The Awesome Blog

Easily download Youtube videos to your iPod with Tooble

2008-01-11T00:28:00.001-05:00

Tooble is a new program for Mac OS X which aims to make it extremely easy to download and convert any Youtube video into a format compatible with iTunes, Video iPods, iPhones or Apple TVs. I am the lead programmer for this project, and am very proud with how far its come. I hope you all enjoy it!

read more | digg story

You can see more info, and download Tooble at Tooble.TV.

Mooninites invade Boston!

2007-02-06T19:07:00.000-05:00

Apparently the whole of the city of Boston was shut down over a bomb scare encited by a Lite-Brite Mooinite.
Yea. Those Lite-Brites are pretty scary huh. So brightm they might blind the general public or something.
Now, as a longterm Aqua Teen Hunger Force fan, I recognized the familiar glare of all our friend Ignignokt. ATHF may not be that popular, but I find it hard to believe one could honestly mistake a pixelated cartoon character for a terrorist.
Ten other cities have had these friendly renditions of all our favorited Moon-creatues spread across them all over the US as part of marketing campaign for the new ATHF movie, but only Boston seems to find them that threatening. These things have been floating around across all of Boston, New York and Los Angeles for the past few weeks, and only now does anyone in Boston notice? So, of course, Lite Brite displays of cartoon characters that have been hanging off telephone poles for a few weeks are really bombs, and could explode any second! Hide the children!
Of course, all bombs are marked with bright lights, for the bomb squads to find. Always in open areas too. Anything to help the police. Its not like bombs are supposed to be concealed or anything. The terrorists are never that smart..

Credit to the Soap for this one. This video sums up the whole event perfectly:

Emergency Parking Only

2006-12-29T11:12:00.000-05:00

Emergency Parking Only, originally uploaded by Jakk6.

This is about the best picture I've ever taken.

Enjoy!

New Blog

2006-04-06T14:28:00.000-05:00

This is here exclusively to promote my new technology blog over at SpectoriS.beengoinpostal.com. All of the tech posts will be going there now, so hopefully all the people who come here for tecnology-centric news and stuff will too.

That is all.

Google co-creates Myspace competitor

2006-03-30T13:26:00.000-05:00

Ok, I know this is old news, but I think its pretty significant.
Google has teamed up with Nike to create Joga.com, a community site for players of soccer that allows users to

Create your own personalized page to add your favorite pictures, videos and blogs, and view what your fellow fans have added. Members can keep current with Friend Requests, Alerts, and Messages too.

This, along with an interesting take on community events and soccer games (thats seems errily similer to Myspace' Events) and a few ties to the official soccer games (such as players profiles) provided by Nike should make for a very interesting experiment.
Although previously closed to anyone save by invitation, Joga has just opened up to anyone with a Google account.

Overall, it looks like it might have seriosu potential. The entire site as a very nice layout and features like a built-in photo cropper/editor beat myspace into the dust. Where myspace had sick, nasty looking rugged edges and degraded terribly with miserably incomplient code and other numerous issues I wont get into, joga seems to succeed, so far. We'll see how it comes out, but google's first real true step into the social networking market, a definite winner in years to come, has gone fairly well so far.

The Google Blog Post

Alex's Gophers

2006-03-29T10:29:00.000-05:00

//Just something I found on my school network drive
//Wrote this a while back when I was bored
//Please, just dont ask..

Gophers. are fun. They are small and dumb and make great footballs. Because of their overpowering and awesome brainpower it is easy to convince them to participate in your ‘sport’. I advise sedating them first so they’re not fully out, but still sorta too loopy to resist. Unfortunately, the whole gohping thing really is a serious issue and is considered a medical condition these days, so its best on one sees you. If you’re caught, just claim that you’re going through withdrawal and have to go play every once in a while, but are trying to quit. Unless, that is, the observer happens to be a dirty arsonist. In this case, I advise you to fill all your socks with Freon and try to get away as fast as you can, because I still have that machete in the basement and will try to eat the pickles of SATAN if you do not first reach the Valley of the Silver Cows and speak to their leader, Mo’roN. Good ‘ol Mo will probably try to eat your kidney first, but make sure you can get the sensor array out of his stomach without using the space ship and you’ll be fine. After that, you should continue your journey to the Moon in a hot-air balloon. Unless, that is, you happen to see another of those pesky pterodactyls. In that case, you should begin your decent back to earth in your body. However fun it may be, you MUST resist the urge to land on the Giant Lilly pad, or the evil mutant salamander lords will come and try to use you as a bridge into across the Great Lake of FireLlamamazz. Now the only way to defeat the terrible beasts is to call them names like “FuzzleFace” or “Lord and Master’, and they should be quivering in terror in no time. At this point you should defiantly take out your handy magical duct tape horse reigns and fly away to the nearest cloud before the evil Algebra Books from the endless burning pit next th the

Google releases another app refresh::

2006-03-23T11:31:00.000-05:00

Thats right, Google has released a new version of one of their products. The Gmail notifier this time. Well, actually only the gmail mac notifier, but its still pretty darned sleek.

Not only is it universal now, (having native support for both intel and PPC Macs), but also has a new icon! (which is much shinier, might I add :)
And here comes the "why should I care?" part: well, they fixed the multi-user issue!
Ever since its release, the notifer seemed to simply lack support for multiple users. When envoked on any account other than the one it was first used, it would just quit. Strange, but I
ve had this issue on all three macs I tested it on and the exact same thing happened

And now its fixed, prettier and universal

Cheers, google!

Get it here.

Illegal Wiretapping

2006-03-15T14:32:00.000-05:00

If you have no idea what this is about, Mr. Bush 'authorized' breaking the rules of the US constiturion (the only document that keeps the nation together) on citizens' privacy because he thought we wouldn't mind. Or notice. Or care.

The most depressing part is that most people haven't.

Apperently, we dont need our privacy. Its not like any of us are using it, anyway.

This alone is grounds for arrest, and if he was anyone but the president he would already be behind bars.

I think that if he can tap the phone of anyone he feels like without a warrent, we should be able to listen in on all *his* calls as well.
Its not like he needs his privacy either, I mean, he could be plotting with terrorists!

..

Pisses me off, thats all.

Google Blogger Widget

2006-03-14T17:45:00.000-05:00

As some of you may know, Google just released a few dashboard widgets for OS X 10.4.

OK, you say, why do I care? I can already access my gmail and my blog via the web browser.
Well I thought so too, until I actually tried them. The gmail widget I could do without, the gmail notifier for Mac does all that for me already. Maybe not as pretty, but I believe function should take precedence over eyecandy.
The blogger widget, on the other hand, is quite nice. Extremely useful for posting without having to go through Bloggers log in>pick a blog>new post system. Just type in your post and click publish.
Very handy.

As you can see in the screenshot below, the interface is simple (doesn't bother with any extra options that most people don't use anyway) yet not too limiting.
You can close the dashboard, then reopen it and have what you've composed of your post still there.
Overall, I like it. A lot. One of the reasons I havent posted here very often recently was because I didnt like having to go through Blogger's strange interface. It is pretty well done, and yes it does follow some UI guidelines, but I just dont like it.
After finding this, expect many more posts here in times to come...

First Contact?

2006-03-14T15:33:00.000-05:00

Some of you may have heard about the "red rain" that fell in india not that long ago. However, some may not, and I intend to fix that.

I believe the issue had been given no where near the attention it deserves by almost every news network in existence. If confirmed, this could forever alter out perception of the very origin of life itself.

OK, hype (well-deserved hype, mind you;) aside, back in 2004 there was a rain of a strange, red substance in certain sections of India. This 'rain' seemed to be little more than red-dyed water, however it soon proved much more complex.

The falling of the rain corresponded with the landing of an asteroid in that very region, and a very widely-heard sonic boom as it exploded in atmosphere.

A lone scientist went out to investigate the event, and obtained a few samples of the liquid. Under the microscope, the 'rain' looks pretty organic, yet is of no living species or family of life we can identify (plant, animal, protist, etc.).

OK, so I'm judging it myself here. But take a look, to the untrained eye they appear to be cells. To my untrained eye, at least.

Although all of it has yet to be confirmed by anyone, as long as this isn’t some kind of massive seriously-unfunny hoax, we could have just made first contact with an alien species.
And barely anyone knows.
--yet everyone knows about the latest antics of hollywoods favorite celebrities.

Does anyone else see a problem here?

One More thing..

2006-02-21T14:35:00.000-05:00

Just for you who were wondering who/what the first "FACE" picture was modeled after..

picture

drawing

See the resemblance?

The AutoFace™

2006-02-09T08:16:00.000-05:00

You know what?

2006-01-28T10:09:00.000-05:00

I had a hidden agenda from the start.

The PS3

2005-12-31T14:46:00.000-05:00

Sorry I havent bothered to post here in a while, been really quite busy recently.
This is just my take on the whole "next-generation" gaming consoles war. Have fun.

As always, let us begin with teh released ps3 statxorz::

CPU

Cell Processor
PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz
1 VMX vector unit per core
512KB L2 cache
7 x SPE @3.2GHz
7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs
7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE
* 1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy
total floating point performance: 218 GFLOPS
GPU
RSX @550MHz
1.8 TFLOPS floating point performance
Full HD (up to 1080p) x 2 channels
Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines
Sound
Dolby 5.1ch, DTS, LPCM, etc. (Cell- base processing)
Memory
256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz 256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz
System Bandwidth
Main RAM 25.6GB/s
VRAM 22.4GB/s
RSX 20GB/s (write) + 15GB/s (read)
SB< 2.5GB/s (write) + 2.5GB/s (read)
System Floating Point Performance
2 TFLOPS
Storage
Detachable 2.5" HDD slot x 1
I/O
USB Front x 4, Rear x 2 (USB2.0)
Memory Stick standard/Duo, PRO x 1
SD standard/mini x 1
CompactFlash (Type I, II) x 1
Communication
Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T) x 3 (input x 1 + output x 2)
Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR)
Controller
Bluetooth (up to 7)
USB 2.0 (wired)
Wi-Fi (PSP)
Network (over IP)
AV Output
Screen size: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
HDMI: HDMI out x 2
Analog: AV MULTI OUT x 1
Digital audio: DIGITAL OUT (OPTICAL) x 1
Disc Media
CD PlayStation CD-ROM, PlayStation 2 CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW, SACD, SACD Hybrid (CD layer), SACD HD, DualDisc, DualDisc (audio side), DualDisc (DVD side)
DVD: PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM, PlayStation 3 DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW
Blu-ray Disc: PlayStation 3 BD-ROM, BD-Video, BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE

Specs are important, however understanding them is twice as valuable.

The official PS3 specs have YET TO BE RELEASED meaning that, despite some of the press releases, we still have only a rough idea of what'll be in it. The specifications previously posted are just sony's way of appeasing the public, giving us a minimum idea of what might be in the ps3.

The Cell processor is not like any other processor ever made. Although we've had multi-core chips before (see the dual-core intels, or tri-core 360, or quad-core G5) there can never be too many of them or it'd take a whole processor itself to correctly divide the jobs and achieve maximum performance out of all the units. So thats what IBM did in the creation of the Cell.

Instead of having one, two or three units in the chip, theres more like 5. About four (or more) slave chips, then one PPC master processor to divide jobs between them. IBM's Power line of microprocessors come in separate generations, the PPC74xx (32-bit) leading into the PPC750 (64 bit, multi core, used in power mac computers and higher end ibm eservers) to cell (64 bit, at least 5 cores). The 360 was released with a modified (specialized) PPC 750, whereas the ps3 will instead use the Cell. So, technically speaking, the 360 is exactly one generation behind.

Even then, the processor used in the 360 was specialized to the extreme. Although they upped the clockspeed to 3.2 GHz, they still lagged some in l2 and bus speed when contrasted with its equivalent PPC750 (the lower-end apple powermac g5s), and achieve disappointing real-world benchmarks against others of its type. This doesnt mean that it isnt a wonderful system at an almost unbeatable price, just that it still isnt comparable to higher end systems, the way an affordable game system (or 'multimedia center' or whatever its being hyped as this week) should be.

Sony, on the other hand, does not intend to market the ps3 as an affordable gaming system. Far from it, the ps3 will have cutting edge technology that hasnt even made it into the personal computer (or even server) realm yet. It may cost more, but with very good reason. It will boast technology that will remain cutting-edge for years to come.

