Four Reasons to Prepare for the Robot Apocalypse in 2012

Just a few more days until 2012, and if you’re anything like me, you’re probably coming up with some vague New Year’s Resolutions you have no intention of keeping and reorganizing your hair doll collection for the upcoming celebratory tea party.

Not pictured: Dignity.

One thing you’re probably not doing? Preparing for the upcoming robot apocalypse.

While you’ve been busy shopping for Barbies and mobbing bowls of free candy, the machines have been lining up their zeros and ones in preparation for the takeover. How do I know?

1. OH MY GOD SELF HEALING ROBOTS.

A great selling point on biological entities is the fact that we can regenerate tissue and heal. I know, pretty awesome right? While I absolutely hate cutting tomatoes, I dig the fact that I can slice my finger open and still have use of it after I wake up from fainting.

Who the F*$% designed these things?!

I’m constantly boasting to my iPhone about my super-human abilities. When it freezes during Jelly Defense, I remind it that I can fucking end it at any moment with a free fall. Yet I’m realizing now that this may soon be an empty threat thanks to this article. While I haven’t actually read it, the headline tells me everything I need to know. Self healing robots.

Apparently a group of traitorous humans at the University of Illinois has figured out a way to create an electronic circuit that heals itself when it’s metal wires are broken.

When reached for comment, the group's spokesperson asked, "Have you seen this boy?"

Has anyone thanked Illinois for murdering civilization?

2. At least they can’t build impenetrable fortresses right? RIGHT?

They totally can.

It turns out that while you were putting together your nephews bicycle this Christmas season, the robots were busy learning how to build a castle out of foam bricks. All by themselves.

And they didn't even read the instructions.

Oh, and they’re called Quadcopter Drones. Remember the name when you’re telling your limbless grandchildren war stories from inside your mud cave.

The swarm of  50 Quadcopters has successfully built a 20 foot tall, 11 foot wide “Flight Assembled Architecture” (i.e. “Doom Fortress”) completely autonomously with the help of a “Fleet Management System”.

I’m sorry, I misspelled “Skynet”.

I'm sure it's safe kids. It's probably just looking for foam blocks.

3. Remember when successful revolutions in the Middle East utilized Facebook? Yeah, that… But for robots.

I don’t keep up too well with world events, but I know that some crazy shit has been going down in the Middle East. What’s been referred to as the “Arab Spring” has really reshaped how we view social medias and their effects on social change.

Facebook Ads in Egypt are weird.

So who’s the buffoon putting this thing together?

In case you can’t be bothered to click the link, the headline is, “Facebook for Robots Helps Droids Get Smarter”.

Than this?!?!

If the robots are anything like us they’ll just constantly upload photos of themselves pursing their lips and keeping tabs on how much weight their ex-boyfriends/girlfriends have gained.

So excited to go out with the girls after work today! LOL!

But they’re not, so it’ll probably end with an apocalyptic machine war.

4. But at least they’re not 13 feet tall and covered in guns. Oh, what? Never mind.

Someone needs to punch Hajime Sakamoto in the mouth. He’s working on building a 13 foot tall Gundam humanoid robot with the intention of eventually going as high as 59 feet.

Japan, will you never learn?

I’m pretty confident that I can overpower most intelligent robots by simply accidentally spilling my chocolate milk on their keyboard as I reach for my bag of Jelly Bellys.

"Hi, Apple Care? Are Tutti Fruttis covered under your warranty?"

However, with the advent of 59 foot war machines my size advantage is suddenly negated.

I’m not sure why Mr. Sakamoto is even contemplating creating real-life Gundams. I mean, he’s definitely human, so why does it feel like he’s trying to give the robots the keys to our front door?

Yeah, definitely human.

So perhaps it’s time to reevaluate our New Year’s resolutions and dedicate them towards the anticipation of the robot rebellion. If I’ve learned anything from countless years of Terminator sequels, it’s that a little bit of precaution and preparedness can make up for some really terrible acting.

Seriously though, what the fuck was that?

Note to the human reader: This is very pleasant example of satire and should not be assumed as fact. Machines do not have attribute of critical thinking and therefore should not be viewed as potential threat. Please continue to enjoy holiday season. Max, who is definitely alive, wishes you the reader happy new year.

– MacBook Pro #1892847

Four Awesome Problems to Have After Getting Freshly Pressed on WordPress

Yesterday afternoon I uploaded my second post to my blog and threw it up on Facebook to start awaiting the handful of views to trickle in. About an hour later, I received Willy Wonka’s golden ticket in my inbox:

“Congrats! Your post has been Freshly Pressed on the WordPress.com home page.”

Charlie knows what I’m talking about.

This sent me into an Internet induced tailspin that has given me some awesome problems to complain about. Here’s a brief description of what my Freshly Pressed experience has been so far…

1. You Will Call Every Person You Have Ever Known. Ever.

After contacting every one of my family members, I started scrolling through my phone contacts and texting every single person I know in alphabetical order. Ever wondered how to piss off your 7th grade english teacher at 1AM? Blow that phone up.

Nobody #*%$ing cares that I use comma splices!

For some reason, no one seems quite as enthusiastic as you, even if they are legitimately excited for you. And it’s not because they’re not totally hyped about your new found exposure, only that you’ve just snorted the internet equivalent of Scarface Brand Cocaine.

Perhaps he should’ve just started a WordPress site.

