The Ministry of Truth

20 Albums

2009-12-28T17:50:00.000-06:00

First off, sorry for neglecting this blog as long as I have. I blame twitter; somehow it is a lot easier to write 140 characters of an idea down rather than write out a blog post. I'm going to attempt to rectify this.

While recently stalking someone on Facebook I noticed a neat note: pick 20 albums from your music library that are significant to you. So here is my attempt at this, with explanation for the crazy choices I have made:

Classical Music Start-up Kit - Various

This was my first introduction to 'secular' music as it were. And it was quite the introduction: 43 tracks covering classical music from its roots to modern times. I don't know exactly when I started listening to this, although I do know it was long before I had a computer.

Surround Sound - Various Artists

This introduced me to a lot of other styles besides classical music, although most of it's tracks are classical.

The Complete Works of Scott Joplin - Scott Joplin

My love of jazz definitely started with Scott Joplin. I'd put scans of the Scott Joplin LPs I have up, but I don't have a scanner large enough to scan them on. If I were to choose two albums that have influenced my tastes the most, it'd be this album and Classical Music Start-up.

Charlie Brown Christmas - Vince Guaraldi

Quite possibly one of the most popular jazz albums of all time, and definitely an influence on my tastes.

Absolution - Muse

Black Holes and Revelations - Muse

One of my friends initially borrowed a CD-RW from me because I had burned him some downloads that he had wanted (back in the day before ubiquitous broadband...). He returned it with Absolution and Origin of Symmetry on it. This was my official introduction to modern 'secular' music, although hardly mainstream at the time. Also, the jazz and classical roots Muse draws on helped to synthesize, in my mind, modern music with my other musical tastes.

At this point, the list takes on a different sort of flavor. I have listed some of the influences of my taste; artists and albums that changed what the rest of this list is. At this point my tastes had mostly solidified and music became a case of finding new artists that fit somewhere within the framework I had built.

Aeneid Soundtrack - Various/Colton

This is not an album per-se; in fact, only 12 other people have a copy of it. One year in Advanced Literature in high school we studied the Aeneid. My friend Colton made a three disc mix-CD that followed the book's storyline. He filled it with tracks from artists ranging from AC/DC to The Who, covering important artists such as Howard Shore, Jimi Hendrix, Phil Collins, and Pink Floyd.

Nassau Coliseum - 1985-03-29 - The Grateful Dead
Madison Square Garden - 1991-09-16 - The Grateful Dead

These two 'albums' are really concert recordings, and introduced me to another genre: psychedelic rock/jam rock. While that is the generic genre The Grateful Dead's music belongs in, it really covers everything from country to jazz to rock to avant-garde classical. I spent a year or so listening to pretty much just Grateful Dead music; whether this was entirely beneficial I do not know.

Freedom - Michael W. Smith

This album intrigued me when I first heard it. Before this I was used to 'Christian' music being mostly about words with musical accompaniment or trying to fit into mainstream rock/pop. I was not particularly pleased with the musical qualities of either. This album changed that. It is a classical album with some jazz mixed in. The album is very united; I believe there to be some level of a story in the music.

Tesseract - Tesseract

I found this band quite by accident wandering around the web starting from, of all places, a Hack A Day article. Tesseract is a local prog-rock band in California that recorded this album in 1997 and then broke up a few years later. Their music encompasses classical elements as well as rock elements for a weird but interesting listen.

Lost Christmas Eve - Trans-Siberian Orchestra

This was the first Trans-Siberian Orchestra album I heard, and I immensely enjoyed it. It essentially makes the instruments found in a modern rock band members of a classical orchestra.

GratisJazz - Eternal Jazz Project

Eternal Jazz Project is a jazz band from Sweden. This is classic jazz at its best: keyboard, saxophone, guitar, bass. It's incredibly peaceful and good for those times when you have to do something frustrating (ahem, Pearson MySpanishLab...). They recently released another album, Seasons, that I am looking forward to hearing.

E. Centre - 1998-11-02 - Phish

Again, not an album per se, but a concert recording. While Phish has many excellent live concerts, this one is definitely iconic of Phish's style. It includes everything from jazzy organ solos to techno-esque gooves to a cover of Dark Side of the Moon.

Letters to the Editor Volumes 1 and 2 - Andrew Osenga

I cheated a bit with this one, as it's technically two albums. I look at it more as two halves of a larger picture. These are another example of 'Christian' music done correctly: talented instrumentation and deep lyrics. The style is more folk-rock-esque; if I were making a tree of these artists Andrew Osenga would be somewhere along The Grateful Dead's branch.

Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd

Although a cliche album to have on the list, Dark Side of the Moon unifies some of the weirder aspects of The Grateful Dead's music with the jazz and rock genres. As well, they create a unified album that, while not telling a story, conveys a consistent idea across the album.

The Wall - Pink Floyd

Opera converted into rock. There's more that I could say, but I'll just point out the impressive storyline told through this album.

(For those wondering where the words on the wall are, the original The Wall CDs had "Pink Floyd The Wall" written on the CD case itself. The liner just had a white brick wall on it.)

Dark Passion Play - Nightwish

Nightwish is a Symphonic Metal band. While the musical style itself falls something along the lines of Trans-Siberian Orchestra, I like to classify it as 'epic' music, that is, music that conveys an epic tale such as that of The Lord of the Rings.

Viva La Vida - Coldplay

This album bolstered my falling faith in mainstream music. Coldplay manages to create an album that not only appeals to a wide variety of people, but also brings a wide variety of musical styles to the table. Despite this, the album is remarkably unified, almost to the extent that Dark Side of the Moon is. Their '/' songs: Lovers in Japan/Reign of Love and Yes/Chinese Sleep Chant are particularly interesting because they combine two different styles of music while keeping a similar idea in both halves of the song.

A Momentary Lapse of Reason - Pink Floyd

This is one of Pink Floyd's lesser-well-known albums, but it is still an excellent piece of artistry. It is an example of a 'secular' piece of music that has very meaningful lyrics in some of the songs without sacrificing musical artistry, a mistake that much 'Christian' music makes.

Well, that turned out to be quite a bit more navel-gazing than I had expected when I started out. Hopefully it's of some use to someone, or at least worthy of discussion.

By the way, if you're wondering about the ''s around secular and Christian music, read this article by the perceptive and intelligent texanpuddleglum.

The Zune HD Interface

2009-09-17T21:46:00.000-05:00

I have a blog. Yeah, that's right. You (one of my two readers) probably forgot that because I haven't written in forever. I blame Twitter.

Anyhow, I was watching this video about the Zune HD: http://ignco.de/176

I'm going to ignore the hardware and just look at the UI. I'm a sucker for a well-designed, beautiful, and functional UI. This is why I have a Mac and why I would buy a Pre if I had the money. Now, at this point, most of you who haven't watched the video are looking at me (so to speak) incredulously. Me, a guy who has a Mac and likes Palm actually wants a Microsoft product? Yeah. I do. Here's why.

The UI is excellent for what it is doing--playing music. It's not designed as an iPod Touch; it's more like a music player with web browsing thrown in. I don't think it will extend well to apps, but we'll see what happens when Microsoft gets there. In the meantime, let's look at the UI, not the featureset.

The design is very minimal, but functional. It's menu driven and all text based, which could be problematic; it would be nice to have some icons next to each item. That said, the UI does have a 'light' feeling to it. There are very few widgets and screen dividers, unlike--dare I say it--the iPhone interface. This lack of widgets makes the UI look a lot simpler; there's a lot less going on on the screen.

The dual-home-screen setup might be confusing to some people, but the key here is that it's optional. You can get to everything you need from the main menu; the second screen just gives you access to your recent and new items. However, that's a very nice feature; if you're browsing the web, you don't have to jump out of the web browser, jump through the Music UI, and pick out that album you just heard yesterday. You just click the home button twice and click on the album. Much faster and probably very handy; I'd definitely pin a few favorite albums that I listen to all the time and just use the Music menu option when I need something different.

Another interesting aspect of the UI is their use of cut-off icons and text. Notice the arrow in the top left corner of the Now Playing screen. It is too big to fit in the corner, so the edges of the circle are cut off. This happens in a few other places in the UI. This uses your imagination to draw in the part of the circle that's not there because you know it is a circle. By making you imagine things that are actually partly off-screen, it makes the screen seem bigger than it actually is.

The music UI is also worth noticing. Instead of being a--gasp--drab menu-based UI like the iPhone, it emphasizes album artwork and albums. This is almost a throwback to the days of LPs where artwork was actually important. I could easily see myself hooking this up to a TV and watching the art while I listened to an album. Also, playing a whole album is an option, encouraging people (or at least making it easier than the iPhone) to play a whole album.

So, shoot me, but if I could afford a new mp3 player, the Zune HD would be a consideration, especially considering that Apple botched the iPod Touch update (c'mon, no 16 gig Touch? Seriously?). The one big problem? No Mac software, so I'd have to use an XP virtual machine, which is ugly.

Power of Communication

2009-08-20T14:42:00.002-05:00

So, this year I'm attending Missouri S&T (aka UMR). As part of their fresman opening week stuff, I had to pick a class. I ended up in The Power of Communication because it sounded less boring than the other choices that I qualified for. In that I was assigned to a team of four people. We took a trip to Meramec Springs and had to write a presentation and a blog about it. This is the blog:

http://poc09.wordpress.com/

(In case you're wondering, posting this gets me extra credit. And if you comment I get extra credit. So go comment on the blog.)

The Downfall In Education

2009-07-28T01:07:00.000-05:00

An essay I wrote on education. The one-line summary? "We want to be happy, so we avoid quality education." How did I manage to write nine pages on that? Guess you'll have to read it.

[pdf] The Downfall in Education

The Trend Toward Mobile Computing

2009-07-20T13:54:00.001-05:00

I was reading http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/technology/20cell.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all, which is an interesting article on Japan's cell phone market. While the point of the post was that Japan was ahead of us technically but unable to gain much marketshare outside of Japan, I realized that Japan might be a source for 'foreshadowing' of technology in the US.

In essence, the trend is toward increasingly mobile computing. This should not come as a surprise; it is a well-known fact that laptops are in higher demand than desktops nowadays. I think there are several elements of technology that are encouraging and will continue to encourage this trend:

First, obviously, are laptops. Aside from the drop in demand for desktops, netbooks are also helping the mobility trend. I find it interesting that we have hit a point where we actually demand slow computers that are small. It shows that, to some extent, we have reached a plateau in computing: we can now make computers that are faster than we need. Related to that is that we can now make them cheap enough that people will buy them just as a secondary or tertiary machine. And ultimately they're buying them because they're cheap and small, making it convenient for people to get on the Internet whenever and wherever they want.

Related to the increase in laptop and netbook sales is the growth of free public WiFi. It encourages people to bring their computers with them wherever they're going. People can now head out to a restaurant and, while they're eating, get on their computer and do stuff. As more and more cities consider implementing city-wide WiFi networks, it will most likely reach the point where you won't need a cell phone; you'll just need something like an iPod Touch and a service like Google Voice.

As well, the rise of cloud computing has helped the mobile trend. Peoples' data isn't stored on any one computer now; they can just log into their account on the internet and access all their documents, email, voicemails, and so on. They don't have to worry about syncing their data across computers and to PDAs and cell phones anymore; it's all handled transparently for them. Cloud computing makes netbooks and smartphones feasible to the average user.

Finally, the increase in the smartphone market is encouraging the mobile computing trend. Many people have pointed to the iPhone for opening up the smartphone market to average users instead of just businesses. With more and more phones coming with data contracts, it is becoming easier to depend on a cell phone for emails and web browsing. And with the speed increases in the mobile cell phone market--the average smartphone is approximately twice as fast as my first laptop--it is more and more feasible to use a cell phone as a small computer. To quote the article that sparked this post: "Many Japanese rely on their phones, not a PC, for Internet access." Smartphone manufacturers have and will continue to add features and power to their phones, resulting in something like a 'mini-netbook'. At one point in Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, Cory Doctorow points out that many 'old' people think of computers in terms of laptops and desktops, while many teens increasingly use their cell phone as a computer.

Ultimately, for any business to 'keep up with the future', they will have to recognize this trend and innovate along it. I think that in the next few years we'll see a lot of advancements in the smartphone and portable computing areas.

Culture and Teens

2009-07-12T22:29:00.002-05:00

The teens are important years in our kids. During their teens, kids develop into adults: they develop their own worldview. Over these ~6 years, they take what they have learned and are learning and synthesize it into a view that will shape their actions and attitudes for possibly the rest of their lives. Because of this, many parents, most notably conservative Christian parents, seek to 'shelter' their kids from the world, understandably. This does make sense: expose them to too much of the world and they take the views presented by the world as their own.