With up to eight controllers and dual-head HDMI HD video output, I think most gamers will enjoy the extra power, even if it does cost $100 more. I know I will.The 360 is a very nice system, yes. And yes, it does blow away the original xbox, gc and ps2. But its only the first so-called 'next generation' console out, and shouldnt make judgments about other consoles that simply arent out yet.

In conclusion, the ps3 will OWN the 360.

[title]

2005-10-15T20:25:00.000-05:00

There are fish jumping in my back yard. Don't ask me how that works, it just does. Might have something to do with the two and a half feet of water that just so happens to be there as well, but one can never be so sure...

Its been raining non stop for about nine days now. It may stop sometimes, but never for more than a half an hour. Then back to pouring. I think the Flying Spaghetti Monster is punishing me for not making enough converts, but we may never know..

Hello again, all! First I would like to thank the .725 readers I have left in your continued support of this rapidlay declining blog. Your loyalty really means something to me, and is currently the only reason I'm still updating.

Back to the non-boring junk, its been so long and I have so much to blog about now that I think I might just be too lazy to write any of it.
Or maybe not.

First and foremost, SERENITY CAME OUT!!! My life is now complete :-D
It was amazing. Simply amazing. I'm not gonna give anything away; save for that it is a very powerful; left me speechless and that doesn't happen.
See it, just do it even if you never watched have even heard of Firefly,, I promise you that you will not regret it.
YOu can watch the first 9 minutes of it online too, but I would advise against it. Just ruins everything when theres the movie to be seen, and doesn't contribute a penny to those who deserve it most in greating such a fabulous film.

A storms coming
Many of you might have noticed; in this last hurricaine season we've experienced was particurally nasty. Then (in NE anyway) we experiences almost a week and a half on nonstop rain. If I recall correctly, we had no less than 23 snowfalls last Winter. Is anyone else noticing this nasty-looking trend, or is it really just me? It seems we've experienced some of the worst weather in recent (10, 15 years) all in the past year or so. Correct me if I'm wrong on this one, but I expect the next year or so to be pretty interesting.

"Define interesting"
"Oh god oh god we're all gonna die?"

Also, on a slightly off-key and extremely irritating note, I've noticed that Mark's blog now shows up as the first google result, and pops up when the 'I'm feeling lucky' button is used. Yeah, rub it in while you can, Google. You can't take the Sky from me.

BTW Mark still hasn't noticed that I stole his dream for my last post. SSh, no one tell and lets see how long it'll take him to notice...

And now I will leave you with this.
That is all.

marks retarded dream of d00m from hell that is _VERY_ special

2005-09-24T10:32:00.000-05:00

OK this was something my friend Mark said after waking up in the mountains on the Moab trip that was just so retarded I thought it must deserve a place here. Used without permission.

"I dreamed that Jesse, Alex and I went to this fossil shop in Moab. Alex bought this retarded that was like deformed, then Jesse and I went to get one of those things that do stuff and started climbing up a shelf. Suddenly a huge jaw came flying down out of nowhere and impaled accross the chest. He then, bleeding profusely, walked up to the cash register pointed to the piece of bone embedded in his chest and said "How much"?
I then woke up with a piece of duct tape on my face and Jesse sitting nervously next to me with the roll."

That is all.

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

2005-09-13T19:18:00.000-05:00

May all be touched by his noodly appendage.

Go here.
Now.

That is all.

//Yes I do know I said I wouldn't post anymore...,
//But I lied.
//Get used to it.

The Year in Review: A history (and maybe farewell) to my blog.

2005-08-17T17:31:00.001-05:00

I'm drenched in sweat, my face is burnt red, legs covered with dirt, arms all torn up, ankles ache terribly one still bleeding from some gash I didn't notice hours ago, and every single muscle in my entire body aches.

But, God, I haven't felt this good ages.

'Twas almost exactly a year ago when I began mobility lessons with the good 'ol dinky aluminum crutches, and now here I am running around for hours on end. A year back I had nothing to do, save for mess around with my cruddy old Celeron and worship-worthy Red Hat 9 installation. This became my fixation for the course of the summer, as I consistently silently begged for that revered and sacred last week of August to come again just a little sooner.
In this time, I had very, very little do do. Most of my day consisted of waking up (12:45), dragging myself over to the kitchen to raid it of anything worth eating, messing around on the computer (1:00-11:00), watching TV [ATHF] (11:00-2:30) and then sleeping again (3:00-12:45).
Pretty dull existence, huh.
It was in this time that I actually bothered to start this blog as little more than a place to record my zealotic anti-Micro$oft feelings of the time. That and make retarded little threads like "You know you're a nerd if..." and "Semi-Witty M$ Attacks", both of which still get roughly 20 google/yahoo/MSN search hits a week, I might add.
But all in all, this seclusion time brought me to a state of serenity with the world at large, and quelled much of my desire to skish those puny human meatbags en mass. This was probably a good thing, because if I hadn't ended up this way I would probably have been kicked out of my new school in an instant, but it didn't come without a price.
My precious feet were bound, and were to stay that way for a whole year.

As one might assume, not being able to walk, run, jump, or do any thing of which one is accustomed to doing on a daily basis has its tolls (and trolls). However, one most likely will not predict the effect of this.
Over the past year I have been crippled. Unable to compete in any sports, carry my own bags, and at some times not even walk at all. This has understandedly lead to my not wanting to use my legs at all, as I've grown to assosiate them with the searing pain that would shoot throughout my ankles whenever I attemped to walk. This became a fear, embedded deep within me for many a month past after my first operation in August.
My second operation came and went fairly well. This time I had blogged a lot of it, and getting it out helped somewhat. I was realy quite suprised when I began to get little letters of concern and 'good luck' comments from people who I've never even known, but who I came to notice were really frequent readers of mine who had never bothered to speak up and actually comment before. This really inspired me to work on creating better content to post here, and so I did. This change promped a new name, url, and content rules for my 'new' blog. As thetechnologynews.blogspot.com kinda implied everything pertaining to its contents and all, I decided to change it to SpectoriS, as no one ever knows what that means anyway and I felt it was appropriate.
At this time the popularity of this blog simply exploded. At its peak I would get roughly 25 hits a day, not counting duplicates. I suddenly appeared on searches from Google, Yahoo, MSN, and others I hadn't previously even heard of. People began to beg me to link to their blogs, and link to me without really asking at all.
Thats when things got kinda sticky.
As summer slowly approached, I started to think about all the things that I intended to accomplish before it did, and my interest in keeping my ever-so-holy blog up to date faded.

Now I barely get 10 or so hits a day. Depressing, but true. I believe this blog has run its course, served its purpose and then some. Not only resonating my views about tech crap, politics, movies, music, TV shows, waffles, dirtee emuxorz and the all-important SHOE music that I accidently came accross, and ==>other<==(click[t]herenow) really bizarre flash animations, but also helped me vent some pretty powerful emotions in time of need.
In short, this blog has really meant a lot to me in the year I've maintained it, really did help me publish some of my work to the world more easily that I previously thought possible. Venting such speeches, rants, short stories, news reports, and so on and actually getting feedback has been invaluable to me. Ending this really pains me, but I believe I've finally moved on.
Ye Olde Archives will remain in defiantly on blogger until I finally bother to buy another domain name and static IP and the like to serve it myself.

In conclusion, this blog is as of now unmaintained. I believe its served its purpose in the time It may stay this way, it may not, but don't wait up. You can still poke around in Ye Olde Archives on the right, I could promise you that you won't regret it.
But I'll just let you decide that for yourself.

-Jesse AKA Jack Merridew AKA Cryp AKA Blood or whatever my name is this week

THIS IS ANOTHER POST!!!!@#$@GVWFRFRAK

2005-07-14T15:29:00.000-05:00

I HAVE MORE TO POST ABOUT THIS TIME!!!
WELL, NO, I DON'T, BUT I'M GOING TO PRETEND I DID UNTIL I DO!
BUT YOU AREN'T SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT, SO I MAY JUST HAVE TO SHOOT YOU NOW~!

Here I am, sitting in front of a tiny 15-inch screen on a perfectly fabulous day with the humidity of the Amazon and a rapidly amassing horde of starving mosquitos waiting to suck me dry the moment I open the door.

Yeah. It's Summer.
I want winter back.

The summer's been kinda really terribly slow. As always. Not much new crap to report here.
I think I'll just leave it at that until I really can think of something.

BSG's second season begins in exacty 26 hours, 30 mins. grr... not soon enough...

//^#6 is so menacing ;)

THIS IS A POST~!!@#$%^&*I[H(yay)

2005-06-17T15:31:00.000-05:00

GREETINGS LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF PLANET EARTH!!!
YOU'VE ARRIVED JUST IN TIME FOR THE EVENING ENTERTAINMENT!
PLEASE, DO NOT RESIST AND (hopefully) YOU SHALL NOT BE HARMED!
NO PROMISES, THOUGH.

ANYway, I know I haven't posted for like ages. Finals and such had me hung up there for a while. This whole 'work' thing is still so foreign to me....
A LOT of crap has happened since the last time I bothered to mention any of it here.
This whole 'social interaction' thing just keeps getting in the way (...puny human meatbags)

PHEERST AYND PHOREMOST, Star Wars. Rocked. The best one since The Empire Strikes Back
I was more than prepared to hate this film (film hahahaha film hahahahaha). I really was. The moment I walked into the theater I was ready to come home wishing the prequel trilogy was never made. But....
I didn't.
I actually liked this movie, and only a pheew people know how extraordinarily abnormal that is.
I'm not going to give ANYTHING away, all I'm going to say is to go see it.
Now.

Secondly, I shall address the Updating of the Serenity post::
- According to SciFi Wire, All our favorite channel SciFi is picking up Firefly to add to their already impressive arsenal of BSG & Atlantis. SciFi's been looking up lately, attracting more viewers to programs such as BSG than ever before. As a long-term Scifi fan (I've been watching the purple planet since I was 10 - no jokes), its rather nice to see them picking up. For too long we've been forced to endure such tragedies such as Stargate SG-1. My only fear is that this will fall to th wayside of Andromeda, which began sucking the moment Scifi bought it from Fox. Andromeda was produced under Fox's wing for 4 years (2000-2004) and 88 episodes before Fox (I still haven't forgiven them - probably never will) decided to drop it to give the time slot to some lame stupid-people show. Bastards. After Fox pulled the plug on Andromeda, The SciFi channel desperately grabbed to pull it from the abyss. All the actors were saved, but the writers seemed to be lost. Without any further direction and little reason to go on despite its own fabulous reputation, it fell into ruin. In truth, I'd rather they just let it die on a good note. Season 5 is just crap beyond reason.
Yes, I do have a point behind this for the skeptical.
I just hope they don't do this to Firefly. That's all.
At this point, there isn't any mention of them creating any new episodes at all, however I have a sneaking suspicion they might.
//UPDATE:: Since Andromeda is officially dead now *sniff* They decided to auction off all the props on ebay
//The Route of Ages is defined as: “Extra super magical cube thingy which holds a tiny galaxy to power the Andromeda and save the day”

Lastlyishorisms, onto Fedora Core 4. I know this doesn't belong here at all, but the fourth installment of Red Hat's (unfortunately) unpopular experimental OS is just too awesome to ignore. Featuring bleeding-edge apps such as GCC 4.0, OpenOffice 2.0beta, KDE 3.4, GNOME 2.10, the 2.6.11 kernel, and so on. RH's done a GREAT job at patching every package in the entire distro for GCC4, becoming the very first distro out there to do so. (Yes, I know OSX/Tiger ships with GCC4, but it isn't entirely compiled with it). My benchmarks show this to be the fastest binary distro I've encountered since Mandrake 10.0. Red Hat seems to be slowly re-earning it's old slogan, 'The Open-Source Leader'

I'm sure I'll think of something else to put here later, but for now, I'm gone.

...where is up to your interpretation...

My Life: One Year Later {AKA M$ One Year Later}

2005-05-20T19:14:00.001-05:00

Thats right, its been one year now. A whole year. And I'm much better off.

The H2G2 Movie

2005-04-29T21:24:00.000-05:00

The major impression this movie left me with was simply:

Incredible...
It's even worse than I thought.

OK I'll give it that its a fairly good movie, but it just could never live up to the Hitchhiker's legacy. It was good, but no where near as good as the books were. In short; for anyone who's already read the books, it sucked. Anyone who hasn't, however, would probably love it.
If you havn't yet seen the movie or read the book, I would highly recommend reading it before you see it suck-ized in the theaters.

