Go Geek, Live Well
May 5th, 2008 by Ealeal
Back in middle school, the word “geek” had no positive association whatsoever for the average kid in class. While the everyday school reality of it all wasn’t as tough as portrayed in a John Hughes movie (I matriculated at a private school for the arts), there were still those kids who were clearly banished to the basement for Dungeons & Dragons marathons while the others went off and seasoned their lives with all things cool, like all-ages moshpits and skateboards.
While throughout my childhood I gravitated more towards Minor Threat and mohawks as opposed to the rickety IBM PS/1 stationed in our home back in 1990, even punk rock could not repress my innermost geeky tendencies. I signed up for a course for young kids at the local college, where we learned how to build robots and machines using mechanical Lego. I developed a deep and almost frightening addiction to Civilization, which was released that same year. I learned to type like a machine gun without having to look down at the keyboard once. I designed posters and greeting cards using some archaic vector application, and thought it was just the coolest thing ever.
Luckily for me, as life progressed and the years went on, geekiness managed to shed its negative connotations and I fully embraced the geek lifestyle and attitude in many different avenues.
However, the world wasn’t about to make my new lifestyle of choice any easier on me – descending from a long line of technophobes (according to my calculations, my parents were the last consumer household to actually showcase a VCR – yes, that’s right, that rickety monster that gobbled up VHS antiques – as late as 2008) and having no geeky genes to rely on, it was time to turn to friends.
I wanted to know everything that could help me make my life a little bit easier – how to defragment my PC, how to try my hand at internet piracy by downloading the entire Epitaphdiscography (sorry, Brett Gurewitz!), how to encrypt my then-secret plans to take over the world, and how to customize just about any program or software I was using to fit my own questionable demands. It was usually my good pals who were phoned urgently when I absolutely needed to get something done – rip old vinyls in order to archive my entire record collection, learn to edit video, or create harmless Flash games.
Luckily for you, the days of chasing others to get things done are over – if only people like Jimmy Ruska had been around when I was in middle school, making videos on almost every possible topic related to technology and the web, perhaps those days of early tech education would have been a total breeze.
In fact, if you have yet to check out JimmyR’s studio on 5min, there’s no time like right now – I totally mean it, you guys. I doubt anyone can watch a single video and not go ga-ga for Jimmy’s helpful, easy-to-understand tutorials, tips and tricks.
For instance, want to know how to bypass those pesky school or workplace censorship programs in order to, say, check up on your Myspace account:
I gotta say, I’ve become a self-proclaimed Jimmy groupie – he just makes everything seem easy.
I view his videos regularly, and I also check up on his blog quite often – and there is always something waiting for me there – usually something decidedly awesome.
For example, just today Jimmy posted a link for the new NIN album, The Slip, which is now available for download, free of charge (unlike many others in his industry, Trent Reznor seems to understand the age of the internet, thank heavens). I just downloaded – and now you can, too!