However, by the time that they are at most 16, it doesn't make sense anymore. At this point, most of the framework of their worldview should have been laid. They should have a fairly clear idea of what they believe and why they believe it. And so, at this point, parents need to be concerned about the other major factor in changing their child's worldview: college. At college, their kid (by now a young adult) gets to test their worldview against the 'real world'. They find out whether what they believe actually makes sense and holds water when they apply it. Unfortunately, too many college students think that their Christian-esqe worldview doesn't actually fit reality when they get out into it.

Parents can and should work to prevent this problem. Once their child has developed a fairly firm worldview, the parents have no reason to insist on only Christian music and G-rated movies. Instead, they should be open to exposing their kids to parts of the world--within reason. Their exposure needs to be tempered with strong teaching on worldview. Parents need to teach their kids about the worldview presented in the things they are exposed to.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying buy explicit rap music and R-rated movies. I am saying to pick out the important 'classics' of their day and age--the stuff that is going to have a near-universal impact on their generation. Teach them to analyze that for worldview. They need to understand what their friends are going to believe--and why they believe it.

And you are responsible to make sure that they do.

Is this going to take work? You bet. Is that a surprise? Kids are work. You didn't have kids just so you could have free slave labor, did you?

WolframAlpha, Bing, and Google

2009-07-09T16:34:00.000-05:00

First off, sorry for not posting in over a month. I know a lot of you used to read this, and it's my fault entirely that I've left off posting. Hopefully within the next couple of months I'll be able to start posting regularly again. I'll explain what's been going on in a future post, hopefully.

I was reading http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/wolfram-alpha-and-hubristic-user.html and it kicked off an interesting train of thought in my mind. A lot of people have been talking about Bing and WolframAlpha lately. I am a halfhearted Google fan; I like their services, but I kinda have to suppress my privacy paranoia to use them. That said, I use Gmail and Blogger and hopefully soon Google Voice (if they ever give me an invite...).

WolframAlpha piqued my interest when it came out. However, when I used it, I ran into the same problems as the guy describes: the tools are there, but it's hard to get WolframAlpha to guess which tool you need. I've tried to use it for a few searches, but ultimately ended up going to Google for my info--although what I needed could have been easily provided by WolframAlpha. And I've only wanted it once or twice in the few months that it's been out. Maybe that would change if I could actually see a list of the features it has and tell it exactly what I want it to do. But ultimately, it will not have as much usefulness to me as Google does, even though I'm a student, which is probably a large part of the target audience for WolframAlpha.

Same thing with Bing. Sure, it's nice to be able to look up celebrities or sports teams to find scores and pictures and news and whatnot, but in practice, how much do you actually do that? For me, most of my internet searching is for specific, detailed information--either research for a school paper, or information on computer issues like setting up e17 on Debian. I don't use Bing simply because I don't need or want those features. If I wanted to have a switching UI, I'd use Bing. But most of the time, I just want a plain full-text search.

Oh, and the times when I actually do want news or something? Google will most likely throw in a "News" hit section that will give me what I'm looking for. And if that's not what I'm looking for, I still have all the full-text search results which probably are what I'm looking for.

Ultimately, neither Bing nor WolframAlpha are useful to me. WolframAlpha because I can't get to the features I need easily and quickly, and Bing because I don't need what it gives me in addition to Google. Neither have given me a reason to use them over what I already have: Google.

It's not funny.

2009-06-01T23:45:00.000-05:00

http://www.twloha.com/blog/postsecret-in-response-1

And, for posterity's' sake, the comments on Postsecret:

-----Email Message-----

The story of Renee and TWLOHA managed to find its way into my life when I most needed it. This story, movement, organization is truly beautiful and much like PostSecret, it gave me inspiration that no one person in my life could. Thanks.

-----Email Message-----

While on a trip with my team one of my teammates started spouting off about how pathetic cutters are. A few weeks later I told my coach how mad I was at him for it. She told me that she had felt the same way, because she had been a cutter herself. Then she told me that when she had told him off for it he showed her his cuts. I forgave him.

PS- Every time I think of cutting myself I write 'Love' where I want to cut. I can't tell you how much it helps.

The Pirate Bay Trial

2009-05-14T00:54:00.000-05:00

I've been working on a paper for about three weeks now on The Pirate Bay trial, and finished it a few minutes ago. You can download it here. Sorry it's in PDF rather than posted at length on the blog, but I had to use Scribus to do some layout for it to get it to turn out nicely.

By the way, if you need a free publishing app, Scribus is extremely powerful and fairly easy to use. My only complaint is that it's ugly; the OSX version is a cobble of 10.4 Aqua, KDE, Swing, and custom widgets, which is not very appealing. But it's worth the ugliness.

I Wore Matt Bellamy's Pants!

2009-04-26T22:55:00.000-05:00

This is what comes of me taking a shower when I'm sleep deprived:

"So, back when I was in high school, I heard about the Country Hoe-Down Square Dance of Awesomeness that was to be held in a fortnight. So, I packed my bags and set off for the distant land wherein lay the location of said Dance. After much toil and travail, I arrived at said location the day of said Dance. Whereupon I realized that I was wearing The Sweatpants of Utter Geekness, which in case you did not realize, is a Bad Thing. So, I was in much pain and distress over my situation, and I cried out in a loud voice, 'O curse me and my lack of the packing nature! Where shall I find a suitable pair of pants to wear to said Dance tonight? Woe is me, for I am a man who lacks style!'

"Thereafter I set off in a dour state of mind to find something to alleviate my situation. As I wandered across the lands of aforementioned Dance, I didst come upon the Country deity Matt Bellamy. (For those of you who deny that his music is country, listen to New Born. That is pure country music, and if what you're hearing isn't country, your version is photoshopped.) He greeted me, 'Welcome, child. For you have traveled far in your journeys from distant lands to come to the Country Hoe-Down Square Dance of Awesomeness.' I looked in awe and dropped to my knees and kissed his toe of awesomesauce. He spake unto me, 'My child, is there anything thou needest?' I answered and said, 'O Mr. Bellamy, I am in dire need of a pair of pants to wear this evening, for I only have The Sweatpants of Utter Geekness, and am ashamed of myself and am a reproach unto my kindred for wearing such an Abomination.' He answered and said unto me, 'My child, you have not because you ask not. Go now, and take this pair of my pants with you.' Whereupon he handed me an extra pair of his pants. I bowed and said, 'O Mr. Bellamy, I am forever indebted to you for the use of your pants this evening. May you and your family be blessed for a thousand generations hereafter.' And he answered and said unto me, 'Go in peace, my child; your faith has made your pants well.'

"After this I rejoiced greatly in my heart and set about the process of putting on Matt Bellamy's pants instead of mine own Sweatpants of Utter Geekness. I went to the aforementioned Dance that evening and brought glory unto myself and my kindred, for the pants I was wearing were great and magnificent."

N.B.
Thanks to Joe my Youth Pastor and Hannah from my youth group for providing the inspiration behind this story. And the King James Bible; not sure how that got in there, but it did. This was written in jest and not meant to mock anything or anyone; I mean, what were you expecting?

Internet Bandwith Caps

2009-04-10T23:02:00.000-05:00

I just saw this article pop up in, of all places, the RSS header in Gmail:

http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/04/consumer-group.html

The thing that shocked me was that TWC charges $15 a month for ONE gig of data. I just checked the handy bandwith counter in my dashboard--over the last six days, I personally have been responsible for 983 megs of downloads. That's just six days from one computer. I have a webserver which probably eats its fair share of bandwith, and there's three other people who browse the internet regularly at my house. Admittedly, I do probably have the highest usage, but still, $15 is what we pay per month for internet right now. I'd rather live with slower, all-you-can-eat style internet than faster, data-capped internet. Because, believe me, one gig a month is not enough.

It would also be interesting to see if/how this limit would play into updates for critical software. I could easily see people turning down a 300 meg service pack because that's a third of their monthly bandwith. Or even updating their antivirus only once every couple of months. Basically, this could widen the spread of virii due to fewer people keeping their machines up-to-date.

On another tangent, it's a great way for TWC to make money on overage charges. Joe User isn't going to bother watching his data usage; and if he spends a lot of time watching YouTube and playing WOW online, he's going to eat that data up fast. And voila, TWC nails him with a $2 per gig overage charge.

All-in-all, this isn't going to make the internet any better. In fact, it's probably going to hurt a lot worse.

Paranoia Apocalypse

2009-03-29T00:09:00.000-05:00

I don't think I've introduced another blog I started: Paranoia Apocalypse (which is an awesome name, IMHO). I cover a lot of security stuff in detail--how it works and what it's good for. You must put the feed for it in your RSS reader!

iPod Touch 2G Jailbroken

2009-03-11T00:18:00.000-05:00

We've been able to jailbreak the iPod Touch 2G for a while now, but the jailbreak wouldn't stay if you rebooted the iPod. Well, MuscleNerd et. al. have fixed that problem and released a jailbreak today.

Sadly, a company by the name of NitroKey apparently got ahold of a copy somehow (details are really sketchy here) and were selling it, thus forcing MuscleNerd's hand. The Dev team had originally been planning to release it after the rumored iPhone 2,1 might be released in possibly June, with the hope that by keeping their method secret, Apple wouldn't fix it and therefore the Dev team would be saved a bunch of work.

Right now you can grab the exploit from
http://www.ipodtouchfans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=155770
However, I can't help you stick it in the right spot...mostly because I only have a 1G Touch, so I haven't been paying much attention to redsn0w et. al. MuscleNerd is trying to get the Dev team to pull their act together and release a new version of the PwnageTool and QuickPwn soon.

I've written up a bit more detail about how the hack actually works at my blog on security, which I felt more fitting for the purpose. Especially because we get into such wonderfully nerdy things as hex memory addresses...

My newly redesigned website

2009-03-03T00:44:00.001-06:00

I've been working on this for a while, and finally finished enough to justify putting it online.

http://LinuxMercedes.homelinux.com

The only thing Javascript on the whole site is the invisible statcounter.

'Song' vs. 'Album'

2009-02-25T16:59:00.000-06:00

I've noticed a trend in music: most people write songs that stand on their own. An 'album' is just a collection of these songs on a CD that the artist thought good.

This is one of the big differences between 'modern' music and 'old' music. On many 'old' albums, certain songs just don't make sense unless they're heard in context. Take, for example, Pink Floyd's Eclipse. That song sounds ok-ish played by itself. But when you play Dark Side of the Moon, it fits perfectly. It's part of a story. It used to be that an album was a story. Now, it's not so much that way.

Same way with jam bands--there are times when you have to hear three, four, five songs in a row to hear the story that the music is telling. Each song may sound good, but when you play them connected together, there's something bigger than each song.

I'm wondering what's changed that casued that. I've got a couple of theories:

1) Radio hits: make one song that's a radio hit. Ignore the album
2) iTunes: no longer do you have to buy the whole album. Just pick your songs.
3) Could it be related to why songs are now about three minutes a piece? Whereas a lot of 'old' songs are around 6-10.

What are your thoughts?

The #1 reason to use Firefox

2009-02-23T23:00:00.000-06:00

It's not Internet Explorer.

This is also the #1 reason to use Safari, Opera, or Chrome.

Why not use IE? It's not standards compliant. At all. I've been doing some work on my personal webpage, and I'd be done with the layout by now if IE didn't exist. When 3 out of 4 rendering engines render a page the same way, chances are the fourth one is doing something wrong.

I don't really care if you use Firefox or Safari or Chrome or even Opera. They're all trying to be standards compliant. And doing a good job.

What I care about is that you aren't using IE. Because every person not using IE is another person that web developers don't have to worry about when they're sticking hacks into their CSS to get IE to render it right. If you just switch from IE to something else, you'll be part of making a difference.

The point being: do eveything you can to lessen IE's share of the browser market. I'm waiting patiently for the day when the biggest question about my new website look is, "How bad does it look in IE?"

Build your own Segway

2009-02-19T17:23:00.002-06:00

I so want to do this. Anyone else open for a summer robotics project? I figure it will be easier if we do multiple ones simultaneously.

http://www.ohscope.com/

And it will be nifty if you're going to college on a large campus....

Be careful with big magnets

2009-02-18T23:22:00.000-06:00

Dirk is a fellow who owns a few large neodynium magnets. He had them out and thought they were a safe distance apart...

...except they weren't. They ended up flying 20 inches through the air and crushing his right index finger.