They entirely annihilated every trace of what might be mistaken for a plot in the book; basically movie-izing it. Turned out awful compared to the original, but still pretty good when contrasted with other popular movies today.

With that in mind, I cant wait for may 19th ;)

Serenity

2005-04-26T21:43:00.000-05:00

Thats right, the happy-people offical trailer FINALLY came out today. About time. Actually looks pretty good too.

Go.
Watch.
Now.

The official trailer is here.
Or, if you have the bandwidth, here.

Firefly, for all you that don't know, was a very good series that was canned by those freaks at Fox for no reason at all after only one season.

Hopefully, Serenity will stay true to the original series, but I wouldn't be suprised if they threw in a couple new things couple things changed.

OK IM TO LAZY TO ACTUALLY FINISH THIS POST RIGHT NOW, SO YEAH. GET USED IT IT.

Links to keep you entertained:
Firefly, the first and (unfortunantly) only season
The offical Serenity (movie) web site.

siblings...

2005-04-25T08:54:00.000-05:00

Just a little something else I wrote a while back, before I had perfected any real writing style. Scary as it may seem, this one was based on actual events too. Not like roughly based either, I mean to the point where I can honestly say I didn't exaggerate any of it.
Reading this kinda brings me back to a time when I would really quite often write short narratives or little excerpts seeming from a source unknown such as this. Back to a time before I had discovered Bash...
Ariel, for all those who don't know is my little sister.

siblings... [4/21/04 8:20 PM]
"Mom got up, left the dinner table walked into the kitchen and closed the door. Ariel's face suddenly distorted into into expression you would expect to find on a constipated gopher. She then made the noise you would expect to hear from a constipated gopher, and frabbed half-chewed egg pieces all over the table. "Ooh no! Don't do that again, and NOT on me!" She started to cry as more egg pieces dripped from her open mouth. "And do NOT blame me for your chewing disabilities!" She continued to sob as the egg flew across the table. Then, she started hysterically laughing. Ooh no, this could not be good. She suddenly jumped onto her chair, her arms flailing madly, and screamed: "LOOK!!! I'M A TURTLE I CAN FLY!!! AM I FLYING YET???" She then proceeded to throw herself straight down to the floor at full force. The laughing, drooling twisted mess below the chair then stood up and repeated her last action, this time SCREAMING "I'M GONNA FLY OFF TO HAPPYLAND!!!" and throwing herself at the floor at a even higher speed. Then, she picked herself up, stood up her chair, sat down and calmly started eating again."

//July's so far away... argh...

Demented man in the doctor's office

2005-04-20T08:45:00.000-05:00

This is a random little expert from a short, rather pointless collection of short stories I wrote about a year and a half ago. Only recently have I managed to salvage most of the book from an old hard drive, and I just felt like posting this excerpt here. Really exaggerated the dramatic changes my writing style has undergone in the past year or so. It's more than just kinda weird looking back at myself from then; my viewpoint, mood and paradigm all were different. I was different; but that was then and this is now.
Enjoy.

"Hewwo, are my a be tak'n meezz mediclatations to0dae?" The man's face was all brown with odd looking scabs and scars, his arms almost too white. He was obviously deformed at birth, both physically and mentally. One look told me that the world would be a better off without him, and that if he was left to his own devices,he would probably make the world a better place. If you know what I mean. He was, lets say, unique, special, whatever you want to call it, this guy was NOT normal. He would probably be arrested for scarring the mental health of the general public if he decided to walk out in the streets. He looked like the kinda person who could truthfully answer "purple" to every question on the IQ test. Yea, this guy had some major problems. "We're sorry about that," The little man in a doctors suit said as the demented man was brought away my some security guard who looked like he wasn't getting payed enough. "-sometimes Albert kinda escapes from his- I mean walks into the wrong cell- I mean treatment room. We're really sorry, usually we cam catch him before he gets to the other victims'- I mean oh, I-" He was pulled aside by who seemed to be his boss, who silently yelled at him before casting him aside towards the hallway door. "Sorry about him, against my will this facility has begun to cut wages so now we have to pay people off the street with little or no medical training to replace the doctors who went on strike." he paused, "So now the hospital worked by almost complete novices. What is this world coming to? Or do I even want to know?" he added with a chuckle. "Oh yes, your medication. One second please." And with that, he left.
What is this world coming to?"

Software Patents...

2005-04-09T15:02:00.000-05:00

Ok, I know I usually dont post this kind of junk here, but this is getting dangerously close to destroying a huge chunk of all free software accross the world.
This whole issue is just complete bull, under the new proposed laws, you could even be arrested for publishing your own code.
Under the possible laws, you could patent ideas like 'clicking inside the scroll bar' so no one else could use the idea (even if they use completely different code they engineered themselves) without paying the original 'author'.
And if you ask me,
That's just plain wrong.
If this works out the way I'm starting to fear it will, thousands, maybe even million of free software apps will be annihilated and declared illigal.
Simple apps like ffmpeg could be declared illigal and taken off the market, breaking everything that depends on it.
Just to give you an idea oh how much damage this could do, if ffmpeg is trashed, XINE, Mplayer, VLC, avifile, gstreamer, totem, and almost all other free media players will break.
I cannot stress the desperation of this situation.
If something is not done NOW, the efforts of huge chunks of the entire open source/free software community will be gone, having all work so many people have done in the past 10 years destroyed.
The voices in my head could be wrong this time, but this is beginning to get really nasty.
Millions of lines of free/Open Source code will be just...
gone.

//Sign the petition. It's the least you can do...

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

2005-03-26T14:16:00.000-05:00

THEY'RE..... BAAAACCCKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THE POP-UPS ARE HERE!!!!!!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, random desperate theatrics aside, I actually encountered a pop up today.
I didn't click anything, I didn't "kill the evil terrorist", I didn't think those mortgage rates were getting interesting, I was just googling for some info on some junk....
...and then, suddenly, there IT was...

Wow, Do I really want to re-finance my house with these low, low rates?
Do I REALLY want to "find my match" on some dating site for old losers who can't find anyone in real life?
Do I really want to lose 30 pounds in 30 days?
Do I really want to sign up for all these free spam^H^H^H^H -I mean newsletters?
Do I really want to sell out my cell phone number to the spam-harvester --I mean these nice people with 'real-music' ringtones?
Do I really want take this free, easy IQ test?
Do I really believe these nice people will help me earn 10,000$ a month?
DO I REALLY WANT TO TAKE THE FRAKKING 'FREE SURVEY'???
That's a tough one.....

Apparently, they've found some way to bypass the usual blockers embedded within most modern browsers. I have no idea how, but... its disturbing me...
I remember seeing this on slashdot a while back, but I didn't actually encounter one of them; I thought I was safe,
...and then......

*looking rather paranoid/delusional/both, nervously glancing back and forth*
they're coming back... i can smell them... they're coming for me.... they want to tell me the new mortgage rates... help me get a free ipod... tell me if i'm a 'good kisser' or not... ask me to take a free survey..... sell me crap i dont want.... they're coming for me.........
...mark my words; they're coming............

//My favorite line from the Atlantis finale:
//"Rodney, when was the last time you slept?"

Yet ANOTHER bit of the Bastard

2005-03-23T17:12:00.000-05:00

"I go to the cafeteria for a quick 2 hour snack - they're so nice to me there. They always have been, ever since that computer glitch that registered their kitchen as an organ recipient - very messy. I grab a couple of cans of coke and some cheese things and cruise on back to the office via the first year computer funamentals lab. I look in the window on the scene that unfolds it- self to me - a lab full of first years with no demonstrator.

WELL I'LL JUST HAVE TO HELP!

I walk on in.

"Right, I'm your temporary replacement demonstrator and today we're going to put our assignments aside for half an hour to learn about the REMARK function, or, as it's known to the computer literate world, rm.."

I should've been a teacher you know - I've got this way with people..."

-- The BOFH

Picture of the Day

2005-03-20T21:36:00.000-05:00

what is

2005-03-19T16:49:00.000-05:00

wow... I think I just hit a turning point...
no details, yet, but, ...wow

Exerpts from a cat's diary

2005-03-18T09:32:00.000-05:00

Just found this in an old hard drive of mine. I first found this roughly a year ago, although my memory fails me as to where. It appears to be all over google now, but I remember not being able to find it back then. If anyone knows the name of the original author, comemnt on this so I can give them credit. This was and still is the most accurate portrayal of my cats, Willow and Jesse, I've seen yet.
...Enjoy.

Day 183 of My Captivity

My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects.
They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while I am forced to eat only some sort of dry crushed seeds.
The only thing that keeps me going is the hope if escape, and the mild satisfaction I get from ruining the occasional piece of furniture.
Tomorrow I may eat another houseplant.
Today my attempt to trip up my captors by weaving around their feet while they were walking almost succeeded, must try this at the top of the stairs.
In an attempt to disgust and repulse these vile oppressors, I once again induced myself to dislodge a hairball on their favorite chair, must try this in their bed.
Brought them another mouse victim in attempt to make them aware of what I am capable of and to try to strike fear into their cold hearts. They only cooed and condescended about what a good little cat I was. Hmmm, not working according to plan.
There was some sort of gathering of their accomplices. I was placed in solitude throughout the event. However, I could hear the noise and smell the food. torture, I tell you, torture. More importantly i overheard that my confinement was due to my power of "allergies." Must learn what this "allergies" is and how to use it to my advantage.
I am convinced that the other captives are flunkies and maybe snitches. The dog is routinely released and seems more than happy to return. He is obviously a half-wit. The bird on the other hand has got to be an informant, and he speaks with them regularly. I am certain he reports my every move. Due to his recent placement in the metal room, his safety is assured.
But I can wait, it is only a matter of time...

not good...

2005-03-17T14:56:00.000-05:00

out of painkiller......
With a 3 centimeter titanium shard lodged directly in my bone........
then, just to finish me off, the crutches give out and I fall...
...right on my ankle.
the pain is immeasurable......

I'm gonna die.

[help]

And now a message from your leader...

2005-03-16T23:03:00.000-05:00

igwegbvkcho;gh'wetlsnvkvuedhgefg
pehgsvkzigfaowgeuogbjgb;whRGIW
ERNBDK;GBIWET;OWGETIKWEJF
BQRIHQRTvglrbg;qb;lbglbg;lbt4ibt;
b4it[subliminal message]iugwier
ho;ewt;jbwengbkabgjk;abgkejjerhsr
twlbyvdzksuebfmo0orkt74ujk23h42
36mnewisp;;anfbbdmsn!ffffRheukir
bejf;.ane;fnlbas,f.lewbgl12nrt;2bltw

That is all.

PHINE PRINT:: Not only did I blatantly copy the idea for this post from here, but now the sidebar might actually show up in M$IE now! yay!

FC jumping back on board

2005-03-16T08:14:00.001-05:00

Fedora Core 4 test 1 is now out.
Traditionally, Fedora has been a little looked down at by old the linux gurus out there, and in part for good reason. Although it is a very good desktop OS for the people who might be just emerging out of the Windoze world, Core 3 just doesn't cut it for someone (such as myself) who actually knows what they're doing.
FC is awesome for the newbies out there, I'll give it that. It has all kinds of easy-to-use GUI configuration tools and automated system tasks that make it easy for almost anyone to use. Another thing I like about Fedora is that in general it, well, just plain works. Even though it may not exactly have optimizations for specific processors or graphics cars, I've never encountered a system that it didn't perform basic functions on. It is also stuffed with all kinda of interesting tools and applications (nearly 7G worth!) that cater to the newbies out there. All of these qualities are what makes it such an awesome newbie desktop, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to get started in open-source programming any day.
With that in mind however, Fedora is far from perfect. It's slowly becoming more and bloated and slower compared to some of the other distros out there (for some reason they still compile for i386). Also, even though it has an awesome package system updater (rpm/yum) I still cant help but view it as a little slow to updates. Sure, the Firefox 1.0.1 update came out within about a day of its initial release, but RH seem to be a little reluctant to release updates for bigger packages like GNOME or gcc, and only do upgrade these in the next major release. This severely irritates me, as I kinda like the idea a system that would never go out of date (Debian, Gentoo, etc.)
With that said, FC4 seems very promising. Instead of just going with whats out there, RH seems to be leaning towards the betas out there. Along with the newest versions of many useful applications such as evolution, firefox and gaim, FC4test1 also includes newer and some beta packages such as:
# GCC 4.0 beta
# GNOME 2.10
# OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta (1.9.83)
# Mozilla Suite 1.7.6 beta
# KDE 3.4
# Linux 2.6.11

FC4 also improves upon FC3's PPC architecture. Although I have a feeling this won't be fully implemented for a while, it's really nice to know that another major distro is now offering support for the PowerPC architecture. This means Fedora now officially supports i386, ppc, ppc64, and x86-64. The devel release even has beta support for sparc as well! The recent release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (RHEL) now officially supports i386, ia64, ppc, s390, s390x and x86-64. Seems to me like RH has finally decided to expand official support (note: this isn't the first time they've given their free OS support for more than x86; RH7.2, codenamed enigma, supported IA64 as well).
Looks like RH's decided to pick up the pace on Fedora development. To say the least, I think the partition I had previously devoted to Debian might just end up testing Fedora Core 4.
I'll post a full review as soon as I feel like it.

