The Island Journal

Have you ever looked at our government (The USA that is) or any government for that matter and thought, "If only I were in charge...". How would you do things differently? How would you improve upon the system?

Recently some friends got me interested in a website called Nation States. It’s a site that incorporates legislation into a game and it's based on a book called Jennifer Government by Max Barry. One creates one’s country, gives it a flag, a national animal, and a currency and then it’s placed among other nations to fend for it’s self in a world market situation. Your nation is then ranked and reported on like an actual country. During the game, you vote on national legislation like union strikes and trade tariffs to build up your nation in the world arena. Once established, you can join a united nations of sorts, the World Assembly, to vote on other world wide issues ranging from human rights to hydrogen cars. It’s a fascinating game, even if you don’t like politics. I personally hate the political feuds we tend to have in this country, but I never the less have a Nation State of my very own, the Borderlands of Boomocratic Poecia (get it?). I have built up my nation on the basis of personal freedoms that don’t infringe on others and fiercely protected human rights as well as passing laws to strengthen the economy and education. It’s been fun for the most part, and a little silly.

I applied for membership in the World Assembly and can now vote on issues. The first issue I voted on was child pornography. Without reading the proposal, of course I was against child porn! What sane individual wouldn’t be against exploitation of children in any form (accept sweat shops I mean... kidding). I read through the forums and I noticed that the majority of the states were voting against the proposal and I was appauled. I read the proposal and the wording left quite a bit to the imagination as well as adding some rights infringing speach in reguards to other issues. The purpose of the game is to inform, provoke thought, and mimic actual legislation. This piece didn’t fully live up to what it was supposed to embody so I voted it down. It will be re-written and re-submitted, but I now understand why some politicians vote against pieces of legislation that, at first glance, seem like good ideas. There is something attached that isn’t what the politician stands for or goes against his / her beliefs.

During this upcoming election, take into consideration the details when a particular candidate voted for or against something… you don’t know why they made that decision without reading the resolution. Don’t take the media’s word that a candidate is a flip flopper because they voted against something, then later voted for it. There is a lot more involved. I have always known this info, but I’ve never really thought about it much, until I became the politician. Take a look at Nation States, it's a thought provoking alternative to Myspace or Face book and you might learn something.

You may be wondering where my blog went. Well, I wasn’t keeping up with it and I had broken the cardinal rule of the slacker… I planned. I planned to make the blog about doodles and travel, but as I’ve been traveling, I’ve run into weekends I just didn’t feel like doing anything picture worthy or I posted them at MySpace. As I’ve been doodling, I haven’t done anything worthy of posting or didn’t have a scanner with me Or I posted them at Deviant Art. In a nut shell, The blog just kind of sat here. I’ve deleted the posts and I’m starting over. It’s September of 08 and I’m picking up about a year after I left off the last time. I begin anew with a new discovery:

LINUX! The Ubutu distrubition, Hardy Heron build to be specific.

That’s right boys and girls, I’ve gotten into Linux, the open source free man’s (or woman’s) operating system. When I was in college, I used a Unix system (the basis for linux) and a text based web browser called Lynx to get online along side telnet for chat. Later came graphical interfaces like Netscape. I eventually fell into the trap Microsoft has lain for us all and became… and end user.

Now-a-days, I like to think I’m smarter than the average user, but I’m defiantly not an U83Я l33t h4ck3r (uber “leet” as in elite hacker, see leetspeak) either. I thought, that’s all that used Linux. Not just the hackers, no Linux users were the elite hackers who had ideas about politics and art and literature and when they spoke, out poured important utterances that would set the coffee house on a roar with debate. These are the people who, while trading pirated software in back rooms of smoke filled techno clubs, wearing faded black sweaters with torn jeans and beanies, sporting silk scarves and dark round sunglasses, would comment on the instability of Darfur and how the oppressive regime currently trying to control the country was nothing more than a mouth piece for the corporations that really ran things and arguing the benefits of pirates over ninjas or vice versa.

This was my misconception. I am more of an end user than a real authority on the subject of all things tech, but that proves the versatility of the OS. Linux has proven it’s self to me so far as a solid and relatively easy to learn operating system. My system is faster and It’s getting easier to use. The only issues I have are some programs that have to have windows to run (Photoshop is a prime example), it’s not as intuitive as I’d like but that can be fixed with some tweaking of the GUI and the inability to sync some devices though I’m looking into that. The best part is a community of support. Windows offers a little database of issues, but there’s no one that really cares. Linux users really want other users to enjoy and have an easy time of Linux. The forums are full of helpful and nice people who are eager to help. All in all, it seems like a hit, but we’ll know more as time goes on.

In the mean time, I’ll be posting some helpful tips and sites to help with using my new OS, Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Site

Forums for help

Change the look