• Posts will be well thought out, fluid and thorough instead of disjointed and messy by spending more time improving my decaying writing skills.
• Posts will be free (to the best of my ability) of grammatical errors. I will still capitalize all articles in titles despite this being incorrect because the rule is too complex, and I can’t be bothered to memorize that.
• Posts will be insightful (cough) and substantial to some extent to prevent the blog from degenerating into another awful activity feed.

In addition, I have culled and will be revising all the old posts posts. The problem is that the authenticity of the moment is lost, but I can’t have incoherent messes like that on this blog, especially when it has its own domain. Some revision of history is necessary.

Windows Live Spaces has not always been the outdated service it is today. When it was originally released back in 2004, it had a competitive feature set. As a cornerstone of Windows Live, Spaces, rather than the activity feed, served as a user’s profile. Now after many years of inattention, Spaces is nonfunctional in comparison to other platforms.

After Windows Live Wave 4 was revealed, even the most dedicated Windows Live users have expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of updates to Spaces. Spaces is plagued with comment and private messaging spam. Rather than integrating a spam filter in the latest round of Wave refreshes, the Windows Live team decided to cut corners and limit the maximum comment length instead, effectively discouraging commenting. They were clearly aware of the PM spam problem, and now users who are not networked with somebody cannot sent that individual a PM. How they failed to see that the obvious alternative tactic of friend request spamming would immediately be employed is amusing. Needless to say, the addition of sorely needed core features such as integrated tagging, readable URLs, anonymous commenting and tracking were not added.

Like many other Windows Live projects, Spaces started off strong until inattention to the product left it uncompetitive. Worst of all is the growing possibility that Windows Live Spaces could be discontinued in the near future. Wave 3 ended Spaces as the profile page of users and Wave 4 eliminated Spaces from the main navigation, suggesting a gradual marginalization of Spaces. In addition, all of the Windows Live teams have stopped blogging on Spaces, opting for WindowsTeamBlog.com instead. A recent post on the Windows Team Blog implied that they do not even see potential in blogging, suggesting that more frequent update style posts are becoming the norm.

I had hoped that Wave 4 would bring solid improvements to Spaces, but instead it has only confirmed my doubts about the service’s future. As a result, I recommend transferring Spaces blogs to WordPress.

If you are looking to export your Space, there is a third party Windows Live Spaces export tool which exports all blog posts and dates into a WordPress compatible XML file. My export and subsequent import into WordPress 3.0 went flawlessly. The only issue is that it does not export post times or comments, so these will need to be transferred manually.

Windows Live Spaces could have been another great Windows Live offering, but now it’s just another service that might be phased out.

Windows Live SkyDrive

Windows Live SkyDrive has added a incremental improvements to the interface such as different views, but it still lacks AJAX features like drag and drop that drastically improve usability. Functions such as file renaming and moving still rely on static pages. When combined with Windows Live Office, it suffers from a confusing navigation logic. When navigating to SkyDrive.Live.com, the breadcrumb navigation shows that SkyDrive is the root, but a click on any of the files it contains changes the file’s root to Office.Live.com. The focus on Photos as a pillar of Windows Live is arbitrary and creates the impression that only photos can be uploaded despite the improved video support. A more logical pillar would be Albums, but eliminating this pillar altogether would be best since it is contained within SkyDrive.

Windows Live Spaces

By the looks of it, Windows Live Spaces is nearing the end of the line. The blogs are plagued with spam and even a basic CAPTCHA remains absent. It lacks countless features that competing blogging platforms have. All the Windows Live Teams have jumped ship from Spaces to their own custom blogging platform.

Windows Live Office

This is the only bright spot in Wave 4, albeit another catch up service. The apps are great, although they are a bit laggy for some reason. Typing results in a noticeable hang before anything appears on the screen when compared to Google Docs, where text appears instantaneously.

Windows Live Profile

Windows Live Profile has added some great privacy improvements, so this was well executed. The new interface is intuitive and easy to use. One feature that was clearly missing was private messaging. Now users cannot private message others unless they are already networked. What’s the point of this if you can just use email? The purpose of private messaging is to make contact while forgoing actual friending. I got the distinct impression that this was a crude attempt to end private messaging spam, but what’s the point? Won’t spammers just begin friend request spamming now?

At best, Windows Live Wave 4 offers features that catch up with the
competition but do little to surpass, resulting in a mediocre product. I’ll be porting my blog to WordPress soon.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Alphaville from 2005.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This device will record all aspects of a moment, as it is recording for virtual reality. It could capture temperature, vibrations, smell, tastes and more to be replayed in a chamber of some sort.

