It's a girl's world

I get to explain away my failure to update often with an ostensibly lame excuse: I'm a boy. And it seems to carry truth when you compare the journals of a normal guy versus that of a girl.

I'll share my findings with you and admit that most of the material is in the LiveJournal spectrum. Indeed, if you look at my friends page, you won't find too many updates by men like us, and when they do, they're concise and abbreviated. soanevalcke's journal is a good example aside from mine; his updates are far and few between and the latest post at time of writing suggests that the practice has become boring for him, which is backed up by the statement in writing and the length of time it took to come up with what's called a 'meme' (which I assume to be a diminutive of 'memory', a tool available on LiveJournal that I've never had the patience to experiment with).

Now look at a post by any of the women and compare. Here is a public entry made by the blogger mentioned before:

Walked in the park today. And then, as a bit of side time to burn off, Lucas (my dog, might I remind most of you), Vincent and I decided to jump across the river. Vincent said that I wouldn't make it, and I did. Lucas swam across, eager to get back to me. He got his toes wet.On the second try, I wasn't so lucky. One leg of mine made it across, the other slipped into the smelly creek. My shoe's currently out to dry, and I quickly ran home to wash my right leg. Lucas got drenched all over. D:

Then look at a post that otherwise would have a similar mood, this being by lightningchan:

Right, so skipping over early morning stuff since it's just whining about cramps and no one cares. So. School.

I got there around eight and only read one of the signs on the door, and even then only half of it. XD I thought all the homerooms were posted in front of the caf, so I had to shove my way through a MASSIVE wall of people to try to see, since god forbid the kids go to their frigging classrooms, or move out of the way, or even INTO the caf so that people can see the lists, or even move around in that huge hallway. Anyway, I figured it out a moment later and went to the gym where I figured it would be anyway. XD It was there and I got my room number and headed off.

Dude, I know almost EVERYONE in my homeroom. There are only...5 people I've never seen before? And even then, I think I've seen them, just not had any classes with them. It's insane. o_o Of course, best part is how Dean, Lisa, Mara and Alyssa are all in the class, too. :D Yay. Our lockers are RIGHT there too. Mine's a palindrome and third-closest to our class. XD; I'm not upset about them moving the lockers around now. I have no classes on the side of the school that Physics is at, so it'd just be annoying to still have my locker there. Anyway, we really didn't do very much in Philosophy. Just looked at quotes and then wrote down what we think Philosophy is and what we want to get out of the course. I copied Dean's second answer: "a 90." XDD; Then I drew Axel and Marluxia on his paper. Which evolved into all the Obvilion Orgy members. That was fun.

Next was Discrete with my old Calculus teacher. WHAT FUN. And...it actually wasn't bad. It really is just my Physics class over again with less people. XD; There are only two or three people who weren't in it. The teacher handed out a review sheet that was just a lot of simple trig. The hardest thing we had to do was rearrange the formula for the cosine law to find an angle. The other side was pretty much the same, but with graphing, so we didn't do that. Overall it was pretty good though, and the only question on the front that we didn't know, we actually got a lesson on. o_o; And I understood it after he taught it, too! If he actually teaches like that every single day, I may do well in this course. How exciting. XD;

After this class was English. In a portable. DX I managed to ask someone in my Calculus class where P7 was, though. Didn't have to though, since I was right in assuming the seventh one was one of the newer ones, right out one of the nearest doors. XD So I went there and saw Ann sitting at a group of desks in the corner. I don't know her amazingly well, but we sat next to each other in Grade 10 Science so yeah. I sat with that group. Sharon's there too so at least I know people. We didn't do very much in that class. Just took papers, she explained our CPT and wants us to choose our books by Monday (wtf! so early!) and then we did some brainstorming on the word "fragmentation." XDD We ended up talking about asexual reproduction since, technically, it could be a type of fragmentation. :[ It involves cells splitting apart or whatever.

English teacher let us out early, so I went to the caf and bought food. It was good, and we've all got the same lunch again, so this semester should be fun. :D I've missed having lunch with the whole group, even though not everyone was there today for some reason or another, including a bunch of guidance visits which for Dean's we took the liberty of eating his pizza so it wouldn't get cold. XD

Last but not least as Calculus. Fomg, I zoomed through the worksheet she gave us. :B I didn't finish, but damn I remembered everything. So proud of myself, even if it was just simple things like evaluating functions, expanding, factoring, and finding roots. XD; Ann's in that class too so I sat beside her and Mitch sits in the two-desk row beside us. So yay, I know people. I got 75 last year (or was it 74? I dunno.), but I want higher. Hopefully I'll get a much better mark this time. We're doing review today and tomorrow and then we start the course. :D It's sad that Calculus is probably going to be my favourite class this time around. Philosophy will be fun, but I miss being good at math and having already taken this course, I'll probably be good at it.

