The analog wristwatch is a piece of technology that has come to influence popular culture in how one would tell time. No longer would people be restricted to sun clocks or clock-towers. People would be able to check the time from the comfort of their wrist.

Origins

Although it is unclear when the first wristwatch was developed, the Guinness Book of World Records states that Patek Phillipe, a luxury watchmaker, was the first watchmaker to create a wristwatch intended for Countess Koscowicz of Hungary in 1868.

The wristwatch was not widely considered during the time when one needed to tell time. The wristwatch was considered womanly as its foremost use was for decoration. Wristwatches would be decorated with precious stones that make it unsuitable for a man to carry around (As wristwatches were about fashion, pocket-watches would be more practical for men). This meant that pocket-watches would hold the dominant position for telling time until the First World War.

Increase In Popularity

Although pocket-watches were quite popular during the late 1900’s, they were also seen as a bit of a burden. During periods of conflict such as the First World War, the men fighting did not have the time nor ability to constantly hold their pocket-watch while in the heat of battle.

The First World War was about officers and soldiers following a strict timetable in order to execute their operations in order to effectively fight the enemy(Tactics such as the creeping barrage). With a pocket-watch, an officer would not be able check the time while holding his weapon and whistle. This is where the wristwatch would come into play.

This would become the transition where the practicality of the pocket-watch would meld with the usefulness of the wristwatch. Combined, it would form the basis of timekeeping that can still be seen today.

The wristwatch lost the stigma of femininity shrouding it as more and more soldiers and officers would adopt the wristwatch over the once common pocket-watch. The demand for wristwatches during the war was being fueled by companies wanting in on the action. Brands such as Rolex, Omega and Elgin would market towards men on the front lines and even towards their families in order to make a profit. This is where terms such as trench watches would arise as anything hinted towards the battles of World War 1 could ring in a profit.

Towards the end of the war, most of the soldiers on the field were sporting wristwatches. Even after the war, all these men would return home and spread the popularity of wearing wristwatches.

World War 1 would be the push the wristwatch needed in order to reach and stay in the limelight.

The O.G

The analog wristwatch would influence creations such as digital wristwatches to be invented. Even though digital wristwatches have come to dominate the late 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, analog wristwatches are still seen as popular collectables to watch collectors and the general population alike.

Analog wristwatches are a technological breakthrough that has seen its use from the hands of the military to the common civilian. They are what broke the stalemate of the pocket-watch and established a monopoly on a way of telling time.

Even though newer ways are being created in order to tell time, analog wristwatches will remain as an important figurehead in how time will be told.

Scratch

Scratch is a visual programming language that is simple to use and can be considered as a starting point for children in teaching them how to code. It is simplified by creating blocks of certain code and combining them quite similar to Lego hence the simplicity aspect of it. Even those who have never encountered programming before can easily learn and adapt when using this language.

My Experience

Although I have previously used Scratch back then in my high school years, it was still fun to interact with because of the sheer simplicity that one would encounter.

I chose to complete the flappy bird exercise as I felt familiar with it. Each lesson generally took 1–2 minutes but all proved insightful in the bigger scheme of the game. They all showed what each object did and guided you into how to use it while letting you play around with the settings. At the very end of the lesson, you are given free reign into doing whatever you want with your very own version of flappy bird. You could change the scene whenever you passed an obstacle or play around with the jump settings. The lessons taught you how to effectively make a flappy bird game while leaving in the fun aspects even a child would enjoy.

Gyazo

It is prevalent to see that I set many settings to random just to see how weird of a game I could make in my own version of flappy bird.

End Note

There are many more lessons that one can engage in if they’re interested in learning more about the world of coding. Scratch is quite a simple program that would of interested my pea brain back in the days of my childhood as it is easy and fun to use. If I had known about this visual language earlier, it might of peaked my interest into the mysterious world of programming.

I would recommend Scratch to those young and old alike. One can never be too young or old to learn as Scratch has made coding a fun environment to interact with.

