Where Have I Been?!

Ha! Did you think I'd actually go through the entire month of November without making a blog post?

The reason this time is because I was busy with final uni projects and then preparing for the trip home! And now I am home! Not to mention today there was some SNOW outside my window! Family, home-cooked meals, cold weather, my Wii games, my old room, and my quaint hometown. Not to mention Christmas is on the horizon. It feels so great to be back. I'll miss hanging out at the pool with all the friends I made down under, but hopefully it won't be only time I'm in Australia.

The stress of flying alone was nearly too much when I was at the Gold Coast airport, but thankfully an extremely nice woman working there waived me through all the queues without any hassle. Not sure if I would have made it in time without her as I got to the boarding gate only 5 minutes before boarding began. She was my hero that day. During my domestic flight transfer through Vancouver I was getting antsy. The line to check in was extremely long! Good thing my flight arrived half an hour early. Not to mention I was getting sick of getting on and off planes, it felt like I did twice as many flights as I actually did (three). At least I didn't have to do the whole security and the "do you have anything to declare" stuff when I landed in Toronto. All I had to do was claim my baggage and be greeted with big hugs from mom and dad!

An upside of the long flights though was that I got to watch a lot of movies. The first was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2. Funny thing is that I started watching it on the flight from Gold Coast to Auckland which was 2 hours and 38 minutes long. The movie was about 2 1/2 hours but since I listened to some music beforehand, the plane landed about 15 minutes before the end. Bellatrix was killed just as everything was switched off! It was worth it though, the music I listened to was an album from an alternative New Zealand-based band called The Earlybirds and it was amazing! I still got to watch the last 15 minutes of Deathly Hallows on the next flight. They had ALL of the movies! I watched parts of the Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets. The lead actors were only kids back then!

Other movies I watched included Captain America The First Avenger and Sucker Punch. Sucker Punch does not...well...suck as much as the critics says it does. Yes the story is a bit weird but everything else is great. Captain America was pretty good but I think Spider-Man 2 is still my favourite Marvel superhero movie. Hopefully The Avengers will change that next year even though Spider-Man's not in it.

Finally I can play Wii again! As a welcome back present to myself I bought Sonic Colors. Since that game is over a year old I grabbed it for only $20 at Wal-Mart! A steal considering how awesome the game is. I was playing through Aquarium Park last night and loving it, there hasn't been an underwater level in a main series title for a long time.

During my two day stopover in New Zealand (which was awesome) my 2008 MacBook, the first laptop I ever owned, died! The logic board fried. However, I've been planning to get an iMac regardless of what happened. Still deciding which one but it will probably be either the more expensive 21.5 inch or the cheaper of the 27 inch. Either way I'll have it upgraded to 8 GB of RAM. Hopefully with such an awesome and fast computer I can resume my Jump Birdy Jump Let's Play without sound syncing problems, wrap up Aussie Life, and maybe one or two surprises!

Arriving home!

Censorship and Politics

Here's another post from my New Comm. Tech blog I decided to share with you guys...

The Internet has changed many aspects of our lives, including in the political sense. Politicians are trying to use the Internet to encourage more people to vote. There's also websites like wikileaks that try to nail politicians for any kind of misconduct.

Censorship in democracy however is still an issue. We are still restricted to where exactly we can voice our opinions. We're free to do so in the privacy of our own homes but not on another person or organisation's premises. There is a point where behaviour must be respected. For example, freedom of speech does not overwrite the fact you have to respect people's property if you choose to stand up in a church and denounce Jesus (Wordpress, 2010). The same thing can be applied to the Internet. Going to a public Internet forum of a political party you don't like and posting hatred about them can still be considered slander or defamation.

There was an issue earlier this year regarding group upgrades on Facebook. The old type of groups were about to be completely wiped out with group administrators losing their group members having to rebuild their group from scratch. However, what was really concerning was that only certain political groups were given software keys to bypass the need of rebuilding while some were not (Munro, 2011). One has to wonder if the Facebook developers are biased in some way.

In conclusion it seems whenever it comes to trying to express opinions in public places, whether it be in real life or the Internet, there's a chance it could be censored. However I think in most cases this "censorship" does make sense. Why even waste time posting about something you don't like in a website that does? You will most likely get a lot of hate, and may considered to be "trolling."

References:
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-you-have-democracy-without-censorship
http://dailycaller.com/2011/05/24/facebook-upgrade-spurs-fears-of-political-bias/

The Terms of Facebook and its Oddness

 This blog post is about the terms of service (TOS) that are currently in place for Facebook. There are many service agreements that branch off into more specific subjects such as payments, but this will just be about the general TOS. It's a bit overwhelming. I remember reading bits of it when I first joined about five years ago. There's been a lot added since then.

The TOS first starts off by saying they value your privacy. An odd thing that I didn't remember seeing when I first joined the site was that Facebook can keep a backup of any deleted content for a "reasonable" amount of time. Why? It does not say. I can't think of any reasons myself....

One other interesting thing I came across is that you can't sell your status updates for money. Never thought of this, but it's a good idea. I would feel angry if someone used my wit to sell a t-shirt without my permission.

It's not hard to see why most people read either very little or none of the TOS. In the case of Facebook it would take hours to read and understand every little detail.

References: http://www.facebook.com/terms.php

The Rise and Fall of AOL

Another post from my New Comm. Tech Blog!

This blog entry will be about the history of the network provider America Online (AOL) and how it faded from popularity. It is well-known for its now outdated dial-up Internet. AOL first started as a company called Control Video Corporation (CVC). It offered downloadable games for the Atari 2600 video game system . When Jim Kimsey signed on as CEO he took the company in the direction of providing online services for the Commodore 64 and 128. They called it the Q-Link. They eventually teamed up with Apple, and after their partnership ended Q-Link became AOL (webhostingreport, undated).

AOL became a Internet provider in the late 1990's. At its peak about 35 million people were using this service to connect to the Internet (CNET, 2002). After merging with Time Warner, AOL's value began to drop. With the increasing amount of competition offering either a free or low-cost service things got worse for them. The increasing usage of broadband also made things tougher on the company (CNET, 2002). AOL eventually made the switch to being a content provider much like Yahoo, as opposed to a service provider (webhostingreport, undated).

Although AOL is not as prominent as it used to be, it is still one of the first Internet providers, thus solidifying its place in technological history.

References:
http://www.webhostingreport.com/learn/aol.html
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-961443.html