Penny Hero (dot) Net

Last night (this morning?) around 3:30am, I was woken up by this insane thunder-like noise. Only it didn’t sound like thunder at all… it sounded like an explosion. It lasted long enough to have me frozen to my bed, looking around. I had vague dreamy memories of a bright flash and the sense that the noise had been happening for a while…

My roommates and I all got up because we all were really freaked out. Marci said she looked out the window and had seen that it was weird and foggy, which is odd for a lightning storm, and she said that when she openned the window, the sustained sound of the “thunder” was unbearable and hurt her ears. She had to cover them. She also said that the wind suddenly picked up intense speed.

Immediately after the noise, the rain came down in absolute buckets! I’ve never seen a downpour that intense before, and I used to live in Hawaii where sometimes you had to pull off the side of the road because you couldn’t see anything in front of the windshield. This was insane heavy rain.

I was totally scared, and still half asleep. My other roomie Cody made some joke about aliens and I actually screamed out loud. It was pretty stupid.

Anyway, when I’d recovered some of my sanity, and after Cody said that he’d seen two bright flashes a few minutes apart just before the explosion noise, I started thinking about what it could be.

I checked online at Lj_Oregonstate to see if anyone else saw it in other parts of corvallis, and yes! People saw it and heard it all over town. I’m on the south end of campus, and people saw and heard the same intense flashes and explosion sounds as far away as Shari’s about a 5 minute drive away and as far north as Witham Hill! This wasn’t fucking lightning. The guy at Shari’s said that it seemed like a flash-bulb went off, and shari’s is a well-lighted family restaurant, which would mean it was more intensely bright than a regular lightning strike… especially since it woke people up all over town.

Anyway, so I came up with this theory: What if it was a mid-air meteor burst? I started googling.

Stories like this one from Komo News describes similar events that were suspected meteor explosions in 2003 in the Seattle area. Then there’s this one from Alaska in 2000 and this one in New Zealand from ‘99 .

none of these describe the intense rain that we saw though… the rain really was just what made me think that this might be a meteor explosion because of the “red rain” phenomenon that some people think is triggered by exploding meteors (like this one in India where they found the red rain was a large concentration of fungal spores in 2001) and because the X-Files used to have episodes where colored rain was explained by meteor activity rather than alien activity (and Mulder was never completely convinced of course). It shows that my leap to a “meteor explosion” is based on pop-culture myths about unknown phenomenon (our first reaction was ALIENS!! afterall), but still… could end up being the truth, right?

Anyway, I have no idea how completely crazy any of this is. I just think it would be exciting to discover that it really was a mid-air meteor explosion or something cool like that. It totally wasn’t lightning. no fucking way. I hope something gets revealed about this.

Local peeps:

Did anyone here get woken up by some odd thunder and lightning…? like, a flash as if it was going off inside your own room, and then these ear-piercing explosion sounding thunder?

Happened around 3:30am as far as I can tell. my whole house woke up and we were pretty scared.

it didn’t sound/feel/seem like normal lightning/thunder….

edit: I was thinking this morning, and came up with a theory: I’m starting to think maybe it was a tiny meteor exploding in the atmosphere above corvallis. It’d be fucking rad if that was it. It totally wasn’t lightning.

The rain/wind behaved really really violently right after the noise… and my other roomie said she saw a weird fog… atmospheric stuff like that could be explained by an explosion in the atmosphere… so… maybe it was an air-bomb, or maybe it was space junk!

Also wrote a longer entry here.

I’m finally getting engaged in my Joseph Conrad readings. So stay tuned for quotes and stuff.

