For example, I sent out a tweet a couple of hours ago about how I’m really excited about the Oculus Rift, a 3D headset that monitors how you move your head while immersed in a video game. In the tweet, I said it seems so much cooler than the Wii or Kinect or traditional 3D, while adding a link to The Verge article on it. There’s not much else interesting I could have added to those thoughts. Two or three years ago, I would have embedded a YouTube video about it and spit out a couple of paragraphs about the gaming possibilities and how awesome or nauseating it would be to play Mirror’s Edge while wearing the Oculus Rift.

Back then, I also had more real-life friends who read this blog at least occasionally. Due to the lack of updates, and not posting links to this blog on Facebook due to keeping my real name and this internet handle separate (half-assedly), the people reading any posts on this blog are almost all internet friends who are already exposed to my thoughts on Twitter. So the only things worth writing here are sufficiently thoughtful and lengthy posts, something akin to this R.A. Dickey fanpost I put together over at Amazin’ Avenue. Maybe I should re-post that piece here just so it looks like I still care about this blog.

The idea of our brains being rewired to acclimate to the internet probably isn’t a surprise to anyone who can’t go a few minutes without checking their e-mail or Twitter or Facebook or forum of choice. We (I say “we” since I’m one of these people) want everything as quickly as possible and without that constant flow of information we feel disconnected from the world. Even while reading this book, I probably checked my iPod Touch at an average rate of two times a chapter. (Yes, I carry around my iPod Touch because I’m too poor to want to pay $90/mo for an iPhone and I live in the city now and there’s always a hotspot nearby even if I’m not on campus.)

I had already read about a study cited in this book that revealed students did better on a reading comprehension quiz of a short essay when they were given a plain text version (or a paper version, I forget) as opposed to a version filled with hyperlinks. Clicking on a hyperlink has the effect of breaking your concentration and not allowing your brain to absorb the information in its entirety, even if it seems like you’re learning more by reading the content of the hyperlinks. The reason posited for this phenomenon is the limit of the brain for working memory. Possible long-term memory is practically infinite, but such retention is only attained after memories are allowed to be stored in the hippocampus for the required amount of time, which can apparently range from an a few minutes to years.

I was probably most intrigued when Carr went through history and talked about the effects of other technological advances on the workings of the mind. He writes about the invention of the book, the printing press, the clock, the phonograph, etc., citing reactions from prominent scientists and thinkers, and detailing where they were right and where they were wrong. It’s almost strange to think that a transition from handwriting to typewriters could have an effect on the content, tone, and structure of someone’s writing, but there are a few anecdotes mentioned that seem to suggest otherwise; one being that the flow of cursive lends itself to more meandering sentences compared to the staccato of a typewriter.

A theme running through all this discussion of technology and its effects on humanity as a whole and on an individual level is that there’s never any turning back (unless we bomb ourselves to hell, I guess). The internet is only becoming increasingly prominent in our lives and the trend in all likelihood will not reverse. When new forms of media were created, others were never done away with entirely. Newspapers didn’t kill books. Television didn’t kill the radio. The internet hasn’t killed anything yet, but it is the first technology that has been able to absorb and provide practically every form of communication the human race has created. And it has greatly affected every other form of media. Many magazines are now laid out more like webpages and there are television shows like Tosh.0 that live off YouTube clips.

But maybe it’s bullshit to worry about the internet-ization of our brains. It’s not like reading is an activity the human brain is particularly evolved for; a person needs to develop a love of reading, which in turn leads the brain to crave more of a similar stimulus. I feel as if I’ve had to work to get back into reading at length, or even watching full movies at home, but I like to think I’m almost there. And it does feel more satisfying to finish a book or watch a great film than it does to jump around reading blogs or watching 20 minute television show episodes. But is it efficient? When Carr posed this question to some very intelligent people, a number of them said they don’t even read books anymore because it’s just not worth the time and effort when the internet is so easily searchable — just Wikipedia it! Well, you probably indirectly Wikipedia it by googling it first.

