Those who know me well enough should be quite aware of my allergy to code. Doesn’t really matter what it is: PHP, SQL, Commodore64 Basic, HTML more complicated than font tags… I can’t stand any of the stuff. Hell, I can barely remember long division, folks. Despite the fact that part of my job entails spelunking through crash reports, at the end of the day I’m a designer, not a statistician.

Having said all that, maybe there are a few ways to wedge bits and pieces of this arcane knowledge into the skulls of right-brainers such as myself. If the wonders of modern technology have made it possible to teach yourself Spanish with a Nintendo DS, why not pick up a little… I dunno, Perl or something, from a cute lil’ manga pixie?

Source: Global Nerdy.

For those of us who aren’t brain scientists or rocket surgeons (wait… naw, that sounds right) the Large Hadron Collider is a massive particle accelerator do-hickey which has been under construction in Geneva for the last ten years. It’s designed to gently caress and massage the subtle unseen forces of the universe in the hopes of finding/filling holes in our generally accepted theories. Oh my. In five days they’ll turn it on.

This has had some buzzkills out there twitching and squirming. I mean, what if something goes horribly awry? The Large Hadron Collider (or “the LHC” if you wanna be gangsta) plays around with some pretty intense and technical-sounding energies which could conceivably generate artificial singularities big enough to swallow the Earth! At least, that was the fear which spawned a lawsuit earlier this year, the second round of litigation on the matter this decade.

But worry not, citizens! A new report has been released to once again attempt to reassure these folks that the Large Hadron Collider won’t destroy the planet. According to the study, Mother Nature’s own forces are already kicking out stronger energies than anything da’ LHC will be used for. So unless some careless whitecoat accidently reverses the polarity of the neutron flow, we should be fine. (That’s a Doctor Who reference; drink!)

Doomsayers, don’t forget: the world is already scheduled to end on December 21st, 2012. If that appointment is good enough for Smoke Jaguar, it’s good enough for me.

Last October, the National Center for State Courts released a pamphlet aimed at letting teenagers know that downloading music without paying it for it is a crime, using the most effective method known of reaching that audience - designing it as a comic. If you squint a lot it kind of even looks like bad rape porn.

Luckily for us, Wired got a hold of this little diddy and graciously uploaded it in PDF format, either helping NCSC reach their goal of education or ironically breaking copywrite laws themselves.

Justice Case Files 1: The Case of Internet Piracy features all of our favorite stereotypes about comics and piracy. Witness the smart (but uninformed girl) get caught up in the terrible web of stealing music from the internet! Revel at her visible minority friend who wouldn’t dare engage in such a crime! Laugh as they attempt to portray recording companies as “fair” purveyors of justice! Be baffled as they try to explain that downloading songs is exactly like the government seizing your property! Enjoy before Wired gets sued!

I’m no fan of Vista, for a myriad of reasons both technical and personal. I knew that many companies continued selling XP after the cut-off date, using the downgrade feature of Vista, but I wasn’t aware how many machines actually ended up running XP in the end.

I think it’s very telling that over a year since Vista was released, Windows XP is still selling strongly amongst not only common end-users, but people who actually know the technical differences enough to make an educated choice. Personally, I think Microsoft should use Windows XP as a base for the next version of Windows, if they have to base it off an existing OS.

Personally, I’m wishing they’d restart like Apple did. Make an OS that doesn’t share any code with Windows, and then make an emulator to run Windows programs. At least I can dream…

…other then me, that is. Yeah, I went there.

Recently, Sean Tevis decided to run against his current state representative, Arlen Siegfreid. Being a nobody, Sean found it difficult to secure financing for his campaign… until he decided to put it online. Then he broke the record for the most donations ever to a state representative, with over 3,000 people, beating the old record of 644.

I’m not a fan of politics in general, feeling that it’s more about image then actually getting anything done. But things like this just plain warm my frigid heart, and remind me what an amazing tool the internet really is.