Casualty In The Fight Against Boredom

EasyUbuntu vs Automatix

2006-08-11T00:03:00.000-06:00

My recent expirement with XGL and Compiz were unsuccessful and resulted in me totally screwing up X.

Oh well, I had always wanted to try out Automatix anyway.

I had heard good things about Automatix from people on Digg.com. I had never tried it before, but I had used EasyUbuntu in the past. Now after using both of them I felt that it might be nice to write a little review comparing the two of them.

Installation
Since both EasyUbuntu and Automatix are installed with Ubuntu or included in the repos there is a little work invovled in getting them installed and running, but it is in no way difficult.

EasyUbuntu requires that you download, extract and run python script as super user. Easy enough, however if you wanted to use it again in the future you have to use the terminal. If you don't like using your terminal or you're setting up a machine for Grandma, this might not be the best option ( however with a little extra work you could probably set up a launcher for her ).

Automatix requires that edit your /etc/apt/sources.list, authenticate your machine with Automatix servers followed by an apt-get install. This little bit of work is totally worth as it will make updating automatix really easy. You also get a launcher to Automatix in Applications/Systems Tools. Grandma likes this.

Interface
While EasyUbuntu may be more awkward to get into then Automatix, EasyUbuntu has the better interface. First off it looks much nicer using some very sexy GTK UI which makes EasyUbuntu look and feel like it is an offical Ubuntu app. Password prompts are obvious and the installation process looks like Synaptic.

While Grandma might have liked the default launcher that Automatix has, she'll be phoning you up for free tech support trying to figure out how to use it. The UI isn't nearly as hot as EasyUbuntu. Most of the installation process and password prompts are hidden in terminals.

Applications
The main reason we would be installing either Automatix or EasyUbuntu is to make installing things like audio and video codecs easier ( god bless Canada for keeping it legal to install these codecs ) however there are also many other applications that can be installed.

If there is something you want to install right after a fresh install, Automatix will have it. There are more applications on there then I would want to use, and infact, that becomes somewhat of a drawback. While Automatix has the core things you want and the kitchen sink EasyUbuntu just has the core things you want. The need for the latest build of Rythmbox or Thunderbird 1.5 isn't that required or special. Synaptic works well for getting the things you don't get out of EasyUbuntu.

Where both EasyUbuntu and Automatix fail at doing is allowing for the easy install of g++. You still have to do the apt-get install your self, which is really confusing for a first time user.

And the winner is...
Like many things it comes down to preference. EasyUbuntu looks nicer, has a better interface and includes the basic things you need on a fresh install. Automatix has better update support and everything you would dream of installing right off the hop.

In my opinion, I would probably just stick with EasyUbuntu as it does everything I need it to and the installation process goes by a little quicker.

Cobert Proves Wikipedia's Correctness

2006-08-01T19:37:00.000-06:00

I was debating putting in 'Thruthiness' instead of 'Correctness' but since I've never watched the Cobert Report I don't think I'm allowed to say that...

In case you haven't seen or heard, Stephen Corbert analyzed Wikipedia and pointed out that 'anyone and everyone and edit any article you want' YouTube link. He then started going on about some Ninteen-Eighty Fourish idea of changing articles on Wikipedia so that it will be seen as fact.

I've written too many essays, posted on too many forums and discussed the quality of Wikipedia too many times to require me to do it all over again.

The neat thing though, is that while Stevie made an interesting point it was proven to be faulty.

Shortly after The Cobert Report mass vandalism hit Wikipedia hard but the Wikipedia staff quickly preveted any attempt at 're-writing the past' that Stevie playfully intended. As a result of these shenanigans, Steve got hit with Wikipedia's ban hammer. link

What really burns me about this is the fact that people actually went off and started vandalizing articles. Wikipeida is like an online library and ( hopefully ) you don't go into your local library and start ripping out and doddling on the pages.

The site is free for anyone to use in collecting and contributing information. Don't be a jack ass and ruin it for others.

Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth

2006-07-22T13:52:00.000-06:00

People can find a reason to complain about anything, even if it's free and especially if it's software and especially if it's me trying to show off Ubuntu to a friend.

People always like Ubuntu at first, the install is fast, all this software comes right with it, no need to make that stupid floppy boot disk to get your SATA hard drive working with Windows and there is no need to worry about installing extra drivers. Things look pretty good until they try and check out a video or play some music.

"Why can't Linux play my video?" or "Why can't Linux let me listen to a Friggin' MP3?" are always common complaints usually followed by a "Linux sucks!" or some other remark.

The reason that Ubuntu cannot play MP3s and most videos 'out of the box' is because Ubuntu was designed to be Free ( as beer and as in freedom ). The developers wanted to make sure that anyone would be allowed to start developing software without having to worry about legal obligations or proprietary software. As a result some audio and video codecs are required to be downloaded separately ( and every time I try and figure out the legality behind why we need to download them separately I always get confused ).

When you get anything for free you can expect a few catches, and these problems with the audio and video codecs are one of them. And really, you are going to spend more time installing Windows, getting your sound drivers installed then you are to download, extract, install and run something like EasyUbuntu ( and you're going to save yourself a few hundred dollars while you are at it).

Justice Minister and DRM Recap

2006-06-15T09:13:00.000-06:00

If I hadn't been so distracted I would have gotten back to commenting about how my meeting with Vic Towes went sooner.

It wasn't what I expected but then again Vic isn't your regular politician, he was very easy to talk to and was aware of the concerns I was addressing. We only talked for about 20 minutes and while he didn't promise that things would change he did sympathise.

He mentioned that radio stations were asking the government for change. Apparently if you use a computer to play a song (that you legitametly own) on the radio you get charged an extra fee and there isn't any rationel as to why. Vic said that he believes that media you should have full use of media that you purchase, which is good news for us in the anti-DRM camp.

I gave him all the research I prinited out before meeting with him and he said he would look it over (he was very interested in the statement the Canadian Music Creators Coalition sent to the government). One thing Vic said though, was that this issue with DRM and the like is up to Bev Oda to decide how Canada will respond to the question of DRM.

Captain Copyright

2006-06-15T08:36:00.000-06:00

Those of you who have been paying attention to BoingBoing will know that Captain Copyright is a propagandous cartoon hero who gives children a distored view of copyright law link.

A continuing article on BoingBoing pointed out that Captain Copyright was not correctly citing Wikipedia. The horror and irony of it all! link

It was at that point that I decided to put in my two cents. I e-mailed Access Copyright ( the organization behind Captain Copyright ) and informed them that their citations were not to Wikipedia standards and that because of the policy of their site restricts the use of the GFDL they should remove their Wikipedia Citations.

After a week of not getting back from them I figured my complaint fell on deaf ears, that is until I noticed that all the citations on the Captain Copyright site had been removed.

I have no recieved a reply from Access Canada:
Thank you for taking the time to email us with your concerns.

I can assure you that Access Copyright has nothing but the utmost
respect for Wikipedia and the Wikimedia foundation. In fact, earlier
this year we announced that we were working with Creative Commons
Canada, Creative Commons Corporation in the US, and the Wikimedia
Foundation on a public domain registry that will create an online,
globally searchable catalogue of published works that are in the
Canadian public domain. As soon as we found out that the credits on the
Captain Copyright site for the information from Wikipedia did not follow
their guidelines, we took action. The material was removed so that it
would not remain online while we corrected the credits according to
Wikipedia's GNU license.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to email us. We appreciate
the constructive feedback we have received.

Sincerely,
Maureen Cavan
Executive Director
Access Copyright

Part of me thinks that these guys spent the two weeks it took to get back to me researching to figure out what the hell I was talking about.

Minister of Justice and DRM

2006-05-12T09:01:00.000-06:00

During the last federal election there was an interesting post on Boing-Boing regarding a site called Digital Copyright Canada. Digital Copyright Canada created a service to send an already-written letter to all the candidates running in your riding informing them of your concerns regarding DRM and copyright law. In April after the federal election, Digital Copyright Canada asked it's members to show their support against DRM by sending another letter to their member of Parliament. I showed my support and sent letters to Vic Towes ( my member of Parliament in Provencher and the federal justice minister ) both times.

