I Feel Old when I think about the state of technology. I’m sure I’m not alone in this either. I’m sitting here at lunch wondering exactly what “Web 2.0″ is supposed to mean. It’s essentially a bull shit buzzword that has been floating around.

Even if we were chronologing periods of “mass internet change” with arbitrary number schemes we’d definitely be on something like Web 4.8 or maybe even up to Web 10.0 which could more readily be addressed as “Web X” because “X” always makes things cooler.

Then I think about how I used to use the internet. I’m not even going to start on how I used the computer before the internet or even how I used to dial up to a local message board and that was IT for online connection. Want to connect to that other board? Hang up and call a different number. Want to play that crazy online text RPG? That’s a third number to dial.

No, I’m going to stick with the internet itself. The one that still required dialing but at the same time only required one call (assuming you didn’t get dropped). That dial up connection was slow slow slow. My most frequent activity at th time was downloading anime based images. The thing is, even if the image was only 200k it still took a minute or two to download.

Now I regularly buzz through Flickr. The photos I upload to Flickr on average are a meg each, they come off the camera that way. These images pop up instantly. If it’s taking minutes to download an image it’s because the thing spans off the edges of my screen to the equivalent of several feet. These images I used to find, I was lucky if they were the equivalent of a thumbnail by today’s standards.

Back in this time of slow speed internet, optimization was a huge issue with web site design. Your page would be mostly text. Posting three or four 1 meg images into an article would have been an absurd proposition. You’d drive away all your visitors with the 20 minute download time.

I built my first website and posted it up on Geocities back in 1998. The entire thing was text. I added a few sword graphics to it later and eventually a background images but I’ve always stuck to text. If I wanted to share a photo I had to scan it and crop it and reduce the quality so it would fit in my 10 free megs of online space. These days I’ve got 1100 photos posted to Flickr, that’s over a gig of data out there. I can post these photos right off of my camera. In ten years I probably won’t even need to sort and offload them. They will just instantly be posted to some online resource to be tagged and sorted at a later time.

Then we have things like Blogs. I sit here typing this out in an editor in my web browser. To publish it all I have to do is click “Publish” and it’s whisked away to the big World Wide Web. In the past I’d type up an article or review, save it to a text document. Format it with HTML code in notepad. Upload it to geocities. Edit the other pages so they would reference the new one. One huge chore.

Now it’s instantaneous.

It’s almost scary.

Then I think about my kids. I was always impressed by my dad’s awesome computer knowledge. Today I could probably run circles around him. One day, probably fairly soon, my kids will do the same to me. They were born and grew up with all of this. They connect to the internet and it’s always been there. They have no concept of what “dial up” is on any level. In a few years the oldest will be old enough that she’ll really be able to use the internet. One day she will probably have her own MySpace page, possibly a blog, maybe even her own Flickr account. Or whatever the equivalent services are in 3 years when she turns thirteen and can legally sign up for all of these things.

Sure at first they will need me to guide and help them, just as my dad did for me, but eventually they will grow and surpass me as I become old and stubborn to change.

And that isn’t almost scary, it actually IS scary.

It’s difficult to pick a “favorite” genre when it comes to music. There are people who pick “Country” or “Metal” and refuse to acknowledge anything else. I listen to music. Any kind of music. I have CDs from Bach, I have CDs from Machinehead, I have CDs from Madonna, I have CDs from Zap Mama. Well actually most of those aren’t really plural but they represent different “types” of music in their own right which are pluralized.

There are preferences at different times. Most music conveys some sort of emotion, and listening preferences vary depending on the time. For a good while I’ve mostly been listening to techno and J-popish stuff (read: DDR Music) but when I’m feeling a bit frustrated or down I may listen to some Pink Floyd. If I just want to relax I might stick in soundtracks from Armitage the Third or Lain, if I really want to get aggressive on something it might be The Offspring of Judas Priest. When I’m just cruising around in the car I can usually find something on the radio, I’ll never pass up a good AC-DC or Tom Petty Track but I still rather enjoy Spear’s Toxic or that Bad Boys 2 theme song.

If I hear a song or group I’ve never listened to mentioned in conversation I usually make a note of it. Next time I bring up eMule I might check out a few tracks. If I like it maybe I’ll try a few more and look into what CDs are available (stupid Rollergirl has no US release CDs, DAMN YOU IMPORT STORES AND YOUR PRICE GOUGING). Though I’ll admit I haven’t bought nearly as many CDs in recent years as I used to, I’m much more satisfied with the CDs I HAVE bought.

