On Facebook

"Being added as a friend has always meant very little. Being deleted however seems to mean a lot - why would you delete someone from your facebook unless you truly disliked them? We seem to have come to the conclusion that adding someone is such a casual and disinterested action that to delete someone must suggest some kind of abnormal dislike." - CC

This post is in response to a recent blog post by CC. In it, she speaks of Facebook within the context of the internet deadening our connectedness with the real world, be it socially with other people, or in a more physical sense wanting to explore the world outside and experience real things. It is a thoughtful post, and you should read it - it'll put this post into somewhat better context.

In order to contextualise my own viewpoint on this matter, though, I will start with something of a personal anecdote. 

The internet was not a friendly place in high school. I had started a blog and participated in a forum here or there because, for the same reason I started this blog, it seemed like harmless fun. What I didn't count on, though, was two things: one - how brutal people (particularly teenagers) can criticise each other out of either spite or their own need to feel superior or dominant in some way; and two - how tender I was to this kind of criticism, being a teenager myself. 

I was hurt, more than I should have been, and I retracted myself from the interwebs. For a very long time I refused to put any of my personal input into the internet.

My addendum to CC's thesis on the effects of connectivity is that both benefits and detriments of this phenomenon are strongly affected by the way in which we, the user, choose to receive them. This is not to say, though, that the responsibility of all the rage and emotive content that is inspired the internet lies solely on the reader. 'Social Enabling' tools and particularly Facebook have evolved to a point where we are being unintentionally drawn toward certain things in ways which we can't resist because of how subtle they are. 

Inevitably, the more 'user friendly' or 'easy' posting your thoughts on the internet become, the more what you do and read is manipulated by social trends. The solution to handling this is to maintain an awareness of what is going on and then by your own judgement choose how to receive information. I hope that this blog post will raise that awareness, if only by a little.

Over time, the successive developments of Usenet, Blogs, Micro-Blogs and finally Facebook have each successively been touted as the downfall of thoughtfulness in print. 

Usenet and the start of the internet were (admittedly very mildly) seen as opportunity for uncensored, unedited and unthoughtful content to be published. This occurred to the ire of those who believed in the robustness of hard print. The ease with which Usenet allowed for people to 'post' their thoughts into a widely proliferated medium lacked the editorial processes that hard print used to filter out the crap. The logic was that the hard work you put into trying to get something printed in a book or in a newspaper meant that not only was your work reviewed (and therefore worthy of being distributed), but that you earned it. No wonder then, that people in the early 80s would view this as a sad descent into anarchy with the masses being given an accessible tool to proliferate their unfettered thoughts and opinions.

The rebuttal to this argument, however, is a phrase (that may or may not be stolen) that I often utter to my friends in this situations: "there have been long haired youths since the beginning of time". The point being that however debaucherous higher ups view whatever is happening now in society, once upon a time they were in that situation with their progenitors, and in about 10 years time something will come along that will make this all seem civilized in comparison anyway.

For the most part this has rung true as 'opinion proliferating' has become easier and easier with the invention of more enabling media. Once Blogging became a thing, blogs then became the target of this level of criticism. Where Usenet, forums and website-making required some foreknowledge of how and where to write things down, Blogging meant that any person with a web browser could write basically anything.  Then, micro-blogging in the form of Twitter made this even easier - 'thoughtful' sentences with a click of a button and hundreds, even thousands of followers instantly read and digest. 

Twitter - short and apparently significant ramblings

But so far, this is (relatively) okay. Control for us users remains clear because we can identify what content is genuinely intellectual and what isn't particularly thoughtful. It's still relatively clear on what level we can choose to react to these things by judging their form or theme. This selectivity, however, has become infinitely less clear with the union of social networking and micro-blogging that is Facebook. 

Facebook is a complex beast. The concept of 'social networking' by itself was a complicated enough process without the internet stepping in and shoving in our faces things that we might not otherwise see. As CC points out, most of the content is made up of in-jokes that can fly over our heads, the 'friend-defriend' dynamic becomes randomly complex and we become depressed when our witty remarks don't garner attention from our supposed 'friends'.

