Very (Un)Creative

A couple days ago I headed down to Universal City (just a quick trip down the Orange Line followed by a one-stop ride on the Red Line … I actually am making use of the EZ Pass I bought…) for a screening of the latest Shrek creation. I believe it’s titled Shrek 4 – The Quest for More Money, or something similar… Not only did I see the flick, but I also paid the premium needed to experience it in IMAX 3D. I now think that I might have been better off saving my $18 and waiting for the DVD (oh wait, Blu-Ray, of course)…

Not that the movie wasn’t visually awe-inspiring; it was. The storyline (and I do realize this is basically a kid’s flick and, admittedly, I was a bit drunk at the time) however seemed way too “cookie cutter” for me. I’m not going to bore you with any review of the flick – there are plenty of those online already; however I am going to give my two-cents on this latest money-making fad that’s hit theaters everywhere – 3D.

It’s rather interesting as 3D has been around for quite some time now. There was a short-lived fad in the early to mid 1950’s and an attempted comeback in the 1960’s that resulted in something like 50 other movies (mostly of the sexploitation variety) being produced; however 3D never caught on as the standard movie-going experience. Perhaps it was the crudeness of the technology back then (the old red/blue 3D glasses); however I think 3D never became the standard for a much simpler explanation – it’s unnecessary. Now that the technology has advanced and the visual aspect has become much more vibrant, the uselessness of this 3D effect is still there…

Now, just to be fare, I’ll let you know that I am not a “normal” person when it comes to 2D vs. 3D. From birth, I have always been quite near-sighted in my right eye. I’m not exactly sure how old I was when I discovered this; but my first pair of eye-glasses were purchased at age 23

when I needed them in order to obtain a driver’s license in Florida. I had been living in Michigan until then and was always able to pass the eye test by explaining my condition; Florida was different. As my optometrist explained to me, I don’t use both eyes to focus when I look at things. My brain has compensated for my right eye near-sightedness by learning to only use the image from one eye to focus. Although my eyes are open and light is being detected by both, my mind is only “paying attention” to the focused image of one eye. And it’s not always the same eye – I can actually make entire pages of text “jump” between two virtual positions just by concentrating and explicitly selecting which eye to use… It’s hard to explain to “normal” people; unfortunately what ends up happening is that I basically have very poor depth perception. And by “very poor” I think it might be none. So basically, the world in general is 2D to me (not that I don’t understand what depth is, I’ve just never “seen” it) which, I suppose, makes me not the best person to be berating this 3D movie technology; however I doubt my opinion would be any different if my eyesight were normal.

You see, the problem I have with all these movies being shot and shown in 3D is that it gives the producers yet one more reason to ignore what should be the most important part of any movie – the story. I mean isn’t that why we go to the movies to begin with – an escape from our mundane lives with the opportunity to spend a couple hours experiencing the lives of others (real or imaginary)? When did we, as a society, decide that all we need from these exploits was bright, flashy colors in 3D? Whatever happened to the import of the story…?

And what the heck is with this latest trend of remaking old movies? They don’t even bother to change the names anymore. Oh look, The Karate Kid is hitting the theaters on the 11th of June. That’s interesting … maybe I’m going mad but I seem to remember seeing that movie (with a completely different cast) back in 1984. But this new one’s different, right? Basically change the cast, change the setting and re-tell the same story … how very original…

Oh well, I suppose it is what it is. As long as people continue to pay the premiums to go and watch this stuff, they’re going to keep pumping it out. I guess the real problem is the audience’s compliancy with this. Unfortunately it ends up being a classic Catch-22 – you can only see movies that are actually being shown. Heck, I paid $18 a couple days ago basically because I had nothing better to do. I guess that puts me right up there as part of the problem…

bis später,

Coriolis

Computer Love

Online dating, right…? According to the commercials, something like 1 in 5 relationships currently begin there. Of course these commercials are designed to attract more users to the online dating sites (I believe this one was for match.com) so I’m not really sure about the verity of these figures. The truthiness (thank you, Mr. Colbert…), however, seems widely accepted. As I wrote earlier, I’ve recently decided to once again attempt using such services for myself. So far – been at it for a good couple weeks now – it’s going exactly as I expected … haven’t even got any responses yet…