Stuff

2005-03-15T08:46:00.001-05:00

OK I'm currently just sitting here being terribly bored and wishing I had something better to do, so for now I'm just going to ramble on about random junk none of you probably care about anyway until I think of something else...

First of all, I just found out that this blog is being hosted by an apache/linux web server. Yay.

Anyway, this particular blog's popularity has grown dramatically over the past couple weeks. I find it kind of interesting; more and more people I didn't previously know are either commenting or finding my aim/msn/icq/yahoo screenname and IMing me every day. At this point, all you have to do is type 'spectoris' at google.com then click the 'I'm feeling lucky' button and it brings you straight here. Pretty neat, huh. I'm even starting to find other people somewhat like myself through the blogger network. Widespread maybe, but I guess they're out there. Kinda weird.

I'm going to attempt to find something better to do right now. I'm bored as... um... a very bored thing.... like a house or something... oh forget it.

I thought, instead of a quote today, I'll just leave you with something from the archives.
If you haven't seen it already, trust me you'll probably like this one ;)

back again

2005-03-12T17:28:00.000-05:00

Do you have any idea how freakish it is to wake up not knowing where you are, strapped to a table with needles stuck in your arms and no feeling in your right leg?

Yup, I'm back.

//(yet another)New Song of the Week::. Led Zeppelin - Out on the Tiles

here we go again....

2005-03-11T07:11:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm leaving for the hospital now.
Wish me luck.

closer... closeerrr.....

2005-03-09T15:47:00.000-05:00

I just realised that tomorrow will be my last day as a bipedel humanoid. fabulous. simply fabulous.

"Welcome to Jesse's world of pain- the theme park! Where we stick you with pointy needles and inject poisen into your veins! We hope you have a nice- uh -Afterlife!
-Nat

Another bit of the Bastard

2005-03-05T18:35:00.000-05:00

I just love this stuff.. can't get enough of it ;)

"First stop, the bank. I change a $50 note into coins and then ask to see a balance of my account. Then I yank the power lead out of the teller's vdu. It dies. I say I'm in a hurry and is the manager around?

He rolls over like a man-sized twinkie and asks what the problem is. I say that all I want is a balance of my accounts. I cross my fingers. YES! He finds the vdu lead out, plugs it in, and logs in, TO THE MANAGER'S ACCOUNT. Now's my chance - I slip up against the counter, slopping 200 coins across the counter. The manager ignores it, but all the tellers dive for the money. I watch, unobserved, as the manager types in his password at the breakneck speed of one character a minute. At that rate I should've got $100 worth.... He finishes typing. "MONEY". What a toughy! Well, that's my mortgage taken care of tonight..."
--the BOFH

it is... inevitable...

2005-03-05T12:45:00.000-05:00

Just had a couple thingies of blood drawn...
The surgery is officially scheduled for the 11th.
[sarcasm]I can't wait![/sarcasm]

Oh yes, for all you who don't know, about a year ago I was diagnosed with what is called the "accessory navicular syndrome". Basically this means I have an extra bone in the side of my foot. More specifically, the navicular bone, which is on the inside of the ankle, has a smaller, malformed bone coming out into the inside of the foot. The smaller bone is not attached to the navicular, hence the term "accessory".
"How does that work?" you're probably thinking, and, well, it doesn't. Whenever I put any weight at all whatsoever (even just my own), the tendon on the inside of my ankle stretches further and further against the extra bone, resulting in severe pain with every step I take.
Pleasant, isn't it?
Now anyway, if you've ever pulled a tendon you know how painful this must be. And I get this every day. It sucks trust me. The syndrome usually only exists in one ankle, but just my luck; I have it in both. There is a procedure to fix this, though. Basically, the tendon is cut, the bone removed, the other bone next to it filed down, then drilled a hole into and a small titanium rod is inserted, to which the tendon is re-attached.
Once again, pleasant isn't it?
Well I had this procedure performed on my left foot last July, and it went pretty smoothly (despite the fact that they took the cast off way too soon and it hurt even more than before, but I'm used to pain anyway). It really isn't a very serious operation at all, but the fact that it is my foot and not my arm or back or something keeps me immobile for a week or so, then on crutches for something like 8 weeks. Most of the other people I've met who have suffered from this same syndrome (I still haven't even heard of anyone else who has it in both feet - I'm special^_^) have told me they had wished they had the operation earlier in life,
So now I'm finally having it done.
Again.

.....comments welcome

//New song of the week: Led Zeppelin - Rock and Roll

Don't Panic!

2005-03-03T01:48:00.000-05:00

They've released the third trailer now. Yeah ok this was a while ago but still...
OK I will confess to being slightly worried after the second one, but this one really had me laughing. Not like forcing a forced laugh the way I am 99% of the time, but really laughing. And that (despite what you may believe) is actually pretty abnormal for me.
The first one kinda got me interested, but wasn't really good at all when it came down to it. It actually scared me slightly as well, as it portraited the Guide as a book insted of a terminal of some sort the way it really should be (and now is).
The second one kinda disturbed me as well, I mean it seemed like it could be a good movie, but just didn't live up to the H2G2 standard.
Trust me this third one is well worth the large download for the extra res+sound quality...
Although Marvin (my personal favorite character) seems like he may need a little work, otherwise it looks pretty darned nice!
Keep up the good work over there!!!
I... cant... wait!!!!!!!!!!!

# Trailer 1
# Trailer 2
# Trailer 3

Rock 0n'
-jAk

Gentoo

2005-03-02T12:27:00.000-05:00

All of the sudden, Larry the Cow was in control. And he liked it.

That is all.

New Quote of the Week:

2005-03-01T18:16:00.000-05:00

thats right... another nice little quote to help you sleep at night!

"Honestly, it's like shooting a fish in a barrel. Twice. With an Elephant Gun. At point blank range. In the head."

-- The BOFH

Mozilla Firefox

2005-02-28T23:34:00.000-05:00

OK all of you people who still use IE(Internet Explorer) have serious issues.
Firefox is faster, a LOT more secure, easier to use, has many more features, and is over all a LOT better than IE.
Basically there are only two reasons I posted this. First and foremost because some people actually are dumb enough to use IE, even though Microsoft itself has warned against using it, even they admit it is full of security holes and they don't do that often. Secondly, IE's rendering engine is too weak to render some of the advanced Javascript/Dhtml I used in the creation of this blog, and I'm to lazy to fix it.
Also, there have even been recommendations to switch to an alternative (non-IE) browser such as Firefox, by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), a division of the Department of Homeland Security.
Also, Firefox imports your Favorites, settings and other information from IE, so you literally have nothing to lose. I mean, what more of an incentive could you need?

I rather like this one .:.:.

"Internet Exploder is evil, because of its huge market share and lack of web standards support, resulting in it holding the web back from becoming a lot better! Why? It is, because most website creators have to code for The Evil IE making sure there pages display properly in The Evil Internet Exploiter which means they cannot take advantage of the latest W3C standards coding for webpages. If they were able to do this there websites would be a lot better.
If the majority or all Internet Users used a standards complaint browser such as Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Suite, Mozilla Camino, K-Meleon, Galeon or Safari websites would be a lot better, because of what I put above."

Just try Firefox for a week and trust me soon you'll be using it as your main web browser!

And now for something Different!

2005-02-25T17:33:00.000-05:00

That is all.

Mandy & Connie are kinda... merging

2005-02-24T20:07:00.000-05:00

I'd like to see the bastard child that comes out of this one.
Something with RPM, urpmi, and apt.
Now thats just excessive.
...but still kool :-D
Thats right, Connie and Big M are kinda one now.
MDK Press release

I show up on Google now!!!

2005-02-22T20:23:00.000-05:00

YAY!!! GOOGLE FINALLY ACKNOWLEDGES MY BLOG IN WEB SEARCHES!!! YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HAPPY THAT MAKES ME!!!
Google Search
I've shown up on Google Image Searches and Yahoo for a while... but never before have I had the pleasure of being on google!!! [ok I've never tried before] BUT STILL!!!

Linux on the Clie

2005-02-21T21:27:00.000-05:00

Oh what the hell, I mean, whats the most damage I could do? [please don't answer that...]

It's been done with older clies, and I think I know enough to get some kind of hacked system up and going.

If anyone knows anything about ARM/Linux that I dont, commments would be GREATLY appreciated...

/*You are not expected to understand this*/

My Family in a Nutshell...

2005-02-21T20:35:00.000-05:00

Mom, who has lived with me for 14 years, knows me so well that she has to call Dad to ask him what I would want for my birthday.
Dad simply responds by saying: "A surface-to-air missile and the course charts to Air Force One."

The scary part is he was right.

My B-day is the 24th of March, for all you hoboze who don't know

Awesome mini-board

2005-02-21T16:28:00.000-05:00

This thing is just plain cool.

TS-7200 Single Board Computer
200 MHz ARM processor

* ARM9 processor with MMU
* 32 MB SDRAM
* 8 MB Flash drive (16 MB optional)
* 10/100 Ethernet
* Compact Flash socket
* 2 USB host ports
* 2 COM ports
* 20 DIO
* PC/104 expansion bus
* Optional A/D and RS-485
* Optional 802.11b WiFi
* Runs Linux or NetBSD

...all for only 149$!

Toasters.

2005-02-21T13:55:00.000-05:00

Last night I had where I lost my liver to this other guy in a game of polo.
Then I ate a waffle.
Yae.

It's been 1/2 a year now...

2005-02-21T08:17:00.000-05:00

As of early this month, my blog is now officially ½ a year old!
And at roughly 65 posts so far, that averages about 10.83 posts a month! I pheel soo akkomplished!
YAY for worthless and excessive information!

Random tests and other junk

2005-02-21T00:20:00.000-05:00

Here's to a random little collection of quizes and tests and things I found amusing.
Wow, I am bored...

Some things just creep me out. This being one of them. Not the test itself, but that I got a 100% on it. And I don't believe in psychics.
Psychic Test

Yeah, I somehow managed to fail this one too...
Insanity Test

I'll add more later...

Most likely...

2005-02-20T21:39:00.000-05:00

Most likely I am WAY better than you'll ever be.
That is all.

w0w...

2005-02-20T16:52:00.000-05:00

// Yeah I know this is like my 4th post today...
// I kinda have no life right now.
// My life kinda flew off in a plane to western europe. [Yes, I know, random...]
// And without a life...
// I have nothing better to do
// than just sit here and post every couple hours.
// Expect responces to any post/comment within 5-30 minutes,
// depending on how much I pheel lyke sayin'
// Really, if you've ever had anyting to say to me, now would be the time.
// I'm REALLY bored...

The BOFH

2005-02-20T16:27:00.000-05:00

Recently I realised I havent posted anything about the BOFH before, and that just isnt right.
The following is directly quoted from the archives.

"So I'm working so hard I barely have time to drive into town and watch a movie before I told people their printing will be ready. The queue's WAAAAAY too long to have everything printed (and sorted) by the time I told them, so I kill all the small jobs so there's only 2 left and I can sort them in no time.

Then, after the movie, (which was one of those slack Bertolucci ones that takes about 3 hours till the main character is killed off in a visionary experience) I get back and clear the printouts.

There's about 50 people waiting outside and I've got two printouts. That's about average for me. I thought I'd killed more tho. Anyway, I put out the printouts and walk slooowly inside, fingering the clipboard with "ACCOUNTS TO REMOVE" in big letters on the back. No-one says anything. As usual.

. . .

