Uncensored
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Unipeak is a nice web-proxy that I use at school because the administration seems to believe that automated censorship based on things like “.exe” or “.zip” or “.flash-game-that-is-blocked-only-after-being accessed-once-or-twice” is effective at keeping the computers safe.
Never mind that this policy does not prevent me from downloading software, nor did it prevent people from just breaking into the school at night and stealing the seemingly safe computers. But this isn’t about the school, damnit! It’s about Unipeak!
Yesterday I discovered** Unipeak’s “member” section. Though I have already used (and will continue to use) witty punctuation such as quotation marks, asterisks, and many-words-hyphenated-like-this in this write-up more than most would like me to, I use quotation marks around the word “member” because accessing it requires only knowledge of its address: http://www.unipeak.com/member/.
** “Discovered” here means, “followed a clearly marked hyperlink from the front page.”
Ignoring the de facto standard of requiring users to log in after registering for a service (thus proving that they have indeed registered) has the salutary effect of also letting people who have not registered use it freely. There are two perks I have noticed so far in being a part of this exclusive**** club.
**** “Exclusive” is the “New Russian,” that is, Mafia-esque Brooklyn-resident, term for “I have bling bling.” I use two and four asterisks because they are more clickable. In print I would use one and two.
The first, and most important advantage, is that “members” are above advertising, so there is none of that malarkey. Second, “members” get a special Unipeak browser, which is occasionally useful.
But if you register in the next ten minutes, you get this special offer! I whipped up a “Unipeak this” bookmarklet. Add the Unipeak this bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar or equivalent and, well, you know the rest.
No matter how much of an ass I muster myself to be, I cannot (yet) match genius, so I ask ye to follow Twain’s advice, and “never let [your] schooling get in the way of [your] education.”
The Thing to Do
Tuesday, January 04, 2005