The shiny 'f' that makes Facebooking so easy

A particularly interesting point comes from the fact that a lot of these Facebook emotional by-products come as a result of what Zuckerberg and others in the Facebook think-tank are doing to prevent it. Although much of Facebook's success can be attributed to the nature of the user interface and (supposed) accessibility much of the website's sticking power comes from the metric that governs what gets put into the top of your 'feed'. The website has evolved to the point where it employs complex but rather effective algorithms that essentially deem what has happened in your 'social network' that should be most important to you.

Facebook distinguishes between what is a 'top story', and everything else

The critical mistake with this is that in order to invoke an 'effective' algorithm, you need to generalise the emotional response of very individual human beings. The result? For a lot of users, fun, meeting people and starting conversation - as the website makers intended. But for others (who make up a significant portion of Facebook) alienation, sadness and ennui for a number of different reasons. As sophisticated as the Facebook programming can be, it will not be able to predict exactly what will make us feel better in moments of non-typical emotion. And sometimes it can step badly wrong.

I am not arguing that Facebook will be 'the downfall of this generation' as some older stuffier schoolteachers (who are now on Facebook) have preached to me in the past. At the end of the day I have gotten a great deal out of Facebook - some of my greatest friendships were initiated by 'friending' them after meeting them casually (an exercise without which I possibly would not have continued further contact). I was connected to my ex-girlfriend via a mutual acquaintance through Facebook - what turned out to be a happy and long relationship.

So how are we to treat Facebook then? We treat it like how we have treated micro-blogging, blogging, the internet, newsprint and television - with necessary and selective detachment. As self-serving as it may seem, I emotionally connect with Facebook when it makes me happy, but as soon as something that provokes an unsavoury emotion from me crops up, I remind myself that it's 'just Facebook'. It's harmless to use these things to amuse ourselves day to day, but we should leave serious discussion and the confrontation of our own emotions to more severe forms of communication.

Those who are happiest using something like Facebook will by and large have healthy lives off the internet and with real people. At the end of the day Facebook should be treated like any other media which is slightly mindless - as harmless entertainment. Nothing more.

Take Facebook with a grain of salt.

Captain America is a Walking Bullseye

"Now get your ass up here. We've got just enough time for me to spray-paint the bullseye on your back. Ah, by bullseye I of course mean, uh,  camouflage..."

- Sarge, Red Vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles

I was mostly quite impressed with how Joe Johnston's 2011 film adaptation of Captain America initially handled how monumentally silly Captain America's costume looks (even by comic-book standards). Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America, is initially recruited by a United States Senator eager to increase the revenue going into fighting World War II and is used as a predictably very cheesy poster boy for the war effort. Essentially, he becomes a mascot for war-bonds

Against the backdrop of gaudy vaudeville dancers singing about the war-effort and capturing the heart of a more impressionable 1940s America, it makes sense then that Captain America would wear the long-johns version of the American flag, don a cap with a giant 'A' on the forehead and carry a shield that's begging to be punched because of how stupid it looks. It's not meant to be functional or even cool - it's meant to be a tongue-in-cheek homage to the original Captain America costume, satirising how silly it all looked.

Then they unveiled his battle costume. And the whole point of the satire kind of went out the window.

Captain America - Joke Costume and Actual. Spot the difference.

In general, superhero costumes are meant to be, well, a bit silly. But I am on the side of fanboys, comic-book readers and cartoon followers when I say that they do (for the most part, at least) have a point beyond the obvious 'look at me' factor. They can be infinitely functional and serve as good identifiers for a brand, much like for the Police or any Emergency Services. And in most of the cases where costumes are showy and gaudy, that showiness and gaudiness has a point.

To illustrate this, I'll take a look at the hero who's appearance is easiest to justify - Batman. Though it started off as being a costume mostly for the sake of being a costume, the Batsuit has evolved over the years into something which has two distinct and very necessary motivations: the armour, and the symbol.

Batman over the years - from silly to functional

Batman's armour plays a major role in Batman's overall abilities. Depending on which versions you happen to come across,  the Batsuit is made from materials that range from specialised and hardened rubber, to armoured kevlar plating. The point of this, of course, is quite simple - to take bullets, punches and hard falls. The amount of acrobatics and sheer violence involved in Batman's day to day activities would necessitate a hard outer shell. Street thugs and your average bank robber wouldn't really stand a chance punching into abs lined with hard metal.