I got feedback last Tuesday.

Mr. Towes said that he would like to meet with me and talk about the issue this Saturday. I am on my way back home to Manitoba for the weekend for the meeting. I'll let you guys know how it goes.

Ubuntu Townhall Meeting - Euro Chat Logs - Ubuntu Forums

2006-03-14T07:13:00.000-07:00

If you are like me you wanted to check out what got said in the meeting with Shuttleworth but couldn't afford to stay up late. I sat in on the meeting and recorded the logs so that I could read them, I figured that there might be some of you people out there that would want to check them out too so here they are!
Euro Chat Logs

Suckling The Corporate Teat

2006-02-13T19:55:00.000-07:00

Your IT Company's Biggest Enemy

This was an interesting post that I found. It deals with whether or not a degree is important when it comes to the computer industry.

Christopher Diggins talks about how he found trouble getting a job as a programmer because of his lack of formal schooling, regardless of his numerous achievements and freelance work. The man was quiet skilled however the human resource personel dismissed him.

There definately is a force in this universe that says that you must have the nice peice of paper to succeed, but is it really worth the hype when all we consider it as is just a piece of paper?

How does expirence compare to the pretty piece of paper?

Even my Grandma can use Linux!

2006-02-12T22:16:00.000-07:00

FOXNews.com - Technology News - Open-Source Users Break Free From Commercial Software

The juist of the story is that this guy set up Linux for his parents, showed them how to connect to the internet and how to check their e-mail and they were able to opperate it fine.

This really should be too hard to understand, all you need is an out-of-the-box distro like Ubuntu or Suse and you will good to go. For most office applications the out-of-the-box install of Ubuntu has everything you need.

People are pretty easy to teach, and those distros are easy to get around in. The problem arises when people need to learn something else, people know how to use Windows but once you change where some buttons are they have no idea how to opperate Gnome. People (especially old people) are terrible when it comes tolearning stuff. The older generations learn things once, in a static set-in-stone fashion. They don't learn dynamicly.

The older generations opperate computers like a driver new to a city. They know to turn left here, turn right here and keep going straight until you see the Denny's. They know how to get to where they want to go but they have no idea how the streets work.

The younger generations know how the streets work. They know what an application is so when they are looking for one they don't have trouble finding it. This is probably the biggest difference between my generation and my parents'.

UML Must Dia!

2006-01-30T23:14:00.000-07:00

Presently I am taking a software engineering course at school. We are required to create all sorts of UML diagrams for the program we are working on, and since our school uses Windows we have to make them with Microsoft Viso.

Those of you that have ever used Viso will know that it's a pain in the ass. Especially when it comes to making something complex like a class diagram.

I started looking around for a Linux program that could easily make UML diagrams and low and behold I found one. Dia is an amazing program for UML designing.

I played around with it a little bit and instantly fell in love with it. It has all the necessary symbols for UML; there is no hunting around or drawing your own actors for use-case diagrams.

My favorite feature is the class blocks. All you have to do is drag-and-drop the class to your sheet and double click on it to open up a big menu which allows you to modify every element of your class. When you are done apply your changes and your class will appear just as it should.

Dia create excellent UML diagrams in a way that Viso could never do: without pain or hassle.
Dia just works.

amaroK is dead! Long live Beep!

2006-01-26T22:44:00.000-07:00

I have recently made a switch over from amaroK to Beep Media Player.

I still like amaroK, but I was fed up with it when it would repeatedly stop working after I installed something else. Granted this could be expected when you try and run KDE applications within Gnome.

Beep is working pretty good for me so far. It's nice and light weight and it has a bunch of neat plugins. The one plugin that I use is Audioscrobbler. It updates what songs you were listening to their site and can determine what other music you might like. Check out my profile here.

