The significance of a profile picture

It's safe to say we live in a new world now. A world populated by social networks, blogs, and other avatars. In an average day we can interact with hundreds of people from around the world, a feat that was simply impossible ten years ago. For the most part, these interactions take place in the form of text chatter, with no true understanding of the individual we're communicating with on the other end. Aside from conversational patterns, tonalities, and habits, our only sign to who we're talking with is a simple profile picture.

While most people take this ubiquitous feature for granted, the profile picture acts as an avatar and symbolic manifestation of who you are in this online world. Whether you use a photo of yourself, cartoon character, or piece of art, people come to know you as this image. It becomes the "person" with whom others identify your personality with.

For this reason, I rarely every change my profile picture. I will upload other images incase others are curious as to what I look like, but the initial profile picture is almost sacred to me. Changing it would almost be like changing myself. Conversely, there are some people who change their profile picture at least once a week. However, whether intentional or not, this repeated changing takes on the same essential characteristic keeping the same image. While their image is constantly changing, the theme, composition, and frequency of change is so similar that it almost feels like the image never changes.

Here's an interesting experiment. For those of you with large friends lists, especially ones with a majority of people you don't actually know in real life, scroll through the list and take note of how many of the people on that list you remember by profile picture rather than profile name. Then think whether you'd know who they were at all once their image had changed. It's just something to think about.

posted by Christopher Schnese

When technology breeds it's own necessity

Take a moment and think back on all the technologies you own. Think about all the features in your phone, your iPod, your wrist watch, and your computer. Think back to when those features first appeared and whether you ever thought you needed them before their introduction. Sometimes it seems like with every new feature, not only do I find myself suddenly needing to use it, but I often have to play catchup just to get to the point where it can be a viable feature.

Now I can attribute this observation to many technologies and features, but right now I'd like to touch on the ability of portable media devices to display the album artwork of the currently playing track. While just about every portable media player now has the ability to display artwork in addition to playing music, this simply wasn't the case back in the days of Napster when mp3s really became popular. There simply was no computer metaphor for flipping through your music collection. Your media appeared pretty much as a glorified Excel document.

Well things have changed and an album's artwork has become the new metaphor for sifting through music. Features like Coverflow, built into Apple's iTunes software, completely abandon the textual view of your music and laterally allow you to swipe through your music library as if you were sifting through the physical discs.

Admittedly, I rarely ever use this Coverflow feature in iTunes, however simply I cannot avoid the effects of album artwork on my iPhone. When you're playing music on your iPhone, the album artwork is not only displayed, but takes up the entire screen. The beauty of the presentation is arguably undeniable. The problem is that when your currently playing track doesn't have any artwork associated with it, you're presented with a generic and unexciting missing artwork image.

Maybe this doesn't bother the average person, but I can't stand the blandness after being treated to the aesthetic delight of a fully artwork supported music sample. So, I have to make use of this feature. There is one major problem inherent in this decision. I've been building my music collection since way before album artwork was a support feature. So, there are huge sections of my collection without artwork at all. This can be an enormous pain when you have a collection with over 1447 albums (and that's just the ones without artwork).

So now here I sit, tirelessly adding artwork, one album at a time. And if I were to continue this, adding art for 50 albums a day, I will eventually finish my collection in about one months time. All this work for a feature I had absolutely zero need for before I was introduced to it.

posted by Christopher Schnese

Night owl to early bird: A transition

For as long as I can remember, I've been sort of a creature of the night. I'm used to staying up till all hours of the night. It's not that I can't fall asleep, it's just that I don't really care to. Well, now that I've moved out and am temporarily sharing my living space, I'm making a few changes. Rather than stay up till the early hours of the morning and sleeping in till work, I'm going to sleep early and waking up several hours before I technically need to.

I'm not sure how it started, but I've really come to think of sleep as a waste of time. Every hour I'm asleep is just an hour that I could have been doing something "productive". Aside from the obvious physical and mental side effects of not sleeping, I don't really see the point spending your "free" time unconscious. I have a naturally curious mind and I do a lot of learning and experimenting on my own time. In my own perfect world, each day would last 32 hours. This would give me a full 8 hours of sleep while allowing the normal 24 hours for work, personal projects, recreational activities, a little workout, and hanging with friends. However, this is not how the world works and I have to deal with it. Which is why I usually stay up late. That is until now.

