Lots of discussion of terrorism-related issues

A youtube video contrasting Dixie Chicks and Pussy Riot was the cornerstone of journalistic slant today.

Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas

The Dixie Chicks were vilified for saying that in the Bush administration, but years later Pussy Riot has wide western support for their own protests. It was our object lesson in Worthy and Unworthy victims. The Unworthy were the Dixie Chicks who insulted president Bush, while the Worthy were Pussy Riot, who insulted the untrustworthy Russian government.

Of course, according to the American media, Bush was a Worthy victim, while Obama is an Unworthy victi. I see regular death threats to Obama from public sources that seem to see no consequences:

Nugent, who last April said, "If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will be either be dead or in jail by this time next year," and in 2007 stated, "Obama, he's a piece of s**t. I told him to suck on my machine gun. Hey Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless b***h," (Source)

Nugent saw no jail time, no media demonizing, no wide-scale boycotting, and was even invited by a Republican politician to sit in on Obama's state of the union address.

I like Obama a lot more than Bush, to explain my bias, although I'd like him a lot more if he wasn't, you know, droning people to hell, but it's still an interesting contrast.

The Wayback Machine

Over at Archive.org, there is a magical device called the Wayback Machine, which contains a lot of the internet of days past. I've used it extensively, but not exactly for scholarly purposes.

I've actually had an easy time in this class learning all the materials, because due to my particular internet prescence (spending too much time on the computer since 1998), I've actually used most, and if not all some very similar services, over the course of my internet 'career'.

It's my mom's fault, really. When I was 12 she told me about fanfiction. And being as into X-Men as I was, I immediately alta-vista'd it. The first result was a story about the New Mutants character Wolfsbane committing suicide. Apparently that wasn't traumatizing enough to keep me off the internet.

Anyway, how this relates to the Wayback Machine is I've read (and written) and enjoyed a variety of fanworks and original fiction over the past decade from that inauspicious beginning, but! Nothing is permanent on the internet. Sites and posts go away. Hosting isn't renewed. Files are deleted. People leave. But the Wayback Machine has helped me re-find almost all of them, if I can just dig up the original link.

Webpage building, file organization, information organization, information sharing, are all part of participating in fandom and anytime what I've done all these years as a hobby turns out to be useful I'm a little surprised. But it's good. It means you're always learning.

Also, it turns out I can't write so great when there's other voices going on.

Yesterday was a wash

I woke up with a migraine, and so apparently did the city. I'd intended to skype into class, but the power had been knocked out and with the sometimes update from Aaron, I discovered class was canceled. So I slept.

My own internet was spotty so all I could do was plan a future post.

This class is teaching me about the importance of information presentation, which influenced me to revert back to a more old-fashioned sort of internet communication platform for an upcoming collaborative writing project with my friend and sister.

Specifically, I created a forum. More on this later.

I chose not to monetize my brand in the end

Thanks to Leah's advice, I now have a facebook page for my blog and twitter!

As with blogspot, it offered me options to put ads on my site for money. While it's not worth it for school accounts, it's an interesting idea for the future.

Discussion of bias in reporting and checking sources.

Reminds me of one of those pointless little internet arguments I had once, where a young lady on a forum I was on claimed that it was proven that homeschooled kids were smarter and more successful than public school kids.

A quick 'citation please' got me a link to a study that through the citations showed me that there were a lot more homeschool organizations out there than I'd previously known.

Zotero

Today's class was mostly troubleshooting Zotero before going 'we'll get back to this later'.

The groups function seems to be haunted by angry ghosts, like Windows 8, but I love the bibliography function. That'll be useful in the future. I'm intrigued by the option of 'Vancouver style', which I don't want to ruin by actually looking up what it is.

Right now we're learning about RSS feeds, so here's my post for my feed. Please enjoy its posty goodness.

I have no idea what my final project will be since I'm not wholly sure about the guidelines. The death and aftermath of revealed story of City of Heroes, CNN's total botching of the Boston bombings, or some other thing that will be a better idea when the teacher gives more details?

Or I suppose I could do something about Amanda Palmer's horrible Boston bombing poetry... but that wouldn't be objective. I really hate bad poetry.

Shiny computer scrubbing programs!

Today we are installing Ccleaner, Malwarebytes, and PC Decrapifier. I've used all but the last one, so I'm googling the various things it wants to uninstall on my computer.

PC Decrapifer brought up my new acer netbook's netflix app and mywinlocker suite, one of which I didn't recognize at all. A google led me first to Acer's website, which said:

MyWinLocker Suite is a preinstalled program available on selected Acer products to help you protect your private data. It includes two applications: Yo-Safe, a password-protected virtual drive, and Shredder, a secure tool to remove files.

The Yo-Safe virtual drive acts as an extra hard drive in your system. You can access it only with your password, so the stored files are kept safe.

EgisTec Shredder is a data shredding software to help you delete your sensitive data permanently. EgisTec Shredder is a limited trial version. The first time you launch the program, a pop-up window will notify that you are running a trial version.

Seemed decent, until I clicked the next link:

In short, it is Trialware; Spamware; "I didn't ask for it yet it came w/the system"-ware.

Lovingly brought to you from Acer (in my case) and EgisTec: 

I decided to uninstall it. This has not gone smoothly. As of the writing, it's opened up two unclickable tabs at the bottom of my screen.

I fear the worst.

Remember me and my darling little netbook.