool. However, Apple's attack on Flash with the new iPad is just perplexing. The iPad is supposed to be a fully functioning web use tool, not a scaled down accessory like the iPhone.

Again, Mr. Jobs, WTF year do you think it is? In 2010, the year you are releasing the iPad, most of what's cool on the web is delivered through Flash.

Micro-blogging killed my blog

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:17:00 +0000

Looking over my sporadic posting habits of the last year and I realized that almost all of my linking to news articles, photos, and videos has moved to micro-blogging sites like Twitter and Facebook stream posts. I post pretty regularly on both of those sites, but only post to my actual blog when there's too much to cover in 140 characters or less, or when I feel guilty that I haven't posted to my blog in awhile. Sure, less time these days is a factor, but overall convenience is a greater factor. I wonder if this is a growing trend among personal bloggers -- have more people who blog for fun abandoned the long blog format?

Something is lost in micro-blogging. Before, I would usually post a link and then describe why I thought the link was interesting, or maybe combine several links in a post and describe a connection that may have been overlooked. Now, it's just a link. I may offer some commentary if someone responds, but that's rare. A typical post is usually just the link, a snippet, a thumbnail maybe (or not), but nothing about what I find interesting about the link. If this is a growing trend among all personal bloggers, blogging itself has lost a certain unique quality that made it special.

The long personal blog format, at least for me, will probably end up being personal internal stories not found 'out there' in the world, where you can simply link it off, because these are things that can't be covered in a short status update. Unfortunately, they are harder to write, require more thought, and as a result come with less frequency.

Frequency and the vitality of blogs are intrinsically related. People simply don't read blogs that are updated a few times a year. I could post my stats to demonstrate this fact, but my point is that statistically you're not likely to see that post anyway ; ) And without readers, of course, the blog is dead.

Well c'est la vie. As Kerouac said, "scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy." Like a spirit board spelling out nonsensical messages from the beyond, my dead blog will probably continue to be updated now and then. I'm just not going to deny that it is, in fact, dead.

Hey, that's a cool title for a blog! "My Dead Blog". Feel free to steal it.

Competitive tip cups at Starbucks

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 03:03:00 +0000

I dropped a buck on Star Trek. Which would you choose?

Kicking off a new year...

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 13:42:00 +0000

... with a little perspective.

This incredible video from the American Museum of Natural History reminds us that all the grand schemes of mankind play out on a very, very tiny stage. Assuming that we shouldn't sweat the small stuff, it's hard to imagine anything significant to sweat here.

The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.

Looking for red weather balloons!

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 14:07:00 +0000

Help. If you see an eight foot red weather balloon anywhere in the continental United States on December 5th, I need you to contact me, now.

More info: https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/default.aspx

They'll look like this: https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/gallery.aspx

Update:

Final locations were posted. They are...

Balloon 1: Union Square, San Francisco, California
N 37° 47' 16" W 122° 24' 26"

Balloon 2: Chaparral Park, Scottsdale, Arizona
N 33° 30' 36" W 111° 54' 29"

Balloon 3: Tonsler Park, Charlottesville, Virginia
N 38° 1' 34" W 78° 29' 28"

Balloon 4: Chase Palm Park, Santa Barbara, California
N 34° 24' 51" W 119° 41' 5"

Balloon 5: Lee Park, Memphis, Tennessee
N 35° 8' 17" W 90° 3' 43"

Balloon 6: Collins Avenue, Miami, Florida
N 25° 54' 14" W 80° 7' 31"

Balloon 7: Glasgow Park, Christiana, Delaware
N 39° 36' 30" W 75° 43' 51"

Balloon 8: Katy Park, Katy, Texas
N 29° 48' 56" W 95° 48' 15"

Balloon 9: Waterfront Park, Portland, Oregon
N 45° 30' 44" W 122° 40' 28"

Balloon 10: Centennial Park, Atlanta, Georgia
N 33° 45' 33" W 84° 23' 33"

I had the Delaware and Portland ones, but submitted them too late to MIT to win any cash.

For my birthday

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:22:00 +0000

As I looked upon his face I saw his years.

These years were not in the thin lines beginning to form on his still smooth forehead, nor were they revealed in the random speck of white that crept into his stubbled chin. He was still a young man. The years were not in the scar on his cheek, nor his crooked nose. His face was slightly asymmetrical, heavier, it seemed, on the left. You wouldn't notice these things unless you looked at him long and still, as I do now. The sometimes tired eyes, perhaps, showed the weight of responsibility and the fixed point of his age, but not the years.

