All Steam

I had started writing a rant about the Web Blackout vs SOPA / PIPA bills, but thinking things over the bills are going to fail but not as a result of Blacking out the web. I think the entire idea stands as a ‘this is how shitty things can get’ but as usual it won’t get that shitty because there’s one person at the top paying attention. And it’s not because people were moderately inconvenienced today.

Anyways if you want some lulz from this I highly suggest checking out @herpderpedia and read all the fail that has resulted.

P.S. I’ll probably re-organize my thoughts and write them up for some more shits and giggles when the full fallout from today happens.

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Our New Leader!

“Meet the new boss, Same as the old boss”

I won again!

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The UFC Paradox

This makes them look like lovers, not fighters.

Let it be known that I absolutely abhor the UFC and all it’s thinly veiled bullshit. No one’s probably going to like me for pointing this out, but UFC is very much a heavily admired homo-erotic sporting event and no amount of denial is ever, ever going to change that. I do not have a problem with things that are of the gay persuasion or highly effeminate, it is not something I seek out, but with UFC there’s very much this active denial / glossing over by the fan base about the gay over tones the ‘sport’.

Oh but you’re probably thinking up a hundred and one things to counter my argument. Let us first however break down what exactly UFC is as a sport: Two men who are heavily trained in the art of kicking other people’s asses are put into a fighting ring. Typically the stronger of the two gentlemen in the caged ring who is able to dominate the other wins the match. This is very much along similar lines such as wrestling (the non-WWF/NWO/WWE or WWWhatever) and boxing. The only difference being there’s less holding back and a lot more blood. Totally manly then right? Not so fast there…

Doesn't look too unfamiliar does it?

You’re probably thinking that UFC is legit because I compared it to wrestling, but people don’t quite remember that wrestling was a sport invented by the Greeks in the classical period and was a lot different from wrestling of today. Classical wrestling is done by two dudes who are naked and covered in oil, then they get to fight. People were a lot more open with their sexuality in these times as well, so this wasn’t such an odd thing. And well boxing is more a sport of endurance of who can take the most blows to the face / body for the longest amount of time.

I feel the most truthful depiction of the UFC / cage fighting was done in the end of the movie Bruno. Yeah Burno wasn’t a good film but it did realistically show UFC for what it was rather than what the fans think it is. Aside from that as a non-fan of UFC here’s what I see when a match goes down: Two dudes in shorts end up hugging and rolling around on the ground for about 2 and a half minutes often punching each other or flipping around while I get various different angled shots of the logos plastered all over their shorts, the biggest being on their asses and crotches. Awesome. Typically one dude gets really bloody and or someone taps out and then shit is done, they hug and the next pair get into the confined area and proves who is the best humper.

I find this sport highly regressive as it plays on the dumb intellect that we all carry around. After thousands of years of wars and countless years of hunting and killing animals, I guess by now we are a species who often does not feel complete or happy unless some blood has been spilt at some point in the month. No matter how smart and civilized we want ourselves to be we cannot go without violence and the real violence that is provided by UFC seems to fulfill that urge we have in the back of our minds. Some of the smartest people I know are super obsessed with UFC to a level which really makes me doubt their intellect. Hell I have a hard time fully believing how some people can love the sport, but I guess if they had women fighting each other nearly naked in a ring, then I would be interested in that too.

This is how you fight.

Sadly I’ve never heard any gent who’s interested in UFC ever say they admired the skill of this fighter or that fighter. I fear that they do have that bullshit term man-crush by the way they talk about so and so in their fantasy matches between this dude and that dude. It’s something that causes me to pause and wonder what subconscious things really go on in the back of our minds.

Fuck yeah!

As a suggested replacement, I say we go back to the old blood sport of Gladiatorial battles. We could use prisoners on death row and stuff. It would be a social win-win; less prisoners and entertainment. And really I can’t see people bitching about how cruel it is over UFC. Unless there’s a lot of gay activists in favour of keeping UFC around.

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Internet War update

And the battle against ‘User Based Billing’ continues because honestly, nothing else is happening anywhere in Canada aside from a mild case of snow and cold. Since the government announced they would do something about what was going on, the entire debate / process / fight has gone into this weird grey area. What happened was that the government said the CRTC had to stop what they did or they would do it for them. So basically it’s going to end, but when and how is an entire other process.

From this I hope you see and understand why I wasn’t very happy when the government choose to step in and do something. Oh don’t get me wrong, they’ve done something, but absolutely nothing has really happened aside from a 60 day review by the CRTC over the thing they decided on. Basically UBB is in limbo for up to 60 days. Realistically, the citizen opposition feels it’s done something / won, the government feels it did a good thing for the citizens, Bell probably doesn’t give too much of a fuck until the review is over, and the CRTC just has actual work to do and prove.

