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Update

By now, Twitter has established itself everywhere. You can even Twitter from your cellphone, now. I still find it rather pointless. Short messages to keep your audience updated through a simple system may be a good idea. But why not just subscribe to a feed instead? I can see it as a tool for developers to keep a constant news ticker running by using Twitter widgets. Again how does this make things easier? How is logging into twitter and posting a short message quicker than logging into your blog and posting a brief udpate that can be read by anyone who subscribed to your feed? Am I missing something?

I would have written this miniature rant on Twitter, but unfortunately it won’t let me. Earlier today I set up a Twitter account just to see how its like, how well it performs, what tools it offers. Right now, ever since I have started using it two hours ago, my leg is twitching constantly and I can’t make it stop. I may also opt to avoid Twitter for the better part of … a long time. Not only was I not able to retrieve any kind of interesting data even from Twitter accounts of TechCrunch or others, I wasn’t even able to handle my own properly.

Bare in mind that my opinion is merely based on my two hours experience I had with Twitter so far. These are the results:

• Twitter accounts hardly update with any useful information. It may be great as a toy for friend networks. But from what I saw from most Twitter accounts I’ve had a look at, its mostly being updated with pointless drivel. This isn’t what I would call “being connected with your friends”. It’s just wasting your time. I can see SMS services using Twitter, though. For now it looks like a cheap alternative … when it works.
• Which brings me to my second point: Wow, man. That site is slow! Every second click results in a server timeout. Reloading takes ages and only gives marginal chances of success. It took me 20 minutes and 7 server time out messages before I had the color scheme changed. I tried it from a local machine and from a machine using a U.S IP. On both boxes I had the same problem. One ran linux and firefox, the other ran Windows XP and IE6. Horrible performance.

Last but not least, I’ve never seen a site in this day and age, designed as unimaginatively as Twitter. I may have thought differently about the design, wouldn’t the constant time outs and extreme loading times drive me nuts!

Maybe there’s just a bad router on the way, or maybe they’re updating the database. Perhaps its just me and my router is flooded. Perhaps it’ll get better. Who knows? If Twitter would work for me, I’d use it in combination with my blog. As it is right now, I am a bit disappointed.

Hrmph.

/*Note from the author: This is a direct continuation of the Office Tales - Episode 2. The title of the story has changed. However, in order to understand the following story, you should have at least read Episode 2.*/

How dare we speak of the laws of chance? Is not chance the antithesis of all law? - Joseph Bertrand, Calcul des probabilités, 1889

I awake disoriented. This doesn’t last long, however. Antiseptic scents, the squelching sound of doctor’s slippers on linoleum floors, the cold fluorescent lights - just like back at the office weren’t it for all those ugly pastels. The walls, the floor and even the sheets; all in pastel colors. I am at a hospital.

I blink my eyes and try to look around but I can’t. My vision is blurred and my head won’t move. The shapes in the room are barely recognizable. Somebody opens the door to my room and that familiar squelching sound of the slippers indicates that its a nurse. My head turns to look. I couldn’t do that just a few moments ago and now, more than ever before in the last five minutes, I want to know what happened.

“What happened to me?” I want to ask but hte words don’t come out; my lips won’t move. I still can’t see properly and I am starting to get worried as my eyes squint. It felt like an automatic reaction, beyond my control.

“Your glasses are on the night stand next to you.”,the nurse that just entered says. What? I don’t wear glasses. Still, I reach for them and slide the slender frame onto my nose. The world around me shifts into focus. I feel numb. The nurse speaks again but I don’t pay attention. I feel out of control and the nurse speaks yet again.

“Sir? Mister Severin?”

“Yes?” a voice answers. My lips just moved. I think I just said that but that wasn’t myname; it wasn’t my voice. The nurse gives me scornful look.

“The doctor says you almost died this time. You were lucky Mister Severin.” she continues. Again she uses the name that isn’t mine.

“Fuck you.” I answer. I want to scream, I want to reclaim control. This isn’t me! “Bitch.” the voice adds and this time the word echoes through the room, through my head, through my bones.

“Motherfucker, wake up!” That wasn’t the nurse. It wasn’t me, either. My eyes are closed. I stir in my bed and pry open my sleep crusted eyes. It was a dream. I look at the ceiling of my apartment. Home. A gun barrel is suddenly pushed between my eyes. I try to sit up and the cold, chromed steel pushes my head back down into the sweat soaked pillow.

“Time to die.” a very real voice announces. Too real. I don’t react. I am dreaming. This is merely a dream. The kind where you slip from one dream to the next, seamlessly. The revolver’s hammer cocks. It slams back. I can neither feel the pain nor hear the noise. I die.

Back at the hospital he gets out of bed after the nurse has left the room and stands on weak legs. His clothes are placed on a chair across the room, folded neatly in a stack. His shoes are under the chair. He walks over and starts getting dressed. As he puts on his shirt he turns to face the mirror to his left. The image of a skinny and gaunt, six foot four tall man with unkempt hair and unshaven face looks back at him. This is Severin. And Severin smiles because he knows the nurse will die tonight. He will be there.

There will be judgement.

-to be continued-

I’ve been too slow recently, avoiding continuation of my fictional story line which started off as the Office Tales. While I really enjoyed the concept at first, I quickly became tired of the bubble-gum appeal that it would achieve sooner than later. Some of you, as you browsed this blog, may have stumbled upon the two profiles I created for the main super hero characters that were to star in the saga. I simply couldn’t find it within me to continue on this plot line. The characters represented typical, spandex wearing super heroes that were to be immersed into a dark, grimy world more akin to a cyberpunk dark future than a Marvel comic universe.

Luckily, I noticed this early enough before the plot could develop to a point where the only way of repairing the damage would have had to be a blatant retcon of all events. I have nixed both main characters and will continue the story, taking it up a different alley and matching the main character to the world he lives in.

The running title of the changed story is now “Severin” and I have changed the category name accordingly to the right of your screen. My intentions are to one day find someone who would work on a script for this story and turn it into an actual graphic novel - with drawings and all (hah!). That said, I am almost ready to publish episode 3 and finally throw you right into the fray of “Severin” and its questionable super hero protagonist.

It looks like the debate goes on forever. The wretched bile about video games being a danger to our youth will not stop to flow. Germany has been especially harsh in censoring games and their content. Too many games end up as flagged illegal for public sale and most other games have to go through an entire revamp before they are free to be published in retail stores.

Command and Conquer soldiers were turned into robots with black oil instead of blood. Their death shouts were replaced with a weird sound akin to a generator shutting down. Return to Castle Wolfenstein had to remove all Nazi symbols and had to change the name of the “bad guys”. The list goes on forever. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve all seen our share of robotic or mechanical prostheses for amputees. They have been either rough to use, had no agility, had a tough time handling delicate objects or perform detailed operations and had very shoddy motor control. They may have helped many amputees to various degrees, but they never quite succeeded at imitating the capabilities of a real arm.

What we can see in the video below, however, is one smooth implementation of a robotic arm. Just look at the way it’s handling the object. That’s pretty impressive, in my opinion. If there was a way to mass produce such things, or at least craft them for reasonable prices, it would improve the life of quite a few people. Making one of these as a leg should prove far more difficult, though.

[video]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9048454679778238317&q=robotic+arm[/video]