Den of the Cyphered Wolf

Friday, July 30, 2010

To Those Bastards Who Say Punk is Dead A.K.A. The Detroit 2010 Warped Tour Rocked

Well not all of it. Admittedly there was a lot of downtime. But when it was hot it was real hot.
I was late and spent a about the first hour at the Kevin Says Stage. Where I heard American Sixgun's awesome cover of Folsom Prison Blues.
















Then I stuck around for The Banana Convention. To be honest, they aren't my cup of tea, but they were so fun that you can't not at least respect them. Even if they aren't to your taste, you see they enjoy the show and their fans enjoy the so and so well, you enjoy the show.

















So like I said, for the first bit I pretty much stuck to the Kevin Says Stage. Last year it was that stage and Ernie Ball that kicked the most ass, at least to me. By the way Longway's cover of Rebel Yell, last year oh my friggin' God. The last band I really caught there was Kelsey and The Chaos.

















After that I walked around a bit and then heard an awesome drum solo and literally went running the the AP Advent Stage Again the drums were the main thing that drew me there, but the band was okay. I'm not sure who they were though.

















All that said those, drums were friggin' loud and I thought I lost hearing in my right ear so I decided to take a break from the bands and head inside the stadium for a while. While in there I decided to get my bearings and figure out an actual plan. You know, figure out what bands I knew I definitely wanted to see. I decided the next show I wanted to see was Reel Big Fish
















After Reel Big fish I was starting to get disappointed. I heard a lot of good bands, but nothing that was kick ass. So I went back into the stadium. And then I went see Pennywise. Prepare for long personal aside. I loved The Distillers, but they broke up so I'm looking for stuff thats like the Distillers, and come accross Tsunami Bomb, now also broken up. Anyway, Agent M on one of their songs, I can't remember which one, sings the chorus to Fuck Authority, which forevermore made me love Pennywise. They are awesome.






And the circle pit. Jesus Christ.










After the pit I needed a decent sitdown so well I went back to the stadium and it was about this time that the Tigers started practicing.









Anyway I get my second wind and end up checking out Face to Face, and having a really surreal experience because they did a cover of a Pennywise song I had just heard. Loved it all the same.










Again its about this time that I started to get tired so well, you know the drill by now, and it's not like I was alone.




This leads me to the grand finale. Okay other bands were playing but hey they were the guys I came to see. The band that made me like rock music in the first place Sum-41.




Friday, July 23, 2010

5 Obvious phishing scams people fall for

I just got some spam while fishing for some ideas. So, here are my top 5 obvious phishing scams people fall for. I'm not talking you're Nigerian princes here. I talking about stuff people still fall for.

1. Anything from a bank.
Just because it looks like it's from your bank, and has an Internet address like it's from your bank does not mean it's from your bank. Any "urgent" email from you're bank should be followed up with a call to them. The problem is that these days is that, that is such a pain that most people don't call the bank and give up and give up all that info. Suck it up and press the pound key over and over. You'll get to them... eventually.

2. Anything that looks like its from your system admin or ISP. (AOL I am looking at you.)
This is the one that inspired me to do this article. I got an email saying I was nearing my memory limit on my email only to check it and find out I'm only at 20 percent of it. Earlier this year my Mom gave away a lot of her personal info to scammers that looked like they were from AOL. ( Hey, it's just a back up for if and when Comcast acts wonky.)

The Internet is the modern gateway to the world and somebody says, "Houston the net has a problem" and people go all panicky and do a bunch of stupid stuff. Again call these people before giving away info.

3. Any email you get more than once no matter how innocent it may seem.
You're getting that email because somehow you got on somebody's automated list of schmucks. Prove them wrong by not being one.

4. Any and I mean any website that asks for your email address especially ones that only ask for your email address.

Okay, these may not necessarily steal all you're money but they're almost definitely going sell your email address to someone who is going to steal all your money.

5. Nearly two-thirds of all google ads.
Just have the confidence that you are smarter than a 5th grader already.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Laying It All Out

You know what. I am tired of people asking me what I want to do with my life and saying uh I don't know. The truth is I do know but its going to take a butt load of time and money, which I don't have right now so its on hold.But here it is. I would like to make a website that updated niche ( and maybe eventually hard) journalism with what could be called an interactive magazine.

I have a few problems with journalism as it is. A lot of it seems tailored to the last generation. So here is what I would do.

Casualness
I may be wrong but, my general experience is that the current generation primarily dresses up to impress the older generation, but when we talk amongst ourselves we dress far more casually. In doing so on online media it sends a message that those guys are our audience, and creates intimacy with the audience. Lets face it though regardless you are sending a packaged message but in all honestly those guys would be my audience 'cause well,. I am one of them. Beyond that I don't see how wearing a suit creates credibility and it seems to make no sense to me.

Profanity
It also seems to me that culturally my generation has less of a problem with profanity than the previous one. One thing that has always strongly irritated me, better take my own advice, pissed me off is a story that comments on what someone said and does not include what they said just because it was deemed profane. That is a critical peace of information that should not be left out of the story. Just saying somebody said something bad is not enough. The same goes for opinion.
The same goes for quotes in general.Most people I know who have strong opinions tend to use profanity to express said strong opinion.

