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Ever notice this phenomenon:
Friday mornings usually, there will be a clear passing lane on the left side, and yet there will be a line of around 10 cars driving 50 mph in the right lane??
I call this phenomenon : Hung Over
Originally Added 7/11/2003 9:22:54 AM (I still have that database and website code... I can import the database soon for browsing)
Another gem, posted July 7th, 2004. It was about the dude at the bank being way too friendly and always wanting to talk to me. This was Bank of America (or Fleet, at the time) in Wayne, PA.
"He then has to shake your hand on the way out, saying "Thanks for stopping in!" Like, I'm gonna keep the check in my pocket and never deposit it."
God this is brilliant:
Recursion
I recurse like a sailor
Added 12/29/2004 5:18:32 PM |
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How many times do you go to watch a video on a site that's not porn and it asks you for your date of birth? There's plenty of videos out there that do that... video games are the ones that annoy me the most. Especially since the sites that I watch videos on, I am registered for and my date of birth is stored with my profile. Sometimes it's just a 3 box combo of month, day and year where you have to type, other times it's 3 drop down boxes where what is automatically selected is January 1, 2004. Other times it's 3 drop downs for month day and year but no default date is selected. On GameTrailers.com, these are the least annoying. They don't have verification code built in so you can just press "OK" and it'll let you watch the video without selecting anything. On the ones with the 3 drop downs where January 1 2004 is automatically selected, I just drop the year down to 1980 or earlier, even though 1990 will suffice now (jeez, people born in 1980 are already 28). The only ones that get my real date of birth are the text box variations where it's easy to type. Seriously, the drop downs gotta go.
These are so dumb and annoying. But I guess you gotta be responsible. Annoyingly responsible to those who could watch R rated movies for 12 years now. To those who can buy anything where an age restriction is in place. To those of us who could almost run for president of the USA (35 is the minimum if I recall correctly). The only thing I can't buy, age-wise, is a house in my parents' community because you have to be 55 or older.
But I guess you gotta be responsible. You definitely want to make it a good warning that you should be of X years (13 for PG-13, 17 for R, etc) before you watch the movie, play the game, drink the beer, etc. But of those, I think it's only actually illegal to drink if you're not old enough. Still, those sites should save your birthday as a cookie or something so you don't have to enter it 120 times. That can't be used to track anything that they wouldn't already know or could even get any information from... how many people were born on March 23, 1979? Well, I guess, how many people were born on March 23, 1979 in the IP range that I use? Probably far less. But still. Hold onto my date of birth or make it so if I just press "OK" I get to watch it anyway :) I like that bug. |
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This new server is about 4 times more powerful than my previous server, but for the same price. I will now definitely be putting lots of new stuff up on here to get the full use out of it. I have my subversion server running off of it, and again, an open invitation to anyone who wants all the free awesome code they can handle :P
Be wary of hosting companies installing MySQL for you. They might install the latest version of it (5.x), but in my.cnf specify that it should use the old password hashing method, the insecure one used before MySQL 4.1. This old method only generates a hash 16 bytes long, whereas the new one is 41 bytes (with a leading *). I did notice it but didn't think anything of it until I tried to login to my website here to post a new item. I had just finished getting all of my passwords for my websites input too. This required looking in the config file that I read to connect to the database to get the current password out, then running "grant all privileges on database.* to 'user'@'localhost' identified by 'password'" for each one. Ridiculous. I think I got them all right on the second go, I didn't feel like reading in the config files again. This site works, and so does Jim and Kate's site (which is awful and is long overdue for an upgrade). Vacre Tei works too. Stringed.org might work but not all of the name servers are pointed correctly yet, so I can't see it. It might work for you, it worked at the office.
Also, if you get "Can't connect to MySQL" and it's running, chances are it isn't allowing networking. I just commented out those two lines (old-passwords and skip-networking) and if I got all the passwords right, everything should work fine. Overall, the transition from the old server went without a hitch, but was a pain in the ass. Here's the breakdown:
- Zip up the websites on May 24 and promise not to upload any new files because then they'd also have to be pushed over.
- Zip up the databases and promise not to make any new posts or anything.
- Zip up tomcat since I don't want to have to reconfigure it
- Download them (the size of jasontconnell.com gzipped up is currently over 600 MB)
- Upload everything to the new server.
- Extract everything where it belongs.
- Update the MySQL passwords
- Set JAVA_HOME
- Hope it works
There were some other steps in there and perhaps at a later date I will be willing to tell them, but that's the gist of it. Enjoy! |
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If you want access, let me know, I'll create you an account and let you access all the code on all of my websites! There's lots of neat stuff up there.
Subversion is a code versioning system that is heavily used by developers on teams who want to keep their source code in a single place, let people edit or view it, and keep versions of it. Branches are often made when projects are going to be upgraded from, for example, 1.0 to 2.0. The 1.0 branch is kept so that any bugs that come up for 1.0 users can be fixed without them having to upgrade to 2.0. Patching is also very easy with a good versioning system. There are many reasons to use them, and hardly any not to.
