Who's to Blame?

We're a blame-crazy country. When accidents happen, people try to find who's to blame. Lawsuits happen.

The medical industry is a great example. When something goes wrong, people file malpractice lawsuits. This has two effects. First, when you go into a doctor, they are usually to scared of a lawsuit to mess up badly. Second, health care costs are rising, partially because of malpractice insurance.

Clearly, accidents cause a complicated issue. I think individuals can solve most of these problems by being ethical.

The victims in any accident need to ask who they're hurting by suing or otherwise hurting the blamant*. Sometimes it's appropriate. Sometimes it's greed. Sometimes it's revenge. Victims, think about your motivations before taking action.

Most of all, avoid being a blamant! Instead, be a human being. See, humans make mistakes. If you make a mistake, admit it. And most of all, try to avoid making mistakes.

*Blamant is a word I just made up to describe the person or organization being blamed for something.

Geriatric Gaming?

My wife stumbled across this article about the Nintendo Wii. To sum it up, they've installed a Wii console in a retirement home, and it's become a popular thing to do.

Contrast this with an experience I had a few weeks ago. I mentioned to someone that I had been playing video games. She responded, "what are you, twelve?" This surprised me, and I told her she was weird, but it reminded me of just how much the Wii has changed the world. I had forgotten that video games were juvenile before the Wii debuted.

How did the Wii change this? Some will say that it's because their marketing is more focused on non-gamers than ever before. Others say its motion-sensing controller is a gimmick that appeals to non-gamers. These things, of course, are part of it, but they are indicative of a spirit of innovation at Nintendo. Their goal is to bring the user into the games by giving her a more natural interface. This naturally appeals to gamers and non-gamers.

The Magical Internet

Before I learned HTML, JavaScript, PHP, and HTTP, the Internet seemed like a wonderful, magical place. I could find out about a new video game, download the demo, and (two hours later) play it. I could talk to friends. I could look up magic tricks. It was all great and useful.

Then my knowledge grew, and the Internet stopped being a place; it started being a creative outlet. I made a web page and shared it with my friends. With increased knowledge, the Internet was not magical or wonderful - it was just a medium.

Today, the Internet is a place again. It's where I go to connect with friends far away. It's where I go to unwind. It's where I go for spirituality. But it's not just a magical place any more; I now think it's miraculous. Instead of being a mystical, arcane place, it's an infinitely useful source for many things in my life.

As a side note, check out the song Electric Highway on the Innovators album by Kurt Bestor and Sam Cardon. This site has a preview, but it doesn't do it justice. Download the song, listen it and think about how the Internet is a miracle. Enjoy.

Should I Cut the Cable?

Following my reading for my CS 404 class today, I've been thinking about the information that I absorb. I think there's too much of the junk variety. For example, I spent about 1 hour today watching the Simpsons, another hour playing Super Smash Brothers Melee, and about half an hour looking up Jonathan Coulton videos. I spent a lot more time than this on school and work, but it's still an uncomfortable amount of luxury.

I think I'll try turning off the information flood for an hour every day to see what happens. I have no ideas for what to do in that time, but I know that people in the past have gone their entire lives without TV, video games, or the Internet. I hope that giving my mind a break from these things will give it time to make better use of what's already in there.

But for right now, I have to finish this post so I can go watch Family Guy.

Hello, World!

Hi everyone! Welcome to my blog. I've been meaning to start a blog for a long time, and now with CS 404 making it a requirement, I finally have an excuse! I hope this will be a fun outlet for any creativity that I might have.

Let me introduce myself. I grew up in New Jersey, thanks to some delicious pizza (and possibly some good parents and leaders.) I love programming, playing guitar and drums, and I enjoy playing video games (though they're not my life). My favorite color's green, my favorite food's pizza (as you may have guessed), and my favorite band is Soundgarden.

I also enjoy making video games. In the past I've made a maze game and a tank game in QBASIC, and a tank adventure game in Visual BASIC. Currently I'm working on a 2-D game engine for Java that I'll use to make some game applets. I'm also thinking about making some XML to represent guitar tabs. If I do this, I'll probably create some small AJAX applets or Java Applets to manipulate and/or play the music from the tabs. This is all the distant future right now; school will be my first priority for a while.

Anyway, hope everyone enjoys my blog!