No, the years shown brightly in the corners of his smile, now beaming back at me. His half-smile contained whole truths. Years of tiny moments that only seem meaningful when taken together, and only to him, these personal but epic tales of tragedy and triumph, of loves lost and gained, of friendships and wonder, of secret memories only shared through that wordless smile. It was a quiet place in the curve and crease where his lips met his cheek that I saw years and years and years.

In the lines and scars of his face it showed a man that, if not by luck or providence, would have died years short by some stupid and hilarious accident. The years, though, lay in the smile that seemed to quietly scream, "I am still alive!"

As I looked upon this man I saw myself, smiling.

Went to pick up my mom at a gun show...

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 19:56:00 +0000

Sounds like a country song, I know, but this is seriously where I went to pick up my mom today so that we could hang out for a bit. She and my dad were working a veteran's outreach booth. While there, I decided to look around for a bit and got this awesome shot with a really big gun. I have no idea what anyone would shoot with this, but I feel bad for whatever it is.

Redneck entertainment

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:32:00 +0000

Me and my dad... easily amused.

Social links...

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:27:00 +0000

I finally got around to updating my seriously neglected personal website JeremyParnell.com with links to all the social networks I hang out at. Yeah, I know, I really need to update the other stuff, but at least this is a start.

Just look for these links at the bottom of the page:

Follow Me:

Twitter boost: A free portrait or web site design to one of my followers

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 13:59:00 +0000

In a blatant attempt to unfairly bump my Twitter popularity (what's the point in talking to yourself?), I am offering a free website design or a hand-drawn portrait to one random follower, if my Twitter followers increase by at least 700 people over the next 30 days (timestamp on post). Pretty straightforward, eh?

I've set up and used a number of Twitter accounts for clients and side projects, but as the world's biggest procrastinator I just recently got around to setting up a personal account. Now I need to fill it up with followers. I can't promise brilliance in tweets, but at least the links I post are interesting. Follow me. Give it a chance. Drop me if you get bored.

In exchange, I'm offering to one random follower a website design (something I do professionally) or a hand-drawn portrait (something I do when I have time, usually as Christmas gifts). I've posted some of these to my website, so feel free to check out the "Projects" section [http://www.jeremyparnell.com/projects/] to see if this is of interest to you. How I pick the winner will be totally random. I mean seriously random. I mean, I'll feed the follower list into a C# program that picks a random winner type of random (I should have explained from the outset that I'm geeky). If the winner doesn't respond within a week, I'll just repeat. Some random follower will get the prize is what I'm saying, essentially.

700 followers. One of them is you. Take the challenge and come follow me! It'll be fun.

http://twitter.com/JeremyParnell

Supersizing quantum behavior

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 13:01:00 +0000

Read Supersizing Quantum Behavior @seedmag http://bit.ly/9SvPl Discovering quantum weirdness on a macro scale has huge implications.

Basically, everything around us is governed by Newtonian laws, laws that predict objects will act in very less than strange ways. Take it to the quantum scale and all sorts of weird things happen; for example, an atom may exist in two states at once, they may possibly communicate over great distances faster than the speed of light or (as some experiments hope to demonstrate) even across time. There's a whole host of weirdness at the quantum level, things that, if they occured on the macro scale, would be considered nothing less than paranormal. The argument against quantum mysticism was never that it didn't make sense at the quantum scale. The arguments have always centered around the premise that quantum effects don't scale up. Supersizing quantum behavior, even a small Newtonian fail, gives a tiny (quantum?) bit of plausibility to the ideas presented in books like The Holographic Universe and films like What the Bleep Do We Know?

What I Understood

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 03:00:00 +0000

What I Understood
by Katha Pollitt

When I was a child I understood everything
about, for example, futility. Standing for hours
on the hot asphalt outfield, trudging for balls
I'd ask myself, how many times will I have to perform
this pointless task, and all the others? I knew
about snobbery, too, and cruelty—for children
are snobbish and cruel—and loneliness: in restaurants
the dignity and shame of solitary diners
disabled me, and when my grandmother
screamed at me, "Someday you'll know what it's like!"
I knew she was right, the way I knew
about the single rooms my teachers went home to,
the pictures on the dresser, the hoard of chocolates,
and that there was no God, and that I would die.
All this I understood, no one needed to tell me.
the only thing I didn't understand
was how in a world whose predominant characteristics
are futility, cruelty, loneliness, disappointment
people are saved every day
by a sparrow, a foghorn, a grassblade, a tablecloth.
This year I'll be
thirty-nine, and I still don't understand it.