The only problem that I have with beep is that it seems to crash ever 24 hours. It will just stop responding and I have to kill it and restart it again. There isn't much I can do to fix it as BMP has stopped being developed. The new project BMPx looks really neat, a lot more graphical and with some cool artist and album features; almost like amaroK for Gnome.

Dude! Your Getting a Mac!

2006-01-17T19:39:00.000-07:00

My biggest problems I have with Apple is that they tell people that a Mac isn't a computer because it's wrapped up in a pastel case and as a result it performs better. Apple claims that the pastel case is able to harnesses the natural Feng Shui of your Ikea furnished home and can increase performance!

What?
Did I say something wrong?
What's this you say about the processors and the internal hardware?
That PPC is a better processor then Intel?
That RISC is better than CISC?

Well before I would have agreed with you.
Before I would have said that the hardware is differnt which is going to mean that a Mac could perform better (in certain tasks then others).

But not anymore.
Not after Apple switched to Intel based processors.
Not now that a Mac is nothing more then a metrosexual Dell.
Without unique hardware the only way that Apple can continue to claim that their Macs are superior is to believe that it has something to do with the pastel coloured case.

But hey, if I could sell snake oil to the public the way that Apple is right now I sure as hell would be doing it.

Software Engineering is not Computer Science

2006-01-14T17:40:00.000-07:00

I found this neat article written by Steve McConnell, on OSNews. It describes the differences between software engineering and computer science and also describes good things to keep in mind while designing software.
Here is a link to the article as well as the original pdf.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

When interviewing candidates for programming jobs, one of my favorite interview questions is, "How would you describe your approach to software development?" I give them examples such as carpenter, fire fighter, architect, artist, author, explorer, scientist, and archeologist, and I invite them to come up with their own answers. Some candidates try to second-guess what I want to hear; they usually tell me they see themselves as "scientists." Hot-shot coders tell me they see themselves as commandos or swat-team members. My favorite answer came from a candidate who said, "During software design, I'm an architect. When I'm designing the user interface, I'm an artist. During construction, I'm a craftsman. And during unit testing, I'm one mean son of a bitch!"

I like to pose this question because it gets at a fundamental issue in our field: What is the best way to think of software development? Is it science? Is it art? Is it craft? Is it something else entirely?

"Is" vs. "Should"

We have a long tradition in the software field of debating whether soft- ware development is art or science. Thirty years ago, Donald Knuth began writing a seven-volume series, The Art of Computer Programming. The first three volumes stand at 2,200 pages, suggesting the full seven might amount to more than 5,000 pages. If that's what the art of computer programming looks like, I'm not sure I ever want to see the science!

People who advocate programming as art point to the aesthetic aspects of software development and argue that science does not allow for such in- spiration and creative freedom. People who advocate programming as sci- ence point to many programs' high error rates and argue that such low reli- ability is intolerable--creative freedom be damned. Both these views are in- complete and both ask the wrong question. Software development is art. It is science. It is craft, archeology, fire fighting, sociology, and a host of other activities. It is amateurish in some quarters, professional in others. It is as many different things as there are different people programming. But the proper question is not "What is software development currently?" but rather "What should professional software development be?" In my opinion, the answer to that question is clear: Professional software development should be engineering. Is it? No. But should it be? Unquestionably, yes.

Engineering vs. Science

With only about 40 percent of software developers holding computer sci- ence degrees and practically none holding degrees in software engineering, we shouldn't be surprised to find people confused about the difference be- tween software engineering and computer science. The distinction between science and engineering in software is the same as the distinction in other fields.1 Scientists learn what is true, how to test hypotheses, and how to ex- tend knowledge in their field. Engineers learn what is true, what is useful, and how to apply well-understood knowledge to solve practical problems. Scien- tists must keep up to date with the latest research. Engineers must be familiar with knowledge that has already proven to be reliable and effective. If you are doing science, you can afford to be narrow and specialized. If you are doing engineering, you need a broad understanding of all the factors that af- fect the product you are designing. Scientists don't have to be regulated be- cause they are chiefly accountable to other scientists. Engineers do have to be regulated because they are chiefly accountable to the public. An under- graduate science education prepares students to continue their studies. An undergraduate engineering education prepares students to enter the work- force immediately after completing their studies.