Secondly, the symbol and appearance. Off the bat, its fairly obvious that the colour scheme that Bruce Wayne has chosen is good camouflage for night-based shenanigans in a Gothic inspired city. But beyond that (and a point which works such as Year One and Batman Begins go into a fair amount of detail) is that the Bat and the Bat-crest are a symbol. This symbol is meant to inject fear into the heart of criminals and, to a lesser extent, hope into those who would uphold justice. The prevalence and recognition of this symbol would mean that Batman doesn't have to beat up criminals in order to stop the crime. Criminals don't commit crimes because of the mere threat of being beaten to within an inch of their life by a borderline psychotic.

And besides that, it actually looks pretty damn cool.

Either if not both of these two points hold true for most other superheros. The Green Lantern wears an identifying uniform just like any other law enforcer (domestic or inter-planetary). The acrobatic feats performed by Wonder Woman, the X-Men, Spiderman and the Flash would mean that they need leotard-like tights to allow for certain degrees of freedom in movement. Superman wears a red cape and a giant 'S' on his chest to inspire hope, selflessness and goodwill in others.

Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Cyclops and Spiderman

So what's my gripe with Captain America? Two things.

First is the setting of his story and his acts. Admittedly the World War II setting is something that is particular to the movie and a select number of comic books. Here is a man who is supposedly a super-soldier, participating in convert ops and special tactical missions in order to undo the Nazis. With all of this in mind, you can't help but realise that, especially for someone who specifically is not invulnerable, his costume screams 'Bullseye'. His shield is circular and has very colourful concentric rings to let a lookout know that he's coming from a kilometre away. There's a massive bright white star on his chest to guide a marksman to his vital organs. And you get bonus points if you manage to sock him where the 'A' is on his forehead.

The second point is that it's all just too...American. As much as Superman has been pushed over the years to eschew particularly American values ("Truth, Justice and the American Way"), his appearance and presentation have always maintained a level of flexibility such that he can represent these values from a universal perspective. His 'S', Spiderman's webbing and even the stars on Wonder Woman's undergarments can be removed from the 'American' framework if the writer sees fit to have them represent greater values. Captain America is too closely tethered to the stars and stripes all over his body and his name for that ever to happen.

Maybe, since most of the superhero movie-watching, comic-book-reading public come from America, this doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. That's fine. As long as he stays bright and stupid enough for anyone gifted with human sight to pick him off for a distance, the rest of the world will be ok.

Target Practice

Perhaps I am being a bit harsh. The movie does do a good job of trying to circumvent these issues. Steve Rogers isn't fighting so that America is king, he's fighting because he 'hates bullies' - a simple but very noble sentiment. And the dulling of the colours, the removal of most of the red and white stripes and the amalgam of the traditional Captain America tights with a sturdy flak jacket and heavy pants make it all work within the context of a fun action movie... to an extent.

It just seems a little sad that Captain America is too mired his original 1940s identity and appearance for these problems to be overcome.

There Will be Wood

Up until recently I only thought of Jonny Greenwood as 'that awesome guitarist from Radiohead'. Consequently I chiefly associated him with bizarre, dissonant but very awesome guitar riffs and tones. When I had heard that he had composed the score to the film adaptation of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, I thought that it would be similar to the prevalence of Radiohead's music in Linklater's A Scanner Darkly (ethereal, esoteric sort of electronica).

Imagine my surprise, then, when I watched a movie with some of the most jarring and emotionally wrought classically-based string compositions I have ever heard.

For those who are acquainted with Haruki Murakami's novel and the works of Radiohead, it actually isn't overly surprising from a thematic point of view. Norwegian Wood deals with a young and profound tragedy that pervades the existence of the novel's protagonist, Watanabe Toru. The subsequent sense of (almost) hopeless depression and discord in Watanabe's life is not an uncommon theme in Radiohead's music.

Hence, it's not entirely unexpected that Jonny Greenwood should compose a score to reflect the same set of emotions.  Sure, his compositions are strongly string based, but it's not such a stretch, given previous demonstration of his musical finesse in Radiohead, that he would be capable of composing pieces for a string orchestra. Not to say that the music was by any means simple - it was powerfully moving. Without it, scenes in Anh Hung's faithful film adaptation would be lacking in a lot of emotional power.

