Kalimat al-Mutafalsif

A bunch of us were chatting yesterday about ICANN's new TLD policy, wherein companies can buy custom TLDs for tons of money, such as .google or .microsoft. Peter Harkins, over at push.cx, maintains that this means 'WWW' will never die. The thinking is that now we'll need a way to indicate the start of a web address more than ever since anything dot anything might be one. HTTP:// isn't used much currently, it sounds ugly in commercials and no one ever types it, so there's no reason to assume that'll be it. However, I don't think that 'WWW' will be it either.

Now, many know that 'WWW' is not actually needed in the domain name, websites will work if you omit it, assuming the web admin knows what he's doing, which tells us that the 'WWW' is there to signify what type of address we have, and that's it. However, ordinary users that don't understand how the Internet works don't understand that its simply denoting a web address and this is where the dependency upon saying 'double you double you double dot" comes from.

So, now we realize that if ordinary users can be trained to realize that 'WWW' is just a symbol, we can be free of it! What better way to do that, than with a symbol itself? It needs to not be on the keyboard, so users won't be at all confused, and needs to not impact potential future domain names if ICANN ever approves multi-alphabetic domain names. To find such a letter I pored over the Unicode docs and found something I think many will agree is ideal. I give you 0x02AC or :

My name for this symbol is Dub-Dub, taken partly from shortening 'WWW' to 'dub dub dub', partly from dubbing my own symbol over what is used today, and partly from the likening of this to the heart of the Internet, with the sound of a heart beating.

What makes this ideal? First of all we clearly express the fact that it incorporates multiple 'W's. This will help ordinary users transition into thinking "Oh, this is what WWW meant." Secondly, this is a symbol that wouldn't occur naturally (more on why in a second) to prevent any confusion. Third, In the event of not having any way to produce Unicode symbols, one can simply decrease space between lines, and put another 'W' on top of a 'W' before the address, or make an image out of it using two 'W's. Fourth, by using a symbol, users will realize this isn't something they type, merely indicating an address, much like lerning that '@' helped to demonstrate an email address. Finally, this symbol is the IPA symbol for a "Bilabial Percussive", aka a lip smack. The only place it will show up outside of addresses is in phonetic or linguistic papers, and obviously not be an address. Better, since its not used in any world alphabet it shouldn't appear in a domain name even if ICANN approves other character sets for domains.

So, I think that as people become required to add a 'Double you double you double you' onto many more addresses, they'll attempt to find a better way of expressing that. Its only natural to find a better, faster way to express something commonly used. My vote is for Dub-Dub, and as people start to pick it up it'll evolve into what is used in everyday life.

You may recall I like cute cat pictures with captions. I've been really into viewing the voting pages lately because there's LOTS more pictures every day that you don't get to see otherwise. Unfortunately these pictures don't have individual links given with them so I couldn't paste into relevant conversations, and lets face it, every conversation can be relevant to a cute cat so I hit this problem daily. That is, until now. Have a go at this page. Ugly as heck, but leads to cuteness.

To use it, lets say you're browsing the voting page when you find something adorable. To get its link, right-click on the picture, and copy the image's location. Paste that link into the URL field on the vote_link page, then hit 'Find'. At the top you'll be given the first link you gave (to make sure it's working), and the link I generate to its individual page. Click on the second 'here' and there's your link!

If you're like me, you like things orderly, but hate having to clean and wait until things get way out of hand and frustratingly hard to use until you do so. My desk is a prime example, I set it up really nice and neat, and just two months later its overflowing with random change, pens, a bottle of "Cheese"-Wiz and other assorted crap. Its starting to bug me so I wanted to clean it, the trouble is all the loose stuff ends up in one pile. Clearly just dumping everything into the same cup isn't making things neater, its putting it into a smaller container. Two night's ago I was reloading my ammo dry box when I noticed something, 30-30 rounds are about the same diameter as a pencil and the tray they came in (from Remington, I can't speak for other brands) looked almost like a pencil holder. Intrigued I put the rest of the 30-30 rounds away and started putting my pens and some dry erase markers into the (empty, of course) tray. They all fit! I've got regular pencils, pens, mechanical pencils, dry erase markers (the small kind) and even sharpies in there now. It is weighted well enough at the bottom that it doesn't randomly fall over, and because its a nice long tray it sits alongside the edge of my cubicle, out of the way yet easily accessible! This little win has given me the drive to start cleaning the rest of my desk up and hopefully I can find some other little tricks to keep it clean this time.

So, I popped into my favorite IRC channel in the middle of a coversation about some new browser game. I paid it no heed and went back to replaying the Brood Wars campaign in preperation for SC2. Then someone offered to toss me an invite and I decided to try it. I only got through 4 rounds before I had other things to do, but I'm hooked already. This is bad because those of you who know me and browser games... productivity goes waaaay down.

Anyways the game is Weewar (yes, that link gets me a point towards "pro" status for everyone that signs up via it and completes at least one game... if you don't like that feel free to remove everything after the '?'), which is an AJAX based RTS that's pretty addictive and yet very simple to learn. Basically its just land units and cities so far, though it does include terrain bonuses (that I just started using right now to great effect!). However, the maps really change the game as cities generate certain amounts of credits based on the map.

The best part, in my mind, is that this is a fun multi-player browser game that one can come back to. My first game went on hold when we all had to leave after 4 rounds. No matter, the game will be there waiting as we each come back. And you don't even have to check back on the HQ tab, you can set the game to email you when its your turn! I already have two games waiting on other players, simple enough to click "Review last turn", watch what happened, and make your moves.

Bottom line? I'm hooked... I go by Snarky (what a surprise) on the site, hit me up for a game some time! Want an invite, I'll bring you in for your first game (I still have yet to finish one *grin*)!

So, if you've never read this blog before, quick fact: I have issues with my school's networks. I've been kicked off them before for "SSH brute forcing" a server set up to BE brute forced. I've been denied various requests for accounts being transferred to me due to being a student and the the administration not thinking I need said account. I've had money paid to other people with almost my same name because the administration was too lazy to use my email address.... or something, still not sure how that happened. Moral of the story, there's a lot of annoyances I deal with regarding this network, though its probably mainly my fault for being the way I am.

Now, for the lighter side of things, fun times that can be had with large networks of computers.
Read More »

I don't think I've said it publically yet, so a little heads up, I've gotten my first contract as "Three Planets Software". Rather (I hope) easy site in PHP/MySQL and some other goodness, but you'll hear more about that later when I put out a call for Beta testers. So I coded up all the login and registration pages two days ago, and now am working on some other fun stuff. Some fun stuff that required more than one user to test. Ideally, more than 10. I did *not* want to sit in phpmyadmin creating 20 dummy users that would only be used in testing, so I turned to perl.
Read More »

Lately I've been really frustrated with myself over the issue of time management. I've never been very organized, and a habitual procrastinator. But this semester I've had an awesome schedule, only class two days a week, so that I could work the other three. Well, it turns out I played much more games than working, and time not spent on games was wasted Internet browsing. To quote Trace Adkins in "I Want to Feel Something": "Damn it all to hell I'm done, 'Cause I don't like what I've become..." Now, he said those words in regard to relationship issues, but that song (a favorite of mine for a while) kinda spurred me to realize I'm fed up with wasting so much time when there are people my age that spent free time coding and are millionaires now. Not that I just want money, but something to feel proud about. 8 straight hours of WoW, or Quake 4 (if you haven't played Q4... go get it, now) yields absolutely nothing, whereas 8 hours of coding would give me a site for Three Planets Software, which still needs one. So here are my resolutions:
Read More »