Creativity, vision and determination are the keys to success and progress. Determination may come easily, but creativity and inspiration do not come from willpower, and require constant stimulation with the unique and new to be maintained.

The following are resources that will open the mind by exposing it to unconventional ideas and to prevent one from falling into set patterns of thinking.

Technology

These are for imagining what might be possible in the future.

• Cyberpunk Review
• TransAlchemy
• High T3ch
• hplus Community
• IEEE Spectrum

Design And Art

These are for artistic inspiration.

• Inhabitat
• Josh Spear
• Instructables
• FFFFOUND!
• 99designs
• Page Gardens
• Best Web Gallery

News And Society

These, along with a wide variety of news sources will hopefully promote unbiased interpretation of events, as well as coverage of events not seen in the mainstream media.

• Cryptome
• TED
• WikiLeaks
• Chilling Effects

Reading

These are some tech religious books filled with wild crazy predictions.

• The Age Of Intelligent Machines by Raymond Kurzweil
• The 10% Solution For A Healthy Life by Raymond Kurzweil
• The Age Of Spiritual Machines by Raymond Kurzweil
• Are We Spiritual Machines? by Raymond Kurzweil
• The Singularity Is Near by Raymond Kurzweil
• Transcend: Nine Steps To Living Well Forever by Raymond Kurzweil
• Ending Aging by Aubrey de Grey

I really wouldn’t care about this at all if nobody else used Facebook. Choosing to use Facebook is not akin to buying a car or choosing a browser. If I don’t like Hummers because they get 1 MPG, I don’t have to drive one. I can drive a nice Aptera 2e. If I hate that IE crashes endlessly, I can use Opera. Facebook is inherently different in that it is a social networking tool, and its utility rises with user adoption. When everybody uses the damn thing, one is forced to use it or be relegated to the dark ages.

Even when I clear away the fog of irritation that clouds my thoughts, Facebook never was that great. One dandy day back in the day I was bombarded with three emails inviting me to sign up for Facebook, and I did. There wasn’t much to write home about. You create a profile and are expected to put personal details on it. Then you are expected to talk about things. Something about uploading a bunch of personal photos on a public website that I did not own never struck me as a good idea even with privacy settings. Luckily, I never uploaded anything.

So what’s the game plan to recover the account?

1. Attempt to recover account with the support team.
2. If 1 fails, get irritated.
3. Create a social networking website that will be open source. It’ll be like Facebook with WordPress freedoms. Anybody can host it or have it hosted on this aforementioned concept. What about the detailed privacy settings? I imagine some sort of verification system with a password in a config file should work.
4. If 3 succeeds, laugh as I look at my userbase statistics.

On a separate note, somebody recommended that I create a Dr. Dre Pandora station. This turned out to be a brilliant recommendation, as Li’l Wayne on Pandora yielded the worst rap has to offer.

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Chrome Extensions Worth Installing Eventually

• Chrome Reader
• Chrome Sniffer
• Google Translate
• Proxy Switchy!
• Speed Tracer (by Google)
• Video Downloader
• YouTube Auto Replay

Current Firefox Addons (Asterisks indicate Chrome equivalent availibility)

• Easy YouTube Video Downloader*
• SEOQuake*
• Colorzilla
• Facebook Ads Manager
• FireFTP
• Greasemonkey
• iMacros
• LeechBlock
• Screengrabber
• Web Developer

Building with snow is a mixed blessing. There’s a desire to build something amazing, but doing so completely destroys the pristine landscape which is always more amazing than whatever you build. But with 6 inches this year, I didn’t have to destroy nearly as much while building because there was sufficient accumulation on the roads.

6 inches? Am I in Canada?

Now this I'd like to see every year.

There was enough snow to build an awesome arch. I intended for it to be 6 feet tall, but the structure was unstable so I had to downsize it. The arch has no internal structural supports and is roughly 89 centimeters tall and 70 centimeters to the base of the keystone. It was constructed from compressed snow blocks formed in plastic container. The top of the arch was created from the two segments of a halved snow block, and the curve of the arch was added in afterward. The weight of the arch caused the legs to fracture twice causing the arch to collapse, but eventually the whole thing balanced out and it was pretty cool.

Building the arch.

Still building the arch.

Shaping the arch with an old kitchen knife.

The completed arch. Pretty fun.