I mean Google because there’s an entire chapter of this book dedicated to the search giant. The search giant that has attempted to get its fingers into every inch of the internet and subsequently our lives. They want to know everything and they want everything to be searchable. The ideas of Sergey Brin mentioned in The Shallows point to the idea of a massive internet cloud singularity in the future of humanity. Perhaps this is inevitable, considering the march of technological progress and the willingness of people to upload as much as possible. Just thinking about such a possibility reminds me of “The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov, one of the favorite short stories. Try to read it without being distracted by the rest of the internet.

As written about by Carr, a move toward such a future would be scarier than the idea of our brains just being overloaded with too much data and not developing enough deep knowledge, as it would basically end all individuality. Although the two are linked — if you’re not forming individual thoughts through personal reading and writing, then it’s all external, which basically means the internet going forward. Already, people on the internet group together around similar interests, e.g., politics or sabermetrics, developing thoughts and worldviews alongside each other virtually. Sure, have a predilection for such behavior, but the internet only exacerbates the narrowing of experience. Imagine such an echo chamber effect across the entire human race. Or maybe just watch episode 2 of the British television series Black Mirror.

- Since I didn’t make a 9/11 post here a week ago, I’ll just mention how I do not give a shit where people were when the planes hit or the towers fell. We were all in class or at work or sleeping, I get it. If you’re going to write something like Rany Jazayerli did, that’s cool, but 140 characters is just garbage in this case.

- It’s pretty amazing how people — on my feed, at least — show up when a sporting event gets really interesting. I like to think Twitter has allowed people to see many more no-hitters, 5-set Grand Slam tennis matches, and overtime Stanley Cup playoff games.

- I don’t understand people who follow a few select people who exclusively tweet about one topic. I follow people I find interesting or amusing, regardless of content. It just so happens I follow a very large percentage of baseball (and Mets) fans because they are the people I come across most. I’m sure this has nothing to do with my own tweeting habits.

- My follower count really wishes I were an attractive girl, or at least played one on the internet.

- Every person I’ve talked to about Keith Law (@keithlaw) thinks he comes across as arrogant (and even Michael Lewis jumped in this week). But he’s still the only ESPN employee (outside of Grantland writers) I follow, due to him being, you know, intelligent.

- I’ve said this before, but I should have quit Twitter after this tweet.

- Does everyone remember when you could see all the tweets from someone who you followed, even the replies to people you didn’t also follow? I definitely remember the uproar when that changed. Can you imagine how much of a disaster your feed would be if that magically changed back?

- Drive has to be garnering the most polarizing movie tweet reviews I’ve ever seen. It’s either “fuck awesome” or “one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.”

- Outside of the previously linked Ayn Rand fatality tweet, I really don’t understand why I come up with my best Twitter material when everyone is asleep. I guess it’s probably because once my head hits my pillow I have to choose between thinking about my life or coming up with humorous tweets; the latter is much less stressful. Honestly, unwinding with some indacloud beforehand makes the late-night creativity flow even easier.

The one bug I noticed is that the list of posts generated when you search, click on the tag cloud, or look at the archives of a certain month now has broken formatting. But if you didn’t know how it looked before, the “View Comments” on the right side that screw everything up don’t look too bad. And now each post in the list has a nice little space between! A page no one sees being a tiny bit screwed up is a small price to pay for some useful features, especially nested comments not turning into a disaster past two replies.

Feel free to make use the Like buttons under my posts.

New York Times

The Sony Corporation will announce Thursday that it has signed a deal to bring Major League Baseball’s live streaming service to PlayStation3 video game consoles.

By the end of the week, PlayStation owners will be able to sign up with MLB.TV to watch out-of-market baseball games transmitted over the Internet. It is the latest in a series of digital distribution deals recently announced by sports franchises.

The PlayStation deal is MLB’s first with a video game maker, giving Sony a leg up for the time being. Users of the PlayStation Network online service will be able to gain access to the existing MLB.TV package, which includes hundreds of baseball games — excluding local team games and others that are broadcast on TV — for an annual fee. There is a revenue split associated with the deal, but Sony would not specify the terms.

