by Chris Billowsin Hobby Heedings0 comments
A powerful feature of iTunes is its ability to create custom playlists of your songs. You can create playlists of particular genres, years, and anything else you have listed in your tags. As I stated in Lesson Five, having information in your tags/comments section that relates to an artist’s city of origin or listing the names of? their earlier bands can all be searchable and thus become the basis of a playlist. I extensively use Playlists to create music lists to listen to. In a future post, I will list how I use playlists to queue music to rate and to organize my songs to further polish them. My playlists operate like an instrument that makes me feel just like a musician, fluidly allowing me to play great music. Here is an introduction to Playlists courtesy of Apple. But one of the most sophisticated playlists I have ever found is listed here. Check them out.
by Chris Billowsin Mental Mischief0 comments
I recall back in 1992, the first time I opened up my Wintel CPU Unit. I was stunned. The unit was so big, but on the inside it was so completely empty. I saw the hard drive, the motherboard, and the wires connecting everything, Yet where was the games I was playing? I expected to see the land of Illuria (the original Warlords game I was playing) inside the case. Of course, I intellectually knew that the game existed as ones and zeros on the hard drive, but it made me do a double-take. Everything we do on computers and consoles are those ones and zeros being quickly arranged in elaborate patterns. It is simply a series of electrical current that we are seeing on the screen – just like right now. It is truly amazing. 😆 I think that this amazement helped the Matrix movies give the impact they did. They portrayed the question of What is Reality? My experience was like an introduction to the Buddhist concept of Sunyata or Emptiness. When everything is not what we think it is, then why become upset when a game is lost or prideful when a game is won? 😉
by Chris Billowsin Hobby Heedings2 comments
In response to a couple of blog posts, Growing Up Games and Games vs Art, I feel compelled to respond with my own perspective about how to evaluate Computer Games as Art. Computer Games is a medium that is criticized for being immature and adolescent. Games are seen as being full of violence, escapism, and lacking any maturity. As an avid fan, investor in a computer games company, and an amateur philosopher, I wondered why do Computer Games get saddled with these labels. After some thinking, I feel that there are three related reasons: 1) Computer Games are relatively new form of entertainment and communication medium. 2) And because of #1, Computer Games possess its fair share of adolescent content. 3) And because of #2, Computer Games do not possess the sophisticated traits consistent with Art. So let’s start with the first reason. My read of 20th century history is that all new entertainment mediums start off being criticized for being frivolous. When Movies were first created, they were seen to be superfluous compared to theater. The first movies were not documentaries, but skin flicks that were used in various naughty arcades. Movies started off as pure bawdy entertainment, but […]
by Chris Billowsin Business Beller0 comments
It is truly stunning. Software developers are releasing games and applications on the iPhone platform for $0.99 and despite the low price their games are still pirated. Developers are finding evidence that 90% of their games are being played without being paid for. The same thing appears to be happening in the music, movie, and book industry as everything has become digitized. People expect their content to be free. But content creation is work, and for the most part people need to be paid for their work. Pirates disagree and feel completely entitled to use this content without paying for it. There are even political parties that articulate their position. They tell us that all copyrights and patents are harmful and that stealing from content creators is an act of freedom. Yes, playing a iPhone game that sells for only $0.99 without paying for it sure makes the world a freer place. Talk about self-deluded self-entitlement. Well, here is an article that completely destroys their position. PC Game Piracy Examined. Check it out. To me the solution is not to prevent piracy (which is impossible), but to punish it. The only way to change a deluded sense of entitlement is […]
by Chris Billowsin Spirit Speculations3 comments
In relation to my previous post talking about understanding Human Nature as the centre of all general and political philosophy, I thought I would touch on two mindsets that plague us as much as ideology. The twin-opposites of Optimism and Pessimism. Optimism is about emotional states of being including hope, wishful thinking, and at its worse fairy-tale views of the world that its always getting better. Pessimism is its opposite, which includes hopelessness, despondency, and at its worse fatalism that the world is going to get worse. Both lead to paralysis since at their most extreme, the world is just fine as it if you are optimist so why worry about it, or its going to hell if you are pessimist and there is nothing that can be done about it. As soon as one accepts optimism or pessimism as their worldview, they shut themselves off from asking questions. I used to consider myself pessimistic and a cynic but after finally reading those definitions, I realized that this was not me. My blog is about asking questions, hopefully relevant and rational questions. My goal is to find solutions, not preach optimism or pressimism. I realized that I am a skeptic. […]