The real shock came when I sat down with a friend and watched Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film, There Will Be Blood. The film portrays the rise of a successful Oil Baron (played by Daniel Day Lewis) and his descent into madness as he lusts after money and power.

The key to understanding this character and the movie, though, especially within the early scenes of this film, is Jonny Greenwood's score.

The beginning scenes of this film could rather be innocently confused with 'just' another film portraying the somewhat repulsive nature of big corporations. The dissonant and darkly foreboding nature of Greenwood's score, however, do an amazingly effective job of conveying how deeply disturbed the events unfolding in the film are.

Greenwood's composition is, in a word, wrong. The broken rhythms, the string sections not agreeing with each other, the dissonance and sparseness of the music - they all alert you to the fact that something is very very wrong. Daniel Day Lewis's character is so good at acting like he's honest that without the music, you would believe that he was a good man. Such is the power of the score, however, that you can't shake the feeling that something deeply, deeply wrong is happening.

This sense of dissonance pervades the entire film and eventually builds to the point where what is happening on screen finally fulfills the promise put forward by Greenwood's haunting score. The effect is powerfully disturbing.

The music in this movie is beautiful, moving and complex. Most of all, it comes from a completely different direction to  Radiohead's Punk-Rock based roots.

There Will Be Blood went on to be nominated for eight Academy Awards. Best Original Score was not one of them.

The reason cited for Greenwood's disqualification was that his work for There Will Be Blood did not contain a large enough ratio of music developed specifically for the film to music taken from elsewhere. This was in no small part due to Greenwood adopting many of the themes from his score directly from a previous string composition of his, Popcorn Superhet Reciever - a piece he composed whilst the BBC Concert Orchestra's 'composer-in-residence'

When Thom Yorke did work independent of Radiohead, he made The Eraser, a mainly electronic album that reflected a lot of where Radiohead were going anyway. When Jonny Greenwood went solo, he became the BBC Concert Orchestra's 'Composer-in-residence', composed three piano and symphony based pieces and wrote the score to two of the best movies I've seen in recent years.

I was shocked by how different this music was from what I expected when I thought 'Jonny Greenwood' and I am in awe of precisely how much of a talented musician this man must be.

The world needs more creative forces like this one.

And yes, I am well aware that the title of this post sounds somewhat like the title to a porno.

Smackdown

In response to C C's considerably more thoughtful post...

See you, Space Cowboy

By conventional reasoning and modern logic, Cowboy Bebop is something that shouldn't work. It's a contradiction in terms - a sci-fi, film-noir inspired anime with a soundtrack dominated by Jazz, Beat music, the Blues and not an insignificant amount of crooning. But it does work, and it's beautiful. And it is quite possibly one of my favourite things in the universe.

I have intersected with Shinichro Watanabe's Cowboy Bebop three times in my life.

The first time I was quite young and honestly just enjoyed a cartoon set in space and in the future (I wanted to be an astrophysicist). It was on television at random times and if I came across it I would watch it. I didn't have the presence of mind to schedule it into my day (which involved large amounts of play-dough).

The second time, I was in high school. Some of the "Remixes" (remaster volumes) were sitting on the DVD shelf of the library, and seeing it there reminded me that it was a show that I liked as a little'un. I watched whatever I could find, and I was hooked. I couldn't explain why - I just did. I liked the stories, the details, the character quirks. I liked Spike - he was a fun guy. After I went through the library's two volumes (totalling 8 episodes), I tried to find the others. But they were rare in the life I was living at the time. So I let it be and continued on doing other teenagery things.

The third time was rather fortuitous (or not depending on how poetically you choose to view life). I was a rather bored (and somewhat hermit-like) uni student on holidays with nothing to watch on TV. I remembered that Cowboy Bebop was something I enjoyed and figured it couldn't be a bad way to pass the time. This time I did it properly - I 'acquired' the entire series and sat down and started watching from episode one.