Be forewarned: the link has some pretty graphic pictures of what strong magnets can do. Trust me, it's pretty gross.

http://www.magnetnerd.com/Neodymium%20Magnets/Dirks%20Accident.htm

Apple says Jailbreaking is illegal

2009-02-13T17:18:00.000-06:00

Apple recently filed a claim at the patent office that said that it is illegal to jailbreak your iThing:

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/02/13/apple-says-jailbreaking-is-illegal/

They haven't offered a reason, but considering the pressure both from the App Store developers whose apps are being cracked and distributed to jailbroken iThings and AT&T who probably doesn't like the whole 'unlock' situation, it's pretty easy to guess why they're doing this. The thing is, it's like arguing that Bittorent is wrong because you can pirate stuff over it. Jailbreaking is simply a tool that can be used for both good and evil.

Fortunately, it seems that the general consensus from the Mac community is that it would be next to impossible for Apple to begin taking legal action against the jailbreakers. First, they're all working anonymously, and second, they're just distributing code that modifies Apple's firmware. So Apple can't nail them for redistributing Apple-only firmware. Also, it seems that Apple doesn't really want to pursue the issue, but needs to make some sort of gesture of goodwill to AT&T and the App Store devs.

Here's hoping no one decides that this insane course of action should actually be followed.

Safenow.org

2009-02-10T21:16:00.002-06:00

Warning: Do not drink beverages and read this site simultaneously.

http://www.safenow.org/

Circular reasoning in this claim about speciation?

2009-02-08T22:29:00.009-06:00

"For example, the closest living relatives of humans are the chimpanzees and the bonobos. We share 96-98% of our genome with chimpanzees, yet our most recent shared ancestor lived 5-7 million years ago. If it takes as much as 5 million years for that much change to accumulate, how can Ben expect to observe speciation in his lifetime?"

Taken from http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/contest/on-the-evidence-for-evolution

Is it just me, or is there some circular reasoning involved here? I'll explain via a dialogue (ala Plato =]):

A: "Because we have not observed speciation, we cannot offer evidence for evolution."
B: "If, according to our predictions based on evolution, humans and apes did speciate from a common ancestor, and that ancestor lived 5-7 million years ago, then we could conclude that it takes about 5 million years to speciate. Therefore, we would not expect to see speciation."

Maybe not. Either way, it makes speciation a moot point in the debate, as both creationist and evolutionist views would not expect speciation.

The not-so-recent trojan in iWork

2009-02-07T22:33:00.011-06:00

I'm baffled by this headline: "BitTorrent copies of iWork '09 may contain nasty Trojan"

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/01/22/bittorrent-copies-of-iwork-09-may-contain-nasty-trojan/

What? This is news? To me, this sounds like "Software downloaded from porn sites may contain viruses". It should be fairly obvious that the principle of caveat emptor doubly applies to black-market items. Obvious enough that this doesn't make all the major news sites.

In addition, I didn't think that the major Mac demographic included a lot of torrenters. Most Mac owners are rich enough that they can blow $80 on new software. I do realize that there are exceptions (in fact, I am one of them), but I didn't realize that this was that popular.

All operating systems stink...

2009-02-04T16:33:00.003-06:00

....Mac OS just stinks less. Which is why I think Apple's new slogan should be "Stink Different" =]

Aside from that, we've got two weeks until we have to ship the robot...so life will be really crazy now. I've got 2000+ unread articles to catch up on...

And my last thought for the day: Stay away from myspanishlab.com. It's interface is one of the worst interfaces ever. And there's bugs, too. I get way too stressed trying to do spanish homework...

The silence of the blog

2009-01-24T20:31:00.000-06:00

Yes, I'm aware I have a blog. Three, actually. And one has next to nothing on it. Yes, I'm aware that it's been an inordinately long time since I've posted anything. Yes, I'm aware that I should probably change that.

But I'm too busy right now. My life is pretty much school, work, and FIRST robotics in my spare time. No time for blogging. And this week is WCS's SIAW, which I've been asked to come back to lead the tech crew for. That's an amazing honor, especially considering their typical policy on this.

So, I'm not dead. In fact, I've got a bunch of ideas running around in my head that are begging to be blogged about. Some software stuff, some worldview stuff, and maybe a few other cool projects as well. And, of course, FIRST Robotics and whatnot.

But, right now I've got some code to write up.

P.S. One thing: knockoff food companies have some of the most ridiculous product names ever. Try ChipTastic cookies. Or Cream Betweens. And my all-time favorite: Mountain Holler Radical Citrus Thirst Blaster.

Snow Leopard Screenshot Leaks?

2009-01-23T18:53:00.000-06:00

This would be so awesome. Period.

http://cubes.fr/6188

Via Daring Fireball.

"Free Inquiry" on "Separation of Church and State"

2009-01-09T20:26:00.000-06:00

From the same page:

"Separation of church and state. The United States needs to adhere to the First Amendment. We call upon President Obama to rise above his campaign rhetoric on this issue and end public support for faith-based charities as a violation of the First Amendment."

I had no clue that this was that widespread of a misconception. Anyone want to explain to me how supporting a 'faith-based charity' 'prohibits the free exercise of [religion]'? I'd also like to see what organizations the government is supporting, and how they are doing that. I suppose they have ground if they're supported in a tax law of some sort, although that's stretching the definition of 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion'.

Unfortunately, most people just have a vague idea of what the First Amendment really says, and what it relates to. And most of these vague ideas are influenced by people who are saying that 'separation of church and state' is in the Constitution. If the blind lead the blind, will they not both fall into a ditch?

"Free Inquiry" on the religion of the US President

2009-01-09T17:41:00.001-06:00

"Free Inquiry" is a publication by the Council for Secular Humanism. I take the following excerpt from this webpage:

"The U.S. Constitution states that “no religious test shall ever be required” to hold “any office or public trust.” Yet surveys still show that a majority of Americans would not vote for an atheist candidate for president. Clearly there is more work to be done to realize a truly secular society."

What? They are arguing that America is not secular enough--but why on earth did they need to put in that quote from the Constitution? My first impression was that they were arguing that it is unconstitutional for the American people to elect a president based on his* religion. It still seems to me that they are implying that.

However, that argument is nonsensical. The Constitution does not say what the American populace should use to determine their choice of a president. It instead prevents presidential candidates from being legally disqualified based on religion. Not that the American populace cannot or even should not chose a president based on religion. That is not within the scope of the Constitution's power.

Maybe I'm just being picky or argumentative, but it does seem to me that if they weren't implying this, there would be no point in including the quote from the Constitution. It just doesn't make sense.

* Yes, I meant his. Not his/hers. Not h/i/er/s. Those are superfluous and, besides, they're bad grammar.

What is wrong with Microsoft's Live service

2009-01-08T08:41:00.000-06:00

I signed up for Microsoft live to give me access to SkyDrive and to allow me to use MSN (because some people are that way...).

But I decided to go ahead and set up my Live email account to be fetched from my Gmail account (which is a really nifty thing to do). But, lo and behold, you can only use POP fetching on a Live *Plus* account. Not a regular one. So, I decided to have Live just forward my emails to my Gmail account. However, apparently you can only forward emails to other Microsoft accounts, or custom domains.

And this is what is wrong: there is no good reason for them to limit either of those. I mean, name me one other free email account provider that doesn't allow you to use POP on your email. Or forward your email to whomever you want. Microsoft is intentionally crippling the Live service to make people want to pay for their Plus service, and to lock them into using other Microsoft accounts. They want their business; but instead of giving them more business, most people are going to go look for something else that provides those features every email account has had for the last ten years for free.

An amazing car audio player

2009-01-05T00:40:00.000-06:00

I ran across this while browsing the net:

http://wps.com/projects/MP3-system/

This guy is amazing. (Check out some of his other projects--they're pretty awesome as well.) He has the idea behind a car audio player right. No fancy buttons or anything; make something that does one thing, and does it well. Well enough that you don't have to worry about looking to see what you're doing while you're driving. The whole setup is worth looking at.

Pay-as-you-go PCs?

2008-12-29T22:49:00.000-06:00

This strikes me as one of the stupidest ideas Microsoft has come up
with yet:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/29/microsoft-patent-application-hints-at-pay-as-you-go-pcs/

I guess this could be OK for my grandma, who just does email and a bit
of web surfing. But for anyone who seriously uses their PC, it's a
total waste of money. Microsoft admits this in their application, but
says that the upgraded hardware should make up for it. I did the
numbers: if I used my PC 5 hours a day, 365 days a year for three
years, I'd pay about $6500. Considering that the lifetime of a $6500
machine should be at least 3 years, there is no reason to opt for this
new plan. And it makes my $1000 Macbook a steal.

The only interesting thing would be hacking it to run at full power.
Maybe under Linux. And that would be 'illegal'.

Sorry Microsoft, but I don't see it coming anytime soon. Glad to see
that it was you who was responsible for this...

The hairy case of iPhone private APIs

2008-12-22T23:23:00.000-06:00

John Gruber wrote a piece that covers the events and stuff related to
Apple's private APIs very well:

http://daringfireball.net/2008/12/private

My opinion on the topic is that you are free to go ahead and call the
APIs, if you make sure they won't break the app on launch. However,
maybe the iPhone developer community should write LGPL versions if
some of Apple's private stuff, like CoverFlow.

A dual-screen laptop?

2008-12-20T20:36:00.001-06:00

Man, this is worse than that Dell XPS thing with a built-in handle:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9124101&intsrc=hm_list

Here's my question: why on earth would you opt for this over a desktop?
I mean, it's not like you're going anywhere with it.

Are the RIAA's lawsuits unconstitutional?

2008-12-19T07:47:00.003-06:00

Some people have a pretty convincing argument:

http://techdirt.com/articles/20081030/0203582685.shtml

This should get really interesting.

Experts say to stay off IE

2008-12-16T18:14:00.002-06:00

Hate to say this, but if any FOSS software had a bug like this, it'd
be fixed by now:

http://lifehacker.com/5111184/security-experts-advising-you-stay-off-internet-explorer-for-now

gOS Cloud - From zero to web browser in just a few seconds

2008-12-15T22:20:00.002-06:00

This looks like an indescribably sweet OS to stick on lightweight PCs
and have them sitting around your house.

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/12/01/gos-cloud-from-zero-to-web-browser-in-just-a-few-seconds/

OSX 10.5.6 breaks Jailbreak!

2008-12-15T21:29:00.002-06:00

This is mixed news: the updated USB drivers in OS X break DFU mode for
iPhones and iPod touches. The good thing is that it can be fixed by
software.

http://www.iphonealley.com/news/warning-mac-update-1056-breaks-dfu-mode-for-iphone-ipod-touch

I also hear (through the rumor mill) that you can plug your iPhone
into a USB hub and avoid the trouble. I'm waiting for someone to
confirm this first, though.

I suppose I'll be sticking with 10.5.5 until this gets worked out.

The thing I don't understand is why Apple would do this--DFU mode is
good for other thing besides jailbreaking. It seems to be a direct
attack, but it may be an unnoticed bug. After all, I don't suppose
that the folks at Apple checked DFU mode; it doesn't seem to be one of
the things I'd check. Until now, of course.

Apple's reaction in the next couple of days will show us how the cards
really lie.

[edit] It also appears that they took away the ability to switch power modes via the battery menu. I now have two reasons to wait. Yay! I mean, not yay. I shouldn't have to stick with older software because it gives me more features. That's just wrong.

[edit 2] The iPhone Dev Team thinks it's because of a kernel bug, not Apple breaking jailbreak. They've got instructions on how to fix the drivers by rolling them back to the 10.5.5 ones, and they also list using an USB hub as another solution. You can read more on the iPhone Dev Blog

[edit 3] It seems there's been other problems installing it as well...search the Apple discussion boards for more info. This us looking like a bad update, to me. I may just wait for 10.5.7!

Caroling

2008-12-14T21:32:00.001-06:00

I went caroling today with a bunch of people from my church. We went through part of a neighborhood and sang and gave out little gift bags. I actually enjoyed it; the weather was amazing, and I enjoyed singing.

I had started out with a song book, but when we got there Mom took it from me and handed me the container of hot chocolate. I never saw the songbook again, but that was fine because I knew most of the words anyway.

It was pretty awesome to walk around the neighborhood and see people actually excited to see us. I guess it was kind of a testament to our heritage--one that I'd like to see more often.

Hurry up with that iPhone Linux kernel, already!

2008-12-13T12:56:00.000-06:00

I'm really itching for a device running Android. It doesn'teven need to be a phone--just something like an iPod Touch. Which is why I want to see the iPhone Linux project keep going. I totallywant to run Android on my iPod.

That being said, I wonder if there's some way to get Android to run on the iPhone's BSD subsystem...

