The Quite Finite Blog

Now: The Exciting Conclusion

2009-06-11T00:23:00.000-07:00

You freeze at your desk. Was that a footstep? A brush of a beard? No, it couldn't have been. It's late and the house is making noises. Orange? Just your eyes playing tricks. As you shake your head to clear it you swear you hear distant ranting. Then in a voice emitted from your speakers most demonic:

"Hello, blog-children."

Phaww! Every good thing must come to an end, my time has come, yada yada. This is the end of this blog. But not This Old Blog oh no! I will continue as a blog-spirit, leaving comments on Star Trek blogs. With me a ghostly chorus defaming Sony Entertainment from the comforts of Joystiq's hellish comment threads. This blog shall not fall, it will stand against good judgement as a beacon of hope and stuff.

Have I learned from this experience? Yes. Alot. I learned that no one really cares what I ate for breakfast and I learned that using 'Star Trek' as a tag is a powerfull tool. Where will I go from here? I have plans to start up a bigger, better, buttery delicious convene of joyous apraisal of ... vidiya games? Funnily enough I get the most kicks of of ranting about movies and video games. I know I like reading rants about that stuff, so maybe I'll give it a go. It's gotta be more interesting than the acute group-psychological study of the internet as was present in this blog. For example:

"OMG did you see the new ODST trailer OMG Nathan Fillion OMG"

Quite elegant in its sentence structure, it does convey the message quite clearly. For more clever This Old Blog antics I have selected the creamy crop of this blog for you.

The First of a Series. - The introductory blog post.

Interblarg 2.0 - An indepth look at the precise underworkings of the web in today's user generated age.

Kiss Me, I'm Bloggish! - Me feeling important on the internet.

Things I'll do in the future? Fix my bloody HTML, I stuffed up div tags in the blogger CSS-like-thing and its quite spazmodic trying to get prargraph spacing between... paragraphs. WYSIWYG fails me.

Cordially

This Old Blog (James Woldhuis)

Papyrus: The Gateway Font.

2009-05-29T21:12:00.000-07:00

Ah, it seems Randal of XKCD and I share an awareness of fonts. Oh how I have struggled with the Papyrus afflicition. Users can be as young as children, drawn in either by friends or just experimenting. The consequences however can reach far into their adult lives. At a diffucult stage in my life, I too was a user of Papyrus. Sure, we diddnt call it that back then; setting the font to 'Pappy' or even just 'P' sounded more harmless than it really was. It wasn't a big deal back then, my father was a heavy user, friends and teachers encouraged the font; said it relaxes readers and gives Turkish restaurant menus an authentic feel. Then typographers started saying things: that it was tacky. Overused.

It was difficult, at first. Making the switch from Impact, and then down to more mainstream fonts like Helvetica. My mates and I slowly drifted apart as they, despite my urging continued to print in Papyrus. Every now and then I see it again in flashes. In menus. Flyers. In window shop fronts.

Lol dramatic.

Kiss Me, I'm Bloggish!

2009-05-19T02:12:00.000-07:00

Snooping as usual I see?

Imagine my suprise, when googling my own name, after the bebos, flickrs and woggle news to find an unexpected entry. "Don't you just love that image by James Woldhuis?" Much cheering and sprinting into the living room would soon follow. My blog-image was featured on Blogussion.com starting an article related to aged blogging. Wowow! The article offender can be found at his blog Asnio when not at Blogussion.

Jeez, it really makes me realise how connected the internet is. Everything I write, everything I create is linked somewhere in tags by either machine or man. Or manchine. It's all traceable too. For example: some guy posted under the name John Fitzpatrick @ Blip.tv the other week on my Blip.tv blog. I found while searching for Blip.tv on Flickr some photos tagged with his name. Recognizing and intrigued I learned he owns a Blip.tv T-Shirt and partakes in paintball. Obviously he is a man of great stature and position. Following further I found the man who took (or at least uploaded) the photos has his own website. I approve of Angus' site largly from his site introduction:

"Beyond this relatively elegant homepage lie dangling links, broken
functionality and 1995-era webdesign."

It means something else to have your crap posted for all to see. It means you have to not stuff up. It is one thing to have your ideas and opinons on display for your friends, randoms and fellow bloggers, but there are people out there who are gonna take stuff away, prove you wrong or worst of all: assume you know what your doing.

Fate Protects Fools, Little Children and Ships Named Enterprise.