Quizlet is a simple free to use web application that can help you study more efficiently through the use of its flash cards, games and tests. Although I personally like writing down my study notes onto a piece of paper, Quizlet is still a great tool to help those who are in a pinch. Quizlet is especially suitable to students who find that looking at their study notes through a screen helps them stay better prepared for a test rather than the latter like me.

Quick and Simple

In order to access Quizlet, you must first create a free account and choose whether you would rather use the free content or choose to access the benefits for a monthly rate (A free account is still pretty good as you still have access to flashcards). Once you’ve made your free account, all you have to do is click the “create” button on the top left side of your screen and you’re done.

From then on, you just input your questions and answers on the flashcards provided. You can make as many flash cards as you want for what you want to study for.

There are also nifty features such as being able to hear the question and answer provided by TTS (Text-to-Speech), uploading images and changing the language of questions and answers in case you’re studying a foreign language (Example., if you input the Spanish language it allows you access to the Spanish accents. No more pesky searching for accents on Google).

Example

EID100 Study Guide Demo Flashcards | Quizlet

As you can see, using this study tool is is quite simple and non-time consuming. It took me 3–5 minutes to create 5 questions about EID100 just from how simple and easy it is to use. Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy.

End Note

Quizlet is a great tool to use in preparation of upcoming quizzes, tests, exams, etc. It’s so simple, I’m pretty sure my young niece and nephew would be able to operate it and that’s the greatest thing about it. The sheer simplicity of it allows for easy access and creations of study guides.

The ability to create as many study guides as you want paired with the ability to share your guides with anyone you want is such a powerful tool that I’m not surprised that it’s becoming one of the fastest growing educational websites in the U.S.

In the end I would definitely recommend students to at least try and feel it out to see if you’d like it. If I, someone who still studies old school, enjoyed using this study tool then I’m pretty sure you’d like it as well.

RescueTime

RescueTime is a type of software that tracks what you do on your PC and takes note of how long you are either productive or distracted. Productive being doing actual schoolwork and distracted being looking at content that provides entertainment.

What’s helpful about RescueTime is that for one, it’s an eye opener on what you do with your time on the internet and two, it has a feature which allows you to focus for a certain time by blocking websites that have the potential of distracting you (albeit the focus function is part of a premium month plan). If you’re like me and don’t want to drop 9 bucks a month on features such as this, the free version is still fine and helpful.

My experience

When I first downloaded RescueTime I was aware that I was a bit of a slacker when using my PC. When I received my results back after a day of what I deemed as a productive one, my eyes widened at what I saw.

I had decided to begin working on my psychology assignment at around 2pm and finished around 6pm. I was spending around 10–25 minutes an hour browsing entertaining content and around 5–10 minutes checking my VOIPS such as Discord. Half of my time was being spent browsing the web instead of focusing hard on my assignment.

Other than the depressing fact that I indeed do not use my time effectively, RescueTime also highlights your top activities of the day. It shows you what you spend most of your time on on either entertainment, learning or communication.

Just to make me feel a little bit more worse about myself, there are also goals for the day that you can either accomplish or fail by being more productive or falling into the habit of slacking.

Final Verdict

What all these images are showing you are all from just one day. This piece of software can track what you spend your time on all day every day for when you really want to be productive or you can pause it if you don’t want to tracked for a certain period of time.

Although the free version is lacking important bits like the focus feature, I believe it is still a good product for when you are in need of an eye opener of the things you do during the day when you claim you were productive. More working, less slacking!

Feedly

Feedly is a type of software that allows the user to follow a wide variety of “feeds” or what I consider a collection of various magazines (encyclopaedias, newspapers or whatever else you would find) containing a wide variety of topics to choose from.

These feeds produce various articles or images related to their topic of interest which are displayed publicly to users so that they can be viewed without having to clutter your browser with dozens of tabs.

I find this to be a remarkable piece of software that can greatly benefit how you browse the internet. Feedly can be seen as a librarian that gathers whatever you deem as important and collects it into a hub where you can choose whatever you want to view first or whatever you want to view later on.

Although the free version lacks all the benefits of what the monthly subscriptions offer, it still is a great tool to use to filter out unnecessary information to find what you’re looking for.