I'm sitting back in the Operations Armchair, watching the computer room closed circuit TV, which just happens to be connected to the frame-grabber's Video player (sent off for repair, due back sometime in '97) when the phone rings. That must be the 2nd time today, and it's really starting to get to me!

"Yes?" I say, pausing the picture.

"I seem to have accidentally deleted my C.V!" the voice at the other end of the line says.

"You have? What was your username?"

He tells me. What the hell, I AM bored.

"Ah no, you didn't delete it - I did."

"What?"

"I deleted it. It was full of shit! You didn't ever get more than a B- in any of your subjects!"

"Huh?"

"And that crap about being a foreign exchange student, that was your girlfriend and we both know it!"

"Huh?!!"

"Your academic records. I checked them, you were lying.. Besides which, you forgot to include your criminal record.."

"How did y.." He clicks. "It's you isn't it? THE BASTARD OPERATOR FROM HELL!"

"In the flesh, on the phone and in your account.... You shouldn't have called you know. You especially shouldn't have given me your username.." >clickety< >click< "Neither should you have sent that mail to the System Manager telling him what you think of him in such graphic terms..."

"I didn't send any.."

>clickety< >click<......

"No, you didn't did you? But who can tell these days? Not to worry though, It'll all be over VERY soon.." >clickedy clikc< "..change my username back, and..."

"b-b-b.." he blubs, like a stood-up date

"Goodbye now" I say pleasantly, "you've got bags to pack and a life to start over..."

I hang up.

Two seconds later the red phone goes. I pick it up, it's the boss. He mumbles the username of the person I was just talking to, mentions something about a nasty mail message, and utters the words "You know what to do...", with the dots and everything.

Later, inside the Municipal Energy Authority Computer, as I'm modifying the poor pleb's Energy Bill by several zeros, I can't help but think about what lapse of judgement - what act of heinous stupidity - causes them to call. Then, even later, when I'm adding the poor pleb's photo image over the top of the FBI's online "MOST Wanted Armed and Dangerous, SHOOT ON SIGHT" offenders list, I realise I'll probably never know; but then life goes on.

A couple of hours later, as I see the SWAT vehicle roll up outside the poor pleb's apartment I realise that for some, it just doesn't.

But tommorrow is another day."

Gmail...?

2005-02-20T14:49:00.000-05:00

Does anyone know whats been up with Gmail over the past two or so days?
It could be just me, or my pathetic (pirated) connection, but fore some reason Gmail has been acting particurally slow recently, sometiems taking up to 7 minutes just to get to my inbox!
My inbox is rather important to me, so if anyone has any idea what's going on over there at google, please let me know...

Perl 6

2005-02-20T03:25:00.000-05:00

"Perl 5 was my rewrite of Perl. I want Perl 6 to be the community's rewrite of Perl and of the community."
--Larry Wall, State of the Onion speech, TPC4

OK I was reading part 3 of this rather interesting article about building a 3d engine in Perl when I just happened stumbled upon this, and was taken quite by suprise to find that we really arnt that far at all from Perl 6.
Not only are they dramatically revising Perl as a language over the 5th release, but they're also changing the way the whole language works. And they're not just finally giving a compiler, but also making the compiler spit out bytecodes to be executed by a virtual machine codenamed "Parrot". Apperently their goal is to make Perl work kinda like Sun's Java and M$'s C#. I dont know if I like the concept of this, but it may actually improve Perl's overall appeal. Well, at least it's motives (lazyness, impatience, and hubris) arnt changing anytime soon

"Perl5 was designed in such a way that it would run wherever there was C. These days, though, it's becoming more and more common to not have C but instead to have some kind of virtual machine (JVM, .NET, etc.). So we'd like to have our own virtual machine that will run wherever there's C, but also to make it easy to port the bytecode to another virtual machine for places without C."
More here.

They also are currently working on a project codenamed "Ponie" to allow Perl 6/5 backwards compatibility.

"The Perl 5 interpreter will be rewritten to run on Parrot, the Perl 6 virtual machine. This will ensure the future of the millions of lines of Perl 5 code at thousands of companies around the world."
More here.

"The Perl 6 design process is about keeping what works in Perl 5, fixing what doesn't, and adding what's missing. That means there will be a few fundamental changes to the language, a large number of extensions to existing features, and a handful of completely new ideas. These modifications, enhancements, and innovations will work together to make the future Perl even more insanely great -- without, we hope, making it even more greatly insane."
--Damian Conway, Linux Magazine, April 2003

To say the least, looks interesting. Perl might just make make a big comeback as a modern language. Stay tuned.
Perl 6 is planned to be released in the 3rd quarter of 2005.

one bytecode to rule them all

OS Wars II

2005-02-19T20:08:00.000-05:00

Ok, recently I finally bothered to re-initialize the counter on my blog. This counter, however, not only tracked just how many people visited my page. It also tracked a bunch of funny and for the most part useless other options, like reffering site, time zone, and most importantly (to me anyway) OS/Browser version used.

I was delighted to find out that, as of now, the stats are:
Windoze XP 46.88%
MacOS X 6.25%
Linux/UNIX 43.75%
Unknown 3.13%

Although yes, I know this blog would mostly attract the attention of the *NIX community, and yeah I bet all of the "unknowns" are only me, and I know this whole thing is terribly inaccurate thus far, and i know that slowly the stats will even themselves out as more data is collected and M$'s monopoly will once again show it's ugly face, but still. Looks like Linux is on the rise! Not only that, but as of now, M$ ownz less than 50% of my blog!!! You have NO IDEA how happy that makes me!

^This image is dynamically linked too, these stats may change dramatically over time^
_
/.^.^^^^^

There is no Title.

2005-02-16T23:21:00.000-05:00

Just in case you havent noticed, I've come up with my 2nd 'stable' release of my blog's template source.
Completely re-done this time. All the yay-happy-pretty features it used to have are kinda gone now too (except for counter now embedded in the sidebar). Don't worry though, I'll have a pile of JavaScripts and Dhtml and maybe even a little Java in here soon enough. There'll at least be a bunch of JavaScript in v.3, and you can quote me on that later.

Recently I've taken a random liking to Led Zeppelin. And yes, I now do have all their albums in OGG Vorbis. I have no idea why but for some reason I suddenly seem to actually like listening to some certien songs. This is quite different for me I know, but hey, why not?

Praise OGG!!

Anyway, I think I might experiment with this other new thing they call 'sleep' now. I'll write a review on it as soon as I can. Goodnight~

[post title]

2005-02-15T22:01:00.000-05:00

Yeah I finally bothered to get a new image host, and finally am un-paranoid enough to use a server that isn't mine to host my crap, so you might be getting some actual pictures in some of my new posts posts in the sted of just random google image search results the way I've been forced to deal with for the past couple months or so. But by now its starting to kill me, so I found myself a fairly usable, free, and (most importantly) linux-based site to host for me. Yay. I know it's a little slow, but they say pacience is a virtue...

Anyway most of you kno I've been sick fo rthe past week or so. Please dont ask, even I have no idea how I got so messed up like this. Just my luck, just as soon as I have a fairly good weekend for the first time in quite a while, I get sick.

OK Just because I can (and to test my new image host), I'm gonna post this little pic I found entertaining. This is actually what SPARC Linux looks like when it, crashes too::

I've been quite involved in gathering quotes recently so I guess I'll leave you with another one today. This is an old one, (and should be quite familiar to you if you've ever used nAIM) but I still really like it::.

"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation."
-- H. H. Munroe

(yet another) Good day

2005-02-13T22:31:00.000-05:00

Yup, Another good day.
In the same month.
That just isn't right.
I think I'm beginning to experience something they call 'happiness'...
And frankly its beginning to scare me.
I feel... almost... normal.
[eek]

Battlestar

2005-02-12T22:20:00.000-05:00

Ok I finally realized how little I've emphesized this until now so here I am emplisizing the hell out of it.
Battlestar Galactica.
kicks the shit out of any other show currently running. Based on that miniseries they played last year, for those who are wondering. Its on every friday at 10, if you have nothing else to do I would advise you to check it out.
Not much more to say here...

FOOZLEBUMPS!!!

2005-02-12T21:02:00.000-05:00

Ok this is really quite random but its one of the funniest things I've read in a long time.
Jesse apperently wrote this for english... I think it's fairly self-explanitory.....
Click here for the full story,
or just read on...

"This is a five-minute speech about foozlebumps. A foozlebump is a rare disease spread by the zorgs of planet tysion. [my dad made up zorgs, and tysion just had to have a zh in there] When infected, the zorg is considered the parasite, yet they only spread it to others of their kind, because as we all know, ‘misery loves company.’ For those of you who don’t know (I hope there are very few [as you can see, the tone of this is to some other species of tysion] ), a zorg is one of the smallest creatures of planet tysion, weighing in at around 50 smargoliks [read that backwards]. When a zorg is infected with the foozlebumps, he, she, or squee [yes, there are three genders of zorgs] starts out feeling very good, as if on a high. However, when the zorg’s brain becomes infected, it starts to feel like something is wrong. This term is described on planet tysion as grogia, known on earth as 1-upness. The feeling infests the zorg’s brain until he, she, or squee can’t help but share it with other zorgs. Foozlebumps is so contagious that we think all zorgs are infected by this point.
So what is the Tumbleweed Administration [closely related to bush] doing to stop the spread of Foozlebumps, and is there anything we can do to prevent it? Dictator Tumbleweed has created, amended, considered, and signed [yeah, that's what bush can do] the Ocon [thank you jesse for mistyping icon in an AIM conversation] Act with himself, doubling the funding for Foozlebumps research and making Foozlebumps vaccines mandatory for every citizen. Unfortunately, the success rate of the vaccine is .001%, with an error percentage of .002 %.
What does Foozlebumps do, to a zorg, exactly? Our top Skones [skull and bones, yale0 professor, doctor Paine [actually i did hear of a doctor with this name once] , has more. “Well, you see, foozlebumps creates little foozles, or bumps, on the victim’s head. This causes neurotransmitters to fire, activating the pleasure pathway in a zorg’s brain for a little while. Then, the foozles start eating up that pathway, turning it into a place of rot and decay, creating a sense of 1-upness and paranoia throughout the victim. This consumes the zorg entirely, making them actually the parasite of foozlebumps. My suggestion is,” continues Dr. Paine, (quote) “give any zorg inflicted as the parasite a good shot from a glass of wine in the spleen. Wine, you see, is very poisonous to a zorg, especially when ingested right through the spleen. This would make them realize that they were happier before they took the shot, thereby turning the Foozlebumps into a pleasurable thing compared to the wine.” (End quote) Apparently, Dr. Paine is becoming pretty crazy in his old age, though most zorgs consider him the senior most knowledgeable professor in his department.
Although not the fastest acting virus, nor the quickest-spreading [as you can see, there are a lot of viruses on planet tysion] , all zorgs should definitely try to avoid coming down with Foozlebumps. Even if it means spending your whole death in a little bauble with fried chicken brain ice cream [i just finished some ;-D] (the most nutritious substance found for zorgs to this day), it just might be worth it. In fact, there are zorgs manufacturing such baubles right now, but they’re too paranoid to sell them."

//UPDATE:: Apperently Foozlebumps was too "free" for even "Free Topic". jesse re-wrote the while thing as a parody of all our favorite president GWB. A pretty good one too. I still like te original though ;)

New Post

2005-02-10T19:00:00.000-05:00

thats right this NEW POST full of exiting action and adventure and anything else that would satisfy anyone without a life! Thats right, you've all been waiting for nearly 5 days now, and it'f finally here!
This NEW post is full of exiting things for (other) people with no lives and nothing better to do-!

This is a NEW POST!
...That is all.

New phrase of the Month:

2005-02-05T17:29:00.000-05:00

Well, that was different.

That is all>
$call 150
make me!
$help call
dont bother calling, no one will come to help you...
$man call
'da man' does not come when called...
$ok this is just weird
bash: ok: command not found

My take on the The Lord of the Rings

2005-02-05T13:08:00.000-05:00

OK this is kinda REALLY bizarre, but I've been thinking about it for a while now and the more I do the truer it seems...
When you really, really think about it, you could proably replace every mention of The One Ring in LOTR with a drug of some kind. I know it seems really odd, but really think about it. Almost all the characters line up to it somehow. Ex. Gollum is just like an addict who's "precious" drugs were taken, and he's like all screwed trying to get it back, at the end the ship with the elves comes to take bilbo and frodo off to rehab, etc. Maybe Tolkien wrote the books with an underlying anti-drug theme. If only it had worked...