I ended up using Chemistry.com. It wasn’t my first choice – I was going to try eHarmony. Unfortunately, due to unadvertised discriminatory regulations there, I was considered unmatchable. Luckily Chemistry allows us blasphemous scoundrels to partake in their reindeer games. Perhaps, if all goes to plan, I’ll be able to bamboozle oodles and oodles of women into forsaking their flocks and living a more godless lifestyle. Sounds stupid, I know; but I can only guess that’s what eHarmony is afraid of…

So I’m on Chemistry now; and, as mentioned earlier, have yet to even receive a single response from the 60-some “matches” that I bothered to even attempt starting communication with. There were also a bit over 30 “matches” that I have added to my “not reallys” list for various reasons bringing the number of women that the site considered matches for me up to about 95 so far. I currently have 32 “connections” still active which means that I have already been deemed unacceptable by approximately 30 other women; and the site, thus far, has yet to fail at giving me five more matches to peruse daily. Sounds romantic, doesn’t it…?

You see, that’s basically what online dating is. It inevitably turns into nothing more than a progression of the systems used to deal with managing the data. After all, that’s all anybody is to these sites – data. Sure, when you first start using these sites, you take the time to read your matches “own words” essay and carefully review all answers given to the standard questions hoping to find your perfect match. You then add this person to your “connections” list by clicking the “I’m interested” button which gives you the opportunity to start communication with this other person by using one of the “chemistry starters” – 5 applets that attempt to make breaking the ice easier – or sending this person an email.

This is where the routine eventually (d)evolves into a new system that you create. After wasting too much time personalizing your efforts at this point based on the uniqueness of each match only to get no response from any, you realize that you’d probably be better off with more of a shotgun approach. Probability is what probability is and the more lines you throw, the more likely you are to get a nibble. Here’s how I’ve decided to play this:

Every day Chemistry sends me five new “matches” to check out. I (rather quickly) scan through these new possibilities and either add them to my “not reallys” list or click on the “I’m interested” button and add them to my current list of “connections”. After this, I go to my “connections” list and send the exact same “Four-play” (one of the “chemistry starters” apps mentioned earlier) to all of the newly added women. The “Four-play” I’ve decided to use is a list of four movies that I “watch whenever they are on” – 1) Pink Floyd - The Wall, 2) Six Degrees of Separation, 3) SLC Punk!, and 4) Monty Python and The Holy Grail. What this does is sends the women my list of movies and asks them to reply with a list of their own. Although this is a rather impersonal approach, it is merely step one of my system; and, should I get any responses to this, I feel that a list of movies that somebody deems “must watch” is a pretty good indication of how that person thinks. So far, nobody’s sent a reply list at this point…

The lack of response here doesn’t really bother me. It just gives me the opportunity to move ahead to step two of my system for any of the women who haven’t “thrown me in the trash” within two days of receiving my “Four-play”. Chemistry is good for keeping track here as it adds the option of “nudging” someone after two days of them failing to respond. This is where I get more personal – sort of… Each day, after considering the five new matches, I check out my list of “connections” for any that the “nudge her” button has become active. For these lucky ladies, I send an email reminding them that I am waiting for a reply to my “Four-play” as well as telling them a bit more about myself than what they can read in my profile essay. It would be quite time consuming writing unique emails basically saying the same thing over and over again, so I send the same email to all of the girls – the only difference being that I include their name in the “Hi {insert name here},” salutation. What this does is, hopefully, fool the lady into thinking that I went out of my way and wrote a rather in-depth letter to her asking her for more communication or, at the least, a response to my list of movies. Pretty sneaky, huh?

Now I am able to head to step three of my system on any responses I get from the step two letters. Step three is to actually send a uniquely written email based on whatever response was received. This is where the actual communication should begin.

