Here’s a neat little thing. Wizmo lets you create shortcuts to do useful stuff like change your system volume and turn off your monitor. This is probably more important to me on my laptop than to any of you folks (because I think all but one of you use a desktop) but you may find a use for it anyway.

And for Glob’s sake, make sure you use the quiet command. Pure Windows 2000 thinking that a program should play a noise every time it does something.

My only gripe with it is that, as an .exe, UAC is all “are you sure you want do what you asked me to do” and I have to say that yes, I am quite sure. Brb trying to find a way to disable that for specific programs. Yeah I missed the “always ask for this file” check box. In fact, in all of the past few months that it has been popping up, I never read it once. Sue me!

edit six months later: Nircmd is a way better program to use

Here’s some great science for you folks. This iPhone app tracks your movement throughout the night, which differs based on the cycle of sleep you’re in, and uses that to calculate the optimal time to wake you up. I heard about it. I considered it. I realized it would work because I am spending lots of money to learn SCIENCE! And then I decided to file it away in case I ever get an iPod Touch.

        Then I waited a few days and decided to write a tumblr post about it.

        There’s plenty of stuff on their site, and in this review, about how it “works” in terms of the waking you up bit, but none of these have explained the coolest part - how the hell does it work? Here’s the thing - when you’re in the deepest stage of sleep, REM, your body is basically paralysed. Maybe so you don’t act out your dreams or something. At any rate, should you wake up during REM sleep, you’ll feel awful. You cycle through the five stages of sleep in around 90 minutes, so the alarm has a 30 minute leeway before your scheduled awakening to wake you up. If you enter the lightest stage of sleep in that period, it wakes you up. If you’re in REM, it’ll wait for you to pass out of it.

        Gosh, isn’t science fun!?

        Also cool are dawn simulators. Yet another thing from Lifehacker, this site allegedly has a good dawn simulator for $40. Or they would if they weren’t sold out until january 2011. I know it looks horrible, but it probably is legit, all things considered. Just bad web design. If you’re too lazy to read the page: “slowly lights a bedside lamp to simulate dawn. This simulates sunrise and tells your brain that it is time to get up and start the day.” So I guess you plug your lamp into it or whatever which is why it’s not big and fancy.

        I’m kinda tempted by the 205 model though, for $20. Couldn’t hurt. It actually does suck waking up to complete darkness. But. Eh. We’ll see.

        edit for bonus SCIENCE!: The dawn simulator isn’t strictly a light-based alarm clock, rather it’s meant to keep your biological clock ticking properly, which is what leads to Seasonal Affective Disorder Syndrome. AKA you get depressed during the winter because light hitting your retinas makes your body secrete melatonin, which gets your body going for the day - and winter is dark so you don’t get that. Thus the dawn simulator, which serves to get your body producing melatonin at the right time and prime you for waking up.

        This also extends to light getting to your eyes before sleep - it’ll keep your brain from knowing it’s night time and that you need to sleep, getting you all out of whack. So keep your monitor brightness down and stuff.

vael:

Here’s a pet peeve about school.

Language and identity have three connections  - symbolic (language says who we are), instrumental (language enables us to do things), and constructive (language can be used for creation)

When you know a language well enough to express yourself in it, you can re-interpret yourself through the use of it

REALLY?! Whoa! I didn’t know that if you know a language well enough, you can, uh, re-interpret yourself through it! Good thing I learned this obvious fact that I will throw away but be tested on.

        Not so much re-interpreting yourself just by using ANY language, but that if you learn Spanish and start speaking exclusively Spanish, it’ll change your identity the more you use it. This doesn’t sound like much, but for the Kurdish bloggers he was studying (while I didn’t take notes on it, it’s basically illegal to use Kurdish in every country where it has a native population), to publicly use their mother tongue is a huge thing for their identity.

        This class is pretty slack and we don’t get tested on stuff like that. We had a fill-in the blank section on our test (pick one of 14 words to fill 10 blanks) which was worth as much as the two short answer questions. We had one question on the other guest lecture we had on the test, but it was just a random thing.

        The idea, though, is to give free marks to people who show up and don’t sleep in class. Sad but true. The more obscure you go with your questions, the higher you’re aiming those free marks - like, you’re either rewarding the people who show up, or the people who take good notes, or the people who take PERFECT notes.

        This is also fodder for the papers we’re going to write in a couple of weeks. Whether for quoting or for expanding on.

        And, truth be told, stuff that I jotted down like that was just poor note taking on my part. Grabbing what’s on the slides instead of what comes out of his mouth. But he kinda rushed through that part a bit and I was like eh well I’ll describe this as best I can… But I’ll be trying to fill things out when I get his slides.

        So that’s my response which doesn’t change anything but there’s what I have to say.

I’m about to run to class, so I can’t say much about this, but here are the notes I took on an amazing presentation by a super smart guy. I’m going to e-mail him and get his slideshow for you guys and ask him a few questions so let me know if there’s anything you’d like to know!

        He knows about all kinds of things, including trolling and griefing, so don’t think your question has to be solely related to blogging. At any rate, his main domains are identity construction and language, so relate those to technology and come up with some things you’d like to ask.

        Or you could just e-mail him yourselves but that might be a bit weird.

        edit: I mention trolling and griefing to say that he knows about internet stuff in general and he’s not like a stuffy dude in a suit who doesn’t really understand what he’s studying

This is an absolutely brilliant piece to introduce you to and discuss the upcoming Atlus game Catherine. There’s basic introduction to it and its general themes, as well as some symbolism stuff that I had no idea about. Really a great read. Even better, the game has since been licensed for release in Europe - which is a pretty strong indicator that it’ll get a North American release. Even if it doesn’t, you can just import it.

Even better than THAT, is that it’s being released for 360 AND PS3, meaning pretty much everyone will be able to play it. Spring 2011 for the European release. Look forward to it.

I don’t even have anything to add to this, really, so just go ahead and read it. I would say this is a must-read if you like video games, sex, Japan, or… anything. So yeah, read it.