My Experience

As I first began using Feedly, I was quite stunned with how easy it was to simply search for a topic I’m interested in and follow various feeds that produce articles relating to the topic i originally searched for. Next was when I truly realized the power Feedly had given me. Instead of the clutter of multiple tabs looking for the latest developments in the field of history/archaeology, I would now have a central hub to find what I would be looking for with a few easy clicks.

Now i would be able to find the latest articles on the ancient world such as the Kingdom of Kush released by Ancient History Encyclopaedia, the discovery of ancient Roman gloves unearthed near Hadrian’s Wall released by BBC News and much more. The beauty of this is that it’s not locked to just a single topic such as the ancient world. I would be able to look at new developments discovered during periods such as the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, World War 1 and 2 and much more. I am free to look at all these variety of topics without becoming cluttered or incoherent with all this information.

Conclusion

So you may be wondering why I’m telling you all about my experience with Feedly and why you should care. You should care because this was just my own personal experience. I am obviously interested in the world surrounding history so it would be safe to presume that I would look up historical magazines. For you however, you may be interested in art, technology, music or whatever else a person would deeply care about. Just like me you would be able to look up the latest developments in your own particular field while having all the information be aggregated into a single hub.

Feedly. A great filter to block out unnecessary nonsense while doing the backbreaking work of finding the important information.

Origin

Pepe the frog was originally created by cartoonist Matt Furie for his cartoon “Boy’s Club” depicting the lives of four slacker stoner friends and their daily shenanigans. Pepe in particular began gaining traction as a popular meme during the year 2008 when it began gaining recognition and more importantly being revolutionised by communities such as 4chan and Myspace into the popular Internet meme that it has now become.

Original

Examples of Pepe Remixes

Turn for the Worst

For quite a while Pepe was an Internet meme floating through the Web mindlessly evolving into many shapes and sizes. Although it was seen as a template for funny reaction memes, various message boards from the website “4chan” began changing the way the game was played. Instead of funny reaction memes, Pepe was being used to display the vulgarity and hate created by the cesspools dwelling within these anonymous message boards. Some examples being of Antisemitism, hate against racial minorities and much more. Example:

By 2016, Pepe had become the proud symbol of the controversial alt-right movement. Although there are Pepe memes floating around still about funny reaction memes, the negative influences on him are now over shining the good. People who are not well affiliated with the meme only see the negatives portrayed on TV or news websites. They do not see the enjoyment in these memes as they only see imprint of hate groups splattered all over its memes no matter how far away it tried to distance itself away from them.

Attempt at Redemption

The creator of Pepe, Matt Furie, tried desperately to save his beloved creation from becoming a symbol for hate speech. He launched a campaign called #SavePepe shortly following the Anti-Defamation League classifying Pepe as a hate symbol and tried to reverse this downward spiral of his creation. Instead of a symbol of hate, he wanted it to become a symbol of good but alas it was too late. The people were afraid of the symbol as it had become deeply ingrained in hate speech propaganda.

Death of Pepe

Furie’s campaign wasn’t enough to change the view about Pepe. With a sad and sorrow heart, Furie decided it was time to lay Pepe to rest with this one page comic he made.

Although Pepe has physically died, his spirit lives on in those who still enjoy his funny memes but more importantly those who would not dare let him go from their hate speech propaganda and ideas. Pepe has become almost like the equivalent of Jesus. Although he has fallen, his spirit lives on in those who choose to remember him.

The idea of writing down passwords on paper or even struggling to memorize the complex passwords you come up with are now a thing of the past. No longer will you have to commit dozens of passwords to your memory as password managers extensions are there to do it for you.

Password managers are the gift of the future. The sole basis of these extensions are to keep all your passwords in a central hub where they are easily accessible yet hard to break into.

Before I heard of password managers, I was a firm follower in trying to memorize all my passwords or if it proved too difficult, writing them down on a piece of paper. This old way was tedious and annoying. Most of the time I would use the same three simple passwords from childhood as it was much more easier to remember yet much more dangerous to continue using. After I discovered the password manager called LastPass I realized that the old ways were not the best.