"What I Understood" by Katha Pollitt, from The Mind-Body Problem. © Random House, 2009

Scarefest 2009 photos

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:32:00 +0000

"We're ready to believe you!"

Danielle Harris. She's been in a couple of things -- Rob Zombie's Halloween II, for example -- but I'm a fan from back when she did The Last Boyscout, playing Bruce Willis' daughter.

I look like a retard in this picture.

Cool ghost hunting equipment. Probably completely useless, but they make pretty colored lights and noises.

And they call me big headed.

Some demon trying to grope my mom.

Independent documentary film maker who recently made a film about a "true" Kentucky haunting. The film's been on KET and other places, and he signed my copy.

Kane Hodder. Played Jason in a couple of the Friday the 13th movies.

Pig man was awesome! Seriously, his mask was so well done, you couldn't see any seam where man met beast.

Zombies rock! Braaaaiiiiiinnnnns.

Smelled like fried chicken.

Creepy gypsy lady.

Incredibly tall monster dude.

Geeks get things done, but they're still geeks

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 13:22:00 +0000

Senior Wired editor Daniel Roth quotes Larry Rosenstock, founding principal of High Tech High, in his essay Making Geeks Cool Could Reform Education:

"Geeks get things done. They're possessed. They can't help themselves," says Larry Rosenstock, founding principal of eight charter schools in San Diego County collectively called High Tech High. He has come up with a curriculum that forces kids to embrace their inner geek by pushing them to create. The walls, desks, and ceilings of his classrooms teem with projects, from field guides on local wildlife to human-powered submarines. (A High Tech High art project called Calculicious, based entirely on math principles, now hangs in the San Diego airport.) The students all work in small groups as a way to foster shared enthusiasm: Get two kids excited about something and it's harder for a third to poke fun at them.

Well, true, sort of. I do believe that geeks have an inherit drive to be artists and create. What this school seems to be doing is inspiring focus and direction in geeks, who have a tendency towards ferret-like ADD. That's admirable. But the overall point of the essay is that if you foster an environment where academic achievement and creativity is positively reinforced by peers, it somehow becomes "cool" or socially acceptable.

Well, again, true, sort of. While it may be true reform in academics to make learning socially acceptable, it's artificial geekiness, less "education reform" and probably only cool in the bubble of the education system itself. Out in the real world it's still socially awkward to be brainy and creative, no matter how cool you make it seem. Geeks are still different from people in general who don't care as much about less life-practical things, say, like, the fibonacci sequence, quantum computing, or the human genome. Creating an environment where these guys can get together and socially reinforce each other is great, but I'm not convinced it's really the "education reform" we need. Education prepares students for the real world, including the world outside of academics. Out there, true Geekdom will always be a sliver of the population, no matter whether individual schools themselves are completely geeked-out.

I think a true reform would be to foster an environment that celebrates and integrates diversity, rather than an environment that just replaces one homogeneous population (wedgy givers) with another (wedgy recievers). The real problem, especially at a high school level, is the obsession students have with fitting in, being cool. Simply encouraging them to fit in with a different group, changing the definition of "cool", doesn't address the underlying issue, doesn't teach them that there's nothing wrong with being different. Different is fine. Encouraging this principle would be true reform, with life-long benefits that carry over into the real world.

Nazi analogies have no place in political discourse

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:01:00 +0000

In 1990, veteran information technology attorney Mike Godwin made the observation that "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." This adage has become known as Godwin's Law, and it holds true. Follow any heated discussion on the web long enough and you'll find, sure enough, someone ends up calling someone a Nazi.

The Internet is generally understood to be a broadly diverse spectrum of the entirety of humankind. Unfortunately this includes on the lower end, which is sadly more populous it seems, darker elements of the human presence who clearly have no desire to be decent people. The anonymity of web, and the statistical improbability of being punched in the face by some guy you pissed off hundreds of miles away, likely contributed to this condition. It's well understood that if you're not encountering assholes on the web on a regular basis, you probably forgot to pay your DSL bill.

