4STR4STAM.NET/moarpylons

Ugh. I feel like half my day’s been robbed from me. Probably because it has, but then again I slept through the morning. Work last night was pretty dreary (even by the usual standards), and without a really good night’s sleep between Sunday and today, it was pretty much needed. So yeah, rested and such. Yum.

What I /cannot/ say Yum about is what I had for lunch. If you don’t know about UK food, it’s mostly microwaveable crap that has very little nutritious value, and just fills space. A typical example of this was my lunch; a Rustler’s burger. Sixty seconds in the microwave, and it’s edible. Barely. But meh, food is food; I’ll have something good at work. Working at a store means you have a much wider selection of food than you did at home. xD

Looks like the trip to the US is off, at least for now. Let me put it this way: Ashley and I have always been somewhat polar opposites, and as the saying goes, opposites attract. To a degree. I’m not going to write exactly what went wrong (she did the same for me, and I owe her at least that), but it’s been pretty much downhill for a while now. If she doesn’t want to speak to me, that’s fine. If she does, that’s fine too. Honestly, I’m not mithered either way. A friend wouldn’t ream your AIM with IMs while you’re quite obviously asleep, and basically act like you’re so hard done to because I’m not replying, but hey.

Yesterday wasn’t so bad, although I have to admit that I was pissed at one point. Blockbuster was running another promotion for their voucher booklet. Way back when, it was a case of get the booklet (which costs £25), and get 10 rentals with it. These would normally cost £4.95, and would last two nights. Now that the cost has gone up to £5.95, you can keep the games for a week. This is much better value for money imo, simply because you can’t really finish a game in two nights. But these voucher booklets, that cost the same, now charge you £2.50 per game rental AS WELL AS the saving from the voucher. So in reality, it saves you £1 per rental. So really, instead of saving me £25 from £50, which is 50%, I save £10 from £60, which is 16.6%. My store has complained, so they’re not just saying ‘lol read the small print next time’. Took out Rainbow Six from the library, and reserved Ubuntu for Dummies when it comes in.

Tonight, moarwerk and then a few days off. Honestly, I’m itching for that break. But at least we get paid on the 23rd.

I first started using Flock when it was in its infancy. Back in 0.3, I saw it as a browser built on Firefox, which allowed me to get through my school’s weak proxies and program limitations. This was back in late 2005/early 2006, way before it really started getting attention. I liked the browser (What’s not to like about an improved Firefox?), I liked the UI, and so long as I stayed away from some of the more temperamental features, it was remarkably stable for such an early release. I posted on my Livejournal, and I used the photobucket upload feature on occasion. When my school locked programs down to the principle of a whitelist rather than a blacklist, it became a lot less useful for obvious reasons. So I left it, coming back at 0.7. Things had changed, although I must’ve not used it for long, because all I remember now is 0.9 onwards.

0.9 felt like the finished product, and I started using it at home as well. I still only used a few select services, but after 1.0 came out, I felt like it had taken a different route compared to the previous release. But, like all good things, it grew on me.

Flock itself introduced me to some of the services I now take for granted on the web. Twitter was the first of these, as it was a site that I had no knowledge of before. It was just a blue ‘t’ that I didn’t bother clicking on. After looking at it, I signed up, and now I use the service regularly. The same goes for del.icio.us, although it was more a problem of the site being too separate from my web experience to use. Flock doesn’t essentially bring anything new to the content; it would be more accurate to say that it introduces a new experience and context, bringing everything together onto one screen, and to bring most features into the ‘three click rule’. It made the supported services a lot easier to interact with, and because of this I now take the services for granted. And yes, I do immediately miss the UI when I’m on someone else’s computer. And have also on more than one occasion typed about:myworld into the address bar only to find nothing.

Flock has redefined browsing, in my opinion. Yes, you can do the same with Firefox, installing add-on after add-on to get the same experience, but why bother when it’s all in another package already? Everything is already set up, and although I would’ve preferred the ‘Add Service’ wizard to have remained, the steps for adding a new service are much more natural (i.e. you log into the service, and click ‘Remember’), and as such much more accessible than the wizard. For me, this is what I think Flock is all about; making services like Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, Wordpress and such a single experience, rather than many separate ones.

After all, what other web browser, by default, allows you to upload a photo from your digital camera, import it into a blog entry, and post said blog entry on a customised privacy level, without visiting a single site?

Flock is not for the standard web user; the one that wants to slip on eBay occasionally, or use Google for a one-click solution. Flock is for content providers and community members, allowing people who do contribute to the internet, to do so as effortlessly as possible, without compromising on standards or presentation. As much as I would like to say that Flock is the beginning of a revolution for so-called ‘Web 2.0’ users, I can’t. It is the revolution, because it blurs the lines between a site interface, and a web experience.

Flock (currently at the 1.1 stage) plugs into all the major networks, minus myspace and digg, but I’m sure the latter will be resolved soon, if not the former. You log in, it offers to latch itself onto your account, and from that, there is no real need to actively visit the site again.

Taking facebook as an example of this, that a friend had uploaded a new picture of you and them, and you wanted to see which mugshot they used. Without Flock, the process would be:

• Go to the facebook site.
• Access the login page.
• Log in.
• Find your friend.
• Click photos.
• Browse to find the new picture.
• Continue to browse, if you couldn’t find it before.

If you do have Flock, and you’ve set up the account to be remembered, the process looks more like this:

• Click the MediaBar button, since its glowing orange at the new content available.
• Scroll through the new content.
• Click the photo.

For blogging, it’s one click away. Out of the box, after logging into your blogging site, if it’s supported, you click the quill once the account is remembered, and blog away. And this is quite literally the tip of the iceberg. There’s a web-content clipboard, webmail, online favourites, photo uploader, and more.