I don’t know; seems like a pretty decent system to me. It gives the shallow, materialistic bitches two days to toss me out based merely on my profile and silly little list of movies – there’s one potential future disaster avoided… It lets the women who didn’t automatically dispose of me receive more information even before they responded to my “Four-play” just in case they were wondering whether or how they should respond – I’m thinking that this should improve the quality of any responses received. And most importantly, it ends up being an easily repeatable process for me that should swing the probability aspect a bit more to my favor.

So far it hasn’t worked; but I’ve just begun. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be able to trick some lucky lady into actually falling for me. Is this really where society is headed…?

bis später,

Coriolis

Password:

So you know what pisses me off these days (well, one of the many many things that piss me off these days…)? Sites that put stupid limitations on password creations! God I hate that!!! Don’t these idiots realize that all they're doing is basically making their site less secure that way? Here’s an example to further explain why this is so freakin’ stupid:

We’ll use you, the average computer user, as an example. Now, to begin with, you already have a very secure and easy to remember (at least for you) password that you would basically like to use everywhere. Why? Because you know it and you’re not dumb enough to give it to others. Let’s assume this great password just so happens to be “fucky0u!”. Now the great thing about this password is that it uses eight characters (a minimum requirement on many sites), alphanumeric characters consisting of both alphabetical characters and one number – the “o” is a zero – and, as an added security bonus, you’ve thrown in a “special character” at the end with your “!”. Good password. So, this becomes the password you want to use everywhere. Then you sign on to some sight (Time Warner Cablevision, for example) that makes your password unusable…

You see, Time Warner Cablevision has a rule that no “special characters” can be used in one’s password. You need to ditch the “!” in your password; unfortunately this brings your password down to seven characters and breaks the eight character rule that Time Warner also enforces. Okay, so you add another “u” to the end (or something similar) which now gives you two passwords to remember – “fucky0u!” for all sites except Time Warner Cablevision and “fucky0uu” for the latter. No big deal, but are you actually going to remember this every time you log into this special case site? I doubt it… But, and I’m sure you’re thinking, “So what? It’s only two passwords. Big deal…” Then you log in to a new site that creates a new restriction – they require at least one capital letter…

Okay, fine … now you’ve got three passwords – “fucky0u!”, “fucky0uu” and “Fucky0u!”. It’s becoming harder and harder to remember which version is used for which site; and, since the password restrictions are only told to you whilst you are creating your passwords, there is no reminder as to what version you need to use as you log in. It only gets worse as you create more and more versions based on other site restrictions – for example, some don’t allow any numbers. When taken with the other possible restrictions, this turns our initial, quite secure password into six versions – the three mentioned before as well as “fuckyou!”, “fuckyouu” and “Fuckyou!”.

Add to that the security feature of some sites that allow no more than three log-in attempts with the same username (oh yeah, and usernames are just as bad…) before your account gets locked – sometimes requiring a conversation with somebody speaking in a rather strong Indian accent wherein you are asked to give some very personal information (completely unrelated to the site you are trying to get back into) in order to get your account re-opened. This, of course, leads to a new password (randomly generated) being sent to you that you need to change back to whatever version of your standard password is acceptable to said site when you finally get in. And don’t even get me started on the sites that keep track of past passwords and have restrictions on their re-use…

So, what we’re now forced to do is somehow make note of which site requires exactly which version of our password. Yeah, your browser does a decent job at storing these various passwords automatically for you if you so choose; however it doesn’t work on all sites. It’s also a rather blatant security risk of you are using a laptop computer that you could possibly lose. Not to mention that you aren’t always surfing on the same machine and, from time to time, you need to update your system in a way that obliterates these stored nuggets. So what does the average user do – writes these passwords down somewhere.

Now what we have is a situation where your passwords are automatically entered by your personal browser as well as written down in a wonderful list form that could easily be misplaced or stolen. How, might I ask, is this increasing security…?

bis später,

Coriolis