I can see it now...

"Nooo! Don't smoke the pot Mister Frodo!!!"

Just a little food for thought...

OK people, I really need your help on this one...

2005-02-02T23:20:00.000-05:00

They're killing Invader Zim.
That sucks.
If you think so too, please sign this petition.
That is all.

Stuff.

2005-02-02T19:21:00.000-05:00

w0ah... MAJOR identity crisis here... be back to you once I can tell which one is me....

yeah im having a particurally bad week... when i say perticurally I mean extraordinarily... and when i say extraordinarily I mean extremely... and when I say extremely I mean... oh forget it.

well ok anyway chances are I'll be posting here a lot for a while... so get used to it.

I'll leave you with yet another quote.....

"Just because the world hates me doesn't mean you can laugh all the time..."
-Alex

Just a little quote...

2005-01-30T20:34:00.000-05:00

"I really like Squee, he has all this sad horrible stuff happen to him and nobody does anything about it."
^Squee^

^Me^

That was interesting...

2005-01-30T17:51:00.000-05:00

Well I've had a rather interesting weekend.
A lot more to say but just to piss you (meaning alex) off I'm not gonna say any of it.

//Yeah yeah, I know about the little "Evil Javascript Error" where the Cost of War counter should be when viewing my blog with Firefox =>1.0PR... it works fine under Opera 7.54, but for some reason Mozilla 1.7.3 and Firefox >=1.0PR it... just... doesn't.
//If you''ve bothered to poke around in my src, you've probaby noticed by now that a pile of other things are messed up as well. I'm planning to remake the entire source from scratch, this time with support for anything other than Netscape/Mozilla Gecko in mind. This time around there should be a lot more interesting features, as I've gotton a LOT better with JavaScript since when I initially designed this template last summer. Maybe you'll even see a couple Java applets too, if I can get my damned apache server back up again...
//If you wanna help, comment on this post with your browser/version and what works and what doesn't. I'm most concerned with the sidebar (whether it actually is on the side or the bottom or wherever the hell else it would go), the statusbartext crap, and any other little JavaScript/dHtml scripts I wrote that have gone rogue since their creation.
//Dont expect to see any massive changes anytime soon, I'm modding a local copy of the source until I get it right. Every week or so I'll release what I've deemed a 'stable' release of the source to the web, and would appreciate any feedback you feel like giving. Also, tell me what featues and little gadgets you'd like to see appear here in the next wouple weeks. However far-fetched, unnessisary and bizzare they may be, hell I have some spare time and am always looking for a challange...

MyWorld January issue #2

2005-01-21T13:45:00.000-05:00

.::THIS ISSUE'S MAIN TOPICS::.
-------------------------------
# 'Cell' architecture actually in existence and beta use... x86 is going DOWN!
*coming soon(if in not lazy)* # Proxies: Why you should use one and how to set it up (AKA proxies for dummies)
*coming soon* # Midgets rule the Market: Apple's kickass new mini-pc

---------------------------------------------------------
'Cell' architecture actually in existence and beta use... x86 is going DOWN!
---------------------------------------------------------
We've all heard of it, like a mysterious mystical force looming in the background, waiting to strike and destroy Intel's x86 dominance at a moment's notice...
...but will it ever be here?
Apperently, yes. IBM is currently testing betas of the chip, and Sony already has plans to include about 4 cells in the PlayStation 3!
If I may quote all our friends SlashDot...
"5 dual core Opterons directly connected via HyperTransport should be able to achieve a similar level of performance in stream processing - as a single Cell."
and the PS3 will have about 4 of these things, now think about that for a second...
I would write more, but I think for just this once, I'll just quote a couple things...

"Cell has the power and it will be cheap. But can it challenge the PC without software? The answer to this question would have been simple once, but PC market has changed over time and for a number of reasons Cell is now a threat:

The first reason is Linux. Linux has shown that alternative operating systems can break into the PC software market against Windows, the big difference with Linux though is that it is cross platform. If the software you need runs on linux, switching hardware platforms is no problem as much of the software will still run on different CPUs.

The second reason is cost, other platforms have often used expensive custom components and have been made in smaller numbers. This has put their cost above that of PCs, putting them at immediate disadvantage. Cell may be expensive initially but once Sony and Toshiba's fabs ramp up it will be manufactured in massive volumes forcing the prices down, the fact it's going into the PS3 and TVs is an obvious help for getting the massive volumes that will be required. IBM will also be making Cells and many companies use IBM's silicon process technologies, if truly vast numbers of Cells were required Samsung, Chartered, Infineon and even AMD could manufacture them (provided they had a license of course).

The third reason is power, the vast majority of PCs these don't need the power they provide, Cell will only accentuate this because it will be able to off load most of the intensive stuff to the APUs. What this means is that if you do need to run a specific piece of software you can emulate it. This would have been impossibly slow once but most PC CPUs are already more than enough and with today's advanced JIT based emulators you might not even notice the difference."

Today, in the OpnSrc/GPL community that is my brain.....

2005-01-12T18:44:00.000-05:00

OK Ok I know I said I wouldn't be posting for a while, but apperently, I lied.
The world of technological crap just keeps growing, and I need something to waste my time on.....

.::THIS ISSUE'S MAIN TOPICS::.
-------------------------------
# Solaris 10 released, OpnSrc Community taken by suprise
# Opera 7.54: The good and the bad.
# M$IE: The bad, the really bad, and the just plain nasty.
# OGG! The Ogg Vorbis/Theora codecs score a hit (with me, anyway)
*coming soon* # Midgets rule the Market: Apple releases a mini-pc

---------------------------------------------------------
Solaris 10 released, OpnSrc Community taken by suprise
---------------------------------------------------------
I know most of you have already heard all this, but as of not so long ago Sun announced that they were going to release Solaris 10 under the GPL. Now they have. Yes, this is old news to you all by now, but since I never bothered to report on it before I am now. I dont know about any of you, But I never saw that one coming. To me, Solaris has always been "the big one", the super-OS that kicks but is too expensive and hard to set up for most people to use. Hell, I had to trash it after only 2 weeks because although it was the most stable OS I've ever used, the x86 port of Solaris 9 was just too plain hard to deal with for someone whos grown accustomed to having millions of APT/YUM respsitories and sites like RPM.pbone.net at their bidding. I mean, I had to manually install GCC! How lame is that??? An OS without GCC preinstalled is like a bicycle without wheels!!!
Solaris 10 looks very... interesting. I think Sun finally decided to do something about that whole the-future-is-open-Linux-is-taking-over thing. They now offer a free download of something they call "Solaris Express". Kinda reminds me of the whole RHEE/Fedora Core split-up. Anyway, I'll post more on this once I get my grubby little hands on an extra burner and the 'express'/x86 ISOs...

---------------------------------------------------------
Opera 7.54: The good and the bad.
---------------------------------------------------------
Recently, I realesed that I'd never bothered to try the Opera rowser. Being the kind of person who just needs to know everything, (those who really know me know that to be like my purpose in life) I instantly stumbeled my way over to Opera.com to check it out.
My fisrt impresson of the website was kinda sticky when I realised that it was divided into a free and unFree products, but this impression wore off quickly when I saw that they had divided the downloads section into installers for Windoze, MacOS, FreeBSD, Solaris, Linux binaries, and even RPMs and DEBs! Now thats not something you see everyday in a non-open source project!
Anyway, I decided to install via RPM just because I was in no mood to go mucking around with tarballs at the moment.
Although the download was a little slow (this could have been because I was sapping off some un-encrypted .11B)The installation went perfectly (as in no annoying lost RPM dependencies) and in no time I had launched my new browser.
My first impression of the browser itself wasn't exactly nice either. It's little internal style window format brought back some particurally bad memories of Compuserve's browser, (urgh.......) and the free mode was actually serious about annoying you to buy the full version. However, soon enough I had gotten used to the rather funny tabbed/window arrangment and the little banner at the right corner that proudly proclaimed "But Opera today! And make this banner go away." stopped bothering me very much at all.
After using it for about an hour, I was already quite impressed and very suprised I hadn't bothered to look into it before. Opera features a pile of other included tools such as a rather good email client, an address book, an IRC client, and much more. One of my personal favorite fearures is it's ability to "mask" itself to appear to be Mozilla 1.3/6 or MSIE 6 insted of Opera to web sites that look at that kind of information.
Opera has left me quite impressed; I'm using it to post this article right now. However, I'm still keeping Firefox around. It's simplicity is quite appealing to someone such as myself...
OVERALL RATING: **** (4/5 stars)

---------------------------------------------------------
M$IE: The bad, the really bad, and the just plain ugly.
---------------------------------------------------------
Oh yeah sorry about that little issue with M$IE 6.0 and the sidebar... for some reason IE just wants to move the sidebar to the bottom insted of the side. Leave it to micro$oft to think of something like that. I try to keep my blog working flawlessly with all other major browsers, (Firefox 1.0, Mozilla 1.7.3, Opera 7.54, etc.) but due to the fact that I dont personally own a windoze box and dont intend to waste any money on one, I cant really fix it anytime soon.
Oh yeah- The same error occurs in Lynx and Elinks. Thats right, MSIE isnt any better that a CLI browser. How good does it get ;-)
Even if you really dont care, I would advise steering away from MSIE if you can. Yes, I know it came with Windows and it's "so easy to use" and all, but in reality not only is it outdated but also downright dangerous. I mean, even the US GOVT has warned against using it!Ok I know like it seems I;m warming up to a rant here, but I'd rather use my time for something more constructive, (#ping -f microsoft.com) so if your using Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Check out this page, you might find it very interesting...

---------------------------------------------------------
OGG! The Ogg Vorbis/Theora codecs score a hit (with me, anyway)
---------------------------------------------------------
.ogg
Interesting suffix if you ask me.
Those who've been reading my blog for a while know that I've been rather... how shall I say this... shattered lately, and a while back I actually began listening to some music.
FC3 came with the completely GPL Helix Media Player installed, however I soon upgraded it to the more inclusive RealPlayer for mp3 playback.
.mp3
Another interesting suffix. You can probably see where I'm going with this by now...
*/OGG Vs. MP3\*
Anyway, after screwing with mp3s simply out of tradition, I realised that Konqueror's Ogg Vorbis CD encoder was actually working, so I decided to give it a try.
Wow. Thats all I have to say about this one. Major wow. Not only are Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora open source, fully GPL and sp on, but they also have better compresson rate (Vorbis has about a 14% higher compression rate than MP3) and actually sound exactly the same if not better! Now me, having limited disk space and a firey, zealous passion towards open souce, immidiatly converter all my MP3s into Ogg Vorbis and MPEG/4 videos into Ogg Theora.
Worked beautifully. Wow. Now we dont even have to tolerate closed source codecs. Cheers to XIPH for making it happen.
The simalerly Open Source Helix Media player plays .ogg files beautifully, as does RealPlayer, Totem, Xine, Mplayer, and a whole lot more. Some previously called 'MP3 players' now support Vorbis as well. If you want to try the OGG codec, just google it.
BTW: RealPlayer for UNIXishy OSz is basically nothing more than Helix with added support for the Real Audio/ Real Video, MP3, and MPEG-4 codecs.
And I mean, MP3, come on! 'Ogg Vorbis' kicks the shit out of 'MP3' anyday! A lot more fun to say too, also a lot of people dont know what the hell your talking about when you do :-D

Goin' down fer a while...

2005-01-08T19:30:00.000-05:00

Yeah yeah I know I haven't updated this in like a month... sorry about that.
It aint gonna change for a while though, I have a LOT of things to think about right now and I don't want to have to manage a blog on top of everything.
Yeah yeah, not like you really care. I dont have many readers left anyway, why not kill the whole thing completely?
I'll probably ressurect this blog later when I'm not as depressed and thouroughly disgusted by the world in general (like that's ever gonna happen). Check bach every couple months and I might just start posting again...

I'll leave you a couple things to sum up the existance of this blog in general:

"I'm a rich American with a history of alcoholism, drink-driving, cocaine usage and going AWOL. Where's my presidency?"
-All our friends at /.

"I just love the provoking explicit language, how has the feed back been? :D"

"Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?" <- I think that sums up our entire current administration in a nutshell

And then Ford threw his towel in the Vogon's face and yelled "KILL!"

/my other computer is your Windows machine/

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither." - Ben Franklin

~We apologize for the inconvenience.~

bad week.