Now I'm home. Gonna wait for Bryan to come home so I can open the door for him, considering he's too lazy to take out his key, then go get changed and then...start on my homework, I guess. Two math worksheets to finish up, got to pull together a few binders and organize them for my classes and then...get mom and dad to write out cheques for my textbooks.

Hey, I can use my school:calculus tag again! XD

Blimey. I admit I don't make it a point to detail the school day, given that I'm pretty much restricted as it is as far as classes go and not much goes around socially since the school is so remote. And even if scenes were made every day and the school I attended was in a more urban area, I probably wouldn't find it in me to record it.

The conclusion then comes from my stepmother: It's a matter of them being more vocal. Now you wonder why there are so many books in the library written in the point of view of girls — seventh-grade Bebo users, ninth- and tenth-grade MySpace users and clubbers, all ignominiously leaving out the boys in such roles, except perhaps as hot crushes or concerned relatives. I know that there are some boys out there who probably love to document their outings, and many of them have pictures that generally take the place of words, but when it comes to the Internet, a vision I have been seeing seems to have credit: In the Internet, it's simply a girl's world. It's a world where cute animated backgrounds, pink and black stripes, fluorescent colours, and stars are accepted fixtures. It's also a world where, whenever the aforementioned is absent, animé characters, Photoshop images and icons, and text smilies dominate. And a lot of it can be attributed to the impact women have had on the Internet. And that's being masculinely conservative about it.

So what can be said in conclusion about the men? I really don't know. I believe we should leave it to the women to say that.

Texting

Di-di-dong, goes the chime emitted by AIM on a Sidekick. Someone's replied to what is construed to be an urgent message when it merely adds to the current drama consisting of anger over an unfaithful boyfriend. Sometimes it's a girlfriend. But whatever the case, texting is another feature of cell phones in which the purpose is defeated.

My main concern is the charge incurred by sending a line of text. On TMobile it's probably two cents to send a line of text, but compared to a five- or ten-cent minute, I'd say the vocal minute is more productive. I'll assume that the average person sends and receives four or five lines a minute: Usually in five lines you get about a quarter of the conversation done whilst the conversation is nearly over (about 80 percent) when the vocal minute passes. And it's a separate charge, one that many teens have compromised to pay for separately.

But what is the logic here? I happen to know that LiveJournal and Blogger allow you to blog from your mobile, but when people do, as I've observed from the blogs that link here via the Next Blog function, it's usually to send a picture, not necessarily text, but since it has to be posted as HTML it still counts as a line of text — two cents more. Compare it to taking photos on a digital camera and then uploading them onto your computer at night, when time is plenty. I'd take the latter any day. Plus which, for all cell phones (don't mention the Treo, Sidekick, or Blackberry to me; they're called PDAs no matter how you look at them), the lack of a QWERTY keyboard makes posting and recording difficult for the poster and potential reader; it's designed more for short recording and the usual speak on AIM.

Of course, this applies to the United States. In Europe and Asia (except China, where text messages are censored), texting is as useful as the vocal minute due to less reliance on the car. For the Americans, the fact that texting diverts your eyes off the road is another lack of support. We already have states passing laws against the use of cell phones whilst driving; with new studies coming out, they might push for harsher penalties on those texting whilst driving. In Europe, you're sitting on a train or walking much more than you can drive due to the city's unaccommodating layout, so it's a lot safer and more productive. They have an excuse, at the very least.

Note to self: Don't start this habit if stuck with the GoPhone for Christmas. The smilies have been knocked down and the tilde is starting to crumble away.

Four years on

Surprise, surprise. I actually didn't have any form of Internet contact until I entered ninth grade, when it was required in order for us to send any assignments to the teacher. And it wasn't until January that I actually registered for a web service — in this case, Super Cheats. And when I stumbled across the Internet, I had already observed, and decided not to subscribe to, the type of speaking that used abbreviations, pipes, and such. Now that it's been almost four years that I've been in the net, I've changed a lot — not much in real life, as I'm always the one who chooses to remain behind as far as that goes, but in the sense of communication over the Internet.