People in the NeoGAF MLB thread have already tested out the MLB app on their PS3s and the responses seem to be a bit mixed. The big problem is the MLB.TV blackouts. Since I actually live in the same area as my favorite (shitty) team, I can’t watch them on MLB.TV. So I couldn’t cut ties from cable if I wanted to, since I want to watch Oliver Perez suck and Jason Bay strike out twice a game.

Nonetheless, it’s really cool to see MLB allowing its fans to watch games in as many ways as possible: internet browsers, iPhone, iPad, now PS3. They should just have an option to be able to pay to watch local games — JUST local games if that’s what the person wants. I guess that would be too utopian, though.

- The slow animated GIF problem will always be there. And in addition to that, I had heard some Mac users complain about how GIFs need to load completely before they animated at all, but I hadn’t come across it until a couple of weeks ago. Thankfully, it only lasted for a day or two. I have no idea what happened.

- When I was recently looking for info on golf handicaps, I was directed to About.com and when I got there, the correct formatting flashed for about 0.3 seconds before reverting back to a 1995-style webpage with no formatting whatsoever. I try reloading numerous times and the same thing happened everytime. And it happened with a bunch of About.com pages. But hey, it seems to be working now!

- Highlighting text can be extremely wonky sometimes. I have no way to expand on this — it’s just very annoying.

- Almost every time I click on the “Publish” button after finishing up a blog post, it ends up loading forever and I need to highlight my entire post and copy it and then refresh the page and paste it back in the editing box and hit “Publish” again. I even tried hitting “Save Draft” before attempting to publish, and while it worked the first time around, that was not indicative of future attempts.

- As someone commented in my last Chrome-related post, the search bar (apparently called the OmniBox?) is not nearly as quick as the Firefox AwesomeBar. It is also much less reliable.

- In preparation for my Song of the Week post yesterday, I attempted to listen to the direct link of “Sorrow” only to greeted with a second of painful corruption noise before the song actually started. I thought the song got corrupted during its upload to my webspace, but when I tested it in Firefox, it was totally fine. And when I tested it within its Flash player in the actual blog post, it was also fine. Bizarre.

These complaints aren’t enough to push me back to Firefox because it’s much easier to stick with the status quo, and that is now Chrome for me, minor frustrating issues aside. It just sheds some light on why Chrome hasn’t eaten much into Firefox’s marketshare; IE has been the browser hurt most by Chrome since the latter’s release.

This week — I don’t even remember which day of the week anymore — I went up to Smithhaven Mall with the sole intention of making a beeline for the Apple Store there and to plop down in that pristine white space and mess around with a new piece of hyped-up technology. I haven’t really provided many of my own thoughts on the iPad up until this point, only creating a 1st-grade-level photoshop, and linking to a few articles about it. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t waste any words on it before giving it a test run, since my feelings and preconceptions weren’t affected much.

The one thing I hoped they’d have loaded on the iPad was the MLB At Bat app, so when I quickly saw it on the first collection of icons, I clicked it and immediately looked for a way to watch a game on it. Unfortunately, the quality was pretty damn shitty, which I originally chalked up to an overworked internet in the Apple Store, but 1) there weren’t many people in the store, and 2) it was recently brought to my attention that MLB.TV was performing terribly the first few days of the season — or maybe that was just Opening Day. No matter the reason, I’m not ready to blame the iPad directly for the awful, pixelated stream. It did have a lot of cool pop-up boxes, though!

Oh yeah, the other thing I immediately realized was that — contrary to what I’ve heard numerous people say — the iPad is not that heavy. I don’t know what people were expecting, but it’s pretty much the exact weight I expected a computer tablet to be. Did people seriously believe it’d be anywhere as light as a Kindle? Yeah, you’re not going to be holding it up to read for any extended period of time, but don’t a lot of people rest a book on an armrest or something while they’re reading, anyhow? I think the discussion is moot, though, since I can’t imagine trying to read a book on an LED-backlit screen. Reading an internet article of any sort of length is tough enough for me.

