Dark Night

Dark Night published on 4 Comments on Dark Night

Where were you when the lights went out?

The world recently took part in Earth Hour, which started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million homes and businesses turned their lights off for one hour to make their stand against climate change. Only a year later and Earth Hour had become a global sustainability movement with more than 50 million people across 35 countries participating.

My favourite thing about it, is that many places celebrate by having a massive Fireworks display, which to me, seems to go against the whole movement somewhat. Both Sydney & Seatlle did that this year. But I do like the pretty lights….

I support the movement due to the public awareness it raises, but I personally feel that it still allows the average person to participate and then forget about what they can do to help save the planet, for another 12 months.
I truly hope I am wrong, and the attitudes of the peoples of the world begin to change.

Anyway, while the lights were off, I got creative! I made some shirt designs and stuff, to help make the world brighter and more fun. Yay for me!
They make excellent gifts and will also increase your coolness quotient by a factor of 22.
Also, the money raised will help fund me to do some art classes and make better/funnier comics, which is something that I am sure you all want.
(yes john, that comment is aimed at you)

To find out more and buy something, just click on the images below:

Zombie headshot shirt Zombie Headshot mug Mr T-rex

ym

 

Social Media Guru

Social Media Guru published on 11 Comments on Social Media Guru

G-U-R-U is the new way to spell “Clueless”

Everyone has heard all about the huge amounts of people self-proclaiming themselves as “Social Media Gurus” over the past few years.
And I bet everyone has met one of these people in real life too.

Almost without exception, these “gurus” are clueless, unimpressive self-promoters who have grabbed on to the latest thing that they think will get them some attention, respect and acclaim.
So many people added this title to their twitter profiles, in 2009, that it became hard to find someone without the word “guru”.
This fairly recent post from BL Ochman talks about the number of people still doing this. You can go to tweepsearch.com and confirm this for yourself too.

It is all so sad and it has created a situation that the word “guru” has lost the reverence that it once had.
The definition of the word shows it was once an honorable title. But no longer. It now draws ridicule, mistrust and scorn in the western world and online.

The odd thing is that a majority of these so called “gurus” have chosen this title for themselves.
This is the reason it has lost it’s former meaning, as the title is one that needs to be placed on you by others, who value your worth and the contribution you can make.

Because these titles were self-bestowed, the wielders of this awesome new rank often made some fantastically stupid mistakes due to their own lack of knowledge. For a great list of some of these, check out this post from mashable

Thankfully, rise of the social media gurus seems to have reached its peak, because there’s a new, contrary, position gaining momentum. It’s the “who the hell are these people to call themselves experts” movement. Posts like this one and this reflect that sentiment.

But the term is forever tarnished, in my opinion.
That’s OK though, because I like the word “sensei” better anyway.


I am also lurking on the internet in places other than here. (and in a VERY non-guru kind of way).
You can check out these places:

Agent-x Comics fan page

Agent_X on twitter Agent-x Comics on flickr Google Profile
FB Fan page Twitter Flickr Google Buzz


Chat Roulette Champion

Chat Roulette Champion published on No Comments on Chat Roulette Champion

Sometimes winning requires missing out…..

Since Chat Roulette is flavour of the month right now, I could not resist doing a comic about it.

It seems EVERYONE is talking about it. The media are all over it, trying to dissect it’s good and bad points.
Parodies are popping up all over the place, youtube videos of chat roulette pranks are being posted as fast as people can make them, and images form webcams are posted everywhere.

Three of my favourites so far are:

> Jon Stewart Goes On Chatroulette

> The eye vagina (safe for work)

> Cat Roulette

It is a novelty that many have tried out and quickly realised that the anonymity and randomness of the connections that you get can enable them to be free (sometime far too free, I think) with their thoughts and bodies.
If nudity offfends, then Chat Roulette is NOT the place for you to be.

In fact, if you can go for 6 rounds without seeing a penis or some boobs, then you are probably doing something wrong.

If you need to, go and check it out here.

Cloud Storage

Cloud Storage published on 1 Comment on Cloud Storage

Kiss your IT geeks goodbye.

If you read tech news regularly, you will know that “The Cloud” is the next great destination for all of your treasured computer files.
If you are unsure what it is I will put it in simple terms here.

Basically, you put your files into a network of computers, rather than one single location, so that the data and applications can then be accessed remotely when you need it. When you here the term “The Cloud”, it actually refers to the internet.

This provides an immense amount of benefits, especially to businesses, as it means their data is securely held offsite from their physical offices. All the data is on a convenient, on-demand network, with access to a shared pool of computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released.
And soon, nearly anyone will be able to handle the uploads and downloads with infinite ease!
This is awesome and shows that we are living on the edge of a marvelous new future.

But I think we should stop and ask ourselves one question:
“What is to become of our Sys Admins and IT Managers?”

In the future, when we are all cloud computing and loving our lives, where will these people be?
If you don’t need them to help maintain server storage, find archived data files and make recommendations on what new hardware you need for the office, then what happens to them?

If these hardworking individuals are not needed to defrag a drive or resurrect a server, where will they fit in modern society?

Well, I will tell you – They will form roaming mobile LAN parties and create confusion on the streets by speaking l33t or Klingon to innocent pedestrians.

But we have a chance to stop this horrific vision of the future from coming true.
And it is such a very simple solution.
(No, it does not involve boycotting cloud computing or storage, because that stuff is going to be f#@king fantastic!)

The solution is this :
Tomorrow, when you see someone who works in IT, just walk up and give them a hug.
Keep in mind that you will need to hold on, so they know it is for real. About 15 seconds will be enough.

Sure, they may flinch now, but if we don’t start to heal the rift BEFORE it begins, then all is lost……..