My new roommate has a job as a surgical technician, which requires him to be up fairly early to make the drive to work in the morning. As a courtesy to him, I've joined him in his sleep pattern. While this normally night seem like a bad thing, I've actually enjoyed it. Whether you stay up late and then sleep in, or go to be early and then wake up early, you get the same mount of sleep. The strange thing is that when I go to sleep early, I actually feel more rested in the morning than if I had received the same amount of sleep starting late into the morning. The transition hasn't been difficult at all, requiring a mere habitual change rather than the physical change I thought it might. All in all, I think this change is going to be really good for me.

posted by Christopher Schnese

The first night in my new house

As some of you may have noticed, I've been somewhat absent from "the internets" for the last few days. I've snuck on during a few chance moments, but for the most part I've been left without a connection. This is because for the last two days I've been slowly moving all my belongings to my new place. The move still isn't technically complete, but I have enough stuff moved that last night I spent my first night in my new home. Though I was born and raised within the same city for my entire 24 year life span, all my friends and both my jobs reside about 20 miles inland in a neighboring city. This generally equates to anywhere from a 20 to a 40 minute drive (depending on traffic) any time I want to do just about anything. So, in accordance with the natural progression of a child's life, I've moved out of my parents house.

The living situation is great. Being that I've moved in with friends and living in a house owned by one of their fathers, I have an amazing deal on the rent. Not to mention the obvious benefit of living with those friends. Before the move, we'd have to actually schedule time where we could get together and hang out, but now we can simply walk across the hall and plan things on the fly.

In addition to the advantages of living with and around these friends, I'm ridiculously close to where I work. I work two different jobs and the furthest one away is not more than a 5 minute drive. Before, I was consistently pulling a 30 minute drive to work and a 60 minute drive home every day. When you combine drives like this with the occasional long lunch break, you can easily push the average 8 hour day into a 10 hour ordeal. By the time you finally get home you don't even want to do anything. This new living situation will save me a few hours each day. Time that I can actually put towards starting up some sort of workout schedule (which I think I can do now that my knee seems to be well enough healed to handle the activity).

All in all, I'm pretty excited about the whole process. I'm sure you'll all be getting some more updates from me in the near future. Wish me luck everyone. I'm off to unpack all my clothes so I have something to wear to work.

posted by Christopher Schnese

The dreaded words "Series Ended"

As we approach this year's fall primetime lineup, I find myself thinking less about the new shows about to launch and more about the shows that aren't returning. There are a whole slew of characters and plot lines that will never again be enjoyed by all of us that invested so much time into them over the years.

It's strange how television has this tendency to suck you into it. I guess it's much the same with movies and books, but I think the nature of television programing gives it a unique ability to draw you in and keep you coming back. I assume it has to do with the fact that television is episodic. We tune in each week for the next installment and over time we begin to genuinely care about the characters.

Whether we simply like one of the characters, have a crush on an actor/actress, know someone who reminds us of someone in the cast, or feel like the story mirrors our own lives, we invest a little part of ourselves in the show as we watch. The characters become almost real and we actually legitimately care about them. We laugh, we cry, we love, and we hate. While none of it's real, we treat it as if the situations and relationships are.

The problem is that it isn't real. Furthermore, their existence depends on the amount of people that tune in every week and if the studio execs decide that a show has run it's course, it gets pulled. Along with the shows death goes all the time we've put into watching. What's going to happen to John and Susie (two completely arbitrary names)? We'll never know. We'll just have to live on without them and replace them with the next series to come along. But I guess all things come to an end.

posted by Christopher Schnese

Are we living in a simulation? (The Argument)

A while back I was listening to an episode of Buzz Out Loud (which is [still] just about the greatest podcast on the net) and a story was brought up of a man named Nick Bostrom, who believed that we might very well be living inside of a simulation. At the time, the story resulted mostly in laughter, however, the Buzz Crew actually brought Nick on to yesterdays show to talk about his Argument for a Simulated Reality. The resulting conversation was very interesting if not intriguing.