Outside the web it used to be different. Television and radio talk show hosts seemed to have higher standards. Sure, every now and then a fringie might have blurted out a Nazi comparison in an interview, but the host would quickly cut them off and, rightly, label them as a loon. They certainly never encouraged that sort of thing, nor promoted it as they seem to be doing now.

As Leonard Pitts Jr. writes in an editorial published in the Detroit Free Press: "it seems obvious the Nazis have invaded American political rhetoric in a big way. As in Rush Limbaugh declaring health-care reform 'a Hitler-like policy,' swastikas popping up at protest rallies, a poster depicting Obama with Hitler's moustache and a pamphlet that says: 'Act Now to Stop Obama's Nazi Health Plan!'"

Dutifully listeners are repeating in step, Nazis, Nazis, Nazis.

So what's the big deal? It's just political rhetoric after all, a little slanting of the historical facts, a little colorization to give a speech more impact. Just words. Obama's evil anyway, right?

The big deal is that it's absurd. It's absurd and it profanes real human tragedy, the nearly 6 million people who died at the hands of real Nazis, real human ugliness.

Pitts reminds us of the real Nazis: "It was Nazis who shoved sand down a boy's throat until he died, who tossed candies to Jewish children as they sank to their deaths in a sand pit, who threw babies from a hospital window and competed to see how many of those 'little Jews' could be caught on a bayonet, who injected a cement-like fluid into women's uteruses to see what would happen, who stomped a pregnant woman to death, who once snatched a woman's baby from her arms and, in the words of a witness, 'tore him as one would tear a rag.'"

Nazi analogies have no place in political discourse because nothing in modern America compares to the above.

There are real places in the real world where human atrocities continue, where genocide is policy, where the ideology of Nazism may possibly apply, but it's not here. We don't suffer nearly enough.

Zombie robots?

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 14:25:00 +0000

No says a company that designed a robot for the military that runs off "biomass", eating biological matter to run perpetually. Our robot "is strictly vegetarian" the company said... Yeah, um, I saw a movie about this...

Full Story

Now the star wars can really begin

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 20:51:00 +0000

I can remember a time when astronomers were excited to have discovered the first extra-solar planet (planets outside of our own solar system). It was only 1991, which wasn't that long ago. I'm no astronomer, but I was excited by the discovery as well. Somehow it made the infinitely huge universe seem that much larger.

Well, that discovery was, like, sooo last decade. Since then astronomers have identified nearly 350 planets abroad in the Milky Way. Some of them, scientists speculate, are likely to have similar conditions to our own planet Earth.

But wait! There's a new reason to feel that the universe is expanding. Astronomers are now stating that they may have seen the first extra-galactic planet. It showed up when they applied a microlensing technique in the direction of the Andromeda Galaxy, roughly 2.5 million light years away. The new planet is said to have six times the mass of Jupiter.

No one has stated yet whether the newly discovered planet is inhabited by wookies.

[Full Story]

This was hard to figure out...

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Tue, 12 May 2009 10:46:00 +0000

... and it doesn't even include the regex .dll I had to write in C# to make the stored procedure work! Watch it crash when I actually put it live : )

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[UpdateFolderSort]
(
@folder_id int,
@folder_sort int = NULL
)

AS

DECLARE @root_decimal varchar(500)
DECLARE @folder_parent int
DECLARE @old_decimal varchar(500)
DECLARE @folder_level int
DECLARE @pos int
DECLARE @level_loop int
DECLARE @regex_prefix varchar(500)

BEGIN
SET @folder_parent = (SELECT folder_parent FROM Folders WHERE folder_id = @folder_id)
END

BEGIN
IF @folder_parent IS NOT NULL
SET @root_decimal = (SELECT folder_decimal FROM Folders WHERE folder_id = @folder_parent)
END

BEGIN
SET @old_decimal = (SELECT folder_decimal FROM Folders WHERE folder_id = @folder_id)
SET @old_decimal = RIGHT(@old_decimal, 4)
END

BEGIN
SET @folder_level = (SELECT folder_level FROM Folders WHERE folder_id = @folder_id)
END

IF @folder_level = 1
BEGIN
UPDATE
Folders
SET
folder_decimal = STUFF(folder_decimal, 1, 4, SUBSTRING('0000',1,4 - LEN(CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_sort))) + CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_sort))
WHERE
dbo.RegexMatch(folder_decimal, @old_decimal + '\.') = 1 AND folder_lineage LIKE '%/' + CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_id) + '/%'
END
ELSE
BEGIN
SET @pos = ((@folder_level - 1) * 4) + @folder_level