Personality
This is where it gets weird and journalistic ethics get gray. I want a publication that succeeds because of the personalities of the reporters. Up until now the doctrine in journalism has pretty much been that the reporter should be an objective observer. I do not completely disagree, but its my publication and I want to have fun with it. And ultimately I think that if its evident that the reporters are reporting on what they are knowledgeable, and interested in will result in a more interesting publication, as long as I'm up front about this I see no problem. I always liked the escapist for its letters from the editor. Where each issue of the online magazine has a letter describing the general theme the editor has chosen for the week. By the way the escapist is a online video game magazine. To be honest I like how the escapist does things in general and think that that is where publishing in the 21st century is headed. They have tons of video.

Anyway, I think that we're now in an age were for better or worse people choose their media not just on the information delivered but how it's delivered, and a large part of that deliver comes from the personality of the publication. The problem with all this is that I don't want talking heads.

Here are a few guidelines.

  • The audience is aware that the content of the publications are dramatically driven by it's staff and editor's interests, opinions, and personalities. Like I said I would like to have regular letters, or videos from the editor.
  • As editor, I would have the responsibility of making sure that the reporters, reported on not only what interested them but they were also knowledgeable on so when they had an opinion it could be an informed one, i.e, you do not just make random statements about the story of the day.
  • Ultimately the website may have many different sub areas but it must work together as a whole. This means everyone the team should be able to work with each other when a story calls for it.
  • One reason why this maybe good or bad is that the reporters because of there general interest in the subject matter should want to report more indepthly on it. To put it simply they would know more and care more about the story.
My Generation
A large part of the personality of the paper is that it would talk to my generation. I notice a lot of differences between my generation and older generations. We have different perspectives, values, and interests. I'm tired of reading articles that were probably written by 40 somethings about 20 somethings. Even more of a sub niche is that it would be targeted towards nerds. My view of what nerdiness is defined by an intense enthusiasm and knowledge about a specific topic and because of that nerdiness the website could be incredibly varied but also incredibly in depth, as the staff itself would be comprised mainly of nerds. I also happen to believe that as a result of the internet it is easier to become a nerd and because more and more of my generation are... well nerds. If your interested in something its easier to find a torrent of information about it and develop or dig into a community.


Media
Everybody in journalism already knows this but the days of print and print alone are gone. Sure you still need writers, but writers are not going to be enough. If one of the objectives of a publication is to swing out information in a way it can be processed, the publication has to at least look at all the ways that information can be processed and decide what works best for a story. The thing about the written word is that it allows for more detail, but sometimes at the expense of user understanding. In nutshell if its going to work I am going to need video, audio, animation, and graphics. These things not only help compress information in a way where it might be more understandable, but engages the audience and allows them to more quickly determine what stories would they like more information about so that they can make the choice of whether or not they want to read a more in-depth print article.

The web makes this available. Publications (Let me be clear I consider websites publications) can and should have multiple complementary media forms to help explain a story.

Inter Connectivity
In the olden time days of journalism a print story had a lifetime of one day. After that it was literally yesterday's news. That is not the case today and this is one of the main things I think the news world at large does not yet realize.

Stories are more often then not written and packaged in a way that assumes you know the background. The problem is we live in a world of quarterly hour updates. I may not have read that last story, but that's okay because it still exists...somewhere. There is no excuse in this online world of not making relevant stories available. Sure most pages have a few related articles but what about big stories that develop over months. That is not enough The site I know that does this best is the New York Times. They have topics pages, that collect all relevant New York Times media so that when a story is developing its easier for the reader to follow.

There is no excuse for not knowing when someone lies
To take this further I would like to see news organizations take advantage of the
near instantaneous fact checking potential of the web I would love to see in a debate where the moderator has the authority to call bullshit, or an interview where if someone is distorting the truth the interviewer is connected to a fact checking team that will help them get at the truth and also call well... you know. This could be amazing in video where people would be held more accountable for what they said.

Get to the Dataaaaa!
You could also link to the sources of information, which would be awesome, not just for news but for communication in general.We have the technology were we could set a scroll on the side of a video screen, on your computer, that would point to relevant links and graphics.

Think about it. Obama gives a speech where he says according to some study we need to do this. When he says that at the side of your screen would be a link to that study.

What really pisses me off is that youtube, youtube people the video distribution system of the masses already does this, but most major news websites don't.

User Interactivity
We are at an end of an age. The days are over were people just got their media. They want to talk to the people who make it, have a discussion about how it was made, and maybe a little input on how more of it will be made. You can't just give people an article anymore. If it was good they want to respond and they want to you to respond to their response. And the thing is that this is good. It not only shows that the audience is engaged, but may well keep them engaged. On my website I have to have a system for that. I want to reserve a time of day or the week were the reporters will be able to talk to the readers candidly, maybe even through a video digital town hall.

I would also like a place for user generated content. I would really like for this website not just to be about news but a place for people of my generation to congregate, so if people had videos, fiction,animation, or songs that I felt fit the tone of the site I would pay them and publish them, again like the escapist.




A vid from the escapist.

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