Here’s the first that jumped out at me and reminded me of why I love being an English major:

But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition–and, therefore more permanently enduring. he speaks to our capacity for delight and woner, to the sense of mystery surrounding our livers: to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain: to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation–and to the subtle but invincible, conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts: to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds [people] to each other, which binds together all humanity–the dead to the living and the living to the unborn” (Conrad on Life and Art, p224 of the Norton Critical edition of Heart of Darkness. emp. mine btw)

*swoons* I think now I remember why I loved HoD back in high school and everyone else hated it: he weaves language into these convoluted web-like patterns. knots, but if you’re as obsessed with language like I am, it’s more like an awesome carpet. A piece of complicated clothing made up of scraps of all the things you’d thrown into the back of your closet thinking never to see again.

Here’s the next one. He finished talking about novelists and how their work has in common with other types of artists the use of the senses to reach a reader, yadda yadda… and he’s also just finished talking about how an artist of fiction should not get caught up in the (he implies true) insight that “there is much evil in the world” and to not take joy in discovering or expressing that. he says that’s not the proper way to approach the art of fiction because it gives the author a false sense of superiority, and then you’re basically just fucked because you A.) hate the world and B.) your readers hate you. Then he says:

“To be hopeful in an artistic sense it is not necessary to think that the world is good. It is enough to believe that there is no impossibility of its being made so” (p228).

:)

…

Last week, in this very class, I gained some sort of random cool insight into why being an English major rocks. We get to know how the world creates meaning out of the changes in our society. So, yes, practical degrees like engineering, CS, accounting, writing, whatever… they create the changes in our world. They do things in the microcosm of it all and build infrastructure, keep records, exchange money, make the system operate. But we get to see what all of that means. I want to hold onto this insight because all the time I feel conflicted about being an English major… it’s not practical. It doesn’t translate into money or a “real job”. It’s a waste of time. And there are a ton of essays explaining that it’s important to be a liberal arts major because it gives you a “wider perspective” or some such bullshit. empty rhetoric. I think I’m on the edge of understanding why I could never be anything else. I might create a better entry about it… write an essay someday… get anthologized in a wr121 textbook in a few years. That’d be bad-assed.

From Kenneth Keniston’s Social Change and Youth in America in The Challenge of Youth:

“If Growing up were merely a matter of becoming “socialized,” that is, of learning how to “fit into” society, it is hard to see how anyone could grow up at all in modern America, for the society into which young people will some day “fit” remains to be developed or even imagined (211).”

I’m enjoying this article, even though it’s fricken LONG.

Typo of the Day:

invasion of piracy

:)

special hello and thanks to people visiting me right now from this thread on the ubuntu forums.

ooh I’m so self-referential! (self-absorbed maybe?)

I’ve posted the following to a bit ago because I wanted to get some nifty conversations going. I also wanted to keep a record of it in my own livejournal in case anyone on my friends list wants to contribute to the discussion, and so i can tag and save the entry for future reference with my own tagging system. Anyway, welovegeeks link, and a similar blogspot entry that hopefully will get googled better.

Hey all, I was thinking about some geek related things over the last few days, and I wanted to see what all of you thought about this, and maybe we could start a discussion/exchange info, yadda yadda.

Anyway, yesterday, a friend of mine told me that I exist in this really unique niche as far as my geek-tech-linux-gender identity. I’m a female undergraduate English major who uses ubuntu as an end-user. In other words, I use linux the way the rest of my department (and the world?) uses OS X or Windows, and I don’t use linux because I’m a system administrator or because I’m a programmer or spend a significant time developing tools for myself.

I use Ubuntu for several really specific reasons: it’s free and I’m a very poor college student, it forces me to maintain a slightly higher-than-average internet-usage literacy without overwhelming me with forcing me to understand everything about my hardware or even the software I use, and it encourages me to stay away from pirated software for Windows. The fact that it also allows me the freedom to dive much deeper into learning about advanced computing, web design and hosting, programming etc when I do have the time to mess around for fun really is just an added bonus. Oh, and I forgot to mention that I don’t have to deal with spyware, virii, malware, etc.

