It's Time for a Common Human Language

   Recently Google+ entered it's open beta phase and also released a new feature that allows you to share entire circles with your circles. The result has been an explosion of circling even among average users like me. With all this circling I noticed more and more different languages being used. I've seen at least six so far. I only speak english so a lot of what some people say will be lost without translating every post and comment, which would get old real fast. And this got me thinking about something I had thought about a few years ago. Why after all this time do we still not have a common human language?

   It's become commonplace in our day to day lives to talk to people from other ends of the world. But still it tends to be only people who speak our language. On web pages and documents it's easy to translate things but it's still no guarantee that the original piece of information won't get distorted or lose some of it's original meaning. When chatting or watching a movie or listening to music it becomes even more difficult. 

   With the rise of mobile web and with more and more people on the net, now seems like a great time to start building a standard human language. Why make an entire new language? To put it simply, ego. No one is going to want a standard language if it's simply taking one of the current languages and saying, "This is the default language". If it was english, every non english speaking person would be upset their own language wasn't chosen. To keep everyone happy, or at least civil, we should make a new one.

   I think the best way to go about it would be to follow the open source crowd surfed methods often used in creating computer programming languages. Representatives from different countries would participate and come up with the basic syntax and nuances. This would allow bits of everyone's culture to be woven into the language.

   Implementation of the language once it's created would be a matter of simply promoting it and using it alongside our other languages. I think the web would be critical in this aspect, simply build it out slowly from the open source project. As it gets more popular, people can start putting it into websites and applications. Even if it's just as an option like any other language pack. If we were able to get one of the big web companies's support it would help speed up the process.

   The end goal isn't to replace our original native languages, but to create a language that sits side by side to our native languages. I think it's important for something like this happen. Not only would it help the species communicate but it would help create an important bond that could cross national and cultural borders.

   This is just a rough idea that I wanted to get out. I'm curious to hear what other people think about it. I looked around the web a while ago but didn't find much on the subject, which really surprised me.

Help Save Your Android's Battery

  This is just gonna be a quick post so let's begin. I'm always looking for ways to save my battery charge on my android. It's a great os but it's loves juice. JUUUIIICE! Ahem, anyways, I recently found a way to really save on the battery usage. Many of you probably know that when chillin at home, your phone will run much faster on your wifi network than on 3g. This mean if I'm home I'm on wifi. Games and websites love it and play much nicer with the connection.

  Recently though I found out that every time your phone goes to sleep it stops using your wifi and starts pinging for the nearest cell tower. So while you think it's doing nothing, really it's wasting your battery. There is a solution though. I guess that's obvious or I wouldn't be writing this. Here's what you do.

1. Make sure you're connected to your wifi network.
2. Bring up your menu screen and go to Settings.
3. Go to Wireless & Networks
4. Go to Wi-Fi Settings.
5. Push your menu button and select Advanced
6. Select Wi-Fi sleep policy and choose the never option.

  That's it. Now whenever your wifi is on, it will actually stay connected and not try to revert to 3g every time it sleeps. I know this sounds easy but it really does make a huge difference. I can usually get through an entire day now with just one charge. 

  Now to make your life a little easier you may want to think about downloading a widget called Wifi OnOff from the android market. This is completely optional but it's free and I highly recommend it. All it does is make switching your wifi on and off from the home screen. Nice and simple, no menu's.

  Hope this helps someone out. It did wonders for my phone and my wife's phone, which I guess I should mention are kyocera/sanyo zio's. Out of all the battery saving tricks I've tried, this one gave me the best results.