I still have a few older ones I still listen too. In the end that’s the real definition of a good CD and really good music. Am I still listening to it 5 years later? Ten years? Twenty? Pink Floyd’s the Wall was one of the first CDs I ever bought and it’s been well listened too.

I suppose the music I like most is the kind that builds up. It starts out light and just keeps adding layers and layers till the tremendous end. It should have a solo or two, the vocalist really should shut up now and then, no matter how good he may or may not be. The instruments and sounds I’m hearing should work together but still be distinct. I don’t care if it’s synthesized or real instruments really, just so long as it has a rhythm and a beat you can get into.

I enjoy pop music. I enjoy Metal. I enjoy Classic Rock. I enjoy Techno. I enjoy Classical. I even like some Rap and Country. I’ll listen to just about anything at least once and do my best to find he most enjoyable parts of it. There isn’t really any thing I can think of that I don’t enjoy much. I suppose if I had to choose it would be that rap that consists solely of the words “Nigga” and “Fucka” repeated a thousand times.

So with all that I’d like to close by mentioning that I do have a “Favorite” song. It’s been my favorite for a good while. Though I don’t listen to this song religiously by any means, it is one that I always enjoy. Maybe part of the reason it is still my favorite is that I don’t drive it into the ground. Heck I don’t even own any CDs by the artist (other than a remix CD Single of this one particular track).

Anyway, that song is The Perfect Drug, by Nine Inch Nails. You can find it on the Lost Highway Soundtrack, and possibly on a NiN. I don’t really care too much for most of the other NiN I’ve heard. Trent Reznor is not god, but for Five Minutes and Fourteen Seconds, he is highly enjoyable.

I enjoy blogging. It’s something I’ve actually done for a long while via my own website and more or less via newsgroups. I used to be die hard for “build it yourself updates” but the ease of Blog based WYSIWYG editors have won me over. Just type it up and go. Not to mention all the syndication options and such that go along with a blog.

I’ve started and killed a few blogs in my blogging time. Well mostly I just killed my blogspot blogs because blogspot is crap. The lack of tags really hurts the service. I absolutely LOVE tags. Blogger I think may have actually added tags now but I’m past using them. Didn’t care much for the overall interface either.

I do still keep up with several blogs however. In case anyone wants to check out some of my less frequently updated, occasionally topic specific stuff you might try some of these.

vox.Lameazoid – That name only sort of works. The original intent was to subdomain out all of my blogs off of Lameazoid.com. WordPress’s Domain mapping feature doesn’t seem to properly support subdomains however. Anyway, This is a Vox account I picked up a long while back when Vox was first starting. Mostly I wanted to pick up my “name” before someone else did but I kind of liked the interface and have been sitting on it waiting for a good use. As of now I’m using it as sort of a Photo Journal. Vox interacts directly with flickr so I’ve been posting some thoughts behind my more interesting photos.

Broadcast Quality – The name is in reference to the level or standard needed in order to broadcast information over the air. T’s generally a high stanard, possibly unlike this blog. Basically is an informational blog about things I do at work. This is not a “bitch about my job” blog. Honestly it’s more for my record than anything else.

Pen to Paper – This is basically the revival of Writer’s Block from Blogger except writersblock.wordpress.com was taken. Personal posts about life. I plan to put up some essays and possibly stories I have/will write. I used to do stories a lot but I don’t so much anymore. I keep hoping I’ll be inspired to do some. Topics are generally things that Iw ould not consider relevant to Lameazoid.com’s point however and so I’ve spun them off.

Lameazoid – The Livejournal! – My old Livejournal. I never did care much for Livejournal and I hate to abandon this blog though. It’s basically what started my “modern blog mindset”. I still use it for the occasional dumping ground for one liner type posts and those quiz things that circulate. Basically I’ve turned it into a mockery of what LJ is and why I hate LJ in the first place. Low brow blogging at it’s worst?

Flickr – Sort of a blog I guess. I love flickr’s interface for uploading photos.

That’s pretty much what I have now. For the record, Blogs I’ve killed either before they got off the ground or sometime into thier lifespan: Ramen Junkie’s Writer’s Block (personal writing blog), Lameazoid^2 (reviews only feed of Lameazoid), Lameazoid Transformers (Transformers only blog, Blogspot), Lameazoid Minis! (Short quicky reviews of toys, Blogspot), The Ultimate Zelda Cartoon Guide (A guide for the 80s cartoon, Blogspot), Ranting at 80MPG (Videoblog where I rant in my car, WordPress), Transformazoid (Transformers reviews mirrored from here, WordPress), Trailer Trasher (Reviews of movie trailers, WordPress)