Then comes the moment you run out of people to annoy. Once you’ve exhausted your entire network…

2. You Will Do Nothing But Constantly Check Your Comments, Likes, Links, and Statistics.

I haven’t eaten for 17 hours. I can’t do anything but click between email, Facebook, WordPress, Twitter and my phone. Sixty minutes after receiving my first email from WordPress, I had almost 50 blog related emails waiting to be read in my inbox. And it’s awesome. I had a bunch of plans last night and I didn’t do a single thing because I was obsessively waiting for each individual comment and response.

Define “a bunch of plans.”

After I saw the number of visits jump past the 1,000 mark, I suddenly realized I hadn’t planned for the next problem…

3. You Are Totally Unprepared for This Large of an Audience.

I originally wrote the article as a satirical look at my recent experience with the health care system (it’s all very true). So imagine my surprise when all the sudden I find that the post is actually hitting home for thousands of people. Now I’m reading and rereading my work with my new found text-induced neurosis and rewriting my “About” page like it’s my status update on Facebook.

Wait… Is it “your” or “you’re?” Probably doesn’t matter, no one’s going to read it anyway.

My other big issue is that I just started writing last Monday. This means I have exactly one post other than my Health Insurance piece to offer this totally incredible audience. Two posts. I have a total of two posts.

“Hey! I know everyone’s thirsty, but don’t worry, I brought these two beers!”

Regardless, you’ve updated as much you can, now it’s just time to sit back and enjoy the ride right? Welcome to problem four…

4. You Will Now Live In Constant Fear That You’ve Just Peaked as a Hobby Blogger.

You know those moments in life when you’re having so much fun you just have no idea how things could possibly get any better? This blogging hangover feels kind of like the day after those moments. You’ve just written about an experience that seemed to have a pretty big impact on a bunch of people, how are you possibly going to top that?

Hint: Not with this.

You’re slowly getting bumped off the Freshly Pressed page and you’re getting fewer and fewer likes/shares… You start to wonder, “Did I just hit the absolute top of my game only five days after starting?”

Ask K-Fed, he should know.

And so begins the pity party.

In the end, it’s so absolutely cool of WordPress to float blogs of interest up where people can see them regardless of how long the person has been blogging or how many posts they have. I think it’s a pretty awesome incentive for anyone and everyone to just get out there and start writing, because you never know when an opportunity might arise that gives you the chance to be heard by thousands of people. I really appreciate WordPress for giving me that chance and of course all the  bloggers and readers who’ve shared a few minutes of their day to read a few thoughts from a fellow Interneter. I’m incredibly fortunate and lucky, because I know that there’s a randomness to it all. It feels like winning the lottery.

At least, what I imagine it feels like.

If you like the blog, make sure to follow up top! And if you’re into the “Twitter” you can always follow me at @MacsJF. I know, it’s shameless…

Thanks for reading!

Three things I’ve realized after joining Twitter.

I’ve just recently started getting involved at a higher level with web development and the tech world, and I’m quickly finding that not having a Twitter page in the tech world is like checking the basement in a horror movie.

Spoiler Alert: You’re dead.

What annoys me most is that I was under the assumption that Twitter was a social media for narcissistic introverts who don’t actually read anything other than their own posts (totally different than blogs); so I’ve been mostly ignoring that section of the internet. Turns out it’s essential to being awesome at the Internet.

Here are three things I’ve learned about Twitter after jumping in this late in the game.

1. You will be judged harshly on the quality of your Twitter account.

I tried to join a website by the name of Forrst which is a community of developers and designers, but in order to create an account I need to be accepted. In order to be accepted I need to fill out an invite and fulfill some requirements. Although not required, guess what’s recommended? Twitter Account.

It’s recommended because fuck you.

Three days before the start of high school, my friend Charlie hit me in the forehead with a rock. This meant that the first two weeks of the most influential year of my youth were spent walking around with Frankenstein stitches on the front of my face. Thank you Forrst for making me feel less cool than those first 14 days of freshman year.

I have a little over 20 followers (see lesson 2) which is roughly 0.00013% the volume of people following Justin Bieber, a pop star best known for his impersonations of a male singer. I have as many followers as I have fingers and toes. I could do one sit-up for every follower every day and still become morbidly obese. I’m just terrible at having followers.

I don’t deal well with rejection, so my application to become a member of Forrst is now on hold while I sort out my insecurities. I couldn’t get past step one because I feel like the internet’s version of the weird emo kid that cuts himself. Ironically, Forrst has made me feel like other Forrest:

“Can’t tweet here.”

2. Most of your followers are spider robots trying to have sex with you.

I get an email anytime a new person starts following my twitter feed (read: once a month), so imagine my surprise when I received three followers all in the same day! On further inspection, all three were morally questionable females that had dirty things to say about themselves in their bios.

Definitely not a spambot.

I like to believe that I’m not the most horrendous looking thing on my block, but I doubt very highly that three scandalous dressing chicks saw my profile while browsing through Twitter and decided they wanted to know more about my thoughts on cottage cheese.

What blows me away is that there are 125 people following Yelena Saintfleur. That means there are 125 people out there who are web savvy enough to create a twitter account, but not savvy enough to understand when an internet whore is a fake thing.

I have yet to delete the spambots as I desperately need followers if I ever plan on making another pass at Forrst.

3. You’ll never truly understand what Twitter is for.

This is the third time I’ve joined Twitter and the third time I’m confused by it. It’s like an ex-girlfriend that I keep getting back together with forgetting why we broke up in the first place.

Hint: It’s because she’s racist.

I just have no idea what the value is, and I keep assuming that it’ll kind of just dawn on me as I use it more. Right now, it represents how badass I am on the internet (note: not very) and how slutty robots are. Which, for all intents and purposes, actually sounds pretty awesome.

Follow me on Twitter @MacsJF. I need to feel accepted.