LastPass

LastPass is a free to use password manager whose main purpose is to store all the passwords you own into a central hub where you will never again have to write down a password ever again. If that’s not convenient enough, LastPass is also able to store very important information such as social security numbers, banking information, etc.

I find LastPass great because in order to access your personal information, you must first enter your master password. The master password is the only password you’ll ever need to memorize or write down. However, if you lose this password it will be quite a hassle to get it back.

With LastPass, when you login into a website such as Twitter or Steam, instead of typing in your credentials you can now just click the nifty buttons beside your username and password and it will automatically fill it in safely and securely. Even better, if you’re creating a new account and are trying to figure out a password LastPass is able to generate a random password on the spot which allows you to keep refreshing until you find the best secure password that you desire.

Just when you think LastPass cannot get even better, it proves you wrong yet again. When you finally input all the passwords you have for the various accounts you own scattered across the Net, LastPass has the ability to compare all of your passwords and tell you whether or not you have duplicate or weak passwords.

Overall

With LastPass, I have become a firm believer in these password managers that keep tabs on my very important information. They provide great advantages to your quality of life over the net while simultaneously keeping your accounts safe and protected.

As one who used to be a follower of the old ways, I strongly advise to using password managers as it takes a load of weight off your shoulders.

Now you may ask “What kind of tool would be able to keep a company connected through the world” and to this I say, Slack.

As the video states, Slack is a new way of communication for either teams or companies to use in order to stay together on multiple platforms wherever you are. It is mobile, fluid and easy to use. Along with the many pros that this messaging service offers, there are a few cons that come with it that I will be discussing about.

Pros

An easy pro to start off with is that it’s mobile. No longer will you be chained to team meetings in a cramped room with no mobility whatsoever. With Slack, you are able to still have these team meetings but from wherever you desire. At home? No problem. In your office and don’t want to leave? A thing of the past. Slack will keep your team ready and connected on any device if they’re either static or on the go.

The fact that Slack is able to be easily navigated through and be easy on the eyes makes it a powerful tool for remote collaboration. It allows for teams to create specific channels for their designated projects or discussions where they will be able to stay on topic while being able to communicate effectively. No hassle no problem.

While this next point ties with the previous point up above, it should be noted that this is a great tool to replace the old archaic style of emailing multiple colleagues in order to stay in touch. As if emailing one colleague wasn’t a hassle, emailing multiple colleagues at different times is just a pain in itself (not including trying to find past emails from specific colleagues). With Slack, every bit of information is documented and saved. Multiple colleagues will be able to work together and communicate clearly and effectively with no added stress involved.

The compatibility of Slack allows for multiple tools such as PDF, Twitter, etc to work together on common ground. Everything is connected. No longer will you need to use multiple tools to display work or staying connected with the world. Slack keeps everything neatly adjoined. It is the hub of the global village.

While there are many benefits that can be seen from Slack, there are a few cons about it that pushes some people away from even touching it.

Cons

As Slack can be seen as the general hub of all the apps it’s integrated, there are complaints of all the notifications one can receive quite often which can hinder precious time needed to work. The urge to not check ones notifications is something that many can have trouble ignoring when working.

Another complaint flying around is that Slack has made conversations effortless. Instead of the deep meaningful messages sent through email, some believe that Slack has created an environment too casual for work. It feels more like Discord (A casual VOIP setting for gamers) rather than for a professional working environment.

There are many of the old guard who are skeptical about this new service as they see it as rehashed versions of apps they’ve seen crash and burn. As many will idly sit by as they believe it’s another fad to replace the old ways of email, Slack does have some promising tunes that it offers.

Have you ever heard of someone who has never seen the Internet before? Me neither. Although there are the few cases such as the elderly or conspiracy nut jobs who do not trust the Internet, mostly everyone in 1st world countries have access and continuous use to the Internet. However, if we poke outside our bubble and look on to less fortunate countries, we’ll be able to see that not everyone is connected to the online world.