Canada for the moment lives in a state of internet limbo. We probably won’t have UBB, but for the time being, all the news is really looking into the shady unfair practices that the internet telecoms are doing. Yeah the math is being exposed and some more people are calling out the bullshit that the big ISPs are trying to push on the people and smaller companies, which is good, but this is just a stall tactic and until some pro competition ruling is passed or what not, things really can’t get better.

Again, realistically this entire debate and argument can be won with simple logic and reason, like most arguments. For fun, I did the calculations about how much of a drain I can put on to Bells service.

I have a 4.5MB down and .65MB up connection. That means every second I get about a peak download rate of 480kb/s using lets say uTorrent to get a demo. In about a minute I can download 28.8MB of data, and in an hour 1.73GB. So given that, over 24 hours I can download up to 41.52GB and in 30 day span 1.246TB of data. On the flip side I can upload 168.5 GB per month or 5.62GB a day.

Wow, that’s a lot of potential data I’m using! As of my writing this now (Feb 9, 6:00pm) my pc has downloaded approx 8.4GB and uploaded 22.1GB  in a 5 day period. I shit you not, I’ve uploaded four times as much as I’ve downloaded on a connection speed that is 1/7th as fast as my download speed. My pc stats can’t always be trusted so looking at my ISPs tracking date to date: 32GB down, 26GB up total in 9 days: 58.53GB or 337MB / hour for this month.

Granted some of that is downloads from my PS3 and realistically the upload number is a little odd in comparison to what’s being tracked by my ISP, however the point I’d like to make is that the amount of ‘internet stress’ I create is actually very minimal given my connection speed. I’m sure the guy with a 26MB connection that resulted in my internet being cut is doing a lot more uploading and downloading than myself so I fail to understand why Bell could potentially bitch about me. Hell, even at my peak of 250GB in a month (148GB down / 102GB up) I was only averaging 347MB/ hour which is not that far off from now (however to be fair, I’ve been getting my downloads in before the rules change).

All and all if the cap was a reasonable 250 or 200 GB per month, I’d be a pig in mud because I typically don’t download this hard and have an average of 115GB a month (upload and download). Call my downloading illegal if you feel you’d like to, but can you prove that? Am I hogging all the internets? Is that something you can prove? Remember I only average about 340MB an hour over my 1.73GB/hour theoretical max. So maybe 3 times out of the year you can call me a heavy user, but clearly the math behind it proves my usage isn’t that heavy as the math has proven. So if you shove that argument out-of-the-way, you can actually get to some brass tacks about what’s actually at the core of the demands to bill people on usage and I hope that happens more than all this new red tape.

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Lessons Learned from the Dance Floor

I really like to dance. But I really don’t like to dance alone. I much prefer to dance with a woman (or a group of women) who look pretty, dress nice and know how to move when the phat beats get dropped on the dance floor. I may normally hate Sean Paul, Diddy and Lady Gaga when I’m not dancing, but it become tolerant in a dance setting (+ alcohol).  Now I can’t say in the recent months I’ve had any lovely lady friends to go dancing with me, so I’ve had to go solo on these excursions. Also it had been a long while since I was dancing for the intent to impress ladies, I’m recently single again and trying to get back into the game.

To that end, I’ve been learning a lot of Do’s and Don’t and ‘That shit don’t make any fucking sense!’ of the dance floor and as an extension, society and the game in general. And I’d like to share what I feel is important to other guys who are also stuck in the game and not performing as well as they’d like. So here’s what I’ve learned in the past few months about going to the disco. Remember since this is my experience it probably differs from your experience and probably should not be taken as gospel.

1. Don’t Solo
   

   ‘Safety in Numbers’. I’m sure you’ve heard that before. Discos and Clubs are crazy and if you’re not prepared, you will be eaten alive on the dance floor. But this not in the way you’re thinking. By being eaten alive, your confidence and presence on the floor will slowly be nibbled away from you in the same way a pack of piranhas will eat pray that just happens to fall into the river.

   Single dancers are somewhat excluded from other dancers UNLESS you’re a woman. Then you’re free to go with any group and any sausage fest is going to want you around to prove how awesome they think they are.

   But if you are going to the Floor as a single dude, best thing I can advise you is go with low expectations and high confidence in your skills. There is the possibility that you can get taken into a dance circle, maybe full of hawt chix, and end the night well. But realistically a wingman is a better bet. 

2. Bring a Wingman
   

   Just like if you were a pilot flying over the European skies in World War II, when the ME-102s are swooping in to fuck your shit up, you want a wingman to watch your back. This goes with the safety in numbers as stated before, but there is a bit of an art to this. Going with like a dozen dudes can sort of send off the warning of a huge group of desperation or that tomfoolery is about.