When the subject was brought up in the original episode, I didn't really care much. It just came in through the head phones as I sat in the office and got filed away in the back of my head. I didn't even bother to look the original article like I usually do when the cast mentions a subject of interest. I wish now, having heard the argument from nick himself, that I would have given it a chance. While his argument is not a "proof" by any means, it does bring up some interesting points and makes you at least willing to entertain the possibility that we may be living in a simulation.

The argument is built upon three premises, one of which you must accept when discussing the possibilities of a simulated reality. They are (more or less) as follows:

1) No civilization could ever reach a level of technological advancement so great that they could create a simulation so real that the participants couldn't recognize they were part of the simulation.

2) A civilation could reach a level of technological advancement so great that they could create a simulation so real that the participants couldn't recognize they were part of the simulation, however, they would have absolutely no desire to actually create that simulation.

3) A civilation could reach a level of technological advancement so great that they could create a simulation so real that the participants couldn't recognize they were part of the simulation, and would create such a simulation. Thus, we could be in that simulation.

Now of course, all you have to do to send the argument crashing into the ground is accept the first premise. In it, we could never be existing within a simulation because no such simulation could exist. But if you are willing to throw the first premise out, you're really only left to accept the third. I mean, can you honestly tell me that if we could create an artificial world that was in distinguishable from real life, we would refrain from doing so. You've got to be out of your mind. This is where we're headed folks. Simulations, whether for entertainment or study, are a huge industry. We live in a world where people do just because they can. If the technology is there, you can bet your ass we're going to use it.

So if we're all on the same page here. If you believe that we could possibly become advanced enough. If you believe that we would use that technology given the opportunity. Can you honestly then refute the possibility that this could all be a simulation? It's something to think about.

posted by Christopher Schnese

Microsoft Points: A broken marketplace system

Those close to me know that I'm no fan of Microsoft. In fact, Microsoft has done very little that I'm proud of. Often, my hatred of the company is often associated with my love for Apple, Inc and I'm simply accused to being to much of an Apple Fanboy. Now I recently bought an Xbox 360, which I think is proof that if Microsoft can do something right, I'll give them a chance. So far I've been very impressed with the 360 hardware and even the software that operates the device. I was utterly happy until Microsoft Points came into the picture.

For those who aren't owners or 360s or simply don't use the box for anything other than playing the games purchased in a store, Microsoft has implemented something they call the Xbox Live Marketplace. This online store allows users of the service to purchase and download content such as game demos, complete arcade games, television shows, movies, and themes. The problem is that unlike Apple's iTunes Store, Microsoft decided they'd shy away from actual cash transactions and thought it was somehow a good idea to move to a completely obscure points system.

In theory, A points system would be ok if there was an easy way to calculate the dollar amount of a purchase on their site. However this is not the case. Unlike an arcade where a token is equivalent to one quarter, one Microsoft point is equivalent to one and a quarter cents. Let's move on from this though, one can argue that a price by any other name still costs as much. The real problem with the system is in the purchasing.

Microsoft points are only available in increments of 500, 1000, 2000, and 5000 from their website and increments of 1600 and 4000 in retail stores. Here in lies the main problem. After playing the demo for Geometry Wars, I decided I would purchase the full unlocked game, which requires 400 points. So, if I want this game, which is all I want, I have to spend $6.75 to buy 500 points to purchase a 400 point game. If you're bad at math that leaves me with 100 extra points or a wasted $1.25. This is annoying because you can't buy any games for 100 points. I think I could buy tip a tip video for the game I've already beaten, but nothing worth it. Astonishingly, this isn't the worst part.

I finally said screw it and decided to buy the 500 points so I could play my game. I logged in, selected the 500 point package, selected my already confirmed credit card they had on file (you know the one I used to purchase the 3 months of Xbox Live from an hour earlier), and clicked the confirm purchase button. After a moment it gave me back an error. "That's strange" I thought. I wondered if Microsoft was worse than I imagined and forced you to buy the $20 package to start things off, so I click on it. Once again I received an error. Well, I said screw it and just settled for playing more demos all night.

Well the next day, I went out for my lunch break at work. At the register, I attempted to pay with my VISA Check Card. Blamo! Denied. "Do you have another card sir?" the woman behind the counter said. I told her no, she tried it again, and in the end I had to cancel my order. Quite upset and a little embarrassed (to have my card rejected in line at a Del Taco), I walked out to my car pulled out my phone and called my card provider. To make a long story short MY BANK PUT A HOLD ON MY CARD BECAUSE I ATTEMPTED TO MAKE A PURCHASE FROM MICROSOFT'S POINTS SITE.