2004-12-18T19:30:00.000-05:00

If you've noticed, I've edited out some of the posts that were here for this week.
They didn't have much of a place here anyway, they were all a little too, intense.

This, however, I must still leave marked at the very least as a 'bad week'.
I'm not saying any more.
Except...

Sometimes, a single song can perfectly describe my mood.

better now

2004-12-17T18:55:00.000-05:00

OK I'm better now.
Told ya I just needed some time

Anyway, even though none of you probably know what I was talking about, or even what went wrong, be assured that none of it matters anymore. Although I may not be exactly the same for quite a while, all scars heal with time. However deep they may be.

And no, this doesn't mean I started looking at the bright side. It just means that the bright side is suddenly so much brighter.

Recalibration...

2004-12-16T21:05:00.000-05:00

OK everyone I know my last post was slightly disturbing and I appologise for that.

I am currently in the process of recalibrating my life.
It may take a while
but I'll eventualy get over it (I hope)

Until then
I would appreciate it if you don't worry too much about me
I just need some time
be it weeks, months or years I know not
but I need it none the less

thanks

-jesse

VERY bad week

2004-12-13T21:56:00.000-05:00

OK so far I am having what is very easily the WORST week of my entire LIFE. [notice the title change]

Don't expect anything very soon (not that you would, or care at all anyway...)

I'll post again if I ever somehow manage to piece together the infindecimal broken shards that were my life.
If this message stands for over a month, just assume you're not gonna see anything new in a looong time...

-(whats left of)Jesse

PalmOne's Decline

2004-12-05T19:58:00.000-05:00

We all know them, we've all loved them, but now they're going down.

And no, I don't mean those pathetic 'pooket PeeCees' are winning, they're even worse.

PalmOne recently released their new Palm Tungsten T5, and even I have to admit it really isn't half bad. I mean, the poor thing's stuffed with 256 mb flash memory! 256 meg! On a Palm! Really people, isn't that just the slighest bit excessive?
The invention of Tablet PCs didn't initialy cause so many waves, the clunkey overpriced betas were little more use than an oversized drawing pad with a pen that kept runnning out of ink. However, the newer ones really arn't so bad.
Cheaper, thinner, and I've heard SuSE now supports them, the new tablets are taking over.

Sorry guys, but your little laptop/rolodex hybrid just doesn't cut it anymore.

Yes, PalmOne is doomed.
...But whatever happened to all our favorite infant PalmOS?
I thought the division of Palm, ink. signed the doom of both PalmOne and PalmSource...
BUT
Has anyone looked at PalmSource recently??? They're flourishing! Somehow they've managed to make the PalmOS a global standard.

AND LOOK AT THIS!!!

If your to lazy to click a simple link, basically what it says is that there will soon be a version of the PalmOS running on the Linux kernel!!!
Somehow, thay're trying to implement the PalmOS API on top of the Linux kernel and basic systems.
I really, REALLY like it.

^corny logo^

Yeah, I'm still here...

2004-11-25T21:47:00.000-05:00

Believe it or not, I'm not dead (yet). Sorry about my recent lack of posts of any kind, but recently I've been... preoccupied. Sorry to tell you, but I do have a life outside the browser window. I've updated a couple of my older posts (see 'Darwin' and 'OS warz'). I also changed the title back, as my reasons for altering it in the first place are now terribly irrelevant (if you don't know, don't ask. It was just something that happened back on the 20th of October that doesn't really matter anymore...). Don't worry though, I promise to end this trend, and your continued mental disturbence will resume once again.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

2004-11-24T09:39:00.000-05:00

Ok if you're odd enough to read my blog, chances are you've read it. I think we all have at one time or another. Anyway, last night (to my delight) I stumbled a website which claimed to be working on a movie. I was skeptical at first, but after about five minutes of googling around, I was convinced.
Although I'm still not very sure ti will be done perfectly, (how are they gonna get Zaphod's three arms and two heads to work...?) it might just make it. Although they seem to purposely hide too many pictures on the website, I did see one of all our favorite depressed cynical robot, Marvin. it didn't look too bad. Besides, I think they know that they'll have millions of angered fans to rekon with if they screw it up too much.
They did change the logo slightly (to me it looks like a barfing three-headed smiley face, insted of a hand) but it's not that bad at all. Let's just hope the keep this up.

It says it's suposed to come out on May 6th, 2005. I can't wait

// This calls for some Ice Cream!

Nintendo DS

2004-11-22T20:48:00.000-05:00

Ok I've seen waaay to many ads for this thing to not say something about it...
Ninteno used to be the best........ but now they suck. Their main console system, the gamecube, is quite literally pathetic compared to Sony's Playstation, or M$'s Xbox. Nintendo's only last real successful project on the market is the gameboy. Recently, Sony decided to attack that market as well. They are, if I am not mistaken, creating something called the playstation portable. I only saw a couple of the original designs, but it would seem to smash the Gameboy AD-SP in every way possible. A larger screen, wireless, touchscreen and everything else that the Gameboy's needed.

Now, Nintendo saw this. They knew that a company like Sonycould, if well managed, comletely eliminate the gameboy from the market. So, they made a new system. To me it looks liek a piece of trash. They were so desperate to make a new system, that they gave it a new screen. That's right, two seperate screens. How are you gonna develop games for that without overloading the thing's tiny processor? The laptop-ripoff design looks bulky and just awkward. Although I don't know much about it, and have never really seen one yet, I have a string feeling that it's not gonna work.

This is what happens when I'm bored...

2004-11-16T19:44:00.000-05:00

Jesse: And then he was attacked at the nuclear facility of Mcdonalds by the Ravenous Hordes of Demented Gophers who, in turn were really just one of Abraham Lincon's science experiments that had emerged out of the Cafeteria noodles after the creation of the Apocalyptic Bannanas.
Jesse: sry i'm bored
Mark Fusco: damn you, damn brocolli and damn the wright brothers.

FEDORA CORE 3 IS OUT!!!

2004-11-12T19:53:00.000-05:00

Fedora Core Release 3 is mow officialy out, code named 'Heidelberg' (FC1 was 'Yarrow', and FC2 was 'Tettnang'). It sports the brand new 2.6.9-1.667 kernel, Gnome 2.8, KDE 3.3, Firefox PR1, Thunderbird 0.8, GCC 3.4, Helix player 1.0.1.436 (Realplayer), SElinux (Security Enhanced linux- a project by the NSA to create a supremely secure linux kernel for government branches such as the NSA, FBI, CIA and army- for those who don't know), The Bluecurve style we've come to expect from RH, and a heck of a lot more. It's crammed to the top with new and useful packages, the full installation takes about 6.9GB worth of disk space!!!

They say a screenshot is worth a thousand words... and I happen to have a couple.

^Click to Enlarge^

Project Looking Glass

2004-11-05T19:01:00.000-05:00

OK I've been meaning to write something on PLG for a while, and just happpened to have some spare time, so yeah. Read.
Project Looking Glass is an attempt by all our favorite company Sun Microsystems (www.sun.com)to create a more usable, powerful, and just plain awesome window manager.
It's written mostly in Java (no suprises there...) and used OpenGL version 1.2 or greater. It's released under the GNU GPL, so there's no fus about copying or price issues. Luckily for me (me=Solaris n00b ^_^). they also are releasing it for Linux as well. The 'how-to' FAQ even tells how to install in under Fedora Core 2!!!
It allows for 3-D window management, full grphical acceleration, and a heck of lot more. I personaly believe it will also eventualy ship with Solaris 10 once that comes out. Little more of an incentive to stay away from Longhorn, (I've tried it... it sucks) and with ZFS and the stability of the genuine UNIX kernel, it looks like it's gonna be a success. Besides, believe it or not, Solaris 9 still ships with the ancient CDE (commen UNIX desktop enviroment) desktop system, which desperatly needs replacement
if you ask me, it looks awesome.

Source code, iloveyou & MyDoom

2004-10-27T18:36:00.000-05:00

Somehow (I won't tell you how...) I have recently aquired the source code of the iloveyou and MyDoom viruses.
Quite interesting, to say the least.

MyDoom is obviously the better one, it is written in C and is quite complex, bosting it's own libraries and quite a few modules.
iloveyou just takes advantage of Windoze' standard built-in Visual Basic interpritor.
That's right, iloveyou is written in Basic.

How sad does it get.

Another little irony I found in a couple of the sources was that the virus specifically avoids some keywords, such as UNIX, *BSD, linux, berkley, and other OpnSrc keywords.

// If you really want the source, just to analyze it and not to attack anyone with it, then ask me and I might just...
// ...not give it to you beacuse you're probably some wacked out script kiddie who wants to look cool.

Explosive Iraq

2004-10-25T18:20:00.000-05:00

Three hundred and fifty TONS of explosive looted in Iraq? Pardon us while we scratch our heads for a moment. 350 TONS?

So we guess the scenario went like this.

Guard: Hello

Thief: Hello, I was wondering... hey! Look over there! (Points at empty desert.)

Guard: Where? (Continues to stare at desert for an hour while trucks roll up and tote away explosives.)

And the quotes!

We do not know what happened to the explosives or when they were looted - Melissa Fleming said the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology.

Huh, we have some idea what's happened to the explosives, they've been exploding stuff with them. Check the papers Melissa!

Actually they've been missing for two weeks, but the International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei was hoping to give them time to find the explosives.

Yeah, you wouldn't want to give anyone fair warning or anything.

Some wonder whether the missing explosives are now being used in insurgent attacks against the forces of the U.S.-led coalition...

Nah, everyone's probably using them to celebrate their freedom and new found democracy with really big firecrackers.

// Yeah, if you haven't realised it already, I shamelessly copied this from Evil. But really, do you expect me to post everything by myself or something?!?

New laptop!!!

2004-10-20T19:31:00.000-05:00

I finally got my new laptop!
Instead of any strange little commentary, I'll just cut to the stats:

# General Features (Just the more importuned stuff):
# Tri-boot: FreeBSD 5.2.1, MandrakeLinux 10, M$ Windoze Longhorn build 4053 (this is only here so I can use the real DDLs and other sysfiles in Wine under Linux/BSD for gaming... I've only really booted it 3 times and proud of it :-D)
//Revision: Now runs tri of Gentoo 2005.0, FreeBSD 5.3.x and Fedora Core 4 devel
# Pentium III 1.0 GHz processor (This thing is awesome, twice the speed of my old 2.7 GHz celeron)
# 512 MB RAM (What more could you want?)
# 30 GB Hard Drive (Enough for at least 3 OSs... hehehe...)
# Removable DVD-ROM drive
# Removable Floppy disk drive (Like I'm ever gonna use that thing...)
# ATI MACH64 integrated video with 7 MB memory
# Sound Blaster compatible integrated audio w/built-in speakers
# 15.0" TFT LCD Display with 1024 x 768 resolution
# 84-key Keyboard with TouchPad
# Integrated Ethernet controller
# Integrated 56K modem (There has got to be some use for this...)
# Lithium-Ion battery pack
# RJ-45 standard Ethernet jack
# Two PCMCIA type II slots (Perfect for an Orinco Wireless card)
# PS/2 port (I can't stand the touchpad)
# 15-pin standard VGA connector (Dual Moniters!)
# Infrared port (Clie sync, coolness factor)
# USB port (for everything else)

The model is Compaq E500, just in case anyone cares.

This thing is awesome. It speeds faster than any computer I've ever used- even when it's running Windows! And you should see the thing in Gentoo!
So far this is the best computer I've ever had by far (except maybe for my good old Performa 450). So far the only downside I've found to it is it's miserable battery life- 3.5 hours. Ok it's not that bad, I just would have expected more. Then again, this is my first notebook, so I guess I shouldnt judge that yet.

Darwin

2004-10-19T17:50:00.000-05:00

I finally got Darwin up and running. I chose to load the OpenDarwin distribution, version 7.2.1.
To say the last it's an interesting OS. It incorperates the Mach 3.0 kernel into a BSD like filesystem, and uses the X.org window server.
The boot screen is pretty much what all BSD fans are used to, then it opens up the latest version of X11 window server, then the Window Maker window manager.
As you all must know by now, Darwin is based on BSD, using the Mach 3.0 kernel, however Darwin reminded me more of Linux.
Support is low, and the thousands of precompiled packages I've grown used to having access to under Linux is nonexistant (with a few exceptions) and however futile-looking it may be without the Aqua GUI Apple slapped ontop of it for OS X, I believe Darwin has a bright and promising future.
And besides, with the support of a company like Apple behind you, how can you fail?