But why am I using one? Frankly because I had to set up a Subversion server at work (svn for short), so I knew somewhat how to do it. Also, because it's a good backup system. Like, hmm, this code used to work, I wonder what I did. Then I can just look back at the history of a file and see what changed, and revert back to what worked. Also, for backup, if I ever want to work on it anywhere, I can, because it's on my server that's on the internet 24/7 with the same IP address. Also if something were to happen to my computer and I haven't backed up recently, I'm screwed.
I've set up SVN about 5 times now, so I'm pretty much an expert. One thing that I am not an expert at is the authz file. The other stuff is simple though. Here's a rundown:
yum install subversion (or apt-get install subversion or emerge subversion) (or download it and run the exe or dmg on Windows or Mac)
svnadmin create /var/data/svndata
edit the configuration
vi /var/data/svndata/conf/svnserve.conf
edit the passwd file (add your user)
echo "jason = jason123" > /var/data/svndata/conf/passwd
(I actually haven't tested that exact syntax... it may put it on the same line as a commented line, which wouldn't work)
svnserve -d -r /var/data/svndata
This will create the repository and start the server daemon.
Then you can test it out.
svn mkdir svn://localhost/dev
It might ask you for a username and password then hopefully spit out the message
Committed Revision 1.
Then you can use your favorite code editor plugin for svn and start sharing! Simple as that. |
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You can get Short Circuit for $4.99?!? That's AWESOME! Of course, knowing my luck in movies, it'll be on all next month on HBO or something.
Also, Amazon might finally not lose lots of money on my Amazon Prime account. I just ordered tons of stuff... glasses for the kitchen since they all seemed to have disappeared recently... movies... silverware since most of them have also disappeared... napkin holder. It said it's all shipping in one package. ?? Yeah, we'll see. One shipment from one warehouse, definitely, but one package would be hard to believe.
I watched the debate in Philadelphia tonight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I thought I liked Obama better even though almost everyone who they interviewed after the debate said Clinton did better. They had a focus group of college students, and talked to them after the debate, and they said Hillary did better. I would have to disagree that she did better. But I can't say any of them did bad. I just felt like Barack was more comfortable up there, actually making eye contact with the person he was talking with. Debates are funny though. The first person who talks loses. If it's a debate between two people of the same party, you'll hear "Well, I agree with most of the points blah makes, but here's where we can approve on that." Basically, whoever gets in the last word. They'll never 100% agree. You'll never hear Obama say "Wow, I think Hillary has a great way to fix the blah problem in this country and I have nothing to add." You'll never hear short answers. You'll never hear an answer directly related to the question asked. I just laugh. I'm voting for Nader anyway... |
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My brothers and I have been working on the new patio for my house. Yesterday we laid the brick. I have video of the process. Contrary to the video, I wasn't standing around the whole time :P I actually moved about 350 bricks from the sidewalk to the patio, at about 25 bricks per barrel load, probably 50 pounds a pop. Here's the Kodie head tilt video:
My living room's a mess, and I'm not cleaning it until later today since we're not done for the weekend yet.
And here's the patio video so far. Next we'll be working on the lawn, putting in trees and a rock garden, and getting rid of all the grass and replacing it with mulch or rock or something.
I have to say, thank you to my brothers, Pat, Bean, and Scott, for their help / doing it all :)
I also have to say, I am glad that Google is around to upload my videos to for free and embed them in my website. And to Apple for iMovie '08, and Sony for the 30 GB HDD on my camera, and USB hookup, so I can record crap without worrying about tape and digitizing. Thanks. |
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Oh internets, how I hate thee.
Some days I would just be better off without it. With all the blatant lies and corruption going on, I would love to just stay away. I should. Case in point, OOXML standardization in ISO. Just google "OOXML ISO". Also, I can't stand whiny HD-DVD fans complaining about Blu-ray winning the HD format war. More on that later. Some sites I hate include ZDNet... that's about it.
However, there's some oh so goodness to it. Like xkcd. I'm not gonna link or mention my favorite sites, but some are Amazon, Slashdot, Wikipedia, and iTunes science podcast directory.
Ok, onto my ZDNet-hate-HD-DVD-Blu-ray-hate rant. So, this dude on ZDNet works at Microsoft and posts to that site. Is complaining about Blu-ray today, or whenever, that "the more expensive format won". But then he goes on to call blu-ray "more future proof". I've caught this dude on so many contradictions like this, it just makes me angry. Of course, he never responds to my posts, and he keeps making asinine statements and I keep responding and he keeps ignoring, it's just a frustrating mess. Of course, "more future proof" means less expensive in the long run. It just points to the quality of worker they have there working at Microsoft.
Of course, the non-Microsoft world has its shining stars too. Like the writers of PHP. It's ridiculous. For instance, today I wanted to find the first paragraph in an HTML string, and I'm fairly familiar with regular expressions, so I checked the syntax on how to match a string to a regex and get the matches (groups in any other regular expression library terminology) out of it. This is easy: /<p>(.*?)</p>/g. But not in PHP.
