Month: February 2012

How to roll a cigarette

Are you spending too much money on cigarettes? Want to quit but you just can’t? Have you ever considered rolling your own cigarettes? It’s an inexpensive alternative to buying a $15 dollar pack – or whatever it is nowadays.

You can either watch the YouTube link here, or you can follow the step-by-step below.

 

 

  1. Grind up your ingredients. The finer the herb, the more evenly spread your joint will be.
  2. (Optional) Make a filter. Using a cotton filter will absorb most of the THC and ruin your smoking experience. A cotton filter will also absorb a lot of the tar for tobacco smokers. I recommend ripping off a piece of resume paper or a business card to use as your filter. 1 piece of resume paper can give you about 50-60 filter tips. Remember, you do not need a big piece for your filter
  3. You dump your ingredients into the rolling paper. There are various rolling papers you can use, it’s all a matter of preference. I like to use 1¼ size rolling papers – not too big, not too small.
  4. After you dump the ingredients, while holding the paper with both of your thumbs and index fingers, you use your thumbs to create an even cylindrical shape. This gives you the shape of your joint
  5. You will need to tuck the paper inside of itself to make that cigarette shape. This may be easier said than done, but practice makes perfect.
  6. You lick the gum. Be careful not to use too much saliva. Too much saliva will not let adhesive stick, therefore making it almost impossible to salvage the paper.
  7. If you have excess saliva, don’t panic. You can use a method called ‘roasting’ to get dry up the unwanted saliva.

 

Modularity

The human body is a giant organism that is composed of various different interdependent organs (or parts) that allow it to properly function. Normally, one part of the human body cannot be removed without causing serious consequences. Every organ somewhat relies on each other. The human body is interdependent of each other, therefore it is not modular. It is not self sustaining.

 

Modularity is one of the 5 Principles of New Media as defined by Lev Manovich. It is the idea that ” a new media object consists of independent parts, each of which consists of smaller independent parts, and so on, down to the level of the smallest ‘atoms’ – pixels, 3-D points, or text characters”(Manovich, 31). This is why there is such interchangeability available. Since no one piece is dependent of another, if something were to malfunction it would not affect the system as a whole.

 

Unlike new media, the human body is nowhere near as interchangeable. If something were to malfunction in the body, removing the problem at the source  wouldn’t solve the problem. It would probably make things worse. We cannot upgrade ourselves if something stops working. We can’t become 6 Million Dollar Men.

 

The World Wide Web can be considered as an extension of man, just like Marshall McLuhan said (McLuhan, 82). But can it be considered as an evolution of man? In a perfect world, wouldn’t we want to be able to fully customize ourselves? You could give yourself a new heart if you ruined your old one. You could make yourself thinner just like you would be able to rescale an image.

 

The Internet and new media technologies allow us to do that. The Internet allows us to customize everything within a digital setting, and is a rapidly evolving organism. It keeps advancing at an exponential rate. The World Wide Web is an extension of the 6 Million Dollar Man.

The Digital Divide

I watched this recently and thought it was amazing how almost 5 billion people don’t have Internet access. I can’t imagine my life without the Internet, and everyone should have access to it.

 

…only in a perfect world

 

http://www.ted.com/talks/aleph_molinari_let_s_bridge_the_digital_divide.html

 

What do you guys think? Should everyone have access to the Internet? Is it a luxury? A necessity?

What the hell is Facebook?

Those were my exact words when my friend said that I should make one back in 2007. I heard it was just like Myspace, so what’s the point of another Myspace? Eventually more and more people started using it. After my last attempt at rejection, my best friend made my Facebook profile for me. I was forced HAD to be on Facebook.

As more and more people made the shift from Myspace to Facebook, I saw myself using it more. I spent a good amount of time on Farmville and other games (I never played Mafia Wars, my pride wouldn’t let me). It took me way too long to realize I was wasting so much time on this website.

I just couldn’t stop.

I told myself I need to do something. If i couldn’t get off Facebook, then I needed to make my time on FB somewhat productive. I just couldn’t figure out how.

Then I saw some companies doing something pretty interesting. They started making a social presence on this website. Every week you could see new companies hopping on Facebook and actually updating them like they would a blog.

I found this great. I would read up on current events on the same place I would communicate with friends. This was great for me because I spend a lot more time on the web than I do watching TV.  I’d become a fan of things like the NY Times, CNN, TED, ESPN (of course). Not only would I catch up on current events, but I’d be up to date with my favorite sports teams, websites, videogames, and an abundance of other random pages. It’s all catered to me which is really nice.

On a side note, here’s a cool website about FB statistics: http://www.sysomos.com/insidefacebook/

Of course I still waste spend a lot of my time on Facebook, but not all of it can be considered wasted time now. I wonder how long until I find another website to waste all my time on.

Spring 2012

So it begins…

This is the first time I’m creating a blog for school. I’ve had blogs before, so this isn’t completely new to me. How much do you think I can get away with on here? I’ll let you know as soon as I find out.

Baruch vs. John Jay basketball game is coming up. I wanna go just to talk smack to all my John Jay friends. My appreciation for the Bearcats is as much about school spirit as it is about hating my friends.