Oh, and if any of you want to buy me one of those Android phones, that's fine by me. =]

I'm glad to see that someone else agrees...

2008-12-12T20:05:00.002-06:00

From Cnet: you get better sound quality from buying a nice pair of
stereo speakers rather than a bunch of single-cone surround sound
speakers:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-10120050-47.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

I've written about them before, but I'd like to point out how much I
like my Pioneer CS-G403 speakers. Three cones each, 30Hz - 20 kHz
response. Can't get much better for free...and in fact, probably not
for $40 either.

3G to WiFi modem

2008-12-12T19:26:00.002-06:00

This just looks like a cool idea. Imagine throwing one in your
backpack--which seems like a rather feasible use for it:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/12/switched-on-mifi-pushes-3g-past-the-router-limits/

Windows 7 benchmarked against Vista

2008-12-12T18:02:00.002-06:00

I have little hope left for Microsoft, and all of that lies in Windows
7. I think that if 7 fails like Vista did (or maybe not even that
badly) they will find themselves in a not-so-good spot. Especially
with Linux getting more and more improvements.

That being said, it's looking good for Microsoft:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3182&page=1

Computers Can Now Read Your Thoughts

2008-12-11T21:37:00.001-06:00

This is quite a neat tech demonstration:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/11/japanese-researchers-create-images-from-thoughts-using-thoughts/

DNA evolution simulation

2008-12-10T23:39:00.002-06:00

Here's the latest in DNA evolution simulation:

http://hackaday.com/2008/12/10/simulated-annealing/

One of the things that frustrated me with these DNA simulations is
that they always have an original to compare off of. And they pick
which mutations are kept by how well they comply with that standard.
Doesn't that sound a little unrealistic? Or maybe I missed Nature's
ability to pick things based on their goodness? But wait, doesn't that
make Nature and the "goodness" standard similar to God?

Or did I really miss something?

A pretty awesome Christmas card idea

2008-12-10T18:45:00.003-06:00

I've always been intrigued by the properties of clear plastic and edge
lighting. But I've never managed to come up with something to do with
it. Until now:

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/edgelitcards

Teacher confiscates Linux CDs, claims no software is free

2008-12-10T14:36:00.001-06:00

This story is disturbing. She's obviously a luser.

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/12/10/teacher-confiscates-linux-cds-claims-no-software-is-free/

Make sure to read the article linked in the beginning...she seriously thinks Linux is LESS useful than an old version of Windows. I suppose that the Linux community is going to make her eat her words.

Woah! Did you see that pig?

2008-12-10T09:02:00.002-06:00

Microsoft released an open-source web page/blog tool:

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/20081209/tc_pcworld/microsoftreleasesopensourcecontentmanagementapp

On closer look, it's not all that it seems. It's built on ASP.net,
which is windows-only tech, IIRC. And it appears that they're still
thinking that this will eventually become a product for them.

I just realized

2008-12-09T22:47:00.000-06:00

how damaging revisionist history can be. I can say that my high school history has been very accurate, but I still find myself fighting impressions I picked up from not-so-great elementary history classes. It's frustrating, especially as I've had those ideas pounded into my head because I read voraciously.

Just my thought for the day.

How to publish blog posts with URLs in them from an iPhone

2008-12-09T16:05:00.001-06:00

You may have noticed that I published a post recently with a link in it. I did that from my iPod Touch. How did I do it?

I typed it in by hand, of course.

That's it!

Not. =] There's a much better way, of course. Go into the settings on your blog and set up an email address under the email tab. I set mine to save as a draft. Then visit the page you want to link to in Safari. Click the '+' button on the toolbar and email a link of that page to the email you set up earlier. Let it send, and in a few minutes you'll have a post in your list! One catch: if you want to use Blogger to edit your post, you have to use the Edit HTML tab. The other doesn't work. However, Blogger should be able to automatically codeyour paragraphs and stuff.

An Apple in your kitchen

2008-12-09T15:50:00.002-06:00

I ran across this and thought it was an interesting look into where computers should be headed.

http://i.tuaw.com/?date=2008/12/09&slug=an-apple-in-your-kitchen&a=show-post&commentspage=

Out of curiosity, are there any projects out there like this already? I'm thinking this could be done with a Mac mini, a wall-mount display, a webcam, and a microphone. And a fair amount of code-fu.

Libronix update

2008-12-05T17:12:00.000-06:00

I recieved a comment on my previous Libronix post from the Libronix company. The fallout from that is that I get a free copy of the Mac software. Rest assured, I still intend to try to make a GPL'd Libronix reader. But I have to wonder, why did they give me a free copy of their software? I'd like to think that it's because they're a nice company. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to assign other motives.

As far as the software goes, I opened a data file, and it looks like line noise. So I may or may not be successful. It's not gzipped, but K haven't tried anything else. There is a slim chance it might be Huffman....

Logos Bible Software

2008-12-03T11:30:00.000-06:00

I've been using Logos Bible software for a while and have to say that it's my favorite non-open-source piece of software, short of OS X. (Leastwise, nothing else comes to mind right now =]). For a while they've been developing a Mac version and have given away betas for free. Unfortunately, those betas expire...and mine just did. Oh, and they're not offering a free beta anymore; instead I have to pay $60 to 'crossgrade' my engine. And, did I mention that I need it by tonight?

So yeah, I'm kinda mad. It seems that this company, which is at least nominally Christian, seems to be charging me $60 to use software I already bought FROM THEM. To me, that's stupid--and sounds a lot like something Microsoft would do. I was under the impression that 'crossgrade' meant a discount you'd get by switching from some OTHER company's product. Apparently Logos thinks that it's Windows and Mac divisons are competing against each other. Yeah...

So, I'm thinking I'm going to investigate the feasability of someone like me starting up an opensource project to replace Logos Reader. I like that solution better than a) paying $60, or b) finding a lawyer to start a class-action lawsuit over Logos' use of 'crossgrade', and any other loophole he can find.

I'll give you an update later.

You know you're a geek....

2008-11-29T14:51:00.001-06:00

...when you laugh at this cartoon:

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20041025&mode=classic

What I want for Christmas

2008-11-29T10:51:00.000-06:00

I ran across this:

http://www.cathodecorner.com/

All I can say is that I'd love to have a Scope clock. It looks awesome.

But it's $999 =[

Linux on the iPhone/iPod touch

2008-11-28T20:38:00.000-06:00

Some amazing hacker has gotten Linux onto the iPhone...

http://linuxoniphone.blogspot.com/2008/11/linux-on-iphone.html

It's useful because you could run, say, Android on your iPhone, eventually. Maybe even dual-boot?

The Rice Computer

2008-11-27T00:44:00.000-06:00

I ran across this article recently:

http://www.cs.rice.edu/History/R1/

and learned a few things. First, this machine ran at about 1 MHz. ONE Megahertz. And they were using this to develop speech recognition software?
Second, the memory was originally built with CRT tubes.
And third, they had pointers! In the hardware specs! Hello, Object-oriented programming abou 40 years before it came into vogue!

It's a neat article to skim, at least.

FoxGLove on OS X

2008-11-24T20:35:00.011-06:00

I recently ran across FoxGLove:

http://lifehacker.com/5097728/foxglove-standalone-google-apps-portal

And I liked the idea, and wanted to try it out. But I have a Mac. No small difficulty--I decided to hack it =]

Here's the screenshot:

I started with Firefox Portable for OS X:
http://www.freesmug.org/portableapps/firefox/

I had to mod it to open while other versions of Firefox are running. After much experimentation, I discovered that you do this by editing the script. Right click on Portable Firefox, click Show Package Contents, open Contents, then Resources, then edit 'script'. Scroll down to the very bottom and you should see a line that says 'quitapp'. Put a hash (#) in front of that line, save the file, and you should be good.

Then I started to install all the plugins and stuff from Alex (the maker of FoxGLove). I had to Google for a couple of them.

I couldn't see how he got Google Talk, Calendar, and Notebook to show up in the sidebar...I didn't see the buttons. So I caved and opened his version in Wine. Three tries later, I had it up and running....and found out that the bookmarks were stuck in the Menu toolbar. Not having one of those on OS X, I improvised and instead put the buttons over the sidebar...where I think they should be anyway. I downloaded the icons from Google and set them up.

Then, I set up Gears to run portably...I installed it in Firefox, then copied the extension over to FoxGLove. It didn't occur to me until afterwards to try to install it regularly....

I downloaded Iconverter to convert Alex's icon to an .icns so I could brand Firefox. I changed the Portable version's icon, and then opened the package and changed Firefox's icon as well....now it just shows Alex's icon, even in the Dock!

The only other thing I would like to do would be to change some more of the Firefox branding to FoxGLove...maybe I'll hack it some more sometime.

You can dowload it right now from http://linuxmercedes.homelinux.com/FoxGLove/index.html.

[edit] Added screenshot. Bonus points to whoever first names the comic on my desktop =]

How to update your 1st gen iPod to firmware 2.0 for free...

2008-11-23T20:26:00.000-06:00

So I recently opened up my iPod Touch, and much to my suprise and dismay, I discovered that even though I had bought the iPod AFTER the 2.0 firmware came out, I still had to pay Apple another $10 for the 2.0 firmware. Considering the reason why I decided to open it was to make apps for it, I was frustrated.

And so I set out to find out how to update it for free. I would have paid Apple for it if they had told me before I bought it that I was getting the 1.5 firmware, and that it would cost more to update it to 2.0. But, since at least in my view they violated the truth-in-advertising laws and didn't tell me that, I decided that they didn't deserve my $10...IMHO.

Anyhow, here are some instructions:

http://www.sizlopedia.com/2008/07/12/how-to-update-ipod-touch-to-firmware-20-for-free/

Basically, you download the firmware restore file (which will restore your iPod, so kiss your music goodbye unless you have it backed up on your computer). You can either download from RapidShare, which is fast, but reqires you to download three files and use a program to combine them into the firmware, or you can dowload from Uploaded.to, which is SLOW (~14 kbps) but doesn't require you to combine three files together. I used RapidShare and combined the files together.

Once you have your firmware update, go into iTunes, plug in your iPod, let it sync (just to be safe =]), then hold down Shift if you're using a PC or Alt if you're using a Mac and click the restore button. A dialog will pop up asking you where the firmware file is. Point it to the one you downloaded.

Let it do it's thing, and once it's done, you're good to go! You then can update for free to the 2.2 firmware via iTunes, so you're running legit code, if that matters to you.

One note: When I did mine I got an error (1403, IIRC). This means that the firmware is corrupted. Download it again. If you used RapidShare, you can try recombining the files first (which is what I did, and it worked).

Note: I'm aware that this falls into a grey area (probably dark grey...). If you're not cool with it, let me know!

One nifty feature of the iPod touch...

2008-11-22T19:45:00.001-06:00

So I finally caved and opened my iPod touch (I was planning on selling it, and may still do so...). I promise I'll write a review of it sometime, but I did want to mention this one feature that I thought was awesome...

So I went out tonight to my sister's piano recital, and, of course, stuck my iPod in my pocket. I forgot to turn the WiFi off. After the recital we went out to get something to eat, and I got out my touch and noticed that I had five unread emails...that weren't there when I was home! Apparently it found a free wifi connection, connected, and downloaded my emails automatically. That, I find, is totally awesome.

[edit] One of my friends pointed out that you have to turn on Push and set Fetch to 15 minutes for this to work. Actually you can set Fetch to whatever you want, but 15 minutes works the best.

Surfacesque idea

2008-11-16T00:30:00.000-06:00

I stumbled across Microsoft's Surface again...apparently now it's a viable product. Unfortunately, only companies can buy it =].

It reminded me of an idea I had a long time ago about tablet computers. I imagined an app that could run akin to the Surface UI on a tablet computer. Devices would line up along the edges where they were plugged in. The cool thing was that if your friend brought over his computer and ran the app on his machine, the two would connect over the network and you would literally be able to drag files between machines--drag a file to the edge of your desktop nearest your friend, and it would show up on his desktop. Nifty, eh?

So now I'm thinking. Would this be possible to implement on any computer? Sit down next to your friend and be able to drag files back and forth...you could even do windows and stuff, to be totally awesome.

Anyone know anything about this? Frameworks, locating devices, etc? I'm thinking OS X might be the best starting point as it has Bonjour and all that stuff...but, then again, there is a PC version of Bonjour too. Any OSS bonjour alternatives?

Or am I crazy?

