Life’s been fairly quiet recently. Started a new web development consulting project, have been bowling regularly, and watching the 2008 Presidential campaign with interest. I’ll probably throw some cat pics into the photo section soon. I’m actually running low on photos to post, since I’m not much of a shutterbug.
I’ve been watching with interest the conflict between Anonymous and the Church of Scientology. Not because I care deeply about either group, mind, but simply because I think we’re seeing something new here, or at least, seeing something fairly new in sharp relief - the rise of the internet-enabled, decentralized pressure group. Flash mobs and online petitions are nothing new, but the size and organization of this one is interesting. The challenge is to see if an essentially anarchic internet movement can sustain itself over the coming weeks and months. Is their passion to defeat a well-funded, well-organized opponent going to be enough to keep them together?
I bet this would make a great sociology project for someone…
Long ago, before the web - so we’re talking ancient history, the 1980s, here - young adults amused themselves by using modems to dial into BBS systems and interact with each other electronically. Most everything was text based, and because of the limitations of the technology, everything was kept small and simple.
There would be message boards, informational text files, program downloads, and BBS games. These BBS games were simple affairs, but they presaged the MUDs of the 90s and the MMORPGS of our current decade. One of my friends, pining for the old days, set up an internet-aware (instead of modem based) BBS a few years back, and a small group of us played around on it for a while.
A few weeks ago, pining for the elder days, I poked my friend Alius and got him to dust off the server and get it running again. It’s once again humming along, and he’s told me I’m free to advertise it far & wide. So, if you’re interested in getting a taste of the (somewhat) elder days of computing, fire up your favorite telnet client and connect to aliusweb.dyndns.org, and have fun! Tell him Woot sent you!
So I’ve put some pictures I took last spring up in the Picture Gallery, so I can stare longingly at flowers and ducks and babbling brooks.