2009-05-13T19:28:00.000-07:00

Greetings blog-ensigns!

If you picked up the subtle hints you would correctly guess that I recently saw the eleventh Star Trek moviefilm, which In according to the law of Stallone naming conventions is know not as Star Trek 11, but as simply Star Trek. These reboots are becoming all too popular in recent years, the most recognizable being Batman Begins and Casino Royale. T'day's Trek themed blog will focus on the representation of data in visualizations. Data like information, not like the android known as Data in the Next Generation. But alas the Next Generation is now the old generation. The next next generation, is acutally a prequel reboot, so I'm not sure how that all works. Trekkies/Trekkers abound are refering to the new franchise as Star Trek JJA (apparently after the director and producer J.J Abrams).

Abrams aside, Data is essentially different to information. Data by nature is raw until it is used, which is when it becomes information. How to use data? Visualisations are the answer. How do we create these visualisations? I have no idea, but you can start with APIs. Visualisations can make boring crap seem interesting. Interesting-er. In final; I promised I would, so to all you This Old Blog lovers head to a good mate's ... site, where you will experience pain beyond all imaginings.

Live long and prosper!

Just Watched Twilight...

2009-05-10T05:15:00.000-07:00

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Multiplerg.

2009-05-06T20:07:00.000-07:00

Yaggashemage children of the nether-blog!

Y'know whats cooler than the coolest thing? One thousand simultaneous playing coolest things set to Moby! The problem? Imitators! Proving that multiplicity has uses outside of Trackmania: 3000 barrels in Crysis. I'm getting an X-men 3 deja vu. Patrick Stewart aside it is scientifically proven that things are made more awesome if there is more than one of them. Too many however and things become too much like water. With a thousand cars, there is a sheer ammount of things on screen at a time, which is cool, but when you crank it up to two thousand, it becomes so hard to distinguish single elements and everything simply looks like water flowing over a track. Which is getting close to reality, since water is made of lotsa tiny particles. With any large sample of whatever, you are bound to find an average pattern.

Oh gawd. On the topic of reality, I recently watched the three-part-finale-comeback-behind-the-scenes-spectacular-extravaganza of Red Dwarf. Rubbish. What a smegging way to ruin the series. In things that almost matter, it is part of my mission to find a copyright free creative commons band which will be able to supply me with a light, crisp motivational jingle of a thirty second length so I may use it in a non-profit small scale presentation promoting the use of brains. I call the campagin 'Plug it in and change the world'.

Interblarg 2.0

2009-04-29T15:36:00.000-07:00

Whats goin on blog-lets? In the happenin' hippedy hop world of the Interblarg 2.0 everything is bouncy and colourful. Like me! What is Interblarg 2.0 you cry? Well a very wise and powerful internet scholar once commented on the rise of user generated content on the interblarg and decided to call the phenomenon Interblarg 2.0. What is user generated? This what-you-are-actually-reading is user generated! This Old Blog is the effect of Interblarg 2.0! Does it blow your weak human mind?

When did this happen you ask? 2004. No debate. I saw a chart. Somewhere. Charts are facts. After this breakthrough all of the interblarg was totaly cool with it and logically tried to make revenue off it. Facebook, Blip.tv, various other fruits: all these sites are full of crap people who arnt paid have made (Well you can make money through Blip.tv but there is a place and time for that talk). I get distracted and lose my place when I use brackets. But how else will I create side notes which are actually compusory to read as part of the article. I theorise that this behavior is somehow linked to my very limited knowledge of comic books and my exposure to the art of editorial side notes often vauge with references I would never read. [See issue #1 The First of a Series -ed]

And with that I return to the dark recesses of Blogger from when I came. Also Pie.

This Thing Still On?

2009-04-19T20:05:00.000-07:00

Bah, I had almost forgotten the tedious grasp of tertiary educations. The past week has had me on a couch living vicariously through my video game avatars in titles such as Rainbow Six Vegas, a game since sequel'd whose online presence is pretty much absent. This is sadly common with games over a year old on the Three-Sixty, minus staying power games like Halo Three and I have heard even Halo Two. Unlike PC games where the sheer amount of people who own a PC or three keep titles as old as Counter-Strike alive the Three-Sixty's online presence acts as a sort of trendy crowd. On lauch, every person with Xbox Live had Perfect Dark Zero, a fairly crappy sluggish game but still the most fun I had that particular three months or more. I also had a popular rival FPS known as Quake 4 or 'IV' as is trendy with those in Rome. Quake was pretty much empty from the day I put it in my console. I spent a good ten minutes searching for a game before I gave up. After a month or so I checked an online calendar on Xbox Live Dot Com and found it was apparently Quake Four's game day and so that night I popped it in, played a single one-on-one against a fellow Australian (Oops, it's out there now), lost due to rediculous lag (I say anyway) and never touched it again.