Some of my favorite groovy Mac apps and tweaks

2008-11-15T22:36:00.002-06:00

I've decided that, for the edification of everyone who reads my blog and has a mac (I think that might be one person =]), I'd put together a list of my favorite apps and tips for Mac. All free, too, so you don't have to pay for cool stuff =]

Firefox: Duh. Favorite browser of all time. It's cross-platform, OSS, fast, and has extensions. I personally use AdBlock Plus (a must-have for browsing), NoScript (ditto, although this one is probably not for your grandma), Web developer toolbar, Firebug (both essential for web development), TrackMeNot (which searches Google with random things to keep them from being able to track what I actually searched), CustomizeGoogle (more security stuff), and, lastly, Cooliris--a must-have for eye-candy lovers and people who need to browse images fast. Get it and try it out--there's nothing like it.

Speaking of web development, TextWrangler (http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/) is my programmer's editor of choice. It's a free dumbed-down version of BBEdit, but it does everything I need it to (syntax highlighting, multiple files, find-and-replace) and lots more (execute a file from the editor, find-and-replace across multiple files, etc.).

The other app I use for web development is Macfusion (http://www.macfusionapp.org/). This lets you mount SSH and FTP shares as volumes on your Mac and interact with them with the Finder. It makes copying and stuff really easy. And if you need to make some quick change to a file, it's fast, too.

NeoOffice (www.neooffice.com) is a port of OpenOffice to OS X. It's a bit faster, and a lot fancier, than OpenOffice, but it's only up to version 2 of OO right now. I use it as a substitute for Word.

I also use the Visor add-on for Terminal that I wrote about a few posts ago. It's nifty to the extreme.

Another add-on I just discovered is GeekTool: http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/ It lets you run scripts and a lot of other things at certain intervals. Currently I just have it running 'uptime' on a window on my desktop, but I can imagine all the nifty things you can do with it. Like using curl and grep (or perl) to download a webpage and pull something out of it (e.g. sale of the day, etc.) and display that on your desktop.

And, finally, there's WhatsOpen (http://www.agasupport.com/?page_id=72), which displays all your open files. You can set it to display only a particular volume, so you can see which apps need to quit so you can eject a disk. If you don't like the command line, this is a nice tool. (For the command line junkies, try lsof and pipe it through grep. For example, lsof | grep WhatsOpen).

Hopefully someone will get something out of this =]

Review of Windows 7

2008-11-13T22:27:00.000-06:00

Review of Windows 7, courtesy The Register:

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/10/28/windows_seven_review/

And here's my take on parts of the article:

"The first thing you notice is the revamped taskbar, with chunky thumbnail icons, full-screen application preview on mouse hover, and "jump lists" - pop-up menus that expose key features directly from the taskbar, provided that the application was coded to support them, and recently opened documents for any application."

Why would I want this? From the looks of it, now it takes me TWO clicks to switch applications via the taskbar. And if I'm working on two projects simultaneously, I've got windows--say Word windows--from each project glommed into one button. Can you say disorganization?

OS X does have some of the same problems as Vista with this, but it makes up for it by not requiring people to use app-switch methods to switch windows--for example, expose or the minimized dock windows. Both are app-independent.

"The system tray area now has a customize option that allows the user to suppress notifications, annoying for developers but empowering for users. It is all about making Windows quieter and less annoying. The same principle is at play in the revised User Account Control (UAC), which offers a simple slider bar that lets the user decide the level of prompting it enforces."

I'm fine with the Taskbar thing--it never really bothered me in the first place. But UAC? I thought that was for security! Basically, it's allowing people to turn off security features. That is not a good idea, because it could let programs change things behind the user's back--what UAC was created for--and not notify them. As well, now that there's an option to turn it down, what would prevent some application finding a way to hack that? Especially given the propensity of users to not read messages but just click OK, it would only take one malicious program to take out this security feature.

"In Windows 7 device vendors can customize what happens on connection, through the new Device Stage, a control center tailored for a specific device. Some Device Stage links can be advertising for add-ons and supplies, so there is a commercial aspect that may not always be welcome. The Device Stage is populated via a Windows metadata service, which means it can be updated at any time."

Sounds neat...until you consider your el-cheapo chinese KIRF. Would you plug that in and risk getting some weird webpage from the manufacturer? And would this be possible to download viruses from? Hmm...

Well...hopefully it will be better than Vista. Although that's not much of a challenge...

My Other Blog

2008-11-06T21:56:00.000-06:00

Alright folks, time for some shameless self-promotion:

I have a new blog!

http://behindthecounterblog.blogspot.com

Basically, I got a job, and decided to write stories about what happens there. Yeah. Just don't tell anyone else there that there are stories about them on the internet =]

So, you should all go check it out, because it's totally awesome. Really. Believe me on this one, OK?

P.S. I appear to have a knack for picking blog names already in use...

The Story of Alice and Bob

2008-11-03T22:33:00.000-06:00

When people discuss cryptography, they usually give names to parties A and B--Alice and Bob. This makes the explanations somewhat more readable.

Someone wrote down some information about Alice, Bob, and cryptography in general. It's worth a read:

http://www.conceptlabs.co.uk/alicebob.html

"Your Perfect Man Quiz"--a possible exploit of a security hole in Facebook?

2008-11-02T22:05:00.000-06:00

I recently started to recieve a ton of invites to the "Your Perfect Man Quiz" on Facebook. This application apparently invites all your friends to take the quiz when you activate it. (I took it because I assumed that it was actually thoughtfully sent to me...FWIW, I'm apparently looking for a guy who is rich and mysterious =])

But here's the thing. Twice it asks you if you want to invite friends. I skipped the invites BOTH TIMES. So it invited everyone without my permission. I didn't think apps could do that.

So, Facebook, tell me. Is this a flaw in your app framework? I suppose it's a query to get the friend list, then a command to invite each person in that list...simple, once you have access. So maybe it's not a hole, but a misuse of the system. But apps shouldn''t do this, because it makes the invite system meaningless; invites become spam.

Here's my solution: Only allow apps to invite people using Facebook's Select Friends dialog. Don't allow apps to randomly invite whosoever they choose; just allow them to show a list of friends and have the user pick who they'll acutally invite. Maybe a little limiting, but that will kill spam fast.

There's my 2 cents.

First Android phone!

2008-10-25T22:10:00.000-05:00

Not sure how long this has been out there, but here it is:

http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/mobile/android/hpp.html

Let's hear it for open-source software!

iTunes' Sound Enhancer

2008-10-25T21:42:00.002-05:00

If you're like me, you always peruse the preferences for every program you own. I remember when I first did that with iTunes and found the Sound Enhancer. And turned it on and liked the sound I got through my pedestrinan Maxwell headphones. And so I turned it up all the way. And left it on for about a year or so.

About 9 months after I turned on the Sound Enhancer, I bought a new pair of headphones: a set of AKG K-44's. They're not expensive (~$30 if you shop around) and sound good enough to do cheap mixes by (although I can hear the nonlinearites, especially if I listen for a while). I was listening to music with these, and after a few weeks decided that there was something muddy in all the music I was hearing. So I wandered back through iTunes' preferences and for kicks turned off the Sound Enhancer. The music was quieter, but cleaner. A LOT cleaner.

Fast forward another year. My old laptop dies, I buy a MacBook. And today I decide to find out exactly what the Sound Enhancer is doing. So I turn on some music (Grateful Dead's Althea, FWIW--a concert recording, so no mastering/compression applied to it, but I also tested with Pink Floyd's Money, which does have those goodies) and turned on Sound Enhancer. I was first listening through the built-in speakers and noticed that the music became much louder--which is good, since the MacBook's speakers don't have amazing volume. But listening on my headphones, I heard that what Sound Enhancer really does is boosts the frequencies that have the 'important' parts of the mix in them--the vocals, guitars, cymbals, and keyboard melody. It probably also does some compression. However, it leaves the mix entirely out of whack, especially if you're listening on headphones.

My guess is that they tailored it for the built-in speakers, as it's hard to hear any flaws listening through them. (One noticable point: in Money it seemed to over-emphasize some frequencies and gave me a headache, even through the built-in speakers.)

So, the point is: if you've got el-cheapo speakers, and you don't care about what the mix was supposed to sound like, go ahead and turn it on. It will probably make it 'feel' better. However, if you've got anything near hi-fi speakers and actually care about the days of work that went into making that recording sound exactly how it should, TURN IT OFF.

A totally awesome program for OSX

2008-10-22T11:26:00.000-05:00

For all the one mac user who reads this blog, I have a major software recommendation for you: Visor.

It's a must-have if you have the slightest inkling about using the Terminal. It lets you assign a key combination to a drop-down terminal window. Press a key and your terminal shows up. Press it again and it disappears. Press it again and it shows up right where you left off before you hid it.

And it also has cool eyecandy effects =]

http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-visor/

A very well planned credit card fraud

2008-10-15T15:54:00.000-05:00

Here's an article about an international credit card fraud:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122366999999723871.html

Basically, the thieves somehow managed to insert bugs into the Chinese-made credit card readers, then used those bugs to capture credit card numbers and PINs, then transmit them to a server in Pakistan. Quite impressive.

And another proof that you can't have security and a life.

Note to terrorists: do not wash your laundry in a laundromat.

2008-10-15T15:16:00.001-05:00

Here's a well-executed terrorist trap used by the UK once:

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/10/clever_countert.html

So, what do we learn from this?

First, having a sense of humor will get you a long way in catching terrorists. "I propose we operate a laundromat. That will catch them!"

Second, everything you say and do can be used against you. The disconcerting thing is that this did not require a warrant to determine where the terrorists were. The reason why it worked is that the terrorists were releasing data--their laundry--with the intent of it being used only in the way they intended. It's similar to the cell-phone story I posted earlier. We hand out our data, not expecting strange things to be done to it. We put our lives on Facebook. We blog. We send emails with all kinds of confidential data in them--reference Sarah Palin's email account getting attacked, or the Nikon camera sold on eBay with tons of top-secret UK government data on it. And we expect that other companies and governments will respect our privacy and not misuse our data. And they don't.

I'm becoming more and more cynical about privacy every day.

New Macbooks

2008-10-15T14:40:00.002-05:00

I don't know how I didn't hear about this, although I have deliberately stayed away from mac rumors after getting my macbook =], but yesterday Apple released a new laptop lineup.

MacBook Pro:
SSD option=meh.
User-accessible hard drive=Yay!
New design--whatever. Some people complain that the design is old. I liked the old design =]
MiniDisplay Port--whatever. It's the same thing the MacBooks have had. Another $20 for users who want an external screen. Face it, Apple: no one else uses your display port.
New NVidia chips--cool. Wish you would put these in the MacBook =]

MacBook Air:
Faster CPU--good. Always need more speed
128 GB SSD--Ok, more space. Now it makes sense to pay the extra $$ for an SSD

MacBook:
Metal case--well, if they fix the wifi range problems, I guess it's a good thing.
Lowered price--well, I paid $999 for my MacBook, so it doesn't bother me that much. Another $100 off when I decide to upgrade, though =]

One thing I still didn't see--multitouch on the MacBook. Although I would be saddened if I did see it, because I would have a shiny old piece of obsolete junk. The thing is, there isn't going to be any major developer support for multi-touch until Apple puts it in their mainstream notebook--the MacBook.

[Edit] They DID put multitouch on it! YEAH! I think Apple's getting it...but they took firewire out. BOO! For all the aspiring video and audio folks who can't afford a MacBook Pro, Apple has just removed themselves from the lineup. I'm kinda liking my MacBook =]

[Edit 2] You can get firewire on a MacBook....the $999 one! That's because it's a last-gen 'book. Still, you'd think they'd do something about this disparity in the product line =]

Clickjacking. Yeah. Hijacking the interwebz!

2008-10-15T14:14:00.000-05:00

Here's an article on Clickjacking, a newly discovered security problem in the internet:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Security&articleId=9115818&taxonomyId=17&pageNumber=1

Basically, an attacker hides their own page behind code from a legit page. Then when you click a button on the legit page, you also click the button on the attacker's page behind it. Sneaky.

So, what can you do? First, COMMON SENSE. Check where you are at and if it looks OK.

Second, use Firefox and NoScript:

http://hackademix.net/2008/09/27/clickjacking-and-noscript/

NoScript, however, is not for your grandma, unfortunately. But, it's not THAT hard to learn how to use, and it will speed up the internet as well =]

Cell Phone (and other) data harvesting

2008-10-15T11:29:00.001-05:00

Crypto-Gram came in today, so I'll have some articles from it =]

I ran across this one about how the NSA can legally (in the letter, not spirit, of the law) use off-the-shelf products to get data about cell phone usage. It's pretty comprehensive data, too--location, tracking people across multiple sim cards, etc.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-10030134-46.html

I also found this story about the Pentagon thinking that World of Warcraft could be a vector for terrorists to plan attacks:

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/09/the_pentagons_w.html

I like Bruce's analysis of this:
"My guess is still that some clever Pentagon researchers have figured out how to play World of Warcraft on the job, and they're not giving that perk up anytime soon."