I’m also really interested in gender and the internet, gender and tech-consumption/usage, the changing face of gender in gaming, and general literacy and technology issues from a very human and “end-user” point of view. I’m interested in doing serious internet research on this, and maybe even setting up a blog specifically for this kind of discussion and research even. My friend suggested that if I dove into it and really devoted myself to this, I could end up getting hired as a pro blogger somewhere down the line. (wow, wouldn’t that be nifty?)

Anyway, I never really thought about this as being as unique or significant as he seemed to think it was until he pointed it out to me and tried to make me see it in that way. (he’s been working for mozilla for a year, and has been deep into the tech and web industries for a long time, so I guess he’s got his thumb on the pulse of something that might make him know what he’s talking about, right?)

How many of you are also interested in these kinds of issues? Anyone here use linux purely as an ‘end-user’ or desktop user and not as a developer or programmer? I think that this is partly the philosophy of Ubuntu actually, and I’d be interested to know how many other “less technical” users there are out there.

This is all also partly inspired by my failed attempts at getting fellow liberal arts students into linux… I ordered a bunch of pressed cds and tried to give them away to others (particularly girls), but it didn’t catch fire at all…

Anyway, anyone have links to sites or blogs exploring this sort of thing? I’m interested in collecting info and doing some research for fun (and to increase the level of meaning I feel my life has in general), and perhaps to set up a really focused blog about these kinds of topics.

[Anyway, the content and “meat” of this post has been partially cross-posted in my blogspot blog, because blogger gets more google attention…]

So, after my compy being winblows-free for SO LONG, I reinstalled win2k last night on my smaller hard drive so that I could put ubuntu on my newer bigger one, and it’s funny… before I even could finish DOWNLOADING firefox, I was already getting gambling and porn popups and requests to add hotsex38382.com as my homepage. My second step was going to be getting all the updates and stuff, but shit… this was not even HALF AN HOUR after I installed!

Then, this morning, I woke up and installed one tiny thing (a game I miss), and win2k crashes and I have to reboot. hahaha. it can’t even hack 24 hours of uptime! (my machine is probably fucking pissed at me for temporarily removing ubuntu.)

oh well. at least the firmware in my rio karma has been updated after about a year and a half of running on what came with it in the mail.

In Other News: I have a new sore throat. AWESOME.

Original post: yesterday, a friend of mine told me that I exist in a really unique niche as far as my geek-tech-linux-gender identity. I’m a female undergraduate English major who uses ubuntu as an end-user. In other words, I use linux the way the rest of my department (and the world?) uses OS X or Windows, and I don’t use linux because I’m a system administrator or because I’m a programmer or spend a significant time developing tools for myself.

I use Ubuntu for several really specific reasons: it’s free and I’m a very poor college student, it forces me to maintain a slightly higher-than-average internet-usage literacy without overwhelming me with forcing me to understand everything about my hardware or even the software I use, and it encourages me to stay away from pirated software for Windows. The fact that it also allows me the freedom to dive much deeper into learning about advanced computing, web design and hosting, programming etc when I do have the time to mess around for fun really is just an added bonus. Oh, and I forgot to mention that I don’t have to deal with spyware, virii, malware, etc.

I’m also really interested in gender and the internet, gender and tech-consumption/usage, the changing face of gender in gamining, and general literacy and technology issues from a very human and “end-user” point of view. I’m interested in doing serious internet research on this, and maybe even setting up a blog specifically for this kind of discussion and research even. My friend suggested that if I dove into it and really devoted myself to this, I could end up getting hired as a pro blogger somewhere down the line. (wow, wouldn’t that be nifty?)

If any of my readers knows of other bloggers/websites who are interested in these sorts of issues, could you forward me some links? I’d like to read up on what other people are talking about as a sort of first-step toward maybe, MAYBE starting up a new and very focused blog.

[some of the content in this post was also posted in welovegeeks because, while blogger gets more google attention, that lj community is more active and discussion-focused.]