Back to Prefect Dark Zero, I bought maps, the game was refreshed and then finally there was Chromehounds. I did not realise at the time how 'into' large mech-warriors I was. It was one of those things looking back, seeing all my achivements, save games with time measured in the several-hundred-hour marks. I did so with many games. I own every G.R.A.W 2 map and got the highest and mightiest achivements such as surviving in a realistic defence match for an entire hour. It has since been removed from my memory how I acomplished such dedication in a fictional and quite pointless environment. Team Fortress 2, Gears of War, Call of Doody Three: all games I have played to complete death until the next game came out. The online components of those games is embarrasing now.

To the present day: I spent hours playing through what might have been an overconfident choice of the 'Realistic' difficulty setting in Rainbow Six, the highest difficulty accumulating in one-shot-death level of play against an endless number of various criminals. I find it odd that for such an elite crack-squal of highly trained super-hero marksmen demolition trained sky jumpers that the Rainbow Six team would choose to land their helicopter (to remove hostiles in Vegas) in the middle of the road, forcing you to wade through fifty guys each who could kill you in a matter of seconds rather than, for example land on the roof. The co-op experience I found eases the difficulty somewhat but still is fairly lacking when compared to the co-op of something like Gears of War (I bought the sequel recently, like yesterday recently), but for ever flaw I find in this game I am assured is repaired and then some in the newer-but-not-new Rainbow Six Vegas Two.

Oh and Medion finaly picked up my laptop after it was requested a repair about 4 months ago. I think the post office is going to refund us the missing-in-transit (read: Stolen) parts we sent previosuly. I should start gettin back to work on my studies (how I equip pencil?) until then blog-children. Oh and pretend this is like two posts, since I diddn't post last week. Do it.

The Birthday Post.

2009-04-08T15:42:00.000-07:00

Oh a most joyous day to post on my blog! You know why, blog-children? Of course you do. You read the title. Now!

I have had a most long week, all in anticipation for my momentous weekend I have planned. But ofcourse you came to hear about blogs and blogging and stuff. If you are looking for a rationale to my other blog then be aware that this isnt it. I will talk to you today about the joys and benefits of segregation! In the computer world... or something. Carving up the world was the meaphorical title of this weeks lecture and it touched on taxidermy. I mean taxology. Er, taxonimics? Whatever its buisness was, the point was you can classify things, but when something fits into more than one category you may have issues. Are pengins really birds or whatever? But I think the eventual point was that on the interblarg, you can't say 'This is a blog of category: Internet' because it is so much more. Quiet you.

This blog perhaps fits many categories. Blogging, birthday, vomit, blip, flickr, old. How do we tell these categories? Through tags!

(Wow, you could have just like skipped that taxidermy thing and just gone straight to tags but whatever.)

Keep watching the skies.

The Evil Empire.

2009-03-29T00:48:00.000-07:00

Greeting blog-children, a short post this week. I have been hard at work to bring you this. I'm sure this certainly qualifies as a post and you can read more there. Indeed, Something About Blip has something for everyone: drama, action and my usual dry wit. Actually it's rather dry and factual but I'm sure it's very informative if you have been one of those misguided tools who submit to the evil empire that is the google network.

Also: WHOA. Holy hell in a carefull constructed series of posts. I dont know who he is. I don't know what he wants. If he is looking for ransom I can tell him I don't have money. But what I do have is a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like him. Funny coincidence though. Look at those dates!

Wait... What do you mean google owns Blogger?

Case of the Fluffs.

2009-03-21T22:21:00.000-07:00

Bah. In order to fluff out my photostream I have uploaded a selection of my holiday snaps.

Now my flock, I must clear the air and speak to you all on the importance of copyright. It is bad if you take things you diddn't make unless you ask for them. Copyright enforces this as a law, meaning you cannot steal published music and attach it to your work unless you ask the copyright holder nicely. But what if you, like This Old Blog, want your crap made into professional works of art which will then be traced back to you giving a wealth of popularity ultimately leading to the robot invasion. The answer Blog-Children, is simple. Creative Commons gives people posting their work on the internet the option to assign copyrights onto their images, video or music and how flexible licence is. You can for example chose to allow people to show your work, but only if they attribute, or allow them to edit and change your work for commerical profit.