The way these two articles are related: if the NSA can harvest all kinds of data legally, and the Pentagon wants all kinds of data, then our privacy is pretty much gone. Unless something changes.

I kinda like my friend's perspective on privacy:

http://www.netcolony.com/tennineteen/privacy.html

Isn't life great?

Fixing USB Audio Static on Mac OSX

2008-10-13T11:30:00.000-05:00

(My sincere apologies for the lack of posts...almost a month! =[ I guess I have reasons...I got a job, and a MacBook. I'm not totally slacking off; I've got some articles planned which I hope to write soon.)

(NB 2...This is a nerdy post. Regular readers don't have to read this =])

On Mac OSX (particularly 10.5) occasionally there will be horrible static in recordings and playback from a USB audio device.

I may have found a solution. (Leopard 10.5.5, fwiw)

The problem, according to some people in a different forum, may be related to the clock source of the USB box.

To fix this, I went into Apps/Utilities/Audio Midi Setup. In the Audio menu there is an entry "Open Aggregate Device Editor". Click that.
In the dialog, click the + button at the bottom of the list, which was empty on my machine.
It will add a new device and in the bottom pane all the sound devices in your computer will show up. Only check the ones you want to use (USB audio). Then use the Clock radio button and select one of the USB devices as the clock source (I used the output).
Click Done.

Now set your default input and output to "Aggregate Device".

In the output options on the Aggregate Device (lower pane of the main window in Audio MIDI Setup) I set the output rate from 8 bits to 16. I don't know why it would default to 8 bits unless Apple lives in 1986. Go figure.

That fixed it for me. YMMV, as always.

How Crazy Can It Get?

2008-09-15T14:21:00.000-05:00

Recently, a woman in Britain was arrested as a terrorist for walking along a cycling path:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article579334.ece

Do you have to show up for your life?

2008-09-15T13:44:00.002-05:00

This is an interesting idea from Bruce Schneier:

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2008/09/securitymatters_0904

Basically, he conceptualizes that we could create identities for people that don't exist and live their lives for them.

Weird.

[edit]
Here is some interesting commentary on the paper:

http://www.examiner.com/x-536-Civil-Liberties-Examiner~y2008m9d4-Im-not-myself-today-or-manufacturing-a-new-you

And here is an example of something similar happening in WWII:
http://www.themanwhoneverwas.com/

How To Erase a Hard Drive

2008-09-14T20:16:00.000-05:00

For all of you worried about data protection, I have a solution for securely erasing a hard drive:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/09/11/strongest-magnet.html

Yup. I guess that would do it.

The Truth can sometimes sound mean

2008-09-11T13:42:00.004-05:00

Last night I went to see Chistopher Hitchens debate Dinesh D'Souza at Powell Symphony Hall. I used my wicked awesome Rhetoric debate-notetaking skills to take 8.5 pages of notes, so expect a few more posts on the debate, including a link to the digitized version of the notes.

Anyhow, the debate was on the topic, "Is it good to believe in the Christian God?" Hitchens is the atheist who wrote the book titled, "god is Not Great". D'Souza is a Christiand and wrote the book, "What's so Great About Christianity?"

I was struck by something Hitchens said towards the end of the debate to D'Souza. D'Souza had explained that Christianity did offer a choice: you could go to hell or you could accept that Christ paid for your sins and go to heaven. Hitchens responded, "I want you to realize, Mr. D'Souza, how mean you como across to so many people in this room. You are saying that we can either burn in hell for eternity, or we can spend our lives groveling before a cold tyrant."

This interested me. I had a desire (which I supressed) to stand up and tell Mr. Hitchens, "Mr. Hitchens, I understand that you do not like mean things, even if they are true. Therefore, when you are ill and go to a doctor and he determines that you are terminal, I will let the doctor know that Mr. Hitchens does not like mean things, even if they are true, and so therefore you should not tell him he's going to die, but soften it up some, or maybe don't mention it at all."

Meanness is not a measure of truth; just because something is mean does not imply that it is false. Just that you don't like it. But to reject the truth because you do not like it or it makes you uncomfortable or it does nto fit with your plans is utter stupidity. I am reminded of II Timothy 4:3: "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires..."

Please remember to evaluate the truth, not by how it makes you feel, but by what you know.

Oh Yeah: Chrome makes JavaScript a major competitor to Silverlight

2008-09-09T20:13:00.000-05:00

Google's Chrome browser, which I covered earlier, offers major speed improvements to JavaScript.

http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-219799.html

Microsoft developers think that this may make Javascript a bigger competitor to Silverlight than Flash. This is a good thing--JavaScript is at least an open standard, whereas Silverlight isn't.

Nice Lord of the Rings Macbook

2008-09-09T16:28:00.000-05:00

This guy did something with his macbook that I've never seen done before:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=559184

It's pretty sweet, although it does lose points for being in English and not real Elvish or something =]

Google Chrome

2008-09-04T13:57:00.003-05:00

Google is starting to develop their own web browser:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html

http://www.google.com/chrome

Basically, it moves each part of the browser into it's own process, with it's own memory allocation. A crash on one web page will not crash the browser, just that tab. And it should not have all the memory leak problems that Firefox has.

Looks neat--hopefully it will be able to take some of the good features of Firefox and integrate them as well.

My only problem? Why oh why did they make the first beta Windows only? I would have thought the Linux community a better place to put a first beta/alpha. Somewhere where people don't dismiss something because it's in development. Oh well.

Edit:
I forgot to point out that the system structure of Chrome reminds me of the structure of Android--except here it's tabs instead of programs. Interesting.

RFC 1149: A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers

2008-09-01T22:20:00.002-05:00

An RFC, for those who don't know, stands for Request For Comments, and is a way for standardizing computer communication stuff and other things.

RFC 1149 is a way to transmit IP packets using carrier pigeons.
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149

And, this has actually been implemented by a Linux user group in Norway. You can download the software from their site:
http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/

Yahweh

2008-08-26T13:15:00.002-05:00

Here's a neat grammar tidbit:

Yahweh, the Hebrew word for God, is actually an archaic imperfect form of 'to be' (at least in Hebrew). Imperfect here means imperfect tense, not flawed. The imperfect tense is used to signify action that started in the past and has or has not been completed, e.g. I have been running or I have not finished bagging the groceries.

What's so neat about that is that Yahweh then takes on a whole different meaning. Not only does it mean, 'I AM', but means, 'I HAVE BEEN, AND AM, AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE', thereby capturing not only the present existence of God, but His existence in our past and His presence in our future. It captures the timelessness of God.

Das Blinkenlights

2008-08-23T23:31:00.001-05:00

Some more hacker humor, this time courtesy Wikipedia. I now know how to refer to lights on computers =]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights

P.S.
Happy 100th post!

Howto: Cross-Compile stuff in Linux for Windows

2008-08-20T17:09:00.003-05:00

So, I've learned something else nerdy (regular readers can skip this if they want =]): how to set up Linux to cross-compile to a Windows target. In less geek-speak that means to make Linux make programs that run on Windows.

This is really really easy. However, it took me about 3 google searches before I found out how to do it.

If you have Debian, all you have to do is install all the mingw packages. Either look them up in Synaptic or run ap-get install mingw32. That should catch all the dependencies.

Once this is done, you are good to go! Congratulations!

Alright, so now you need to know how to actually use the tools. Well, if you're a wimp and use an IDE, you can just set your IDE up to use the compiler (which I'll mention in a minute). If you're a hard-core programmer who uses just ed and gcc, it's a little harder. (But not much.)

Anyhow, the actual compiler executable is in /usr/bin. It's called something like i586-mingw32msvc-c++. Now, you could just use it like this, and type in that really long name whenever you want to compile. (IDE users: this is the executable to set your compiler up with.)

Or, you could cheat, and set up a symbolic link (ln -s, to get you started =]) with a name like mingw-c++, which is what I did.

You're good! Mingw syntax is pretty much the same as gcc, so you don't have to learn a bunch of new tricks.

Oh, you might want to install Wine to test your windows executables, now that you can make them.

Tips for selling a house

2008-08-08T17:37:00.001-05:00

Ever want to know what not to take pictures of in your house? Look here:

http://lovelylisting.blogspot.com/

Magic/More Magic

2008-08-02T17:26:00.001-05:00

Today I ran across a story about hackers 'back in the day' at MIT, and a switch labeled 'Magic/More Magic'. It's pretty humorous:

http://catb.org/esr/jargon/html/magic-story.html

Jimmy Moves to Utah: Part 4

2008-07-26T01:42:00.000-05:00

This is, unfortunately, the last in the series, and may be a surprise to some as not even all the authors know this story exists. So, without further ado, Part 4:

Mail User Trasaction Terminal! Jimmy couldn't keep reading, or else he'd laugh--and that would make him nervous, even though he knew they were moving again. To New City in Utah. You couldn't find it on Google Earth yet because Google was too busy documenting the results of a nucular bomb in Russia at the moment. But soon you'd be able to see every Denny's in New city. At least Denny's didn't call their egg McMuffins egg McMuffins even though you could ask for one. The really nice waitress had gone down the street and bought Jimmy one from McDonalds with a side of chicken McNuggets made with artificial white meat. It was almost as good as at Ihop when he had asked for a Lincoln Continental breakfast. The waitress said that he shouldn't believe everything he sees in a movie. So maybe it was a good thing they weren't moving to Canada. Or Cuba, even though orchestrating that would have been difficult even with the bribes that Jimmy had arranged everything with. They had taken up most of the cash he had left from his settlement with Sony. It was a good thing they were now offering to recycle their PS2's and walkmans instead of letting them litter the dumps. Really, we all have to pitch in and help with the global warming issue. That was why Jimmy was moving to Utah. He hoped that among all the Mormons no one would take it amiss that he didn't have solar panels on his roof or walk to Washington DC to take part in riots against the established order. After all, what do you want to riot against an established order for? Jimmy walked out of his room and down the hall, where he unexpectedly ran into Max carrying a stack of boxes. "What are you carring those boxes in for? Were moving out." "Yes, but I'm moving in to practice yoga and headbanging." Jimmy wondered why Max wasn't coming to Utah. "After all, Linux is a good choice for those pursuing mainstream lifestyles." Oh. Well out in the street there were some handballs. Jimmy wanted to run over them, but his mom had laughed so hard that Jimmy freaked out and took three mailboxes with him. But that was when they were moving to Canada. Now they were on their way to Utah, stopped in a rest stop in Kansas City, Missourrii. Jimmy looked for other contradictions in the city, but then decided that it was so backwards even its contradictions were backwards and therefore forwards out of the city. A man driving next to Jimmy was engaged deep in a simulation of North Norwegian healthcare and so Jimmy wasn't sure if he was looking at reality through Google or not. Max pulled up alongside Jimmy in a hotrod using a RAZR V8 running Linux to do his web serving. He had even hacked it so that he had 250 GB of space instead of the standard 2. Jimmy yelled out: "Why do you keep using that evil PSP even after I sued Sony?" Max yelled back, "What PSP? That's your subconscious mind telling you that my RAZR is a PSP because you have been so damaged by Sony you can't tell an Apple from a Dell!" Jimmy was cut off by a jacknifed truck and didn't get to tell Max about the dangers of PSP addiction. Kansas would have been worse, but only if the road hadn't been paved and thus fit into the landscape better, even though he did ride a tractor for a while to generate extra greenhouse gases because he had purchased too many carbon credits. Jimmy was shocked that nothing had been done to enliven the Kansas roads except for adding new billboards concerning Mike Tyson running the "Deal or No Deal" game show in place of John Kerry because he was busy writing sermons for Reverend Jesse Jackson. Sermons aside, Max pulled back up and helped a hijacker tie Jimmy to the hood of a passing semi. The rest of the ride to Utah was exhilarating, but Jimmy ended up getting off a few hundred miles off-course. This could only be solved by riding the strawberry car with the illegals up to New City. When he arrived there, Al Sharpton was conducting a mystic purification of his dwelling so his soul could abide in semi-eternal peace. So long as Sony left him alone, he could be happy.

The moral of the story: The more you write, the weirder it gets...