Universities award computer science degrees, and they normally expect their computer science students to obtain software development jobs in which they will immediately begin solving real-world problems. Only a small fraction of computer science undergraduates go on to graduate school or research environments in which they are advancing the state of knowledge about soft- ware or computers.

This puts computer science students into a technological no-man's land. They are called scientists, but they are performing job functions that are tradi- tionally performed by engineers, without the benefit of engineering training. The effect is roughly the same as it would be if you assigned a physics Ph.D. to design electrical equipment for commercial sale. The physicist might un- derstand the electrical principles better than the engineers he is working with. But his experience in building equipment is in creating prototypes that are used to advance the state of knowledge in a laboratory. He does not have experience or training in designing rugged, economical equipment that pro- vides practical solutions in real-world settings. We would expect the equip- ment designed by the physics Ph.D. to work, but perhaps to lack some of the robustness that would make it usable or safe outside a laboratory. Or the equipment might use materials in a way that's acceptable for a single proto- type but extravagantly wasteful when units are manufactured by the thou- sands.

Situations resembling this simple physics example occur literally thousands of times each year in software. When workers educated as computer scientists begin working on production systems, they often design and build software that is too frail for production use, or that's unsafe. They focus narrowly and deeply on minor considerations to the exclusion of other considera- tions that are more important. They might spend two days hand-tuning a sort- ing algorithm instead of two hours using a code library or copying a suitable algorithm from a book. The typical computer science graduate typically needs several years of on the job training to accumulate enough practical knowledge to build minimally satisfactory production software without supervision. With- out appropriate formal education, some software developers work their entire careers without acquiring this knowledge.

The lack of professional development isn't solely the software developer's failure. The software world has become a victim of its own success. The software job market has been growing faster than the educational infrastructure needed to support it, and so more than half the people holding software development jobs have been educated in subjects other than software. Employers can't require these software retreads to obtain the equivalent of an undergraduate engineering degree in their off hours. Even if they could, most of the courses available are in computer science, not software engineering. The educational infrastructure has fallen behind industry's needs.

Beyond the Buzzword

Some people think that "software engineering" is just a buzzword that means the same thing as "computer programming." Admittedly, "software engineering" has been misused. But a term can be abused and still have a legitimate meaning.

The dictionary definition of "engineering" is the application of scientific and mathematical principles toward practical ends. That is what most pro- grammers try to do. We apply scientifically developed and mathematically defined algorithms, functional design methods, quality-assurance methods, and other practices to develop software products and services. As David Parnas points out, in other technical fields the engineering professions were invented and given legal standing so that customers could know who was qualified to build technical products.2 Software customers deserve no less.

Some people think that treating software development as engineering means we'll all have to use formal methods--writing programs as mathematical proofs. Common sense and experience tell us that that is overkill for many projects. Others object that commercial software is too dependent on changing market conditions to permit careful, time-consuming engineering. These objections are based upon a narrow and mistaken idea of engineering. Engineering is the application of scientific principles toward practical ends. If the engineering isn't practical, it's bad engineering. Trying to apply formal methods to all software projects is as bad an idea as trying to apply code-and-fix development to all projects.

Treating software as engineering makes clearer the idea that different development goals are appropriate for different projects. When a building is designed, the construction materials must suit the building's purpose. I can build a large equipment shed to store farming vehicles from thin, uninsulated sheet metal. I wouldn't build a house the same way. But even though the house is sturdier and warmer, we wouldn't refer to the shed as being inferior to the house in any way. The shed has been designed appropriately for its intended purpose. If it had been built the same way as a house, we might even criticize it for being "over-engineered"--a judgment that the designers wasted resources in building it and that it actually isn't well engineered. In software, a well-run project can be managed to meet any of the following product objectives:

Minimal defects
Maximum user satisfaction
Minimal response time
Good maintainability
Good extendibility
High robustness
High correctness

Each software project team should define the relative importance of each characteristic explicitly, and then the project team should conduct the project in a way that achieves its obje ctives.