Where the iPad shines is in its internet browsing. It’s tough for me to admit, but flying around web pages and click on links with your fingers is fun, and compared to iPhone or iPod Touch, it’s about 50x as functional. Everything is bright and clear, pages load much quicker, and you can see so much more of every webpage. On the other hand, not having Flash functionality is fucking GARBAGE, and it destroys any chance of me agreeing with Apple’s statement that the iPad is “the best way to experience the web.” I guess I just contradicted the first sentence of this very paragraph. Basically, it’s awesome at browsing the parts of the web it actually supports.

What else did I do? Not much, since way too many of the apps loaded onto the iPad were iPhone apps. New York Times app for iPhone? No fucking thanks, I want to try out the version that has a resolution above 480×320. I guess Plants vs. Zombies was the one iPad-optimized game I played, and it was for about 15 seconds, since I rather just play the Steam version. Shit, there really were way too many iPhone apps on it.

I did get accustomed to typing on the iPad fairly quickly. With it rested on a flat surface, I was able to go at probably 80% speed with only a small drop in accuracy. I guess that bodes well for anyone who plans on doing a lot of typing on it, but I can’t see many people fitting that profile. I also can’t see all that many people even needing this admittedly impressive piece of technology. The iPhone (or smartphone of your choice) + laptop combination still makes way too much sense for someone on the move. When I’m at home, I’m not going to have the urge to use a gimped internet browser. I feel like even the hundreds of thousands of people who have already bought one see it as a complimentary device to use around their house, not some new type of computer.

BUT I guess the huge advantage an iPad has over a laptop — or even a netbook — is its battery life. I don’t know what to make of that, as I don’t travel often, and even when I have lately, I didn’t bring along my laptop. And that has nothing to do with having a monstrosity for a laptop, nope. I made use of my hotel room Wi-Fi with my iPod Touch. That was good enough. No need to buy a $500 king size version of it.

Damn, this post needed to be much more negative, if only to get Apple fans to post. I don’t think my heart was in it this time, guys.

Chrome came out about a year and a half ago. I was all over it immediately, as it was made by Google and I’m all about new free stuff on the internet. While it was fast, there were too many bugs and no extensions. It definitely seemed like a good framework to build upon, but it wasn’t a finished project (this might have been due to me using the beta) and it was not nearly enough to pull me away from Firefox. I did like the quasi-ability to turn websites like Gmail into applications that have shortcuts on your desktop, but that was just a cool novelty.

So over the past year I stuck with Firefox, checking out Chrome one more half-assed time when extensions were added, but I yet again wasn’t impressed enough to switch my loyalties. I had my Firefox add-ons and all animated GIFs worked the way I wanted them to and I didn’t see a real reason to change. I don’t like change for change’s sake. That may be a problem in real-life for me in some respects, but I feel that when it comes to personal computing it’s not a bad personality trait.

But recently I had been getting a bit annoyed with the long wait for Firefox to load, and some freezing issues, and just general sluggishness. I took the opportunity with a fresh install of the retail version of Windows 7 to give Chrome a real shot. I imported my Firefox bookmarks, and when the ones I had on my bar in Firefox weren’t added to the bar in Chrome I actually bothered to drag all of them onto the bar in Chrome. And then I went as far to add some extensions. The result is that I don’t see myself going back to Firefox, even though some GIFs animate too slowly due to a minimum frame time hold (I’m failing to think of a better/more technical phase for it). I can live with more epic and suspenseful GIFs, just like I suffered the horrific framerate drops in Shadow of the Colossus. And then there’s some weird pop-up and full-screen streaming video issues on…certain sites — but once again, I’m able to deal. I’m only there to take care of business and back out of private browsing mode. Which does remind me that being able to have a private window open while having a regular window open is invaluable.