by Chris Billowsin Spirit Speculations0 comments
If you have read my blog for a while, you will know that I am a thinker. I like to mull ideas around, post about them, and the re-post again when a new insight arrives. Today’s blog post appears to be a cumulative of many years of thinking. I think that I have solved an inner puzzle that has tricked me for as long as I can remember. The irony is that the answer is not really that profound, yet the implications are. Based on my experience with Socialism, Green Politics, and Anti-ideology thinking, I have arrived at a conclusion that the problem with politics, political philosophy, and philosophy in general is that humans fail to understand human nature. Absurd isn’t it? To be human and yet not understand what human nature is… Yet, that is exactly what I think is the problem. Let me illustrate: I have argued for quite some time that ideology is a human disease that creates wars and immense human suffering. Yet, ideology is just the dogma of political philosophy, which in turn is just a world view that claims to understand what human nature and life is. All political and general philosophies are about […]
by Chris Billowsin Hobby Heedings0 comments
One of the things I appreciate about iTunes is the fields you can use to add extra tags to your songs. As we discussed earlier most people use Genre as their default sorting system, but that is just tapping the surface of what you could get out of your music collection. If you have an extensive library, it would be worth your while to ‘polish’ these song tags so that you can create some great play-lists. Here are some essential tags you might want to consider using: Date – Should be the date of the song’s release, not the date of the album release. This is especially important when it comes to greatest hit compilations. Having the correct date allows you to listen to an artist’s evolution as a musician. Location – I put this in the Grouping header. I put the city, state/province, and country that the artists/band was born/formed in. Having a location can allow me to listen to bands from California or from Scotland. Other Info such as Member of XXX Band – I put this in the Comments header. When I do a search for the Police, I will also see my albums by Sting, Andy […]
by Chris Billowsin Spirit Speculations2 comments
In a recent meeting with a few of my work colleagues I was struck by how differently we each see issues and problems. I am not talking about different personality views, but a general worldview that appears to be defined by the generation cohort we belong to. As one of the younger people at my office, I belong to the Baby Bust / Generation X cohort. which is in contrast with most of my colleagues who are in their mid to late 50s and are part of the Baby Boom. It has been my experience that Baby Boomers are generally a positive group who believe that the world is always getting better. In contrast, I am pretty cynical about the future, particularly the Health Care industry I work in where the future challenges are being solved with more bureaucracy and institutional thinking. While I see us being faced with a very negative future, my older colleagues see lots of strengths. Who is right? I don’t know, since the correct answer depends on the question being asked. A big part of my perspective is my fiscal conservatism which which asks, “How are we going to pay for all of this?” What […]
by Chris Billowsin Spirit Speculations0 comments
I attended an ethical workshop recently and the presenter stated she thought that most people are good. This worldview allowed her to approach people she met in a warm and open fashion which made for a rewarding and pleasant work experience. Benefits aside of such a worldview, is she right? Are most people good? I never asked her, but I am sure the presenter thought that all of the evil acts of the world are committed by a small number of bad or misunderstood people. She saw people themselves being valued as good or bad. For her, the world is made up mostly of good people whose lives get ruined by a small number of bad people. The value is placed on the person, not on the behavior. My experience tells me otherwise. Instead of seeing human nature being inherently good or bad, I would instead that it being imbued with potential for both. Across time and place people have struggled to avoid suffering and find happiness in life.? It is the limitless ways of finding happiness that makes human nature appear so complex. Yet this complexity does not mean that we have to leave our ability to judge at […]
by Chris Billowsin Spirit Speculations0 comments
Most journalists talk about the five W’s as a method to get a story. These are: WHO? Every topic needs a subject. WHAT? Every subject needs an event. WHEN? Every event needs a time. WHERE? Every event needs a place. WHY? The existentialist question. There is a reason behind the subject experiencing the event, at the time and place it happened. That’s five W’s… but there is actually a sixth, forgotten one. I will argue that the sixth W is found at the end of the question and word: “HOW?”. HOW is the most forgotten and subtle question. It is the only future-looking or solution-focused question. After we have answers to the first five questions, we need to ask HOW so we can re-frame the entire situation to consider change and solutions. HOW do we create peace? HOW do we reduce suffering? HOW do we find happiness? Perhaps problems remain unsolved because we stop short of asking the forgotten ‘W’ question of HOW.
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