Software projects are different from engineering projects that use physical materials. In other kinds of engineering, the cost of materials can contribute 50 percent or more of the total project cost. Some engineering companies report that they automatically regard projects with labor constituting more than 50 percent of project cost as high risk.3 On a typical software project, labor costs can contribute almost 100 percent of the total project cost. Most engineering projects focus on optimizing product goals; design costs are relatively insignificant. Because labor cost makes up such a large part of total lifetime software costs, software projects need to focus more on optimizing project goals than other kinds of engineering do. So, in addition to working toward product objectives, a software team might also work to achieve any of the following project objectives:

Short schedule
Predictable delivery date
Low cost
Small team size
Flexibility to make mid-project feature-set changes

Each software project must strike a balance among various project and product goals. We don't want to pay $5,000 for a word processor, nor do we want one that crashes every 15 minutes.

Which of these specific product and project characteristics a project team emphasizes does not determine whether a project is a true "software engineering" project. Some projects need to produce software with minimal defects and near-perfect correctness--software for medical equipment, avionics, anti-lock brakes, and so on. Most people would agree that these projects are an appropriate domain for full-up software engineering. Other projects need to deliver their software with adequate reliability but with low costs and short schedules. Are these properly the domain of software engineering? One informal definition of engineering is "doing for a dime what anyone can do for a dollar." Lots of software projects today are doing for a dollar what any good software engineer could do for a dime. Economical development is also the domain of software engineering.

Today's pervasive reliance on code-and-fix development--and the cost and schedule overruns that go with it--is not the result of a software engineering calculation, but of too little education and training in software engineering practices.

The Right Quesetions

Software development as it's commonly practiced today doesn't look much like engineering, but it could. Once we stop asking the wrong question of, "Is software development engineering currently?" and start asking the right question of, "Should professional software development be engineering?" we can start answering the really interesting questions. What is soft- ware engineering's core body of knowledge? How should professional software engineers be educated? Should professional software developers be regulated? Should software companies be regulated? Should the software itself be regulated? And, perhaps the most interesting question of all: What will the software industry look like after all these questions have been answered?

if ( roses = "red" && violets = "blue")

2005-12-04T20:35:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and he was telling me that he was learning the guitar and writing some poetry in an attempt to get better at writing songs.

It dawned on me then that I don't have any drive to express myself artisticly. I've always wanted to be a rock star or have a web comic but I coudln't get myself motivated to learn how to play the guitar or to get better at drawing.

Being an engineer it's not very important to be artistic, however you have to be creative and you have to understand style. An engineer who isn't creative can't think of new or better ways to create something and if it doesn't have style then no one is going to want what you create.

I know I'm creative, I love to make things, things that are impressive, complicated but simple. I love to make things and to be creative but I know I haven't done something like that in a while and I feel that I need a purpose to go and do something.

I have decided to create poems written in programming syntax. They wont be the most cleaver of poems, however they should be pretty neat.

I'll post them as I make them.

Explorer Destroyer

2005-11-12T03:40:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling kinda sick the last few days, so when I got home from work the other day I went straight to sleep. It felt really good but since I was still used to getting six or so hours of sleep a night I ended up waking up at 2am. I decided that since I was up I might as well surf the net for a while.

I came across an interesting article on BoingBoing which talked about a site called Kill Bill's Browser. It was a list of reasons why people should switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox. Not really that funny but it did have the Steve "I'll Fucking Kill Google" Balmer video where he's screaming developers over and over again, that's always good for a chuckle.

As I've mentioned before I'm a pretty big advocate of switching people off of Internet Explorer so I was interested in a link to a site called Explorer Destroyer. As you may have noticed there is a new button on the sidebar advertising that site and if you were using IE to get to my site (tsk tsk) then you would have had to go through a pop-up asking you to switch.