For me, now, Flock is indispensible. I would genuinely feel lost without it, because the connectivity between me and the sites would no longer be there. I would no longer be ‘a Flock user on social networks x, y and z, and on blog x’. I would be a user, using a website, twelve or thirteen times over. I have PocketFlock on my USB thumb drive at all times, so when I go to other people’s houses, I don’t have to settle for something that’s below par.

Some people don’t understand why I prefer Flock to Firefox, and that’s fine. They use Firefox, and that’s great; anything is more stable than the blue ‘e’. Oddly enough, the only ones that do understand, are fellow content providers; those that post videos on Youtube, Photos on Flickr, Blog at Wordpress or Livejournal etc. Why do they understand?

Because they use Flock, too.

I would apologise for not posting in any of the blogs that I am part of, but I don’t think that I should be apologising.

I’ve not been active, because I have been thinking about a lot of things that need to be considered. I’m coming to a bit of a crossroads in my life, and I’ve decided the path that I want to go down. But, as always, I’m going to start with the seemingly trivial stuff.

So I’ve decided that I need a new chair for my computer desk. Well, it’s not even a computer desk, it’s just a normal desk. With a computer on it. ANYWAY, if you haven’t been told by me yet, what’s happening is that whenever I lean back, because of the spider legs having shifted up the cylinder a little, I fall on my ass. I’ve looked at getting a cheap one, and I think that is the only option that I have, considering the big news I am about to drop on your asses.

If all goes well in July (two week trip to the US), I could well be moving stateside permanently. Well, I lie. I hope that I would be able to secure a lease on some place for a year, preferably with Ashley, and then after that year see whether I can deal with living so far from my parents. Honestly, I think that’s going to be the major thing. Obviously I will be visiting them every now and again, but whether I can stand to be an eight hour flight from them is an entirely different question. To be honest, I’m scared, but I know that I want to do it. So, like I said, July will be crunch time, and then I will be making the choice. If I say yes, I am going to have to sell a shitload of stuff pretty quickly. So make offers on stuff I have if you want it. The only thing that’s staying is the laptop (sorry guys; I just bought this baby), my PC, my DS and a few other things. Basically, everything that I have no chance of carrying/posting to the US.

And you have to be in the UK to make use of it. D<

Soyeah.

Ugh. I’m tired like crazy. Granted, tomorrow is today and today is yesterday, but normally I’m awake until 2am. It’s probably all that hanging around in the morning hours (8am onwards) waiting for a parcel that didn’t arrive.

Yeah, that’s right. My laptop hasn’t arrived today, and probably won’t arrive until next week. See, in the UK we’re majorly susceptible to Customs fees and VAT. Even on gifts. Yeah, for stuff that’s been sent to us from certain places, we still have to pay in order to get access to it. Something which I have long been against, but that’s besides the point. THe money that I got for fixing Jamie’s PC is probably going to end up right back in the taxman’s pockets, and I am powerless to do anything about it.

What’s odd, is that the laptop is in this country, but the money still hasn’t come out of my bank account. I’m not sure what’s going on; Paypal have said that the transaction is completed, but at the same time the money is still loitering around, earning interest in my Natwest account. Not that I have a problem with keeping hold of my money for longer, I just wish that it would get out so I don’t have to keep thinking ‘I need to keep this much money back for when the transaction goes through’.

Did the GameOnYou podcast today, and despite the fact that I did all I could to make sure that it didn’t skip, it still did in places. Although, that was to be expected really. I’m going to have to find out what is causing that and deal with it, because it’s going to end up being to my detriment when I start podcasting by myself. Meh. There’s a guide hanging around somewhere on the net for optimising your computer so it’s good for podcasting and doesn’t skip etc, so I’ll need to find out where that is again.

On completely unrelated notes:

• Apparently it’s about 100Mb for me to send the audio I have in 128kbps. WTF?
• Why didn’t Flock just use Eco Edition as a platform for the 1.2 release, to get more people interested?
• Why can’t Microsoft stick to their own deadlines, and not shaft us UK gamers with their maintenances?
• Why can’t Harmony get on at a decent hour (for me)?

…At least, on here anyway.

I’ve been really busy on 4str4stam, including a new, better look and ploughing through the posts. I think I only missed one day without a piece of news or an article/feature, and even then I explained why. But alas, things have changed.

I now write for GameOnYou UK as well, which was something I was glad to accept; the group as a whole really get along well, and despite the fact that I failed on my first attempt at joining in a podcast, it was fun, and they seemed to be impressed at my typing skills, despite the fact that I don’t really touch-type the way you are supposed to. Ah well. So, I’ll be in the podcast next week (I hope), and I’m aiming to write two articles a day for Evad and the lads. Although my Soul Calibur one is way overdue.

Things haven’t changed much on the homefront. I’m still working, although not nearly as much as I could (I had to laugh when Dave ridiculed my job [He’s at uni, I think]), and I’m still trying to pull myself out of the red. But somewhere along the line, my parents decided to give me the money for a new laptop. But I have to pay it back at a minimum of £75 a month. They gave me £300, so that’s four months. BUT, with my PSP finally going to be sold on May 1st (for £110 incl. all the stuff), and Jamie’s computer finally having the hardware that I need to sort out his operating system problems (I need to get that sorted sometime tomorrow, and find a blank CD or something.), I should have just about £85 left to pay after one fixed payment and chucking the rest of the money their way. Which is good. :3

That’s it. Not much else to say, other than I play Call of Duty 4 way too much, and should ration my time on it. And chances are my laptop will be here by this Wednesday coming. Yay!