Reasons ICO is probably the best game I’ve ever swooned over:

The Animation: The animation is so sweet. Sentimental and subtle. Like puppy-dog romance between children. You jump across a gap, and you call to her. She hesitates, steps forward, jumps. You catch her before she falls because she can’t jump far enough and pull her to safety. At the save points, when you’re both resting side-by-side on your little stone couches, if you press the “call Yorda” button once, you turn your head to look at her. Also, I think (but I’m not sure), that if you resume a game from a save point, Yorda pulls her head off of your shoulder, but it happens so quickly that so far I can’t zoom in fast enough to see it.

The Girl: Yorda is a frightened, confused, vulnerable girl. Not a stupid bimbo, which is what I was afraid of. She pulls her hair out of her face when she’s left idle as if she’s nervous and frightened. not like she’s primping. She steps hesitantly, unsure of what to do. She looks around for danger, but frequently watches you like she’s afraid to be left alone. She gasps when you swing your stick at things and tries to run away from danger (sometimes straight into a phantom, but whatever. I’m a spry 8-year old boy and can usually save her). If you fall off a ledge (and not die), she’ll gasp and run toward you. If you let a bomb explode in your face, she runs to your side to see if you’re ok. Her character cultivates this intense real desire to stay with her, regardless of the fact that if you leave her in the next room alone for too long, phantoms come and try to take her away. Even if there was no danger in her being alone, you’d still never want to let go of her hand.

The Language etc: Neither Yorda nor ICO speak English (or Japanese for that matter). Their speech is jibberish, but ICO’s is subtitled in English. Yorda’s on the other hand, is subtitled in this beautiful indecipherable script, meaning she and ICO can’t understand each other. And you only can understand your own speech. You as the player are really just as clueless as this little 8 year old boy (I’m convinced he’s 8. I’d like to know for sure though.). The world feels more “real” for that. no more badly dubbed or translated irritation. You’re looking into a fleshed-out world.

The Gameplay: There are no icons, no health-meters, no magic spells to cast. There are no lame-ass “collect 200 of this stupid item to get the stupid key” quests. No boss fights. No points, no scores. Either of you fall from too great of a distance and die, it’s Game Over. Yorda gets re-captured by the phantoms and it’s Game Over. But that’s all. It’s hard enough though. All of the rooms are difficult puzzle-based escapes into the next room. They’re non-repetitive, progressively more difficult and complicated, and the design of the castle itself seems to be real spacially. If you look out the window and see a windmill a few hundred yards away, chances are in the next few rooms, you’ll be outside and have to climb that windmill. In the puzzles, even in the very beginning of the game, there are no obvious visual or audio cues to give you any kind of clue as-to how to solve them (except once, Yorda ran excitedly over to some stone pillars I was supposed to push, but I interpret that as her anxiousness to get out of the castle. We’d just had a run-in with her “mother”). Even your first actions in the game are completely without any kind of tutorial. You figure out the buttons either by reading the little booklet, or just through trial and error.

*sigh*

This game is turning out to be all the things I hoped it would be. Which is silly, I guess. I’m trying to think of an analogy between the mainstream games that are out and this one to express how completely different this is from anything else I’ve played or heard of before. All obvious cues that say “you’re playing a game” are just gone. The only time you see the mediation of any kind of menu or information other than the subtitles is when you pause, save, or die. What kind of book does that? or poem? when all other books need chapter-breaks, or conventional climactic build-up, or antagonists or narrators. Back-story… but here the point of the game is to uncover the back-story as you try to escape from the castle. *purr*

I think this is the kind of game that might be a real challenge to enjoy for some people. especially those who might be used to more “action” based games with great big explosions, epic stories, gore, timers, or races. I think it might be a rare guy who loves a game like this. Maybe even a rare girl who might have by now become conditioned to love the “other” kinds of games. I’d just like to kiss anyone who loves this game as much as I do.