One of my personal motto's is, "Convention is the devil".
I like things the way I like things, not the way they are made for everyone else. Much to the chagrin of my wife, I often do things simply for running against the grain of conventional thinking. While the irony of my life is that I have mostly succumbed to a conventional lifestyle, I continue to fight against it with small acts of rebellion that keep the spark of individualism alive.
Most of these acts I implement through my gadgets but I have also added small tweaks to my home improvements, such as a hallway closet which lights upon opening, a stairway light with a switch integrated into the door jamb, and tiled a broken patio set table, to name a few. My primary outlet are my electronics though. I would even start using Linux on my PC if I had the time to teach myself. Alas, time is a commodity these days.
The gadgets I'm refering to are my Droid, digital camera and Nintendo DS. I have "hacked" each of these items to suit my needs. I say "hacked" because real hackers would laugh at me. These are simple changes to the vanilla version of each product, or the product as it comes out of the box. Its such a simple pleasure for me to be able to conform things to my needs. Its quite simply, for lack of a better modifer, empowering.
Droid: The Motorola Droid is one of the easiest Android phones to Root, which simply means the phone owner is given superuser permissions over the phone. This allows one to remove unwanted apps, explore the root directory of the phone, install custom ROMs (operating systems), and custom kernels (programming which dictates the speed at which the processor runs). I have done all of the above. The thing I love about this is that it takes most of Verizon's power away and gives it to me. Because, you see, the original OS is updated by Android every now and again but its up to Verizon to push it to your phone. Depending on how old your phone is, you might never get the latest versions of Android. But if you install a custom ROM, you can get it whenever you want. This thrills me. And just the versatility of Android alone, I am able to customize my phone in any number of ways. You won't find an iPhone that looks like this.
Digital Camera: The one thing that always irked me about the camera was that I was not given complete control of exposure. What if I want to do a 60 minute exposure. No, says Canon. But I say yes. I was lucky enough to come across this post in Lifehacker which explained how to install a piece of firmware on any standard Canon digital camera which greatly broadens the amount of available options. Now I can do things like long exposures, faster shutter speeds, squeeze helpful feedback information out of sensors, longer video recording, and even run specialized scripts which can do things
like motion-sensing photography for perhaps taking pictures of animals or lightning strikes. It was these extra settings (which to my mind should be standard to any camera) which allowed me to make these pics using a red laser light.
Nintendo DS: Ah the DS. How I love mobile gaming. Although, I really dont like having to carry all those seperate cartriges for different games. It seemed silly to me, in this day and age of virtual media. After some quick research, I found there is a DS cartridge which acts as an adapter for a micro SD memory card. I also found that you can find DS game files on the internet and load as many as your SD card can hold. I didn't hesitate at picking one up, and the fact that they are not availble in American retail stores did not stop me. This also required using a simple OS for the adapter which allowed the playing of mp3 files and various video. I took a step further by learning how to replace the entire outer case of the DS and use my own. I found a very cool red one with a Japanese dragon on it on eBay. The final product was a sleek and pretty machine loaded with all kinds of games on a single cartridge. Mobile gaming at its finest.
All of these are examples one of the greatest benefits of the internet, that being the endowment of immense DIY powers to the otherwise clueless masses. The unprecedented sharing of knowledge has created an infinite brainstorming space with the capacity to incubate ideas for some truly remarkable concepts, ranging from tips on life hacking (tiny things that make life easier) to 3D scanning techology using modified Microsoft Kinect cameras.Its DIY standard bearer's wet dream. You want to fix that button on your DS's case yourself? No problem, here is a YouTube video with detailed instructions, and while you're at it, buy a cool bootleg case from Hong Kong with a red dragon on it. And for home projects? I would imagine small time contractors think the internet is the bane of hell sent to show the ignorant masses how to spot weld plumbing and install electrical sockets.
Its this facet of the internet which I so dearly love because it takes the power out of money-driven con artists and puts into the hands of the consumer. Its like legal tender for laughing in the face of convention.
Or rather, the devil.