Jimmy Was Walking to the Road to Hitchike: Part 3

2008-07-19T01:42:00.000-05:00

And now for the third part in the series:

Jimmy was walking to the road to hitchhike. It was snowing. He saw a big tree and decided to climb it. When he was halfway up, he realized that he had no reason to climb the tree, so he decided to use it to look for Max, even though he wasn’t supposed to be there. When he got to the top, he looked around, but instead of finding Max, he found National Geographic filming an episode on maps. Suddenly the wind whipped up, and Jimmy was tossed. He fell out and landed on a water buffalo. The buffalo took off at a gallop, with Jimmy hanging on. He was riding on the buffalo and an antelope came and asked him why he was sitting in his cantaloupes. Jimmy got down off the buffalo and started looking for Hidden Valley Ski Resort, where his car was parked. He kept walking, but when he reached the road, he didn’t see Hidden Valley. So Jimmy pulled out his PSP to listen to some music, and his DS to send a wireless message to Max, who was at McDonald’s. He sent Max the message, “Where is Hidden Valley Ski Resort?” A friendly motorist pulled over and pulled out a gun. He fired, but the bullet didn’t land. Jimmy thought this was strange, and it also reminded him of a TV show that his parents used to watch. Max sent a message back, asking Jimmy to play chess. Jimmy worked hard, but Max beat him. Then Max said, “You would have won if you didn’t have that useless Sony piece of junk. It is emitting hazardous radiation that is destructive to your Logical Facilities.” Jimmy decided to sue Sony for making such defective products, but he still hadn’t found his car or Hidden Valley. So he messaged Max, “You still haven’t told me where Hidden Valley is!” Max told him, “What does it matter to you? Besides, you still have that defective PSP!” Jimmy figured out that there were two ways to find Hidden Valley. First, he could walk back the way he had come. Secondly, he could ask the National Geographic crew. He got on the road, and while dodging cars, played Halo with a guy named “550ktrsAMA”. 550ktrsAMA was much worse than Jimmy at Halo, but he knew how to hack the system. Therefore, the game ended on a stalemate, with 550ktrsAMA winning. Jimmy decided he would retrace his steps, hoping to find Hidden Valley. As he walked along, he found a cantaloupe lying on the ground. This must have been one of the cantaloupes that the antelope was talking about. He suddenly picked up the cantaloupe and threw it. It disappeared—landed without a crash. Then Johnny Appleseed came out of the forest and asked Jimmy if he knew of a place that wasn’t snowing. Jimmy asked if he was still planting the apple seeds. Johnny replied that there were enough apple trees, so he had begun planting peach trees. Jimmy asked him if he knew where Hidden Valley Ranch was. Johnny said no. Then Max showed up and drove Jimmy to his lawyer.

The moral of the story is: Don’t ski in places that imply secrecy in their name.

Random Story 2: Part 2

2008-07-12T01:42:00.000-05:00

Continuing in our series, today we have Random Story 2 by Gonkzz:

Jimmy was on his way to E3 ’09. He wanted to go there so he could find out the future of the video game industry so as to be better educated on which companies to invest in. On his way, he almost walked into a bar, but he wasn’t quite tall enough to hit it. Jimmy then decided he would take the long way home which led him to an apple tree. The tree was about 40 meters tall and 3 meters in circumference, but that’s not really important to the story. What is important, however, is that on the tree grew red, green, and golden apples of the sort that you often see on Christmas Trees as ornaments. In other words, they were plastic.
Jimmy, wishing to do a random noble deed, decided he would make a sign warning everyone not to eat the plastic apples. He decided the best way would to do this would be to project a hologram saying: “Do Not Eat the Apples, They Are Plastic,” in front of the tree. But that would be far too expensive! He needed to save his money for deluxe accommodations in Los Angeles when he went to E3. So instead, he built a wood sign. While nailing the sign to the signpost, Jimmy unfortunately got a splinter. This reminded him of a movie he once saw, but he couldn’t remember the name of it. Jimmy decided that the only thing left to do was to chop down the apple tree which had indirectly caused him this pain! So he left to go borrow a chainsaw. When he returned, the tree was gone!
Jimmy cried out in desperation, “You tree! You may have escaped this time, but I’ll find you and chop you down!”
One month later, Jimmy was on an airplane bound for Jordan. The in-flight movie was terrible. It was about an aspirin carver falling in love with an optometrist. By the end of the movie, the aspirin carver’s dog had died forcing him to sell his home, his car, and his Pulitzer prize that he had won after writing his little-know masterpiece, “The Walrus and the Cynic,” and he moved to Siberia where he lived in a cave with the Yeti who was a terribly messy roommate.
Jimmy was so appalled by the movie’s horribleness—the writing, the directing, the acting—that he threw himself out the window of the plane. Fortunately, he had a jetpack and a parachute. But which to use? To decide, Jimmy whipped out his Nintendo DS and started playing chess via wireless network. Unfortunately, Jimmy was paired against someone with the screen name, “dennis_weredana.” “dennis_weredana,” actually turned out to be the long-lost Bobby Fischer, who was once the best chess player in the world. The game ended in a stalemate, so Jimmy still had no idea whether to use the jetpack or the parachute.
Abhorring indecisiveness, Jimmy decided upon the jetpack.

The moral of this story is: don’t measure trees using the metric system.

Max's novel: Part 1

2008-07-05T01:42:00.000-05:00

So, for your entertainment, I've decided to publish a series written by my friends and I once each Saturday in July. So, without further ado, Max's Novel:

It was a cold day in August. Jimmy went to the local market and ordered a philly cheese steak Thickburger. His total was $7.85. He didn’t like the green bell peppers, but other than that it was ok. He bought it from a strange immigrant who called himself Emilio. Emilio asked him if he wanted any stereo equipment. Jimmy had a woofer with a side of CD’s to go. He paid another $200. The strange immigrant vanished in front of his eyes. Later that night, Jimmy went back to his hotel room and saw Emilio watching TV. He was watching Wheel of Fortune, and Regis Philbin usurped Pat Sajak by skewering him on the wheel. The first contestant spun $550. He guessed “T.” To which Regis replied, “Would you like to use a lifeline?” I beamed an equivalent frequency at Jimmy’s TV from my hotel window across the freeway. I changed it to American Gladiators. Emilio was competing on this show, so I knew it was a rerun. But I was wrong. Jimmy looked at Emilio, and he pulled of his skin. It was Mike Tyson. And he proceeded to chase his ear(he has this rare disease where people have strange nicotine-like cravings for ears, but Jimmy left his at GenCon ’05. Mike was crying, begging for an ear. Jimmy called room service and ordered 1432 chicken wings. When the room service lady came up to deliver the grub, Tyson had a snack, and Jimmy had some wings. Jimmy went to the bathroom and took a shower. When he was about to dry his hair, he realized that the hairdryer was also a .50 caliber magnum – a hotel safety device. He took it and fired at Tyson. But Tyson was unharmed. Then Jimmy realized – he was in a Marriott. Mike pulled out The Pearl of Great Price with ‘a bullet hole in it. “You!” Jimmy exclaimed, “taking advantage of free LDS literature! Tyson screamed, “This crap is LDS? Forgive me, Allah!!!” Allah summoned the “ring girl” out of Jimmy’s TV via HBO and she ate Mike Tyson. Then, I came into the room and ate the remainder of Jimmy’s chicken wings.

The moral of the story is – NEVER stay at Mormon hotels. They’re really creepy…

Bruce Schneier and the crabs

2008-06-17T12:45:00.000-05:00

Here's a tall tale if I ever heard one:

http://www.vivtek.com/fiction/singularity_tales/tale_crab.html

Bruce Schneier, for those of you who don't know, is one of the leading security analysts out there. He blogs and publishes a monthly e-newsletter to which I am subscribed. Maybe I should republish it on my blog, for your entertainment. Seriously. The TSA does some pretty amusing things.

The DMCA is issuing many false positive takedown notices

2008-06-17T12:21:00.000-05:00

Surprise, surprise. The DMCA can't accurately tell who is downloading illegal content from Bittorrent sites.

The University of Washington did some research on this, and managed to get over 400 takedown notices without uploading or downloading anything from a bittorrent network. Also, they managed to frame several printers and a wireless access point as illegal downloaders.

http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/

Enjoy =]

Walking. Where are you walking, little girl?

2008-06-14T23:16:00.000-05:00

I walked down the stairs, last in a line of people making for the door. We walked across the hall and down the side to the exit. The girl in front of me stopped and held the door very briefly for me. Mentally, I slapped myself. I should have been walking a little faster at least. But I was tired. Holding the door for her would have been awkward, trust me. She was tall and blond. I walked through the door and let it close behind me. I paused to look out the window as the tall girl walked out the second door so she wouldn't have to hold the door for me. I looked out over the small valley filled with shrubbery, flowers, and a few trees. I reached in my pocket and touched the granola bar in it. Then I realized that it would probably be wise to eat it out on the concrete patio in front of the school, instead of inside where I would spill crumbs all over the floor and people would care.
    I opened the door and walked out onto the concrete patio. It curved in a semicircle around the front part of the building, and was partly covered by an overhang. Sitting in the uncovered part were several bright blue wire mesh picnic tables, which didn't seem to match the current color scheme. Maybe it was just me, but they seemed leftovers from a previous decor that had been too expensive to replace when the school redecorated. Around the edge of the patio ran a blue rail--a darker blue. At the front of the patio the rail broke and a bridge spanned the gap over the small valley between the building and its parking lot. The tall girl and a couple others were sitting on the benches. As I walked over near the fence to look over the valley and eat, one of the girls got up from the bench at the far end and walked the step and a half to the fence to look over it as well. She was shorter--maybe 5'6"--and had short blond hair as well. She was wearing blue jeans and a navy t-shirt. She looked past me and I noticed that her face remarkably resembled that of Edmund's from Chronicles of Narnia--the close-set eyes, freckles. I pulled out my granola bar and started to eat as I looked out across the valley. The valley wasn't very wide; probably only 30 feet at its widest. I couldn't tell how deep it was; my eyesight is bad on normal days and was totally out of whack after five hours of testing. Directly opposite me in the valley was a large evergreen tree that stuck up above the edge of the rail. It was surrounded by several smaller trees and shrubs. The valley was flecked with flowers among the tall plants (which were most likely weeds). The third girl, sitting about two benches away from me, picked up her cell phone and called someone, probably her parents. Whoever it was, she had a long conversation with them. I looked back down the rail to where "Edmund" was standing. A moment later she turned, walked back to the picnic bench where she had left her purse, picked up her cell phone, and proceeded to call someone as well. About thirty seconds into the call, she walked off under the overhang and back into the building. The tall girl, who was still sitting on the bench where "Edmund"'s purse was, was also engaged in a conversation on her phone.
    I looked back across the valley. The midday sun illuminated it well. I had finished my granola bar and stuffed the wrapper back into my pocket. I took a drink and stopped to listen to what was going on. I saw a couple of birds fly out from under another bridge past the tree I was standing opposite of. Some crickets were chirping in the distance. I stared across the valley, looking at it and mentally listening to "Uncle John's Band" (by the Grateful Dead). A few minutes elapsed
    The door opened again and an older woman came by and spoke to the girl sitting closest to me. The two of them had a conversation of which I heard little. What little I heard suggested that the girl's name was Annie and that the other lady had thought she had gotten sick, like a few other students. (This did not surprise me; I would expect to find epidemics of flu break out after standardized testing.) Annie was a little taller than "Edmund" and was wearing a reddish-orange plain t-shirt and a long skirt. A few seconds later the older lady walked back into the building.
    I turned back to the valley again--it was the only thing to look at except for the people, and it would be rude to stare. About a minute later "Edmund" came walking back out of the door, still on the phone. She stopped and sat on the bench next to her purse and spoke for a little while, then got up and walked down, across the bridge, and over to a set of concrete stairs that cut through a retaining wall. She sat down on top of the retaining wall and carried on her conversation.
    I returned to my study of the valley. It didn't appear all that deep, yet I knew it was deeper because of the height of the retaining wall on the other side. It was just that I was ignoring all the clues from the sizes of the bricks and the height of the trees. I looked down. Directly over the edge of the fence were the cap bricks for the retaining wall on my side of the valley. What was intriguing about them was that they were not square; instead, some tapered out and some tapered in. It kept individual bricks from falling off into the valley, which would have made retrieval difficult. I was surprised that a high school would have such a distinct land feature on it; normally high schools are run-of-the-mill buildings and unique landscaping is reserved for colleges.
    Several cars pulled past the end of the bridge. Minutes passed. Then another car pulled up, and stopped. No one got out. I felt compelled to ask, "Whose car?" since both Annie and Tall Girl were reading and had not noticed. About a minute elapsed before someone from the car called, "Hannah!" The tall girl suddenly closed her book, hurriedly placed it in her purse, and walked briskly across the bridge and climbed into the waiting car, which pulled away.
    I looked back at the other girl--"Edmund". She was now lying along the top of the retaining wall, still talking on her phone. Another car pulled around the lot and parked by the sidewalk. A lady got out and pulled some large posts wrapped in cloth, presumably a banner of sorts, out of her car. She set off across the lot. At about the same time the other girl sat up, climbed off the wall, and walked across the lot towards the other woman. They passed each other. The girl walked up onto the sidewalk by the car, then along the sidewalk in front of it. A red minivan pulled up in front of the bridge. Annie closed her cell phone, picked up her purse, and walked towards the van. When she had reached it, the driver nudged the car forwards a bit. She banged on the side and quickly opened the door and climbed in. It pulled away.
    I laughed to myself and finished off my water. Then I looked across the parking lot to see the girl walking along the sidewalk. I could just barely see her head above the cars in the distance.