What the hell? Are you telling me that besides making a stupid, obscure, customer screwing points system for their Xbox Live Marketplace, Microsoft didn't even bother to make sure their service was flagged as a legitimate site by all major banks and credit card providers? What the hell indeed. Oh, and since I cannot add points to my account with my check card without it having a hold placed on it, I had to purchase my points from a retail store which only sold it in the 1600 points for $20 package. Which, again, means buying $15 worth of points I didn't want. Congratulations Microsoft, you've managed to tarnish the one thing that I thought you had done right.

posted by Christopher Schnese

The Automobile: A temporary cure for ADD?

We all have places, things, or activities that inspire us or help breed creativity. We all have something that, when we really need a moment to clear our heads or search for a solution, will allow us that little edge we need to accomplish that goal. For me, oddly enough, that place is behind that wheel of a car. For whatever reason, when I'm driving in a car all the white noise that is usually floating through my head is completely cleared and the creative energies of my brain are allowed to roam free and unhindered. Until recently I simply accepted it and was thankful. I now believe, however, that clarity of mind is actually a side effect of the act of driving on an ADD mind.

For most of my life I actually held the belief that ADD was not only a misdiagnosis, but this grand conspiracy concocted by the pharmaceutical companies to gain a little money. Over time, however, I made a complete about-face and even became convinced that I was actually plagued with it myself. While I've never been diagnosed with ADD, a fact that may have changed had I ever been tested for it, self-analysis of my own thought processes and thinking patters lead me to hold this truth.

A lot of people think that people with ADD simply can't concentrate on any task placed before that. While there is some truth behind it, it's looking at the result and not the problem. What's actually happening is (and forgive me if I butcher this a bit) that their brain is constantly searching for stimulus. When the brain begins a task what provides little or insufficient stimulus, it will move on from that task in search of something more stimulating. This is why an individual appears inattentive. The brain is, in a manner of speaking, bored with whatever it's doing. Now this is treated with various drugs, all of which are themselves stimuli. By chemically stimulating the brain, there is no need for the constant searching and the individual is allowed to concentrate on the tasks set before them.

I believe that driving a car mimics the effects of ADD medications, at least within my brain. When I'm behind the wheel of a care there are two distinct and very present activities operating at all times. First off is obviously the act itself of operating the car; the steering, signaling, and observing the actions of other vehicles on the road. Secondly, I almost never drive my car without my iPod playing. This is more than enough natural stimulus to keep my brain actively engaged.

This, in effect, leaves the creative centers of my brain to work through any thoughts, emotions, or problems that I may be faced with. This may seem counterintuitive to most people, but I will often go on spontaneous two hour drives on days when I'm feeling antsy or days where my brain is filled with particularly noisy "chatter". I know that driving is often aggravating, enraging, and the last thing most people would do to calm down, but it always works like a charm for me. All thanks to my self-diagnosed ADD.

posted by Christopher Schnese

The pains of post-college life

Let's face it, school (no matter what grade level) is always sort of a drag. As I slugged my way through my last semester, I had slaved way too long and way too hard to not be dying to see my career as a student coming to an end. In what seemed like no time at all, it did come to an end. And now I'm totally free. Or at least I should be.

So it's been a little over three months now and I think I'm losing my mind. To be fair, things may have been different had I not dislocated my knee and been land locked to my room for a large chunk of that time, but I think I really am losing it. I wont lie, I've always been somewhat of a hermit, but I've grown a lot over the past few years into a very sociable person. Now that school is out, it's quite obvious what a factor in socializing school had become.

Everyone has their own lives, jobs, families, and relationships that will naturally "take up" most of their time. School, however, was one of those things that all but guaranteed you'd see those friends at least one time a week. It seems like the time just isn't there anymore these days. And believe me I'm not trying to place this on anyone else but life. Hell, with my working 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday, finally sleeping in one my first free day (Saturday), and then going to Church (and all the related activities) Sunday, I don't exactly have time to make myself available to anyone else either.