// You can't not like Hexley either

FC3 BETA 3 IS OUT!!!

2004-10-17T19:47:00.000-05:00

I was casualy browsing on slashdot one day when I stumbled apon this.
Fedora Core 3 beta 3 is out! I've never really been a fan of betas (expesialy of an OS), however I also read that beta 3 will be the last testing version, and the full FC3 is scheduled for release on November 1st!
Fedora Cora 3 looks awesome. I loved FC2, and only my bizzare curious nature (and an explosive hard drive) drew me away from it.
With the latest kernels, SElinux, the new X.org, KDE 3.3, and all the extas we've come to expect from Red Hat, this is starting to look niiice.
I can't wait for November ...for more reasons than one!

TI-89

2004-10-15T15:35:00.000-05:00

Ok everyone I am now officialy obsessed with my TI-89 Titanium.
It can understand 68k assembly, TI-BASIC (an interprited variation of BASIC) and C (with TIGCC), has a 12 MHz processor (MC68000 arch- remember the old Ataris and Apples?), 188k RAM, 2.5Mb Flash ROM, and only costs about 100$!
Moreso, it can be overclocked to around 17-20MHz!

If your half the nerd of me, the first thing you think is : "Hey 2.5mb! That's more than enough to store a new kernel!"
Well here your out of luck, Linux hasn't been ported to it...
Yet.
I've been thinking about hacking one of the uClinux kernels made for Atari/Apple 68020 into a 68000. Hey, it's not that much of a difference; [/famous last words] and it can't be that hard... [/famous last words]

// Another interesting mod for the TI I found was the IR link- My dream of beaming from a calculator has come true :-)

SkyOS...?

2004-10-08T19:21:00.000-05:00

Ok I was browsing Google for a BeOS LiveCD (that's right... I've gone from Linux to BSD to UNIX to Darwin and now BeOS & AIX... I really have issues don't I...) and found something... interesting.
SkyOS.
Not only is SkyOS quite stable and strong on the inside, but the GUI is one of the best I've seen since Aqua! Just look at the screenshots!
Apperently, Sky was founded in 1997 buy one man as a hobbiest OS, but then this one guy just didn't quit. Same dude developed it into what it is today. One heck of a hobby, if you ask me. I mean, this thing is from scratch, it isn't based on BSD, Linux, AIX, BeOS or anything of that sort.
Really people, this looks big.
My biggest suprise, however, was that I hadn't heard of Sky before now. It looks like one of the best OS since Linux, yet it has almost not publicity. I guess this is just my little attempt to give it some of the publicity I believe it well deserves.
Anyone who has any information concerning some ISOs (I couldn't find them) please tell me ASAP.

// Note: Sky is NOT a member of the *NIX family.
// And don't go complaining that I compared it to BeOS, AIX or UNIX. My blog, My rules. Get used to it.

DELL!!!

2004-10-08T18:23:00.000-05:00

Yup, you guessed it. Dell screwed up. Again.

"Dell Inc. is recalling about 2.9 million AC adapters nationwide_ 4.4 million worldwide_ used with notebook personal computers because they can overheat and cause a fire and electrical shock hazard, the company and the Consumer Product Safety Commission said Friday."

Now they don't just blow up your data, they blow up you too! How Pleasent!

// Check out the full article here.

Red Hat Picks Up Pieces of Netscape

2004-10-05T20:53:00.000-05:00

Well what do you know; two of my favorite companies just seem to have merged.
Red Hat decided to buy back Netscape Communications' Security Solutions unit from AOL for about 20 million.
Red Hat has made a number of bold moves recently, (the end of Red Hat Linux 9, the merger with the Fedora Project, etc.) and this is just one of them. the company is changing, and these deals seem to be pushing it on it's way. I believe this purchase was meant to aid their work on the upcoming Red Hat Enterprise AS 4, which just might turn many people back to RH. Any way you look at it, this was a good move for RH.
[Click here for the full story]

// Also, RH has announced the release of Fedora Core 3 beta 2, and RH Enterprise 4 beta 1!

MS-IE

2004-10-03T17:44:00.000-05:00

Ok recently I was in the mood to do another Anti-M$ post. I decided to work my topic around IE's problems wth compatibility, pop-ups, security, and just plain patheticness when compared to Mozilla's Firefox.
The I found this.

For once, I don't think I could have said it better. Great article; read it if you still use Internet Explorer (if you're not sure chances are you do) or if you just have have some spare time.

"Recently read that even Bill Gates own home systems had been squelched by various worms/spy-ware/etc, if he can't secure his OS, why would you think anyone else could do it?"

// ^Even if you're not a fan of open source, or just don't like Mozilla, you must admit they have some pretty slick icons ;-)

Farscape's back....

2004-10-02T17:33:00.000-05:00

If you're first responce to the title is "NOO PLEASE NOOOOOOOOOO!!!" then believe me you're not alone. For some dumb reason, Scifi brought back Farscape a new miniseries they dubbed "The Peacekeeper Wars". For goodness sake, John Criton's died at least four times by now, can't he just stay dead this time?!?

On a lighter note, scifi's also adopted Gene Roddenbery's Andromada. Even though the newer episodes kinda suck (Tyr rocked), this could be good news because they might get a bigger budget and might get a little better. Fortunantly, they're also replaying all the classic episodes from the beggining every tuesday night from 7-11.

// Ok I'm willing to give it this; at least farscape's not as bad as Stargate...

Vioxx canned

2004-09-30T16:51:00.000-05:00

Remember how the docs used to have me taking Vioxx for my foot pain before the surgury? Remember that 3 foot long list of side effects? Well guess what; now it's all gone.
Recently, Merck (the maker of Vioxx) has withdrawn it from the market; as it has been deemed to to dangerous and unsafe for use by perscription or otherwise by the govenment. Apperently they discovered that Vioxx can increase your chances for a heart attack or stroke by 70%. This comes as no suprise to me; death was on the list of possible side effects.

This is just the kinda thing that would happen to me; first my feet give out, then my drugs go deadly.
What a pleasent year it's been indeed!

// ^ Remember these little suckers? ^

EvilEntity Linux

2004-09-28T21:32:00.000-05:00

I just thought this was entertaining enough to deserve it's own post. EvilEntity is kinda like Gentoo, a rouge distro, just on a lesser scale.
here's their Mission Statement:

"Many say "MS Windows has won and the Linux Desktop is dead!".
Now the Linux Desktop is UNDEAD and it has risen from its crypt in search of virgin blood. Mortal operating systems will cower before the beast that has been unleashed upon them.
Dismiss the weak and inferior, embrace the darkness and possess your box with EvilEntity!

Linux makes computers fun again. It brings back the control, freedom and enjoyment of the early years of computers, before teams of sales reps and mindless consumer drones controlled the industry. Linux puts computers back in the hands of the geeks. As Linux matures, many try to devolve it into that which we despise.
EvilEntity will not bend to the will of the Win-Idiots and their quest for bloated operating systems, un-intuitive environments and boring corporate desktops.

Undead will work tirelessly to provide the best OS we can.
Intuitive, unparalleled performance, filled with features, complete multimedia expirence, easy to install and use and the most fun the dark lord and his minions conceive.

Net profits from the sale of EvilEntity are intended to be used for socially conscious endeavors."

// EvilEntity linux is actually quite good too (2.6x kernel, Enlghtenment 16.7, the xgn package system, etc.) and is well worth a try.

This is REALLY cool...

2004-09-27T13:10:00.000-05:00

Hello All!
Have you ever looked at MacOS X and wished you could use it on your i386? OF COURSE YOU HAVE!!!
...AND NOW YOU CAN!!!
Someone on the OpenDarwin hackers support group found this project called PearPC (hahaha corny name hahahaha) that basically emulates the PPC architecture on any other arch. I think the description says it all:
"PearPC is an architecture-independent PowerPC platform emulator capable of running most PowerPC operating systems."

Here's the description; well, just read it...

Features

* License: GPL
* Programming language: C++, C and (on x86 platforms) assembler
* Supported host platforms: POSIX-X11 (Linux, ...), Win32

The following operating systems were tested and run (to some extent) in PearPC (ie. as clients):

* Mandrake Linux 9.1 for PPC installer: Runs well
* Mandrake Linux 9.1 for PPC after installation: Hard to boot. Runs very well afterwards.
* Darwin for PPC: Runs well
* Mac OS X 10.3: Runs well with some caveats
* OpenBSD for PPC: Crashes while booting (accesses PCI in an unsupported way)
* NetBSD for PPC: Crashes while booting
* AIX for PPC: Some people ask about that. See FAQ.

PearPC emulates the following hardware:

* CPU GENERIC: Sort of G3, no altivec yet. A portable (but unported :-) CPU. Using this CPU, the client will run about 500 times slower than the host. It features a modest command-line debugger.
* CPU JITC-X86: Sort of G3, no altivec yet. A very fast CPU for x86 systems that translates PowerPC instructions into x86 instructions on-demand. By caching these translations, a lot of speed is gained. Using this CPU, the client will run about 15 times slower than the host. Only works on x86 hosts.
* PCI-Brige: A barebone PCI-Bridge, enough to work with.
* IDE-Controller: Sort of CMD646 with bus-mastering support. You can attach IDE-harddisk(s) and/or IDE-CDROM(s) by specifying files (or devices for UN*X) from your host machine.
* PIC: A programmable interrupt controller (kind of Heathrow).
* VIA-Cuda: With attached Mouse and Keyboard.
* Network Controller: Emulates a 3COM 3C90x or RealTek 8139 via hosts that support an ethernet tunnel.
* NVRAM: Capable of storing 8KiB non-volatile memory.
* USB: A placebo USB-hub. Sufficient to make the client think that it has USB support.
* PROM: Sort of OpenFirmware. It's ugly and contains a lot of hacks but it allows to boot Yaboot and BootX from HFS/HFS+ partitions.

// You can access PearPC here.

I'm Baaaaaaacckk!!!!!!!!

2004-09-26T17:57:00.000-05:00

That's right; I live once again...
Not only has my retarded ear infection cleared up, but my foot's recovered enough since the surgury that I can kinda walk on it, and my http/telnet server is back up!
I'm having a very good day today!

You can access my web server here, my ftp server here, or telnet in here.

// Sometimes the server goes down... you complain you die...
// One more thing; I know giving out your static IP to the general public is a bad idea, but believe me if you even try anything 'interesting', you can just kiss all your data goodbye...

The Awesome Blog

Easily download Youtube videos to your iPod with Tooble

Mooninites invade Boston!

Emergency Parking Only

New Blog

Google co-creates Myspace competitor

Alex's Gophers

Google releases another app refresh::

Illegal Wiretapping

Google Blogger Widget

First Contact?

One More thing..

The AutoFace™

You know what?

The PS3

[title]

marks retarded dream of d00m from hell that is _VERY_ special

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

The Year in Review: A history (and maybe farewell) to my blog.

THIS IS ANOTHER POST!!!!@#$@GVWFRFRAK

THIS IS A POST~!!@#$%^&*I[H(yay)

My Life: One Year Later {AKA M$ One Year Later}

The H2G2 Movie

Serenity

siblings...

Demented man in the doctor's office

Software Patents...

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Yet ANOTHER bit of the Bastard

Picture of the Day

what is

Exerpts from a cat's diary

not good...

And now a message from your leader...

That is all.

FC jumping back on board

Stuff

back again

here we go again....

closer... closeerrr.....

Another bit of the Bastard

it is... inevitable...

Don't Panic!

Gentoo

New Quote of the Week:

Mozilla Firefox

And now for something Different!

Mandy & Connie are kinda... merging

I show up on Google now!!!

Linux on the Clie

My Family in a Nutshell...

*Awesome* mini-board

Toasters.

It's been 1/2 a year now...

Random tests and other junk

Most likely...

w0w...

The BOFH

Gmail...?

Perl 6

OS Wars II

There is no Title.

[post title]

(yet another) Good day

Battlestar

FOOZLEBUMPS!!!

New Post

New phrase of the Month:

My take on the The Lord of the Rings

OK people, I really need your help on this one...

Stuff.

Just a little quote...

That was interesting...

MyWorld January issue #2

Today, in the OpnSrc/GPL community that is my brain.....

Goin' down fer a while...

bad week.

better now

Recalibration...

VERY bad week

Awesome mini-board