What the 'frag'?

Deep, in a damp, dark basement, a solitary, wide-eyed adolescent boy sits in front of a glaring monitor. He is in the zone. Bags of potato chips are strewn all over the floor and empty cans of soda have created a fortress around his desk. This used to be the typical online gamer. Although these people (heh...I'm probably one of them) still exist, online gaming is becoming more publicly recognized and embraced. Old, young, male, female; a wide spectrum is now engaged in the gaming community.

Well, with every good thing also comes the bad. Obviously people become addicted, people die and communists lay down the law. Don't believe me? Check it out. China is attempting to impose a system to control the amount of time spent by it's 'proletariates'...read all about it! On a grim note, one man died after a 50-hour gaming marathon, and even worse, a couple became so engaged in a 'bout of World of Warcraft that their 4-month old child died due to their neglect.

Where can the boundary be drawn? Moderation in all things. It is a difficult concept to grasp when you are addicted to something. That's why an addiction needs to be realized before it's full-blown. I personally love my video games (yea, I'm a poor player too), but I can always pull myself back to reality. My take on this whole situation? Keep on 'exploring the realms', keep 'fragging'...but for the love of God, don't lose your grip on reality!

Boston

Another year, another fun-filled ABS conference. This year, the annual Association for Baha'i Studies conference was held in the 'intellectual capital' of the US; Cambridge, MA. Here are some pictures from the conference and the following week of 'sight-seeing' (what a lame term).

Our cute little friends down south

The "Blog Train"

So, it seems as though more and more people are constantly jumping onto the wagon. Now, it's very difficult to approximate the actual number of blogs out there, but here are some statistics (all approximates):

• 15,000 new weblogs created every day
• Less than a million are updated regularly (275,000 new posts daily)
  
• 200 blogs have monthly traffic in excess of 1,000,000
• Only 20 have monthly traffic in excess of 10,000,000
• 11% (50,000,000) of internet users browse blogs regularly

Yes, I guess it is useless information, but I can guarantee that you read it, and at one point said/thought "woah" à-la Neo. The most interesting statistic for me is that less than a million of these blogs are updated regularly (1% of all weblogs). What does this mean? There's a whole bunch of blogs out there with ONE post saying something such as this: "Wow, everybody's blogging now, I should do it too. I'm going to be throwing some wild and crazy things out at you, so keep your guard up! Peace!" That's it. Hehe...wasting valuable web-space while less fortunate people have absolutely NONE!

Now, some who are reading this are probably in this same boat, so either play hard...or go home. Peace!

A Whole New World

Yes, I realize, another unexplained, prolonged disappearance. Most of you probably didn't care/realize, so really, there was no disappearance. For the few die-hard fans (and I know there are a few), my apologies. We just recently moved to a new home, and by the time we got settled down, I made a trip to Boston. Before I get to the crux of this post, I'd like to first of all say how beautiful Boston and Cambridge are. Kamyar and I drove down for the ABS (Association for Baha'i Studies) conference...which by the way was great...and stayed with Aram for an extra week to see the area. Beautiful!

Anyways, more importantly (as you can tell, I have my priorities set straight), this is the first of many blogs from a brand new piece of hardware. Yes, I purchased a 15' Apple Powerbook. Lovely. Exquisite. Now, I have been preaching Mac for quite a while, but I was waiting for the right time to buy my laptop...and here it is! Finally! As I previously posted, Apple is so much more intuitive, sleek and integrated than PCs. Compatibility problems? Phhht...I laugh in the face of compatibility. Why do I want to run PC programs on the Mac? My only gripe is this. Actually, I'm sorry, I have a couple:

1) I may have a faulty book, but my airport (wireless card) is not strong at all. I have heard that powerbooks' airport cards aren't very strong, but I didn't think that two walls would prevent the signal from reaching my laptop.

2) The laptop gets very hot. I understand it is a very powerful machine, and other laptops do get hot. But, if I'm watching a movie, it does get very uncomfortable on my lap halfway through the movie.

3) I now spend too much time on the computer, browsing even more useless websites, and creating pointless songs and movies.

4) My Powerbook doesn't dance for me.

That's it....those are the only problems...besides that, it has filled the void in my life that I have lived with for much too long. Wanna slam the Mac? Leave me a comment. Fellow Mac user wanting to hi-five me? Leave me a comment. Is your name Mack? Leave me a comment.