SET @level_loop = 1
SET @regex_prefix = ''
WHILE @level_loop < @folder_level
BEGIN
SET @regex_prefix = @regex_prefix + '\d{4}\.'
SET @level_loop = @level_loop + 1
IF @level_loop = @folder_level
BREAK
ELSE
CONTINUE
END

UPDATE
Folders
SET
folder_decimal = STUFF(folder_decimal, @pos, 4, SUBSTRING('0000',1,4 - LEN(CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_sort))) + CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_sort))
WHERE
dbo.RegexMatch(folder_decimal, @regex_prefix + @old_decimal + '\.') = 1 AND folder_lineage LIKE '%/' + CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_id) + '/%'
END

BEGIN
IF @root_decimal IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
UPDATE
Folders
SET
folder_sort = @folder_sort,
folder_decimal = @root_decimal + '.' + SUBSTRING('0000',1,4 - LEN(CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_sort))) + CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_sort)
WHERE
folder_id = @folder_id
END
ELSE
BEGIN
UPDATE
Folders
SET
folder_sort = @folder_sort,
folder_decimal = SUBSTRING('0000',1,4 - LEN(CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_sort))) + CONVERT(varchar(4), @folder_sort)
WHERE
folder_id = @folder_id
END
END

You know you're having a bad day when...

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 03:39:00 +0000

You're bicycling down the road and all of the sudden you're knocked out by a corpse thrown from a speeding car.

True story.

Don't Answer

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 02:59:00 +0000

I don't want answers.

I want to be inspired to the possibilities.
I need a mystery,
A promise of an answer
Skirting softly in flickers of secret glances,
Written in glyphs carved in stone
no one remembers,
Spoken in dead languages,
Indecipherable,
An old key to a lock to no one knows where
found in a box in the back of the closet.
Mysteries open ended where the truth,
if there ever was one,
is whatever story you wove that fit the clues

or simply the question alone,
left unanswered.

When you said no,
that you were leaving,
I couldn't understand.
You spoke too clearly.
What did you mean?

Gun control laws are totally useless...

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 18:55:00 +0000

I read the following and thought, there's no amount of safety laws you can have to protect people from guns.

Glasgow, Ky, Oct. 21 -- Luther Johnson, a young farmer living in the southern
part of this county, blew into the muzzle of a shotgun early this morning to see
if it was loaded. It was.

Actual death notice published in the Louisville Courier-Journal, October 22, 1899

Facebook, you don't know me.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremy) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:11:00 +0000

Facebook has unveiled a mockup of their new home page, which looks like an improvement at first glance. There's new features for filtering out the noise and showing just what means most to you. I like that.

Then I saw the new "Hilights" section and rolled my eyes. It's not surprising that Facebook would move towards pushing content to its users. It's more surprising that it's taken them so long to get around to that. It's the way that they're doing it that makes me cringe.

Featured photos, events, notes and more that you don't want to miss. Stories are chosen based on what your friends have interacted with.

[My emphasis]

In the early days of TiVo, users complained about the heavily played up profile feature that automatically recorded programs that it thought its users would want to see, without them explicitly specifying such programs, based on what they had watched before. It sounded like a good feature, that is until TiVo decided they were gay.

Look, Facebook, here's the thing. You don't know me. And you're not going to find out what I like using some algorithm that analyzes what my friends click on. I don't really have much in common with my friends (even the real ones, not just the ones I recruited to help me kick ass in Mob Wars). I like my friends exactly because of our differences. I tried to hang out with people who are like me and it was just annoying, probably because I often annoy myself.

I've got some weird friends too, into some weird things. It's fine that they're into weird things, they're my friends, but I don't really go there myself, you know? No, you don't know. And that's the point. You're just a super-computer sitting out there running statistics to see how many of my friends watch a certain television show. If enough of them are lesbians and watch The L Word, somehow that means I'm a lesbian too?

Dude, you seriously don't know me, so stop pretending that you do.

Oh, and by the way, you suck at pushing content anyway. All those people you think I might know sitting over there on the side of your old home page... I didn't know any of them. That creepy looking guy with the mean mug that you left up there for three months thinking I might know him, though after hundreds of page loads your algorithm should of guessed that I didn't, well, he's just creepy. Please don't push me any content he clicked on.

Thanks.