Explorer Destroyer offers a pretty interesting deal: You sign up for google adsense and put this script and link on your page. The script detects for IE and gives you a pop-up if you are using it. Every time a person switches over because of your pop-up you get some cash. Being the good Firefox-Zealot that I am I put the script on the page but I did not sign up for the adsense part of it.

I've heard some horror stories about google adsense not recognising ligimiate clicks and refusing to pay the site owners and because of stories like that I don't want to support google with their adsense program. I do like how google is making a major effort to take Microsoft down a notch and I think sponsering a program like this is awesome but I'll do google a favor and let them keep the cash.

Sim Ant Eat Your Heart Out

2005-11-06T22:05:00.000-07:00

So a while ago a few of my friends and I ended up scoring this awesome paid internship. Now besides all the bitches and platinum Bentleys we were able to premptivly waste a shit load of cash at thinkgeek.

This is what I got.
Pretty sweet eh?

The only major drawback was that it didn't come with ants and the weather had started to turn a bit brisk so there were no ants to be found. I ended up having to order some ants from Life Studies. It was only $4.00 including shipping for about 25 ants. The problem was that Canadian customs have this thing about live animals being shipped inside an envelope. As such it took nearly 3 weeks for the ants to finally arrive; only half of them made it across the boarder.

After I put them into their home I tried to clean out some of the dead ones and the little buggers made a break for it. I was able to contain a few of them by keeping them running on my hands but that didn't last too long. You see, I didn't get regular ants, I got Western Harvester Ants and little did I know that they have stingers.

Since when do ants have stingers?

It only took them a few minutes until they found a soft spot on the palm of my hand and boy oh boy did it ever swell up.

That's when the ant Holocaust occurred.

Since then the ants have been more cooperative and quite productive. They have dug them selves many little tunnels and it's looking pretty impressive. It's pretty neat to see them haul out their dead and bury them with the gel and how they will rescue any ants that some how get trapped.

Come Out and Play

2005-10-03T22:52:00.000-06:00

I must excuse my hiatus, for the past several weeks I have become re-addicted to World of Warcraft, as such I have slowly become tied closer to it's community and boy did I ever think that it was funny when I read the annoucement from Blizzard about Blizzcon.

I would agree with Brent, everyone is just going to show up and wish they were back home playing WoW. You pay $120 for the ticket to the event so you can talk to developers and meet other players, get a sneak peak to up coming releases and get to enjoy a closing night rock concert!

I had a good laugh about that one. "What kinda shitty band are they going to get to play?"
I stopped laughing when I read this.

The fucking Offspring is playing Blizzcon.

I don't know how to feel about that man. I love The Offspring, but to play at a gaming convention seems to me pretty weak on there part.

I checked out The Offspring website to try and find some info about it and try and see if they did it because they were fans or were they really needing the benjiamins. Saddly their site only had the offical press release and the forums had nothing else to offer.
note: The people on The Offspring forums are the biggest group of lamers on the entire internet.

Beating a Dead Horse

2005-08-31T17:49:00.000-06:00

Recently there was a post made on slashdot titled King Kong vs. the Pirates of the Multiplex.

Haven't we already been down this road a million times before?

Piracy is bad and the movie industry is hurting because of it. No. The movie isn't hurting because of people cheating the system, it's because the movie industry hasn't given the people anything decent to watch! Check out this list and tell me that at least half of these movies have been worth shelling out $10 a pop for.

I'm a firm believer in patrionage. If I want to see a movie, I'll shell out the cash for it. If want to own a copy of it, I'll buy it. But to expect that everyone else is going to drop good money for a product that is not worth it is foolish. If the movie industry got off their ass and produced something of quality, something that everyone would actually want to own or see the people will drop the coin for it.

(check out that list, movies that were actually well made earned a fair bit of cash)

Recursion();

2005-08-29T23:34:00.000-06:00

This weekend I did a little bit of coding. My roommate was asked to help out some guy write a program to calculate what the average damage would be if you were to roll X N sided dice and there was a damage reduction of Z on the roll.