    "Walking. Where are you going, little girl?"

    A pause.

    "You're walking a long way."

    "Why are you walking?"


    A horn honked. I jerked out of my thoughts and looked across the parking lot to see my ride arriving.

    I walked along the rail and threw my empty water bottle in the trash can.
    Dad's car drove through a puddle and splashed water onto the sidewalk.

    I walked across the bridge.

    I walked over the sidewalk, and climbed into Dad's car. We drove off.

    And we passed the girl on the side of the parking lot.

    Sitting.

Epilogue:

    What? This story has an epilogue? How can it have an epilogue? It's not even long enough to make a short novel!
    Okay, okay, so it's not really an epilogue. It's rather an explanation of the story.

    The point of the story is not to show you how much of a creeper I am. (I'll let you decide that one.) Nor is it to show you that I'm special because things like this happen in my life. The point is to tell you about what I saw today while I was people-watching. It's fascinating to catch a glimpse into the lives of other people, even if only for a few minutes (in this case, about 15). Sometimes you remember these people and think about them later. They become characters in some imagined story, or their faces become the faces of a character in a book. Sometimes you get to know them, in a very weird way, enough to write a short story about them.

I'll give you a million dollars...

2008-06-13T15:11:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I'm not really giving you a million dollars. But, I have a contest. The winner will get, umm, an honorable mention on my blog in a future post, and the respect of me and my readers, forever...maybe =]. Ok, so there really isn't a whole lot of a prize, but I know you all are SO competitive, you'll try to win anyway.

So, the contest. Download and listen to the "Amazing Grace" mp3 available behind a link at this site:

http://linuxmercedes.homelinux.com

(I'll let my astute readers guess at which link it is. For the not-so-astute readers, it's the last one =])

The rules are pretty simple. The first person to comment, either here or on Facebook, and tell me which instruments I used to record this, wins. Pretty simple, eh?

Yes, the song was inspired by Jimi Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner".

Here's a hint: I, unlike Jimi, do not play either electric or acoustic guitar. In fact, I don't even have one.

Good luck!

(And for the lawyers out there: If you're a writer of this blog, you can't post the answer until the end of the contest. When does it end? When I tell you how I did it, or someone guesses, whichever comes first. If you don't like the rules, deal with it. Since there's no material prize, I guess you can be under 18 to play. If you want to sue me, let me know before my pocket is empty, otherwise I might need to win my contest...)

Video Games

2008-06-12T17:40:00.002-05:00

The army is a video game now? That bodes ill.

How to fix a failed initramfs update with do-release-upgrade

2008-05-20T20:58:00.000-05:00

(All my regular readers could probably ignore this post; it's here to present newly learned information to the interwebs)

I was recently upgrading my Ubuntu 7.10 server to 8.04 using do-release-upgrade. Everything was going fine until it spewed this unsightly verbage:

Processing triggers for initramfs-tools ... update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-server dpkg: subprocess post-installation script killed by signal (Interrupt)  Could not install the upgrades  The upgrade aborts now. Your system could be in an unusable state. A recovery will run now (dpkg --configure -a).  Please report this bug against the 'update-manager' package and include the files in /var/log/dist-upgrade/ in the bugreport. E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)  Setting up initramfs-tools (0.85eubuntu36) ... update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)  Processing triggers for initramfs-tools ... update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-server ^[[13~ Could not install the upgrades  The upgrade aborts now. Your system could be in an unusable state. A recovery will run now (dpkg --configure -a).  Please report this bug against the 'update-manager' package and include the files in /var/log/dist-upgrade/ in the bugreport. installArchives() failed

Pretty, eh? Well, I hunted all over the wide wide interwebs and asked around in ##linux, #ubuntu, and #debian on FreeNode. No one really knew; the best advice I got was to format and reinstall--not something I felt like doing at the time. I finally found the solution browsing a page not even related to it: run update-initramfs -u

That's it. I checked (and double and triple-checked) to see if anything else seemed broken, but it didn't. Rebooted, and ended up running 8.04, just as pretty as you please.

Prince Caspian review

2008-05-17T00:58:00.001-05:00

Warning: This contains spoilers for those of you who have not read the book and/or seen the movie. Read on at your own risk after consulting your lawyer (and mine).

First off, in general I'd say it's a good movie. There's some parts that made me dislike it, there's some places where they strayed pretty severely from the book, and there's some parts where it was dead amazing. Overall, I ranked it an 'A' on the survey I took.

The cons:

The movie strays from the book in a few places, most notably in the beginning and later on in a made-up scene and a few other additions. The beginning begins with the actual enactment of the birth of Miraz's son and the flight of Caspian, instead of the landing of the Pevensies on the island of Cair Paravel and Trumpkin retelling the story. In general I do not think this was a bad idea, as it makes more sense (and a more suspenseful beginning) with a third-person omniscient film rather than the book, which follows the actions of the Pevensies. However, they severely played up the pressure behind Caspian's leaving; in the book everyone stops to celebrate, and Caspian makes it out. In the movie, Caspian is only 3 feet from his would-be murderers.

One of the problems with the film is they seemed to play up the suspense when it wasn't that important in the book, and played it down when it was a bigger part of the book. This can be seen when the Pevensies land in Narnia. It takes them all of fifteen minutes to figure out that they're in Cair Paravel and that it's about a thousand years later. As well, the treasure room was, to put it lightly, unimpressive. It showed nothing of the riches of Narnia of earlier times. Instead, it held four chests, one for each of the Pevensies, and that's it. Austere would be a good description.

Another scene they totally made up was a storming of Miraz's castle. It seemed like a quick idea Peter had and wasn't planned that well. There was some suspense, but I felt apathetic to it because I knew that the Narnians would be defeated and have to retreat. They did a nice job with it, and managed to lose Edmund's torch there instead of at Cair Paravel, but it felt rather out-of-place with the rest of the story. There were also some definite Lord of the Rings steals in this scene, most notably when Edmund falls out of the tower a.l.a. Gandalf on the top of Isengard.

After they return again to Aslan's how, I never really felt the urgency to do something. It seemed (to me) that they were still pretty well off. There was never a definite count of their troops, nor a comparison with those of Miraz. They also made the stone table seem small and almost insignificant (Lucy even sits on it). The room is also very well lit; much better than if they had been running low on everything.

The final battle made some diversions from the story as well. Most notable is the partial destruction of the How, and the caving in of the ground under the plain to entrap soldiers. As well, there was an absence of Wimbleweather, the giant, and the battle seemed to still be pretty good on Caspian's side until he nearly gets himself killed and the trees step in. Again, a lack of suspense.

The makers also threw in another subplot (taking out a few original subplots, but I didn't expect them to keep them): a love story of sorts involving Susan. It starts out with a guy in London approaching her. She pretty much avoids him, and then ends up in Narnia. I picked up on the Caspian-Susan thing pretty early, as that's how my life tends to be (very very very subtle indications of feeling...), but didn't expect it to end with a kiss and all. Anyhow, I don't think it's totally worthless, as it underscores the fact that Susan's not the girl of previous books. At the end you see her as a young woman, which is kinda neat. (After all, she is 1300 years older than Caspian...) And I suppose it makes it a movie good for a date as well (not that I'd know, but making a guess...).

The pros:

The Pevensie's exit to Narnia was a pretty sweet sequence. It transitioned much smoother than, say, chimes and fairy music =]. As well, the animators got to show off their chops at animating live sets (if I'm correct in assuming that was CG).

Overall, the animation was amazing. It's gotten to the point where it's difficult to tell live action from animation, which is pretty sweet. I can't wait to see some future work from them.

As well, I enjoyed the bagpipes played by the mice when they bring Reepicheep before Aslan. It occurred to me that if the mice were men (haha), they would be Scottish. And Trumpkin was Trumpkin, all the way through.

But, the best part of the film was when Nikabrik brings in the hag and werewolf and the hag actually summons the White Witch. The whole sequence is amazing, but I was particularly blown away by the part "Just one drop of Adam's blood..." I felt that it extended the story in a very congruous fashion. In fact, I'd watch it again to see that scene again, it was that good.

Final thoughts:

This is the first film I've watched since doing a 10-minute film for Rhetoric in a weekend. I was walking out of the theater and it occurred to me just how much work postproduction would be for a film of that size. I definitely have an appreciation for everyone involved in that.

As well, it was a nice touch (to me) that Dr. Cornelius looked strikingly similar to Jerry Garcia. Glasses, hair, beard, build, face, it was all there, except for the guitar. I definitely would not have been surprised to see him pick up Wolf and play some =]

Overall, I'd watch it again. Yeah, it strays from the book, but it's a great story in it's own standing. If nothing else, you should watch it for the bewitchment scene.

[Edit:] After thinking it over and reading another review, I've rated it at 3.5 out of 5. The problem is they took and chopped up Lewis' book and tried to 'modernize' it, and failed miserably.

My parents are in Israel

2008-05-16T18:17:00.000-05:00

And so, for their long-awaited and much celebrated 25th wedding anniversary, my parents went to Israel with Precept Ministries and a bunch of people from my church. You can read about their adventures here:

http://ncc-israel-2008.blogspot.com/

As well, I'm proud of my dad for figuring out this whole blogging thing. It seems that more and more non-nerds blog, something I attribute mainly to blogger.com.

Our next president

2008-05-16T17:51:00.000-05:00

I've been kinda thinking about this for about a week, but was waiting for one of my other friends to say it first so I could blame it on them if I was wrong. Well, they have:

http://thevanishingblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/oh-hullo.html

So here's my idea: Obama is going to be our next president. He's the most well known of any presidential candidate by far. Hillary runs a fair second, and McCain a distant third. Hillary should be embarrassed; after all, she's a former first lady of one of our, ahem, better known presidents. And she's a woman. Two nice publicity cards to play. McCain is a nobody: he has nothing "special" going for him that would gain him media coverage. Obama has a few cards as well: he's young and a motivational speaker.

As well, he's black. Apparently racism is a hotter topic than feminism (or lack thereof) nowadays. He seems to be garnering all the limelight because he's black. And he has a black pastor who's been saying controversial, if not outright wrong things. Two more cards for media attention.

McCain is a nobody. He's kinda the "last man standing", that is, the Republican with the guts to tough out an election. Not saying that Romney, Huckabee, and Paul didn't; just that they left, whereas he missed his chance to get out. He was pretty much a nonentity even when there were more candidates. He's too liberal for many Republicans. And he never made a big stir about anything. Huckabee and Romney at least seemed to be causing somewhat of a ruckus what with the religion and Mormonism cards. Not McCain.

And that's the problem. McCain is a half-decent candidate, but no one knows who he is. Hillary has lost the card battle to Obama; as well, I think her dead horse of universal health care might have been beaten a little too much.

As well, Hillary is a weak candidate for other reasons. I had to analyze some political standpoints for each candidate, and browsing through the answers for topics such as the war and Internet security I noticed Hillary seemed to be unusually skilled in giving nonanswers. When asked for her general plan for the war, her response, stripped of political-ese and boiled down, was this: In about 3 months after I'm instated (that's April or May, for those of us counting), I'll get together a bunch of people who know about the war and see if maybe we should do something. Oh, and I'll be giving all the soldiers universal health care. Because, we all know their job is so, um, dangerous.

Obama, instead, at least seemed to have plans for most stuff, even if I didn't agree with him. McCain I noticed had answered a few questions with an "I've done x, y, and z about this in the past."

So, as much as I dislike it, here's to Obama as the next president. Wishing not, but, well, what can I do...

Another web exploit

2008-05-15T16:10:00.000-05:00

This time it's on those stupid link pages that you get when you type in a bad web address (like, say, http://male.google.com).

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/04/isps-error-page.html

Basically, hackers can make stuff look like it's from trusted domains, like google or paypal, and put whatever they want up there by just hacking the ad page servers, which aren't well known for their security. Watch those links and install NoScript if you're paranoid, like me =]