Category Archives: Random

Smartphone

Smartphone game has crossed the moral line.

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Anyone who knows me personally will know that I've always had an objection to computer games. It's not because of the violence or anything like that, but because of the addiction that is inherit with computers and electronic games.

I've lost count of the number of times when I've gotten up at all godly hours in the morning to discover my husband not in bed, because he was playing a stupid computer game (the same game he was playing when I went to bed six hours before). When our son was first born, my husband's addiction to computer games got so bad that we had to put in rules: he wasn't allowed to play any computer games except on a Friday or Saturday night, when he didn't have work the next day. Now that our son is in his late teens, my husband can see the dangers of our son going down the same road, and my husband has been helping me teach our son to manage this special breed of addiction.

However, lately I've noticed that the nature of the advertised games on certain apps has changed. For the first time ever, it's the nature of the games that has me seriously disturbed.

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I Appear to be a Pack Rat of Data Files

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In getting ready for GDPR (the new privacy law in the EU), I decided to take things one step further and do something that I’ve been avoiding for such a long time. We’re talking about something that I have been avoiding for years. I decided to clean out the old files on my Google Drive and Dropbox, and limit what I actually had on my local hard drive.

OMG, what a mission and a half — mainly because it appears that I’m a pack rat of data files.

Shall I hang my head in shame now?

For years, I have separated my personal writing from my other projects. Because of the way Scrivener works (a word processing program specific for writers), I tend to keep my personal writing limited to my Dropbox. However, in my clean out exercise, I found a whole range of files, both on my Dropbox and Google Drive, that either didn’t belong there, or were mislabeled.Read More→

It’s not Zuckerberg’s fault that Google+ sucks.

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Like so many, I've been watching what is going on with Zuckerberg's Congressional Hearings. Let's face it, here is a man who had a brilliant idea to take advantage of the internet and the way things were changing to help people connect with others all around the world. In the last month, a few sticky wheels got oiled in a big way, and Zuckerberg got massive amounts of poo thrown at him for breaches in privacy, security issues and general business practices. I like, everyone else, wants to know what is going to happen with the popular social media platform. And we also want to know what Zuckerberg has to say about all of this mess.

Do I think he deserves to be summoned before Congress? Well, that's not for me to say either way, but I do believe that some heads need to roll over this massive privacy breach that hit mainstream media in recent weeks. Do I think he need to go to jail, like some are suggesting? Hell, no!

I want to say that you can't blame the guy for making this up as he goes along, but that really isn't an excuse. He's been at this for fourteen years. He should know the rules by now. But I don't think he should lose everything that he's worked for either.

Facebook might appear to be a monopoly, but it's not Zuckerberg's fault that Google+ sucks.

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Wording matters. People do take things literally.

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I have written before about the importance of wording choices, when I examined the legislation that California had brought in to help improve situations with how the LBGT community are treated in convalescent care. In that post, I looked at how just a simple phrasing could be interpreted one way, which totally negates the spirit of the legislation.

The spirit of the law and the actual law are two entirely different things. This is why it is vital that legislation and policies need to be carefully scrutinized by those well versed in legalese. In a way, it’s a lawyer’s job to find those loopholes in the way things are worded.

However, when you are not talking about legislation, many are willing to forego the importance of wording choices, and just paraphrase things. At times, this is perfectly okay. There are other times this is not.

Emails sent as a public statement in response to a court case verdict is not the time to be paraphrasing and forgetting about the importance of wording choices. As much as you might hate the idea, people do take things literally. Wording matters.

Let me set the stage.
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Easter

Easter is exactly when it should be…

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Every year, I hear someone complaining about how Easter is too late, or Easter is too early. And the number of people that complain about how Easter can't seem to have a fixed date… Every year, I respond to these complaints in the same fashion.

"You do know how Easter is calculated, don't you?"

The blank stares are borderline hilarious.

Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox.

(Okay, the Spring Equinox for the Northern Hemisphere.)

It's a simple calculation really, or at least one would assume so, until they discover the truth behind the equation. While the description appears to be one based on astronomical events, it's really not.

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