Digital Divide

Digital divide is the term used to describe the line between those who do have access to the Internet and those who do not. As described by the ingenious professor Ahmed R. Sagarwala, there are six ways in how the digital divide separates those who use the Internet and those who do not.

Global: developed vs. developing

Geographic: urban vs. rural

Generational: old vs. young

Economic: wealthy vs. poor

Physical: able-bodied vs. disabled

Knowledge: those that know vs. don’t know

Now that we know how the separation occurs, we must learn how to bridge this gap.

The Bridge

Giant conglomerate companies such as Google and Facebook are beginning the trek into creating the bridge that will connect both sides of those who do have Internet access and those who do not. For example, Google is engaging in a campaign to bring Internet connection to very remote places using the idea of balloons to to basically bean down the Internet on those below.

Although these leading companies will benefit from connecting the people without Internet to their products and services, it will still be the greater good in connecting the human race as a whole. No more will we be separated into small pockets of isolated tribes but now be connected via the global village. Innovative ideas such as these are what will benefit those who are in difficult positions. A village without a basic doctor? Pfft, a thing of the past. The Internet will have doctors on standby eager to help those less fortunate.

The Internet can be a grand swell place if it allows us to connect and help each other just as it was meant to be.

Netiquette is what keeps the Internet from degenerating from a beautiful utopia into a barbaric wasteland. It is the line that establishes the distinction of man and beast. Without it, the Internet would be a disgusting society that no one would dare to approach (Unless one likes to dive through filth). Now you may be asking yourself “What can I do to prevent myself from becoming one of these barbarians?”. If you did indeed ask yourself this, well, you’re just in luck.

The BBC news network has posted a basic set of rules that one is able to follow to keep oneself civilized.

1. Refrain from personal abuse. You may express robust disagreement with what someone says, but don’t call them names or threaten them with personal violence.

Yes that’s right. There are certain individuals who return to their childish days on the playground that cannot refrain from name calling when their ideas or opinions are chastised or not agreed with. If you’re able to act like an adult, you should be fine.

2. Don’t spam. That is, don’t repeatedly post the same advertisement for products or services. Most sites have strict and specific rules about who is allowed to post ads and what kind of ads they are.

The basic primal urge of spamming is one that is hard to resist. Why spend money on advertising when you can spam whatever product or service you offer for free on the internet right? Wrong. Spamming is looked down upon and can even cause negative consequences as it will backfire upon oneself. Nobody likes to be forced fed products that they have no desire for.

3. Write clearly and succinctly. On a site that has many non-native English speakers, avoid using slang they may not understand.

Not everybody hails from your country or more specifically your block. Local slang will just confuse non-native English speakers or worse, native English speakers. Write as well as you can to be well understood.

4. Remember that your posts are public. They can be read by your partner, your children, your parents, or your employer.

As your guardian always said, “if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all”.

5. Stay on-topic, especially when you’re new. Don’t post about football in a hair-care forum or about hair care in a gardening forum!

Always stay in your lane. Nobody wants to read why hockey is your favourite sport in a message board about soccer.

6. Don’t expect other people to do your homework for you. If you’re looking for technical help, for example, don’t ask questions you could easily answer yourself by reading the manual or online help provided with the product. When you do ask for help, include details of what attempts you’ve made to solve the problem. It will save time and also show people that you are making an effort to help yourself.

If you have a question for say Microsoft Office, always check the F.A.Q. Most general questions are able to be answered there. If there is no answer to your problem, post a complete listing of the situation you’re in so others will be able to help you out easily.

7. Do not post copyrighted material to which you do not own the rights. Sites vary in how strict they are about this, but as well as facing the possibility of legal action by the rights holder, you may also get the site sued.

8. The site’s owner, perhaps assisted by one or more moderators, has the final say in enforcing the rules.

Finally, Don’t think that because you have the vast power of the Internet at your fingertips, you are God incarnate. Always adhere to the rules implemented by site owners and moderators as it’s their job to enforce their rules and protect their website. Don’t be a cuck.

Hopefully after all this you have achieved a greater sense of mind. I have shown you the light of what the Internet can be. A place free of bigotry and hate if only we followed the rules of netiquette.