The Column

Motto: The Desolation of Smug This post is going to come across as snooty, maybe, but I don't care. I asked myself a question earlier today: "What are the things that you do that you're really happy about?" which quickly transitioned into "What are things you do that you think everyone should be doing?" Here are my answers. Establish a System for Passwords I used KeePass for around a year, but have recently switched to LastPass (100% for convenience's sake). Both services work great and there are many others you could choose. I have all my accounts, passwords, and important reference information in one, easy to reference place. Why you should: I've written about this extensively in the past , so I'm not going to rehash everything. We all know our passwords should be "passsword1" and we all know that we should reuse passwords between services. Using GOOD and UNIQUE passwords on EVERY service is flat out impossible without some...

Motto: Vegas is Paying Out Big Money to Some to Some Lucky Betters This weekend I built a computer. Let me answer some anticipated questions: Q: Why did you need a new computer? A: This is a great question. The best, most truthful answer I can give is that I didn't need a new computer... yet. My Linux-running laptop does achieve the bare minimum functionality I needed it to. It was, however, incapable of many things - and the things it was capable of doing almost always had an asterisks next to them. It was capable of browsing the internet.* It was capable of editing video.** It was capable of watching video.*** It was capable of playing games.**** It was capable of transcoding video.***** *except for sites using flash, quicktime, or silverlight - or some other sites that would just sometimes not work without explanation. **with a video editor I never "liked" only tolerated, with many limitations. ***so long as that video was 24 or 30 frames per second with a low...

Motto: Liberty and Monarchy, that's my Free King Motto Because I sorta work in the industry, I feel the need to say the following contains information sourced only from public news and my opinions garnered from public news. My job does not afford me overwhelming insight on the future of consumer-facing television landscape. This will all be wild speculation using made up numbers to illustrate a point I would like you, the reader, to consider your stance on. The economics of television work out like this: Millions of customers subscribe to a basic cable package that gives them 100 channels for $50/month. Let's say that consumer XYZ watches somewhere around 10 of those channels in any given month. So, that she is wasting 85-90% of the money she's paying, right? Couldn't she just choose to pay for only the channels she watches and save ~$45/month? Ms. XYZ is saving $45! Huzzah! Wrong. Wrong for the simple fact that channels are not equally "valuable...

Motto: Coincidental Minds Think Alike If it's been a week since my last update, you can bet one of a few things is probably happening: I'm really busy at work or at home I'm on some sort of sabbatical I have several half-Columns written I'm obsessively thinking about something else In this case, both 3 and 4 are true. I've written half Columns about the following topics: 2014 in Pictures Microsoft's Great Streak of Terrible Design Decisions A Post I Had Titled "#Deep" Steroids in Competition A Post about My Desire for a "Refresh" This post is a variant of the "Refresh" post.  There's been something on my mind for the past couple of weeks. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on, I couldn't explain. Refresh. Renew. Something should change. I didn't know what. I wasn't "unhappy" by any means, I just felt (careful, here comes a new-agey made up word) under-actualized. I f...