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.

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!

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*)!

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

At my school you "need" a CD to get on the school network. Meaning, you have to run their CD, and install all its crap to get on. Really, all that it takes is just to register your MAC address, and actually just faking one works as well. But I digress. On this CD is a BUNCH of useless, slow, and annoying software. There's also one feature I like... a printer select utility. This really is nothing, just an easy way to add printers to a computer on the campus network. Typically, the idea is for laptops to find the closest printer... Hackers don't like to use software as intended however, and this is no different.

We've got some really nice printers here, new HPs among others, that are just GORGEOUS print quality. For some odd reason they suck at printing PDFs. It'll take about 10-15s per page to spool up, as opposed to a good page a second on regular text files. So if you do this from a lab, and stand in front of the printer EVERYONE hates you. I've seen 10 page PDFs take up to 5 minutes to print, and there's no smart queueing whereby regular documents could get pumped to a higher priority. Moral of the story you can't print PDFs except at night, and if you want to get yelled at. That is, if you're in the lab. I'll add a printer from a big building near the center of campus from my office last year (a good 15 minute walk), print my PDF, and walk over. By the time I get there I just walk in, pretend to be a computer aide, "check" the printer, take my PDF and walk out. I've wasted none of my time, as I had to walk across campus anyways, and no one knows it was me tieing up the printer.

Same works if someone prints a PDF ahead of you. I had to print an important paper in about 5 minutes, and the girl next to me printed a 20 page PDF. I was quite irked, but just printed a copy to the printer next door, and walked over there to fetch it. Again, my time isn't wasted and no onee's the wiser.

Now, that's just basic stuff, lets have some FUN. All new printers are actually computers, at least the high end ones. They've got JVM (Java virtual machines), RAM, and typically a web server. Also, an easy to get at diagnostics printout from the printer itself, though this can be password protected. Luckily at my school they never protect it, because what does a menu listing show anyways?! Well, for starters its the recon I use to find the goodies. Typcally I'll print one of these out to find the quickest route to a configuration printout, which is the next thing I print. Once I have that, I've got a wealth of information, including (my favorite) the IP and if its got a web server running. If it does, one can log right into that and get much more information. Most times there's no password set, and there's a direct print option from this pane. Why do i care about that? Because if I go over my print allotment (printing any other way deducts from my print allotment) I have to pay $.10 per page. Here's a way I can print directly to any printer on campus without paying a thing... *shh* don't tell anyone.

Now, lessons to be learned from this? For network users it would be that the admins might give you more power than they think. Do not abuse this power (i.e. printing a bunch of blank pages, or a PDF of all black pages to be an annoyance to the campus) because that's just immature. But do a little exploration and find oout what's available to you if you just *have* to get a certain paper in and something goes horribly wrong.

For network admins it would be that you need to make sure you know what you're giving your users access to. Yea, your new printer is cool, and it has no password because you either want access to that without memorizing a certain password, or just didn't know it was available, but now you have a huge hole in your network. If its got a processor, it can spread a virus, and these things even have a JVM which can be oh so fun.

My registration page right now asks for first name, last name, an email, and a password. I needed data to through into those fields so a quick google search turned up this fine document. I decided I'd use the nickname as a first name, and the real name as a last name. The password would be the first name concatenated with "1". This'll provide some overlap, along with unique passwords, and a password scheme I could easily figure out looking at hashed passwords in my database.

use WWW::Mechanize;
my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
open(NAMES, "$ARGV[0]");
while($_ = ) {
if(/^#.*/) {
} else {
m/^(\S*)\s*(\S*)\s*/;
$firstname = $1;
$lastname = $2;
$password = "$firstname";
$email = $firstname."@".$lastname.".com";
$mech->get("http://192.168.1.3/o2h/www/register.php") or die "Can't load page!\n";
$mech->form(1);
print "Registering $firstname $lastname!\n";
print $mech->set_visible("$firstname", "$lastname", "$email", "$password", "$password");
$result = $mech->click_button(number=>1);
}
}
close(NAMES);

This is a whopping 17 lines, took 10ish minutes to write. Yes, it could get smaller, but I wanted it somewhat readable. In about 10s of running I had 537 new additions to my users to test with, yippee!

This can easily be adapted for any website (that doesn't use CAPTCHAS and asks for information of the same nature as mine), feel free to steal it.

Next, to tackle the issue of gaming too much. I really, really like the controls Blizzard offers for World of Warcraft accounts, specifically the parental controls. If you haven't seen it, here's an image.

Notice you can knock out any 30 minute window during the week. Also, if you drag and click you can easily select large blocks of time. To toggle a day on or off just click the day of the week. Some handy presets are available as well. The only thing its missing is an "invert" button to invert the times, but this isn't much of a lack, since they've provided good other controls. Anything red won't let someone login during that time. I'm assuming it'll also kick off an account that's logged in, but haven't tested.

The first thing I did was to knock out the times I have class. Tuesday/Thursday from 11-6 became blocked. My thinking is if I'm not in class, I might as well be studying, not gaming. This also removes my incentive for skipping. I then did the same for time I would be in church, as that's something that means a lot to me. Finally, I hit on the idea to knock out every work day from 9-5. The thought here is its my job to learn as much as I can, and if I'm not learning I might as well be working on programming something that'll earn money. SO, this essentially makes my WoW account treat me as if I have a full time job, which I really liked. The funny thing is, while this is only one game that I did it for, my brain is already thinking "Its not 5 yet, can't play games". I implemented it last Friday, and had an extremely productive day. So productive in fact, I had my old problem. I completely forgot that I could finally log into WoW, and just kept working 'til about 3am! It was great.

In addition to forcing myself to spend more time being productive, I've looked at ways to make myself more productive. A blog I was pointed at a few weeks ago, and have been reading faithfully since, is David Seah's. This guy is really great at design, and I've been taking some of his productivity ideas and charts in order to force myself to be more productive. Well, not force, but to increase productivity by following some rules. First off, actually, comes from Harkins, who suggested I make sure to reflect every night on what I'd done, and how it could have been more productive. This is a great thing, as it takes me about half an hour to fall asleep, and I can spend that time pondering ways to be better rather than just laying there and day dreaming. As for waking up, I took David's idea that one should set a base goal of three tasks a day. By the way, I should say that his forms are really amazing, and if you can use them, use them. Easy to use, nice to look at. But when I wake up, I pick three things to get done that day. Small such as "Make a post on how you're organizing your time" to large, such as "Knock out CS abomination of code today, or else".

This is all leading up to me taking my first contract as Three Planets Software either on Wednesday or a week from Wednesday. I felt I could only accept it in good concious if I was able to reorder my life to give myself the time to work on the website, and this weekend was my major test. It turns out, I can be DARN productive when I try, and am really pleased with the progress I've made. I'm hoping this'll lead to a better self-image as well, as if I on't think highly of myself, why should anyone else?