Jet, Spike, Faye, Ed and Ein

The premise of Cowboy Bebop is quite simple - Spike, a layabout with a shady past, and Jet, an ex-cop, have teamed up on the good-ship Bebop in the year 2071. Bounty hunting is in vogue and the duo go about trying to earn a meager existence by catching as many wanted thugs as possible. A set of rather entertaining circumstances mean that they come across a femme fatale who only thinks her name is Faye, and a dog who's technological genius is rivaled only by a young, androgynous girl called Ed.

It's possible make an entire blog full of entries on the different aspects of what makes this anime so good. The stories, the richness of the characters, the animation, the sensational music and even the framing of the shots in this series not only stand by themselves as exemplars in anime but come together and just fit in beautiful and poetic way.

The first thing that literally smacks you in the face is music of this series.

Veteran Anime composer Yoko Kanno put together her now well respected big band, "The Seatbelts" in order to first perform the soundtrack that would score this anime. It's opening theme ('Tank!', in the youtube clip above) sets the scene for how much of a bizzarely entertaining ride this anime would be. Its loud, over the top and a surprisingly complex big band piece that excites you and makes you think of those old 1970s cop shows - but with more energy and more power.

And this is the essential underlying theme of the music. Unlike a lot of the scores of modern television shows (don't get me started on Smallville), the soundtrack subtly and unobtrusively suggests a feel and set of emotions to you. Where else would you find a high speed and emotionally charged hovercraft chase happen to the sound of a gentle and rambling piano ballad? And who else would only use the sparse tinkering of a music box in the most heartbreaking scene of the entire series? It's beautiful not only because it's good music, but because its used in such an artistic and considerate way.

This subtlety is mirrored by the film-noir inspired characterisation of Spike, Jet, Faye and Ed. Where a lot of modern story telling in popular media is akin to being smacked in the face with a large "narrative" hammer, Bebop holds back on telling you exactly what's going on. Of course, the events in a particular episode unfold in a straightforward manner like good storytelling does, but the characters themselves, their stories and what motivates them is shown to you, not told.

Spike's hurt over his old flame is only talked about as much as he would like to

The effect of this is two fold and almost contradictory. You grow intrigued by the mystery of the characters (as any good film-noir would do), and yet you grow closer to these characters because you're forced to feel what they feel instead of being told what they feel. Spike, Jet, Faye and Ed initially all seem like personality types put together for sit-com-esque fun. But even at the beginning you sense that there is something more underneath the surface - that the characters are much more three dimensional than they're initially presented. And this is all because of good writing, voice acting and animation.

The end result of this is a rather emotionally charged-yet-understated final set of episodes. As the tragedies of each of the characters is revealed to each other and to us, you start to feel the sense of loneliness that those itinerant wanderers must have to carry all the time. The sense of loss and pain that have driven these 4 people to be so emotionally closed becomes more and more prevalent. And you can't help but be fascinated by the way they have ended up growing so attached to each other.

In a lot of ways I'm still in the middle of my third encounter with Cowboy Bebop. It has now been 2 years since that bored stretch of holidays, and I still listen to the soundtrack late into the night, still think about Spike and Julia and I will immediately suggest it whenever anyone who is remotely cartoon inclined tells me they're bored. It's only 25 episodes - a relatively small fraction of your life.

Watch it. It's good. I liked it.

Operating Systems: haters gotta hate

The first time I showed my MacApple obsessed friend the fresh install of Windows 7 on my computer, he may have fallen over when he saw how much the new taskbar looked like the iconic Mac OS dock.

Compare the Pair

At the time I was a fierce Mac objector - even in the face of what a steaming pile of fail Windows Vista was. In fact, the whole issue that I personally had with Vista was that it seemed like, somewhere along the way, Windows tried too hard to be Mac OS X and had ended up being like something akin to a Vegas Cher lookalike. It was inefficient, frustrating, and in a word my colleague coined specifically for these situations, "terribad".

Three years and several OS-related programming experiences later, what I slowly came to realise is that, after all, Macs aren't an evil hipster plague upon the technological universe - they're actually pretty damn impressive pieces of engineering. It just so happens that their intended use doesn't intersect with mine.

What I wanted to do in this post is have a stab at trying to pin down the mechanics of the standoff between Mac users and Windows fanboys and try to bridge the gap between them.

