Category: Technology

I’m always restless when I’m trying to sleep…and even if I tire myself out completely before going to bed, nothing changes. It’s just toss, turn, toss, turn, rinse, repeat until I just want to yell into my pillow at the injustice of it all. I just have too many thoughts going on in my mind, is all. At least, I think that’s all. I’ve been browsing the web, going through different theories for why some people have trouble falling asleep.

One recently-debunked idea is that it’s digital antennas. Installation in Melbourne has gone up since people realised that they can fast-track programming from the US. I’m more of a streaming person myself, and it’s so easy nowadays…but anyway, I was deep in the Insomnia forums when I discovered a user theory that digital antennas affected our brainwaves. He theorised that since it was such a powerful form of broadcasting, it actually interfered with the electrical signals in our brain and made it hard to sleep because there was so much programing running through our minds, all the time. ALL the time. I looked out my window, and sure enough, my neighbours had a digital antenna installed right on the same level as my room! I was paranoid about signals playing around with my brain for weeks.

It’s all nonsense, of course. Our brain’s electrical signals can’t be stuffed up so easily, since…well, they’re how we do anything. If that was the case, then every time we walked past an antenna we’d start walking funny and slapping ourselves or whatever. Nope, looks like I won’t have to file a complaints with the antenna specialists in Melbourne because they’re stopping me from sleeping! Turns out my mind is just more active at night. Man, I wish I was one of those people who could just switch off their brains and get a good night’s sleep…

-Deon

I’m grateful to live in an age where we can catch up television online. Back in the day, not that I was alive back then, but back in the day that just wasn’t really any option. You saw what you could see and that was that. To be fair, workplace standards were a bit more lax, so maybe if there was a big game on the boss would let you watch it while you cleaned the counters or manned the store or filed some arrest warrants. It was a simpler time indeed.

Except now you can go to a college in Melbourne and get a video game design course, easy as anything. Imagine if you travelled back in time, using…I don’t know, some kind of machine. Like a machine that manipulates time. Like a time…machine. So you had one of those, like the Time And Space Perambulatory Inspection Service vehicle from Professor What (or just the TASPIS). That takes you wherever you like, so let’s say you went back to 1970s Melbourne where televisions were tiny little things and some were still in black and white maybe. And you told these people that one day, there would be game design courses in Melbourne! They’d think you perhaps meant sport type games. That’s what they used to call the subjects of sport and P.E.: games. You’d have a games master and they’d be the ones in charge of all the sporting equipment. In fact, I bet they still have similar things at private boarding schools and places in the country where they speak in a very proper fashion. But anyway, those were games, whereas nowadays we have sport and video games, which many people think are opposed. Those people have never heard of Mii Badminton. But I digress.

Technology is great, basically. Now I’ll never miss an episode of anything because you can pick up that stuff online, easy as pie. And you can actually do a game design course, and it has nothing to do with tennis or cricket unless that’s the game you’re making. But Mii already did that.

-June

I just had this GREAT idea. I was watching this movie, The Mauritian, about a guy on a scientific mission to Mauritius who gets left for dead by his crew, and he has to survive on a desert island with only his wits and knowledge of mineralogy. It’s that new Yaival DuMesque film, you might have heard of it. But once upon a time I did a website design course in Melbourne, all very interesting stuff that I chose to disregard because I was an idiot and I didn’t think this internet thing was going to take off. Mistakes of youth, you know how it can be. But the point is, while this guy was on that island in Mauritius he was stranded, with no way to contact the outside world. Obviously he had no internet, even though he rigged up the exercise bike to give himself power for other things, because Mauritius is a notoriously poor spot for Wi-Fi connection.

See, the thing about websites is that they’re often made to be elaborate. People are catching onto why that might not be a good idea, because when a page takes time to load, people bail. Sad fact of the internet, and also humanity. Now, people are doing web design courses (I assume) where they’re taught that less is more. Sites are converting to clean designs that look fresh and aren’t loaded up with stuff that makes them slow to load. But what if there were sites that were SO minimal, they could be accessed from anywhere? Like, just a bit of text and a box, for people who are stranded in places and they can barely get messages out. It can be like the emergency services, but for the internet.

The scientist guy couldn’t make a call, but a few times during the movie he got intermittent signals from the hotel that was a few miles just off the coast but sadly across shark and octopus-infested waters. If he could just access a super-minimalist site…he could’ve sent out a message. I could change the world. And all with a web development course I did in Melbourne about fifteen years ago. Or, this might already be a thing. Because the internet is just like that.

-John