   But if a huge group of DUDES NIGHT OUT is what you like to be in, then by all means take that shit to the dance floor. What I found was better was going with one or two wingmen and if other dude friends are there, join up with them. The reason for having Floor wingmen is to break up/break down the barriers that chixs form. Chix don’t like to be left alone so if a solo dude goes for her friend she’s going to want someone too or resist to not be alone.

   As a bonus, you give ladies options and a sort of point/counter-point between yourself. Women will judge you on the other people you are with and over-all how well you both can bust it on the dance floor. So choose your wingmen carefully and wisely.

3. Have a Drink in Hand and Smile on Your Face
   

   Going dancing is about having fun and a good time, you’re potentially there to meet nice people. Going there with a scowl on your face is going to give the impression you were dragged there. Even if the music is shitty and you can hardly dance to it, smile like you just won the lottery or something. And make sure women see you smile. They love that shit.

   As for having a drink in hand, well that’s to show you like to party. It may not be hard partying but you tell people, you enjoy drinking and killing your liver just like everyone else. I typically drink liquor and have a distate for beer unless it’s a cider, so I can’t really say how effective it is to have a beer bottle vs plastic cup, but the important thing to remember is to not spill whatever you’re drinking on someone as a that could kill any and all chances of people liking you. That is unless you happen to spill on the chix who’s into water sports and that kind of shit, then you best live up to that standard as best as you can.

4. Dance, no matter how bad you are at it
   

   Now I know for fact I’m not the most awesome dancer when I get onto the Floor, but I know I can cut a little rug if my blood alcohol level is at a good level and the beat/music is going well. In theory I should be super awesome since I’m mulatto, but it never seems to work out too well for the first half of the night, but does pick up later and I’m like some sort of superstar. They key however is to keep dancing when on the floor, even if you’re just on the sidelines looking for potential.Remember the scene in Jurassic Park when the T-Rex busts out of his enclosure and they make mention that it’s attracted to the movement? Well same rules apply on the Floor, except you’re not going to get eaten. Maybe.

   But still remember this: ‘If you walk without rhythm, you won’t attract the one.’  Realistically speaking from my experience, depending on where you are and the crowd, the chixs might be in to the flailing white guy rather than the smooth dancing black dude. It’s important to remember to use your entire body when dancing and dance to the music going on, never lose the beat. Even if you have to slow down, keep some part moving to that beat, else how do you expect to keep up with beat changes in other places and more exotic dances. (HINT, HINT)

   I think a reason for being passed over on the Floor could be the fact that the white dude’s shitty dancing makes the chix look better in comparison to the better dancers.  I experienced this a lot while at a resort discotheque and it was irritating as shit and mind-boggling. Hell, even the old white dudes were able to dance up ladies more than me. I’m not going to say it was any one thing as there were a lot of variables going on that entire week. It was a mess of bad dancing, repeated tunes and a sever lack of young single ladies.

5. Confidence
   

   So you’re on the Floor, or standing to the side watching what’s going down. You’re dancing with a drink in hand being mindful of who’s watching you and your  wing man is watching out for you too. Finally you notice some chix has been glancing at you several times in the last five minutes. What do you do?If you answered anything other than ‘Get on that Shit’ you answered wrong. Don’t wait, get on that shit. Because the Floor is full of any other dude who’s going to move in when you’re slacking, taking a nap, or trying to get another drink. Everyone who’s not a wingman on the Floor is a cockblocker, yes, even the dudes that are with their ladies.

   If you wait too long you risk the chances of looking stupid and uninterested in the ladies. And don’t make the noob mistake of just walking over, you’ve got to casually continue dancing over and dance with her. It’s also key to speak up and have something quaint to say instead of cliché, although some times that’s okay as well. But be confident in what you do and the ladies will pick up on that.

6. Be a Gentleman
   

   Not all Chix on the Floor are going to want you around and you have to respect that. It’s fine sometimes to be a cocky mother fucker on the dance floor, but if you’re getting resistance don’t be a douch bag and keep forcing yourself on ladies who don’t want your shit. You keep that up and all the chix will peg you as one of the creepy dance floor motherfuckers to avoid.

   It’s confusing at times, but you have to play it right more so when it comes to full contact dancing. It’s really best to wait until the chix in target makes the move first and then establish it’s what she wants. Don’t worry, she’s not concerned with your feelings at all at that point, just what she wants to get and what you are providing. This also means you have to be mindful about the groping, although typically you’ll get the message if she wants that level of action or not. But it’s not something you force on a lady. Be a Gentleman.

That’s really all the major lessons I’ve learned and depending on where I’ve gone, with various crowds, you’ll get a half-dozen results. It’s best to keep in mind that you have to be patience and understanding as everyone is out for something different. You would think that the equation of “Black Dude + Good dancing = lots of ladies dancing on his shit” is universal, but I’ve been cocked blocked by enough people of all levels of dance skill and ethnicities to know it’s not true. Just pick your place that you like and dance. And if nothings happening with you, just dance because you like it.