Since it used recursion and was kinda tricky to figure out I figure it would make for a good example:
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/*
* This code is distributed through the GNU Public Licence. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt

* Author: Paul Greber
* Date: August 29, 2005

This program calculates the average result of several multi-sided dice being thrown. It is a display of recursion.

*/

#include
#include
using namespace std;

int calc(int,int,int,int);

int main()
{
int sides,dice,reduction;

printf("Please Enter...");
printf("Number of Dice: ");
scanf(dice);
printf("Sides on the dice: ");
scanf(sides);
printf("Damage reduction: ");
scanf(reduction);

int sum=calc(dice,sides,reduction,0);
double combos=pow(double(sides),double(dice));
double awns=sum/combos;
printf("sum: ");printf(sum);
printf("# of combos: ");printf(combos);
printf("The average damage is: ");printf(awns);
return 0;
}

int calc(int d,int s, int r,int x)
{
int sum=0; // keeps the running sum of the results

for(int i=1;i<=s;i++)
{
if(d-1>0) // if this is not last dice
// take the value of the dice
// and the previous values
// and pass them on to checking out
// the next dice
sum+=calc(d-1,s,r,i+x);
else
{
if(i+x-r>0) // if this is the last dice
sum+=i+x-r;
} // sum up the value of that
// dice and all previous
// dice.

/* The recursion will sum up all the values of the
last dice with all the previous dice values.
Then once those sums have been made, the value
on the previous dice will increase and go back into
recursion of the next dice and so forth.
*/
}

return sum;
}
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Rants From the SoapBox

2005-08-18T00:17:00.000-06:00

Ok so here is the skinny.
I have to give a persuasive speech tomorrow and if I type it out it will help me organise my thoughts. Note: This is only going to be part of it since I'm way too tired to finish it up right now.
....

People do stupid things for two simple reasons; ignorance or apathy.
If you are using Internet Explorer to surf the web you are doing it because of ignorance or apathy.

Good afternoon, my name is Paul and today I am going to inform as to why you should stop using Internet Explorer and motivate you into switching to a different browser.

There are three reasons why you should stop using Internet Explorer; Security, Standards and accessibility.

Security is the main reason why everyone should stop using Internet Explorer. People do a lot of private things with their computer on the net and Internet Explorer leaves them open to spyware, adware and viruses which invade their privacy, spam them with pop-up ads and bogs down computer performance.

Why does Internet Explorer make you so susceptible to these things? It is because of how it is designed. Internet Explorer is directly intergrated into the Windows operating system allowing IE to download and install certain files without the user even being aware.

Some people like to think that the reason why IE is so prone to viruses is because those that write them want to cause the most damage and because IE is the most popular. While this argument makes sense it isn't the real reason why. Let's take a look at servers. There are basically two types of servers; Windows and Linux. Unlike with web browsers Microsoft does don't have the majority. Linux is the most popular type of server but it doesn't get broken into, it's the Windows servers that do. The reason is because the Windows servers are designed poorly and that is why people target IE, because it's easier to write malicious code for.

IE users think they are safe with Microsoft's Security updates, Norton anti-virus and an army of spyware and adware removal programs. To say that you are safe is like saying that you are going to keep intruders out of your house by putting up a fence and leaving the door wide open. It is in the basic design of Internet Explorer that prevents it from being an acceptable way to keep your computer safe.

Little Bit About Me

2005-08-13T00:27:00.000-06:00

I figure I should start this with the basics...

I'm a 20 year old dude who is presently taking Computer Engineering.
I spend most of my time at the computer listening to music, reading web comics/news, posting in forums and other excellent forms of wasting my time.

I don't play nearly as many video games as I should, it's a downside to using linux as much as I do. I've gotten pretty into the whole Open Source idea and spend most of my produtive time trying to tweak/fix my system.

My aim with this blog is to display general items of interest and to keep personal shit to a minimum. I don't have the dark rimmed glasses or web cam to make this an emo blog. If I had those I would so be all over it!

First Post

2005-08-12T00:09:00.000-06:00

This is just filler, new stuff will come later.
Caka pee-pee poo-poo