My first submission on Super Cheats was a hint about capturing Regirock, Regice, and Registeel as well as how to get to Rayquaza. (It may no longer be in the system since submissions were regularly pruned before the archiving programme that started in November 2004 or so.) The hint was typed out in a meticulous format, although it eventually was broken up by the editors' habits that preceded the new PRO-submitter system, and it reflected much of what my stance of speaking was: formal, abusive of big words, and haughty to a point. And when I pioneered the question-and-answer sections on the site, I pretty much kept the same sort of tone.

Then, PKMN.NET. In May I came across its Spanish extension looking for photos of Mirage Island. In July I found the main site and registered — this was the first forum I ever joined. My first posts were shallowly demonstrative, many of them being experimentation with BBCode and copying and pasting of Pokémon reports I had written earlier in my life. As a result, I was regarded with looks of 'wtf?' all over the board, but then again, I hadn't been on the scene that long and had much more to learn. And when the admins pulled their joke of September by censoring 'Muuma' (there was a massive team called The Muuma Army, led by Rex) and then responding to calls for the censor being lifted by replacing several common words with 'muuma', I became ever more frustrated. It finally boiled over when my name at the time, Vennblomster, was censored. This rage followed me all the way to the formation of TPL.

Then, it was back to Super Cheats. Their forums opened in September 2004, and the members that joined immediately made a joy of it (the rumour had been circulated a few months back). This was just what I needed to get my forum use on track. Over time I developed an understanding of how it worked, helped mostly by tooling the rules from PKMN.NET to provide examples of how I thought the forums should be run (until I found that the configuration of the forums made full application of those rules impossible, and it was eventually discovered that the rules had just been duplicated and modified, so we were left with a meshed list that survives to this day and was geared mainly toward issues that were at hand at the time of writing. Nevertheless, it helped me so much that I was able to experience the joy of being a moderator of a respected website in March of the following year, although the promotions unfortunately coincided with the PKMN.NET fallouts. But I can't forget the smaller forums where I would communicate with people and help run things. One of hese forums was the Crow's Nest, the first forum at which I became an administrator, regardless of the foundation of the forum (a failed roleplay on PKMN.NET). I was very harsh there, as I later would become at Super Cheats upon promotion.

As far as speaking went, I got a lot better. Normally I didn't think about the topic before I replied (and admittedly, I still don't sometimes), and I kept up the formal speech for a while. When I used MSN, I adhered to graphic smilies that are now abhorred where I am. I can probably say that the graphical smilies were something of a change for me — I found it difficult to convey emotions any other way. By the time I had come out of TPL and returned to PKMN.NET, I had lost much of the formality, but it would still be some time before I reduced my speech, became slightly more terse, started using asterisked cues, and then moved on to text smilies at the endorsement of Lily. Each time I would get a reaction of surprise from whoever witnessed it — as you can see, Lily was astounded and Shiny Zapdos was horrified to see me use 'XD'.

So here I am, a moderator at the Pokémon Community, a DCC regular, and an MSN hog. Who knows what'll come next? I have a LiveJournal, which is good, but will I probably migrate to using the tilde instead of the ellipsis? Only time will tell~

...Drat.

Messenger Plus! 4: Part 2

Further to the assertion that the Messenger Plus! add-on for Windows Live Messenger will be released in June, we can expect something great on Saturday.

They did it! Microsoft finally released Windows Live Messenger publicly today. After the longest period of public testing for a MSN Messenger client, Windows Live Messenger (MSN Messenger 8) is going to be a pleasant surprise for old time Messenger users. The interface of this new version has been completely redesigned, it's more simple, cleaner, and yet more powerful than anything else MSN has released so far. You'll have to get used to talk about Windows Live though and not MSN (although I suspect most of us will keep on calling the client "MSN" for a long time).

Because of the new direction taken by Microsoft, Messenger Plus! was also completely redesigned. It took 8 months of full time work but your favorite add-on is now ready to go public as well. The new version of Messenger Plus! (4.00), distributed under the name "Messenger Plus! Live", will be officially released this Saturday, June 24th, at 23:40 GMT. The new web site will also be put online at the same time, and a last post on this site will be made to start the transition period. These are exciting days for anybody interested in Microsoft's Messenger clients and its surrounding communities, make sure you don't miss any associated event!

See you soon at msgpluslive.net :).

So there you have it. When the add-on is finally released, it'll be on a new site, Messenger Plus! Live.

Messenger Plus 4?

The fourth major update to the popular Messenger Plus! add-on has been promised in the wake of more people getting invitations to use Windows Live Messenger, which was previously listed as version 8.0 to the antiquated MSN Messenger programme — four months after I first downloaded the beta, but even back then Patchou had been promising an update to be compatible with the new beta system.