1.8 Arrives and the people rejoiced...well, some of em.

  Minecraft 1.8 has arrived and it's been one hell of a trip. Here's a quick recap. Everyone was happily playing 1.7.3 eagerly awaiting what was being hailed the adventure update. Out of nowhere a pre-release version hit the web. Mojang chose rather than fighting the leak to embrace it and use it to find more bugs. The pre-re led to a second pre-re fixes some of these bug and delaying the official release, but not for long. Two days later 1.8 officially hit the scene. Aside from the fact that Mojang had a beta of a beta this is all pretty standard stuff. Or at least it would be in any other community.
  Video game communities are well known for having rowdy members. All our bases are belong to them. Usually this manifests in aggression towards bad games, bad companies, outsiders, the web itself, and even the players themselves. Often the only thing that escapes this scrutiny is the the team behind the game. They get attacked of course, but not on the same level as the others. This tends to be especially true in the indie gaming scene. I hate the term indie btw, I prefer underground gaming but whatever.
  Indie game companies tend to be much closer to their player base. They actively communicate with them and even frequently request feedback on how to make the game better. Because of this intimacy, the gamers themselves tend to be more polite and respectful of the game and everyone involved. They tend to thank and encourage the coders. The coders in turn tend to work harder and with more passion. Everyone wins.
  The best community I've seen so far that exhibits this kind of relationship is dwarf fortress. The game is an underground classic and to those in the scene, it's the measuring stick all other games are measured with. It's complexity and depth is matched only by the wretched ugliness of it graphics and interface. The game is dense, difficult, incredibly fun and the community loves it. They embrace the fact that with such depth you sometimes get nasty bugs. They accept the fact that with games that live in beta things can get hairy. Not only do they embrace these things they actually use the bugs to their advantage and end up having even more fun. Yes both kinds!
  No matter how bad it gets, the community in general, loves ToadyOne and continue to embrace dwarf fortress. This community may be the best in my opinion but they certainly aren't alone. Another game called Cataclysm(not the WOW add on) has the same kind of community. It's much smaller but the respect for the coder is there and so is the understanding that games are not easy to make and take time.
  Which brings me back to Minecraft. Minecraft started out like all the rest, small indie game, tight player base and a coder who has no problem talking to his community. But something about minecraft was special and it suddenly exploded onto the mainstream gaming scene. Everyone seems to love this game and with good reason. It's a lot of fun, it's easy, and it can be played many different ways. Because of this, it's captured a very large player base even though it's still in beta, and as a result has made a lot of money.
  And yet for all that minecraft has going for it, it still has the worst community base I've ever seen. They're rude to each other, they have an unreal amount of trolls, and they're ungrateful. Before we continue, I should point out there are good members, you know who you are so don't get pissed. Now back to the douchebags.
  A large chunk of minecraft's base seems to think that since they paid 20 dollars for a game, they now own Notch(the coder) and have the right to basically act like a bunch of brats. They've decided minecraft should be a 24/7 job and that it should run flawlessly. No matter what notch does, it's not good enough. The players will scream for an update and get one, and then scream that the update sucks, notch should have waited. If he had waited they would have called him lazy. This time in particular it was Jeb's fault the update was late. Turns out jeb is married and his father in law was visiting. The selfish prick actually went an spent time with his wife's dad. The nerve of him. I guess no one told him that he was a slave to minecraft and as such is not entitled to family visits.
  I'm not suggesting the game is perfect or that the developers themselves are perfect. They've made mistakes and there are bugs but there's a difference between acting like an ungrateful prick and helping find bugs and working to help build a game. Everyone that has bought Minecraft knew they were buying an unfinished game. This was never kept a secret. In addition to that, Mojang has given the players free updates, little drm, and access to the finished game when it is done. They have been beyond generous in how they offer up their game.
  In spite of the communities attitude, Notch and Jeb continue to work hard at improving minecraft and they never seem to complain about it. Maybe they realize that the ones screaming the loudest and acting the rudest are just a small percentage of the true minecraft community. A large but silent group of people who love minecraft and appreciate the effort that goes into creating it.

My Sacred Place

   Most people who know me would have no problem calling me a geek, nerd, shut in, or whatever the current fancy term is for 'guy who sits around playing with computers all day'. And for the most part they'd be right. There is another part of me however. As with almost everything in my life there is a polar opposite version of me. This part of me loves the outdoors. Hiking, camping, that kind of thing. I love forests, I love the way they look, I love the way they smell. I love the way you can feel the cool damp air crawling out a big forest when you stand at it's edge.
   The only thing I love more in the natural world than forests is water. Oceans, streams, creeks, ponds, hell, give me a big puddle and I'll just stare at for hours. Bodies of water have some kind of strange hold over me. I'm not sure what it is or why but it's there none the less. My favorite of all however is lakes, which brings us to my main point, Lake Wallenpaupack.

   Lake Wallenpaupack is located deep within the Poconos mountains of Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is a place of phenomenal beauty. People from all over come here to fish, camp, hike, boat, water ski, and much more. The lake itself is 13 miles long, has 52 miles of beautiful shoreline, and at it's deepest point is about 60ft. The lake is surrounded by large swaths of forests and smaller lakes, streams and tributaries.     When you see it first hand it's hard to believe that a place of such immense natural beauty could ever be created by man, but that's exactly how it happened.
   In 1926 PPL(pennsylavnia power & light) Corporation decided to build a hydro electric dam, over what was at time, the Wallenpaupack creek. They bought up a ton of land from local residents, and cleared the valley that held the creek. Houses, stores and everything else had to be demo'd and/or relocated. To this day there are still, some remnants under the lake of the small town that once stood. Not full houses mind you, but foundations and even some roads can still be seen by brave divers who venture below the lakes waters. At the time of  it's completion, Lake Wallenpaupack was considered a marvel of engineering and was the largest man made lake in the state.

   This is one of the places I grew up. Normal life was spent in the suburbs, but summers, and occasionally winters were always spent 'up at the lake'. We gathered at the lake house each weekend. Usually there were about 10 to 15 of us there at a time. Everyone would go out hiking or swimming all day, and then in the evening we'd have a huge communal meal. It's hard to describe the effect this had on me, but some of my fondest memories occurred here.

   Eventually, in my later teen years my mom and step-dad split up and I lost access to the lake. At first it didn't seem like that big of a deal. But after a year or so something strange started happening. I started thinking about the lake more and more. Simply reminiscing about all the good times I spent there. A little while longer and I was starting to have dreams about the lake. After that I'd start getting this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach whenever I thought about. Eventually it gets to the point where I can think of nothing else but the lake.

   This happens at regular intervals, roughly every two years or so. I try to ignore it because I live an hour an a half away and I don't drive. But the only way to stop the obsession is to go there. To be at the lake. Once I get there all I have to do sit down next to it and the feelings start to disappear. Replaced with a sense of peace and calm that I rarely ever experience in my normal daily life, I'm ADD to the core and I don't handle anxiety very well.
   I'm not a religious person, and I'm not a hippy by any sense of the word. But I can't deny that somehow this place is a sacred spot for me. It holds power over me that I can not control and must obey. It is absolutely relentless. No other location has this kind of hold on me and no other place can replace it.
   Someday if I ever get my life in order, one of my dreams is to own a home on the lake. I would love to buy the exact property I grew up on, but even if that's not possible, a new home on Lake Wallenpaupack would be the perfect place to create new memories and bring peace to my twisted head.