And now a short film marking the start of my grand video blogging career on Blip TV. Notice the subtlety and majestic nature of the dance. No don't expect more videos after this one, this was simply a test of Blip's system. If the video is not displayed then I fear I have removed it in favor of more exciting content. If you are interested check out the creative commons license attached to this video.

Creative Commons also features a search engine for Creative Commons tagged work only, making finding usable images and video easy. Also I found another imposter. You arn't fooling anyone Joe!

Eyes like an Ape.

2009-03-17T20:09:00.000-07:00

Geddit? Lol.

Er I mean old blog talk... uh phaw! So whats this API all about then, eh? Well y'see, being an old blog, I know everything there is to know about APIs, or as we in the biz call it: Application programing in-your-face. No, don't look it up, I'm right and all you will get is some jargon about it being largely abstract.

From what I understand of the subject, it is really cool and allows you to ~~steal~~ use more popular services and websites' hard work to display their data in an altered way. Or something who knows what that lecture was about. Erm, I mean what lecture ho-hum old blog-ness. I'm old and hate people etc. So y'see blog-children, APIs are really simple when you get down to it. To use and API for a service, it is expected you either ask them nicely or pay for it for things like Windows or Mac OS software development kits. Generally the APIs you pay for can be used commercially while the free ones are only for non-profit services unless you strike up an agreement.

Being a worldly blog I found a program available for purchase which equips us common folk with the nessecary tools to start your own youtube clone site. I know what you are thinking, but alas someone has beaten us to it.

Completely unrelated to anything ever. A site that will ruin your brains.

Flicker? Have You Tried Tuning It?

2009-03-13T05:06:00.000-07:00

Ah greetings again my Blog-Children!

This week has had drastic changes in the site's layout and functionality. And don't worry, I have spoken with the site admin and they say this flickering business will go away in a few days. But more to the point, what did the old site look like? After all history and blog-preservation is one of the key issues of this site. I think.

Well since I am a forgetful old blog, It slipped my mind to take a photo of the old designs but I did manage to save the old banner from the recycle bin and will use my new-fangled ache-tea with Mel to display the photograph via my photograph streams. Streams! They think This Old Blog can't take a full on river! When they get back to me about this flickering business I'll give them a post of my mind. Oops! Carried away.

As you can see from the hyper-linked image above, I am quite the master of this technological wizardry. Despite my first post denouncing the childishness of 'what i'm listening to' I felt compelled by unseen forces to tell everyone about a love that took me by force.

The song I was listening to at the moment I wrote this:
(Well technically I listened too like 10 songs, it takes a while to type this stuff out you know.)
Sneaky Sound System - Thin Disguise

What's that? An embedded youtube clip? Oh old blog you tease! Well this showcase of really crappy HTML has come to a close. Next week: API? Really? That sounds hard. Until next time Blog-Children, look to my coming at first light of the fifth day, at dawn look to the East.

The First of a Series.

2009-03-04T18:53:00.000-08:00

Greetings blog-children!

You may have guessed it. I am an old blog. The beard is obvious, yes? Back in my day, I was the talk of the interblag. Sadly, as I grew older, my content grew outdated and my page design unattractive. What was I to do? People stopped visiting me! All the meta tags on the world wide web couldn't restore my youthfull exuberance (side note: Is this what kids do for fun these days?).

And so, a new chapter (post) opens in blog-history. No more a collection of rants about who-knows-what and links to old Flickr albums. Wan't to know what I'm listening to? Too bad! This blog is gonna focus on important things like children's welfare and related digestive expulsion. Now I know all about about digg'n and whats-what with that entirely suspect delicious business!

This is my final (never) blog-work, to stay even when I have long since passed into the after-blog. It is my hope that one day the young bloggers will find me on Technorati (Not that I can find myself) and say 'Gee whiz! What a really super splendid blog he was, I sure do wish I could have been as ruggedly handsome as he. You don't see any his kind anymore.'

In a collection fourteen or something separate entries I will recall in detail my experiences with nature of blogging, these so-called bloggers and the very nature of blog-kind itself.

Eternally,

This Old Blog

EDIT: Whoa IMPOSTER alert!