Although Windows Live Messenger presented three new interfaces, shown right in order of update, and included the idea of built-in virus scanning and creation of folders dedicated to file exchanges, it still did not attain anything that Messenger Plus! added to Messenger 7, such as coloured usernames, boss alerts, and condensation of conversation windows into one (although each conversation would still count as one session in the Session layer of the OSI model — just had to say that for Mr Leitz!). Still, I liked it, although I had been checking frantically for news of an update to the Plus! software.

A few days ago, a talk with a PC mod about failing to set her status to Away whilst she was sleeping spurred me to look for an update, and I found this article titled 'Messenger Plus! Live Public Beta?'.

First, notice the question mark at the end of the title :). For those of you who are wondering about Messenger Plus! Live, here are some news. I just came back from a "pre-release vacation", having spent the last 6 months in my office with Visual Studio, I have to say this break really helped me to clear my mind and have a fresh look on the software. Microsoft doesn't seem to be willing to release Windows Live Messenger anytime soon and as more and more people are now using the public beta of the new Messenger, I get more and more feedback about "when Plus! will be compatible with Messenger 8?!?". Simply put, the answer is: soon. One of the latest internal beta versions of Plus! was leaked, some of you are already enjoying it (you shouldn't :p) and from what I've heard, I think the software is now ready for public distribution. It's still missing some bits and pieces but I can't hold the release forever.

So, here's the current situation: whether Microsoft releases Windows Live Messenger or not, you can expect Messenger Plus! Live to be available publicly within the next 30 days. It will keep a "beta" label as long as Messenger is not final but you can still expect a pretty reliable product. The internal beta testers have done a fantastic job squashing bugs, giving their suggestions, and the software is now almost feature complete. We are still working on the new web site so I guess it will be released as "beta" along with the software.

With all the preparation, an important event almost got forgotten: the 5th anniversary of Messenger Plus!. I'd say 5 years is not bad for a software that was originally meant to last no more than 6 months :). Thank you all for still referring the add-on to your friends and colleagues, Messenger Plus! wouldn't exist without this kind of support. You may like to know that since its creation, the software has been downloaded/installed more than 150,000,000 times, with the current rate being 190,000 installs a day! It's nice to see the evolution of the statistics (I've kept them from the beginning), they almost never stopped progressing since "The MSN Messenger Plus! Extension" was first released on the 19th day of May 2001. At that time, almost nobody cared about MSN Messenger, dedicated web sites were just starting to appear (mess.be was probably the first serious one) and the add-on scene was simply inexistent. What started as a side project to pass time is now a worldwide Messenger add-on used by millions of people everyday; I'm very proud of it but I'm still wondering how it came to what it is today, especially when I look back at the code of the first version (brrrr, gives me chills to think anybody would want to install that on their computer).

Soon, the fourth major update of Messenger Plus! will be distributed to all of you under the new name "Messenger Plus! Live" and I hope it will keep on serving some purposes for the year(s?) to come. I don't know when or how this adventure will end but there's one thing I'm sure of: it's been a hell of a ride and it was worth all the problems and sleepless nights that came (and will come) along the way.

So what can we expect? A month is an attractive amount of waiting time, but the number of things Patchou may want to add in addition to what's offered for MSN Messenger probably will outweigh the promised amount of time. But it's good to dream, yes?

The Family

A few days ago I had to stand witness to a moderator of the Pokémon Community being rather upset that her pair had pulled out, and after testing to see if she wanted to pair once more, it turned out that she was holding off on it on a permanent basis. There are also another moderator and a petty administrator that have decided to treat their pair declaration as a bona-fide relationship and, judging by records of events in which they actually met, are seemingly on the road to bliss with things headed in their current direction. However, there are also people that have claimed actors, singers, animé characters, and Pokémon as 'bishies', or virtual dates, on Serebii.net; there is a member on the forum named Yori Ryu that even creates vector-image dolls that are popular as medallions of bishie claims.

Going beyond relationships, I have recently been pulled into a 'family' headed by Egyptian Sphinx of the Pokémon Community. The objective of a 'family' is to group together people that have considered themselves to be in very close ties and wish to identlfy themselves under the guise of nuclear families on the Pokémon Community. One other family designates the young petty admin Kylie-chan as a grandmother, a sign that age is disregarded. And often some people will create 'evil twins' to designate people that think parallel to them.