The main criticism that anti-mac users will have for Mac OS is how inflexible it is. Everything about the Macbook, from the Touchpad to the way 'Finder' looks almost exactly like iTunes seem like they dictate exactly how you're going to experience your shiny new machine.

That doesn't strike me as being a necessarily bad thing.

In the same way that good level design in a game intuitively and unobtrusively leads a player to the next waypoint or objective, the Mac interface is designed to tell the user how they're supposed to get onto the internet, or play songs, or make home movies, or a host of other things that, lets face it, 70 percent of the population wealthy enough to afford a computer will ever do.

The Macbook Touchpad - By far the best Touchpad in the market today

Apple knows this. And when Microsoft ported over Microsoft Office to the Mac OS, there's little denying the enabling power that a Macbook can bring to someone who wouldn't otherwise care about computer resource management or hardcore software development interfaces.


It's little wonder, then, that Windows tried so hard to tap into that intuitive interface market. Once upon a time, the set of killer apps for Windows were business, word processing and application compatibility - none of which are issues for Macs today. Quite a few Windows vs Mac OS arguments that I've witnessed in the past few months have basically consisted of the Mac user replying "Macs can do that too".

One would logically think then, given all this information (and that Windows at least seems to be following Apple's lead) that Windows is starting to trail behind in the consumer OS war, right?

Wrong - Windows currently runs on 82 percent of all internet access clients (see Wikipedia's article on OS usage share). That is, based upon data that your internet browser surreptitiously sends to magic databases, the 82 percent of all machines that access today the internet are running Windows.

OS Usage share. Note the Windows domination (From Wikipedia)

So, why? It's rather complicated (and possibly beyond my understanding) but I will try to distill it down to three things in decreasing levels of simplicity in explanation - Games, Working Flexibility and User Interface.

First, Gaming. Yes, I know that both Blizzard and Steam develop and enable games for Mac. But at the end of the day the Gaming community, (one that makes up a sizeable chunk of the consumer computing market) wants their Windows and wants their DirectX enabled graphics. Macs still have a long way to go to try to grab that market share.

The amount of noob pwnage that occured when Mac users entered Team Fortress 2 servers would only be topped when TF2 became free to download

Second, Flexibility - I talked before about how much effort has been placed into Macs' intuitive user interface. The problem with so much design going into intuition is that you leave little room for flexibility. That is to say, Macs are beautiful machines to use so long as you don't stray outside the bounds of what the Mac OS X developers had in mind. Again, I'm not denying that Mac is capable of many things. Graphics design, music production and even architectural software are all beautifully executed within the Mac OS framework.

The problems come when you get into the niche yet computer dominating markets - namely, engineering, software development and high end business. With the exception of some Unix distributions, Windows has the ability to integrate some of the most profoundly useful and elegant programming environments to work in (cf. Microsoft Visual Studio).

And the knock-on effect of this integration is that the software developers who make engineering software like Altium, AutoCAD and Matlab know that their chief users are going to use their products on Windows machines. Add onto this that Microsoft offers the best support for large corporations supporting massive networks of Windows machines and you have a business industry full of market sustaining Windows users.
 
And finally, where this post all started - User Interface. This is tricky. I complained before that Windows Vista was a pale imitator of Mac OS X. Windows 7 pushed that even further. But by fixing all the places where Vista went horribly wrong, 7 actually is a very nice and, dare I say, intuitive operating system to use.

Such is the success of Windows 7 that Microsoft have finally decided to retire the behemoth that was Windows XP (still, by the way, the most popular OS). And with the Windows 8 open beta out and receiving some very positive reviews, it seems like Microsoft are pushing in the right direction with user interface. It's not a Mac, but still nice to use.

The Windows 8 'Metro' UI is more touchscreen friendly than ever

Final anecdote - a rather persistent shop assistant  tried to justify the extra cost of a Macbook to me by saying that I was paying "for all the extra software features that make Macbooks easy to use". I stopped short of pointing out to him the conclusion to this post:

"You have no idea how I use my computer, and I don't care if your OS works better for you."

Hi. I'm a PC, and my best friend is about to become a Mac.





Post Scriptum:
Yes, I have seen the pictures of Henry Cavill in the new Superman suit. Its awful. But I will refrain from telling you all exactly why until I dilute the amount of Superman in my blog.