[Interjection: This, of course, makes it incredibly hard to get back into dating too, but that's another story for another post]

Sure, so I miss school, but you know what the worst part is? I actually, and this is going to hurt me to say this, miss homework. That's right, I said it. I, Christopher Schnese, miss annoying assignments with even more annoying deadlines. Ok, let me digress just a bit. I don't miss all or any home work. I specifically miss assignments geared towards my Visual and Performing Arts major.

Basically, I am a creative mind trapped inside a little box with no outlet. This is the true reason why I'm going mad right now. My brain is flying at a million miles an hour and I just need something to do to keep it busy before it explodes. Back when I was in school, I was forced to utilize my creativity to actually create something. I had a professor to direct me, to give me a starting point, and to hold my feet to the fire. Right now I have nothing.

Today I just limped back and forth from my room to the kitchen holding my little Canon MiniDV Camcorder in my hands, desperately racking my brain for something to shoot and edit. I literally couldn't take it anymore. I desperately need footage, I need to be inside of Final Cut Pro, and I need to edit something. I have a little notebook full of video projects, but all of them need a crew, cast, and a fully flushed out script. I even have three television commercial spoofs that I'd like to do, but I can't shoot them in or around my house, so I'm sort of stuck with those too.

I just need some people who want to work on some projects. Even something simple. I just need something to realize my creative potential before I lost the potential to be creative.

posted by Christopher Schnese

Computers, humans, memory, and experience

Have you ever spent a lot of time on an activity, fallen asleep after holding out as long as you possibly could, and then ended up having a dream about the very activity you were doing? Now in most cases, a dream of this sort isn't very exciting or interesting. And it's not one you'd usually share. Sometimes, however, the seemingly simple dream can be a segue to something so much more. This morning I awoke from just such a dream.

Last night my brother and I went to the movies to see The Bourne Ultimatum. Though we returned home well after midnight, the action and intensity of the movie had me wide awake. Unable to sleep I booted up my computer and began playing World of Warcraft. I played the gave for a few hours and then headed to bed once my eyes began to get heavy. Once asleep, my brain slipped back into the state it had been while I was awake and I began to dream that I was playing World of Warcraft. Only there was one subtle difference.

When I began playing in the dream world, it was using a different account and a different player than my own. I didn't know who's account I was on, who's character is was playing, but it was a dream and I never thought anything of it; I simply played on as if nothing were wrong. When I woke up, rather than having the expected "maybe I should play less if I'm dreaming about it now" thought, I began to surprisingly philosophical thoughts springing from the seemingly inconsequential dream.

I thought less about playing that character and more about being that character. I was very intrigued by the idea of existing in the game, knowing and having an understanding of all the spells and abilities my character had, and yet knowing nothing about the experiences involved in earning those spells and abilities. I thought of it in terms of the differences between memory in human brains and the memory in computer hard disks.

We always grow up with the idea that our brains are like super advanced computers and modern scientists are constantly trying to create smarter and smarter computers that are capable of "human-esque" learning. However, there is a significant and fundamental difference between the way a computer catalogs data and the way our brains catalog memories.

A computer absorbs information without bias, and without care really, for the source and reasoning for the data. The world is simply a series of charts, databases, failures, and successes. When a quadrupedal robot "learns" to walk, it hasn't truly "learned" anything. It was programed with the task of moving forward, began making random movements, and then compiled a database of "movements that accomplish nothing" and a database of "movements that create forward momentum". Furthermore, a computer program like the servers of Wikipedia have endless "knowledge" stored within them, however that data means absolutely nothing to the machine. All the computer knows is how to store 26 characters, 10 numbers, and several symbols. It knows nothing of experience.

The human brain on the other hand, knows only in experience. The data itself comes almost secondary to living through the intake of said data. As humans we tend to learn through our emotions. This is why things that are funny, sad, or interesting are so much easier to remember than things that don't interest us. This is why we do so much better in the school subjects that we like than in the classes that we don't care about or are forced to take. Scientists may one day discover that our brains have cataloged and stored every single piece of data that has entered them, much like a computer, but that will still not change the fact that we will never be able to "remember" that data. That is unless the experience was significant in some way.

That is because data, without experience, is just noise.

(image borrowed from www.changeyourmind.com)

posted by Christopher Schnese