Here’s an interesting writeup about how email is becoming more and more a technology that the old fogies used to use.

A poll conducted by Chungbuk University computer education professor Lee Ok-hwa on over 2,000 middle, high school and college students in Gyeonggi and Chungcheong provinces in October revealed that more than two-thirds of the respondents said, “I rarely use or don’t use e-mail at all.”

The reasons given for shunning email are that it’s impossible to tell whether an addressee has received a message right away and replies are not immediately forthcoming. Still another reason is that you send messages through SMS or [instant] messenger as if you were playing a game, while doing so through email makes you feel as if you are doing homework or performing a task. “The new generation hate agonizing and waiting and tend to express their feelings immediately,” said Professor Lee. “The decline of email is a natural outcome reflecting such characteristics of the new generation.”

This is interesting because I can’t rightly say that email technology even really got picked up here in the Philippines, what with less than 1 million people with regular internet access. SMS is much more prevalent but I’ve always felt that texting was more of a transitory medium, until our cell networks can support longer, rich-media-type messages … in other words, email. But now that everyone is getting in on the IM thing, I think what we’ll eventually see is a sort of merging of cellphone SMS and the internet’s IM technology. Something a bit more seamless than Yahoo’s “I’m on SMS” status messages, at least.

I guess Korea is experiencing this decline in email usage because the people that make up their online population are mostly students, who have no real use for the “formality” of an email. My experience with IM is that you usually end up having long, winding conversations peppered with emoticons and hehe’s which are ultimately, of no real consequence. Also, most messenger apps are pretty lax when it comes to archiving and address book organization so it doesn’t have the same sort of permanence and maintainability that email does … at least, not yet.

I think that when 3G becomes the de facto wireless network around the world, we’ll see a real convergence of technologies in the communication arena. SMS/MMS will be the first thing to die out, with a more cellphone-friendly version of IM becoming the short-messaging technology of choice. Maybe IM will eventually replace all types of communication — we already have voice and video chat built right into most clients — but for the next 3 or 4 years, I think I’ll stick with my spam-infested inbox.

And speaking of quitting, this 77-year-old therapist has been experimenting with electro-shock therapy ’round the genitals as a means to help his female patient get off the cigs.

Boy, and here I thought the smoking-causes-impotence campaign was bad.

Why does it hurt when you try to stop a sneeze?

This was the question tumbling about in my head while I lay on the floor a few minutes ago, writhing and cursing. I’ve been sick as a dog the past 24 hours, and have been sneezing so much I’ve lost feeling in my balls.

Every now and then, a really big sneeze comes along and I try to delay it in time to grab my Kleenex box, but by the time I get the sheet to my face, my insides feel like they’ve ruptured and my ribcage feels brittle.

While puzzling over this question, I found some interesting sneeze-related articles online:

You can even stop a sneeze by pressing your finger into the cartilage between your nostrils. I learned that one from a friend who got a nose job and would rather rip her toes off than sneeze post-op.

(from The Boston Herald)

After a sneeze people often say “Bless you!” Do you know why? In the middle ages people believed that when you sneezed your soul left your body for a brief time. If the devil was in the area patrolling for souls he might capture it while it was unattached. As soon as someone said, “God bless you!” the soul would be returned safely to the body.

(from MonteCarlo)

Oh, well that explains everything. It’s not just some germs you’re trying to expel, it’s your friggin’ soul. No wonder my balls feel numb.

Weird news, although it does give the whole series a bit more legitimacy (at the very least, they know a thing or two about good music):

Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead will be appearing in the fourth installment of Harry Potter, along with Pulp vocalist Jarvis Cocker. Previously, Ian Brown of the great (though defunct) Stone Roses had a cameo in Prisoner of Azkaban.

[ from 94.7 Zone ]

If anything could ever make me quit smoking, this would be it.

42 more reasons here.

Don’t ask, because I have no idea.

photo by nyx, of her two dogs Miggy and Hunder.

I’ve been playing Half-life 2 for the past couple of days and I must say, so far this game is kicking Doom 3’s ass. I mean, I love id and I have nothing but respect for what Carmack has done for shooters and gaming in general, but there’s no denying that Valve has got a real classic here. (I believe the relevant catch-phrase here goes: “Other developers make great games. id makes great engines.”)