Oddly enough, it reminds me a lot of the MySpace dilemma. This is for everyone reading that still has a profile there: Go back through your friend lists and try to identify each and every one as best you can. The site mimics a youth summit, so not many will readily make information available, which means that you will not get the full benefit from having a true friend. In fact, a detective went* under the guise of a college student named Matt and 'befriended' three girls from Middletown, Connecticut, USA — and later leaked their profile habits to their parents. (One of the girls had previously been ordered to destroy her profile.) After that, the owner of the profile himself encountered the three girls in the Dateline interview.

The interview tells you what can happen if you don't play your cards with online contacts right. Fortunately, PC families are based on sound judgement of the members involved, which is why many of the families happen to comprise staff members. Because of this, 'families' and 'pairing' are rendered marginally safer than friend lists, yet the very natures are so similar that they need similar judgement in consideration. Pairing and bishies don't afford you anything more than status. Why do I see, then, people declaring marriage on the forum? There is no bonder or rabbi. And what are pairs? People that have a relationship, emulating the dating scene at school. It rarely works out; aside from the mod and petty admin aforementioned, Articuno and Lugia have defeated this rule. And some have, of course, been taken so seriously that we hape people weeping when a pairing is annulled. And some are wise enough to debate this.

Both are inherently outlets for predators, although the latter pronounces it significantly more and constitutes cliques. So if you still have the urge to be part of the group on the Pokémon Community, just form a 'family' and, if possible, review anyone inducted carefully.

* Requires Internet Explorer 6.

Communication defects

When I placed a rant and an advisory aginst MySpace, I expected more than the people that I see online to heed the warnings. Unfortunately, some have disregarded them and continue to do so. And in most of the fashions they resort, as many people in the chat room, on the mobile phone, or the instant messaging programme do, to using a language that many people like myself can't get the gist of at a glance.

A sign positively prohibits the use of the language of texters — here called '1337', or 'Leet' — within public buildings.

Texting using abbreviations has become very nostalgic for the Internet and mobile phone community. It seems ideal for people that are communicating under a time constraint or just want to disregard what the English instructor taught them for a while. Some studies condone this as a way to better communicate with others. However, I see the use of such abbreviations and slanguage as purely unessential.

Then there come those that don't use abbreviations, but use a dialect of 'txtspk' called 'Leet'. This term generally refers to any shorthand text, but more specifically so to the use of punctuation or dingbats as letter strokes. For example, |\|() /-\|_|7()5|9/-\|°|-|5 translates to 'NO AUTOGRAPHS'. The symbols used to represent letters may vary (one could use | and 1 to represent an 'I'). At any rate, however, not only is it time-consuming and used only as a display gimmick, it's also extrememly illegible from a glance. How our brains developed, we were made to interpret a | as a rod, not an 'l', 'i', or '1'.

I am very grateful, however, that people are not using this posting method when they write on their blogs. Some may include a 'pwning j00' just for rhetoric, but generally I'm glad that the use of some blogs such as Drudge Report have refrained from abusing such a system (mainly becuase many blogs are starting to assume political identities). The same cannot be said, however, for the majority of Xanga, MySpace, or Hi5 titbits that barely pass as 'blogs'. Below is a sample from a person in my Hi5 friend network:

Well it's sumemr hols..and ive never been so [expletive] bored in my life, sitting round pointlessly it is soo terrible. I think ive been on this site every 10 mins. Just to show how i have NETHIN to do.
Anyways, being depressed with fiji my baby, about how [expletive] this all issss....but we r gonna go visit Harry's hamster now yes!
Peace out, i'm gonna go swim xx

Fortunately, that is minimal use for a profile titbit.

So I should within two days rest assured that those that have the time to glance through my blog are, for once, going to take this into consideration and pass it along for others to adhere to. To me, even the 'Leet' sample I gave looks foreign to me. How we work, only the most dire computer fanatics can interpret those lines from a glance. In fact, I don't think anyone can....

Where's that Patchou?

Because Messenger 8.0 Beta is out for Hotmail users that have signed up to be invited (however oxymoronic it sounds), and it seems that Messenger Plus isn't compatible with that version. Ah, well, while we wait for Patchou to come up with an update, I might as well go into detail about what Messenger Beta is.

To me the only drastic improvement over Version 7.5 was implementing Yahoo Messenger's computer calling feature (and it also is free). However, the style in which it was made is apparently an attempt at a futuristic interface, but now the only areas in which you can change the colour in the conversation window are the writing tabs, header, and Send button. The new activity icon omits the clock and no-entry symbols that indicate whether a contact is away or busy and instead is coloured light green. A deep green indicates a person that's online and active, and silver indicates that the contact is either online or has blocked you. Blocked icons are just small sprites.

Still, if you wish to sign up for Messenger 8.0 Beta and have a Hotmail account, you can do so here.