I on the other hand think about my computer skills and see all the other things I wish I knew how to do or just knew more about. More than general networking stuff? I think I’m clueless. Hard-core programming, LOADS of information to still digest and learn.

However, in my “real” job, I’m regularly reminded how much general computer knowledge isn’t out there. In helping support the applications and websites I develop during the day, I come into contact with a number of computer users that it’s far from second nature on what to do.

It’s for that reason that I think I’m going to do some short and quick, general knowledge posts about computers right here. If you’re like me and serve as the tech-support guy for people (particularly friends and family) then hopefully you’ll be able to direct some people to these posts for a quick tip on how to use their computer more efficiently, or just at a little bit higher level than they have in the past.

If you’re not the “computer geek” and have questions on how to do stuff and you’d like me to tackle them and give you a quick post on what to do, feel free to leave me a comment and let me know what you’d like me to try and help you with here in the future.

I look forward to hopefully hearing from a variety of people on this one.

Image Source: www.sxc.hu

Post from: EveryJoe

Some Computer Basics 101

The next few paragraphs is an attempt to shed some light on the apparent fascination on the culture of failure on the Internet.

Phail. Fail! FailBlog. PWNED. LOL. These are but some of the iterations of the concept of Failure, and by itself has become something celebrated over the Internet either as a cult following or a niche topic on its own. Why does the Internet revel failure? Why is it archived into blogs – and more importantly – why is there so much FAIL in today’s society?

Behind the fascination for failure is an engaging community. Take for instance FailBlog. I noticed that within a 10 second refresh of a page, comments jump from 50 reactions to 76 reactions. It varies per blog post, but the lesson is obvious: there really is an engaging community fascinated by the failure of others. And the quality of the comments aren’t limited to a simple “LOL that was funny!” but these were probably the wittiest one liners I’ve ever read in a humor blog.

So again, again, again .. what is it with us folks and failure?

Jason Calacanis talked about this in one episode of TWiT – this isn’t a direct quote but the essence was that the culture of failure has to be celebrated because it is only through failure that we see the fruits of innovation. This is why the Internet of America chronicles failure as an aggregation of events that we shouldn’t be too ashamed of. I guess the culture of failure brings home two points to learn from:

Everyone, and absolutely everyone is capable of failure
FailBlog updates itself several times a day. There is just so much material to be published, found all over the world. Failure unites us in two ways – the fact that all of us can screw up whether we’re a foreign dignitary falling off a chair during an interview or a guy knocking himself out during a log throw.

At the end of the day, we can laugh together at failure and move on
Have you ever tripped in public? Embarrassing isn’t it? The next time it happens, right after tripping, look up and smile then say “Bet you couldn’t do that!” It lightens the mood and makes people laugh. And sometimes this is all we need to move on. As Heath Ledger’s Joker said, Why so serious?

Post from: EveryJoe

Two Lessons: An Inspection on the Culture of Fail on the Internet