There’s nothing really startling about the image quality that Valve has accomplished with HL2 … which is not to say it isn’t really, really good. It’s just not quite as good as Doom 3’s graphics though (the flashlight halo is one of the most obvious differences). On the other hand, it does give you a whole lot more to look at. The major problem with Doom 3 was that it tended toward formulaic run-and-gun missions with little in the way of variation. With HL2, the settings are many and varied, and the pacing is just fantastic. (Keep in mind that I’ve only played through to the 3rd chapter, which means I haven’t seen a whole lot of what the game has to offer.)

Some of the puzzles are really cute. In the screenshot above, Gordon Freeman (that’s you) is trying to set up this ramp so he can use his water-cycle-thing to jump over a high wall. The problem is, the ramp isn’t tilted high enough to clear the obstacle.

I was stumped for a few minutes when I reached this point, until I noticed that there were a handful of empty blue barrels lying around. I realized that you could force the ramp upwards by placing those blue barrels in the water underneath it, because the air inside them would push it up. All you had to was look for enough barrels to do the job.

It was the sort of puzzle that shows off the game’s shiny new physics engine, and I thoroughly enjoyed solving it.

The skirmishes have so far been pretty tame. I’m playing it at Normal level, and I haven’t lost a firefight yet, although I’m expecting it to get tougher soon. Dialogue, music and sound effects are all top-notch. (The dialogue is, btw, well-written and well-voiced. No Far Cry foolishness here!)

This is a really, really good game, and if your PC can handle the stress, you owe it to yourself to try it out.

A small followup to the iRiver review I wrote a few weeks ago:

Installing the Nov. 11 upgrade will allow your H300 device to play videos! Woo!

… Ok, so it’s a tiny 220×176, 10fps-type video, but for a free device update, I think it’s a great step forward. I’m not sure why iRiver selected XviD as their codec-of-choice though (it may have been simply a licensing issue).

The recommended video specs are pretty tricky, so compressing my videos for use on the H300 quickly became a frustrating exercise in trial-and-error when I attempted it this afternoon:

File format : AVI

Codec : XviD MPEG4 (recommend XviD 1.0.2 codec)

Resolution : 220 x 176 only

Frame Rate : 10fps at Maximum

Video Bit Rate : 500Kbps at Maximum(recommend under 450Kbps)

Audio Bit Rate : 128Kbps, 44.1KHz

As with the H300 itself (and, it looks like, most of iRiver), getting this to work is a challenge. I’m not sure how many users out there have even heard of XviD, let alone are familiar with the concept of frame-rate decimation (the process by which you can reduce your video’s frame-rate from say, 30 to the required 10), and that isn’t even half of the problem here. The page suggests that you use VirtualDub to accomplish the encoding, but there are no links or clues as to where to get this software.

(For the record, I use VirtualDubMod, which you can get along with a lot of other useful ripper/encoders here.)

I was struggling with the problem for almost two hours before I came up with a 3-minute clip that didn’t spit out a “Video Not Supported. Skipping.” error. It had some major stuttering though, even at a bitrate of a measly 150Kbps. Also, the audio track (which I had re-encoded at 22,050 KHz to save space) became chipmunky and shrill. Apparently, 44.1KHz isn’t just recommended, it’s mandatory.

(Oh, and it doesn’t support audio-less videos either, in case you were wondering.)

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and posit that maybe iRiver rushed this patch, what with the iPod Photo throwing its weight around and all. Even if they hadn’t made the video support more tolerant, they could’ve at least provided a more specific guide on how to make these magic clips.

Still, I haven’t completely given up hope. The sample movie that iRiver includes (a collection of chi-novela-style pixel commercials for their various products) had a higher bitrate and longer running time than my test-clip, but it played relatively fast, so it is possible to get decent performance out of this thing.

It’s just a matter of figuring out how.

… That, or wait a few months for another firmware upgrade.

I’m a huge Star Trek fan, but my conspicuous lack of ST paraphernalia is stopping me from joining any cool fat-and-bespectacled Trek clubs. I have a feeling though, that if I were the proud owner of the Only Working Star Trek Communicator in existence … why, they’d make me the chairman. Or the admiral, or whatever.

[ via anticlown ]