And now it’s time for me to mention some awesome Chrome extensions. I had plenty of Firefox add-ons, but I felt like I had some of them just to feel like I was getting as much as possible out of the browsers and barely actually utilized them. Meanwhile, I have a select few Chrome extensions and they are all awesome.

Adblock – I think we all realize this is necessary for internet browsing nowadays. I went as far to add the Adblock Browsing Button, though, for the few sites I wouldn’t mind seeing ads to support (yes, I realize they are based on click-throughs, but whatever).

Chromey Calculator – This extension is FUCKING AWESOME. It’s basically a miniature version of Wolfram Alpha, which means in addition to regular mathematical calculations, it can shoot back to you the circumference of the earth or the height of the London Eye or how many dollars equal one euro. So, so sweet.

goo.gl URL Shortener – This is really for anyone who posts on Twitter. By far the best URL shortener out there, only a click away. It even copies the URL for you automatically.

Google Dictionary – For those times when you’re reading an high-brow article or blog post by a particularly erudite internet denizen and need to know what the fuck they just said. Double-click and BAM — the word’s definition. God, I love Google.

Baseball Player Search – I love baseball more than Google though. While I had Fangraphs as a search engine in Firefox, the fact that I can choose which sites I want to search — and that it simultaneously opens up a tab for each one — makes this extension so much cooler.

Slideshow – You can get your Facebook stalker on more efficiently with this extension, by turning people’s albums into an easy to scroll through slideshow. It also works with Google Image Search, Flickr and Picasa.

I highly recommend everyone, PC and Mac users alike, to give Chrome a good hard look if you haven’t already. It’s much better than it was when it first was revealed, while Firefox seems to get worse.

A Disturbance In The Force – BURGER WARS. This would be the post the above graphic originates. The title comes from treating McDonald’s as the black McEmpire and displaying other fast-food places as different-colored pockets of resistance. I have no problem with making McDonald’s evil. Does anyone find it strange that Dairy Queen’s region of dominance is the coldest part of the country? Sure, there’s 5 feet of snow on the ground and the wind chill of -40, but I sure want a DQ Blizzard!

My Roger Ebert Story – Will Leitch recounts how he grew up idolizing the film critic, attended his alma mater, initiated contact with him, met and hung out with him, asked him for advice, and then turned on him with an article entitled “I Am Sick of Roger Ebert’s Fat F—ing Face.”

Jenrry Mejia Looks Like Jenrry Mejia – A plea to not turn the Mets’ #1 pitching prospect into a reliever. I agree with this. I don’t want the Joba fiasco to happen with the Mets. Keep him in the minors and let him develop as a starter and don’t bring him up until he’s ready to START.

Mets as Best Picture Nominees – This is pretty cool — I get to kill two birds with one link. Jose Reyes = District 9 and K-Rod = Avatar are the best comparisons.

8 History-less History Channel Shows – This list is just kinda depressing. Not that I’ve watched the History Channel in years. But that just means I watched more when it showed actual history. I’m not responsible for this, I swear!

Everything I Know About Japan, I Learned From Mr. Baseball – I enjoy linking to stuff that involves Tom Selleck.

Best Single Season WAR (without winning the MVP) – The required weekly link to a post featuring sabermetrics.

Valve’s Big Fat Hint: Steam for Macs? - I really need to dedicate a full blog post to this, but I might as well sneak this in here for now. This has been a big sticking point for me with regards to Macs. No Steam = no sale. Now what do I use as an arguing point?!?

But what spurred this post was browsing the internet with a newly-installed Firefox, visiting my own site, and seeing that the Song of the Week posts had that missing Flash plugin symbol. It had never even crossed my mind that those little things were Flash. I mean, of course they’re Flash, but I’ve never thought about this stuff before the iPhone and iPod Touch. I have an iPod Touch and I never even noticed it before — maybe because I barely use it. Combined with the now daily animated GIFs until I receive what I rightly deserve, it must take an obscene amount of time to load the site and then some of the posts end up being worthless anyway. On the other hand, I think stuff I post can wait until someone is in front of a computer.