Also keep the following in mind

• Attention Whores: These are chix who dance for attention. They have no intentions with mens on that night, so forget them
• Douchbags: They’ll get all up in your biz because its nature to them. Make sure to shun them and keep them away.
• Don’t arrive early: Timing is tricky as you don’t want to be first, nor so late you’re last. Again, depends on where you go to dance.
• Watch booze levels: This is just to make sure you’re still dancing on the floor or sleeping on it, or away too frequently because you have to piss.
• Leave the Sloppy Chix: Sometimes, it’s just not worth it to deal with someone who’s going to pass out, forget or vomit all over the place
• Get numbers or email: Try and keep a method of contact with the ones you like. Giving your info runs the risk of not being contacted, but getting hers means she’s leaving it to you. The worst she can say is no and then you really haven’t lost anything.
• Dress nice: Seriously, who wants to dance with a bum? Don’t drop $300 on an outfit, just find some shit you don’t wear often and pull it together. Also smell nice too.

That’s all I really got to say about this. It’s really ever evolving like the game itself, and if I were to score myself,  know I’m on the losing side for now. But keep in mind this isn’t something done in a day, or a week, it takes as much time as you’re willing to put into it. And the real way to win is have fun, not get numbers or take ladies home, that’s just bonus.  So get out there, get noticed.

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Skullcandy Headphone review

Doing something a little different today, going to be reviewing / giving an opinion on some headphones. Last week I got a pair of replacement headphones from Skullcandy to replace my pair of broken T.I. headphones which are so nice, when I found out I couldn’t get the T.I.s replaced I ordered another pair.The replacements are in fact their Skullcrusher brand with a nifty little base boost do-dad. However, there are several things wrong with them.

To start, I really have not liked the direction that Skyllcandy has chosen for any of their headphone products. They’re marked more on the ‘street’ and ‘urban’ style rather than you know, making a good product. Why do I say this? Because the first pair of T.I. Headphones I got lasted nearly 2 years before suffering from catastrophic break down of the wire (which is typical of any headphones). Hell, I broke off the ear pad of my headphones and had to super glue it together again. But they worked until one speaker went dead. The problem was however I had to wait forever for a replacement since they didn’t carry the basic black T.I. Headphones any more and the current run of replacements ran from gaudy gold to fuck ugly fuzzy pink.

So I opted to wait for the new styles to come out in hopes of something as basic and neutral as black. And when I did hear back, the style only got worse. The best I could get out of the current run that wasn’t fuzzy or brighter than a supernova was the Glen Plaid style which are not bad at all. Fast forward about 8 months and they’re broken again via shitty wire connection. Once again replaced only to break (the same way too) for a third time.

Now apparently the people who do the replacing in Canada don’t carry the TIs any more and so had to give me the Skullcrushers. However they sent me the style listed as ‘Peace Love Noise’.This is what they look like:

Peace Love Noise? More like What The Fuck!?

I mean, I can’t expect them to know I’m a guy, as much as my name is a dead give away, but who can honestly say they want to be seen in public with those on? It’s a chaotic mess of hot mess dressed in hot pink / peach. So after several e-mail exchanges and some phone calls I was able to get them shipped back and replaced with another style since they’re ass hats and wouldn’t send me the TIs.
This is what I got back:

This is the lesser of like 8 other evils.

They don’t look as bad, but the sound on them is awful. While waiting for these to get back I did get a totally new pair of TIs which totally helped me discover this problem. The comparison between them is almost night and day. The Skullcrushers have a good lack of range and sound high-pitched and tinny which is not something I want at all in my headphones. Even with the base booster, it’s still bad and the base boost doesn’t even sound that awesome in and itself because it makes everything sound like shit if you have the volume too high on it.

In comparison the TIs have a near perfect range to them and a volume control to boot! And there isn’t even that big of a price difference between them (I think it’s about $10 which is worth it to listen to your music and not have it sound like shit). Realistically the Skullcrushers sound like oversized ear buds and not like proper DJ style headphones, which is really disappointing. I mean really the only upside the Skullcrushers have over the TIs is the compact size and maybe the dual wires, but I really like the single wire look so my shit doesn’t get tangled.

I think perhaps when both headphones eventually bite the dust, I’m going to seek out a new brand because I’m tired of Skullcandy’s bullshit quality control and fantastically retarded artistic design and style. Its getting to be too much and I really want to know the demographic they’re aiming for to push these headphones on so I can go punch them in the face and ask ‘What’s wrong with you?! Why do you like this shit?’

But if you must get some Skullcandy headphones, get the good kind. Get a pair of the TIs while they’re still around and before they make them look any worse.

 

The best design of the current TI runs.

The Basic Black before Skullcandy fucked it up.

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