$matches = array();
preg_match_all("/<p>(.*?)</p>/", $htmlString, $matches);
OK, looks easy. $matches will then have an array of matches. But that's where it gets tricky. The fourth parameter is optional, and it's called "flags". Read the "flags" part here.
PREG_PATTERN_ORDER - Orders results so that $matches[0] is an array of full pattern matches, $matches[1] is an array of strings matched by the first parenthesized subpattern, and so on.
PREG_SET_ORDER - Orders results so that $matches[0] is an array of first set of matches, $matches[1] is an array of second set of matches, and so on.
PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE - If this flag is passed, for every occurring match the appendant string offset will also be returned. Note that this changes the value of matches in an array where every element is an array consisting of the matched string at offset 0 and its string offset into subject at offset 1.
Yes, the "matches" array will be different for every flag. In Java, this looks (half-hearted with no syntax check) like this:
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("/<p>(.*?)</p>/");
Matches matches = p.match(htmlString);
for (Match m : matches){
m.group(1); // always contains the first set of parentheses in the regular expression.
}
I'm tired so I have to finish writing another time. Tune in for part two soon! |
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Sometimes I'll add an item to my amazon.com cart, only to end up leaving it there for months.
When I added that MicroSD card for my phone, it was like $30. Buy!
Now, Jaws on the other hand... Damnit, I missed the $9.99 price.
Another item, I think it was Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, just reached below $6 earlier this morning. Might have to hop on that one. |
Related Pictures |
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Did you take Acid3 with your browser?
My FireFox 3 beta 3 scores 61 out of 100. The best reported was Opera 9.5 at 65. The cofounder of Opera was a designer of CSS or something. Acid3 was more of a Javascript + CSS test, whereas Acid2 was strictly CSS. FireFox 3 beta 3 passes that easily.
Microsoft's IE6 doesn't fare well. I think it got 7 out of 100. IE7 is probably way better? Nope. 12. Linux based browsers like Konquerer scored in the mid 50s.
I read a comment somewhere, probably Slashdot, that said these tests aren't to see if it's a good browser, but more to push the browser makers so that developers can use the things that they test for and take for granted that a wide variety of users will be able to support them. That should make a lot of developers happy. Except for Microsoft! They just got done making sure their latest version of IE, 8, which is in beta, passes the Acid2 test. That's where free software owns. Release cycles based on business fiscal schedules are no good for anyone. |
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I like rap and stuff with good beats that can make you dance. My next few songs will be like that. My favorite thing about guitar is its percussion. Particularly about my Gretsch going through the Blues Deluxe and my microphone to my computer etc. I love the sound of it. Before I start recording, I usually sit there for a good hour with my eyes closed just listening to the output of the microphone through my headphones. It just sounds so f#%@#$ing good. Compared to my old way of recording, you hardly got any percussive variations no matter how much you tried. Now, just hammer on that B and roll a bass line in E, and it just sounds incredible. No more old way for me!
Also a word on guitar. Again. I noticed that when someone who doesn't play guitar listens to my song from last week (here), they usually judge it based on my soloing ability. Whereas when I listen to it (over and over for hours), I listen to it for the rhythm guitar. Just a thing I noticed when my coworker, the smercenary, and I were on our way back to the office after a client meeting in Exton, and we had to take a back way because it was around 5pm and the Schuylkill Express was jam packed. I decided to put on Jimi Hendrix' "BBC Sessions", a two disk album, which got us through, and "Driving South" made me easily do 90. I didn't know the area that he was taking me, and we were coming up on a turn and he almost missed telling me to take it, and he said "I almost missed the turn there because Jimi's guitar playing is so f%@$ing good." It was just rhythm playing :P Scott's a musician too. But I typically love Jimi's rhythm playing too.
When I practice, lately, I'm practicing my rhythm, so my soloing skill has been declining. I don't wonder if it's because I'm getting better at rhythm that I tend to favorite it and practice it more, getting even better in the process. It's my favorite whether I suck at it or not.
In totally unrelated, totally geeky news, I saw an article about a moon on slashdot that was tagged with the most hilarious tag ever: thatsnomoonitsagasstation. Be sure to read the article. |
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| I had beta 2 installed for a while, and scrolling certain websites was a bit slow. Today the update was released, and it's a whole new browser. It looks a lot different, it's fast, and the last thing I have to check is if it stops working after a while like beta 2 did. But I mean, a while as in a few days. Check out the release notes here. |
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Me: i'm gonna have to ditch my yahoo im account
Me: you have to get me on AIM or google talk
Jared (on AIM): hello
Me: for some reason i thought you only had a yahoo account
Jared: nope, i have gmail, yahoo, aim
Me: i have no one else on my friend's list in yahoo :P
Jared: hahaha
Jared: you're my only yahoo account too!!
Me: good, i can get rid of that account
Me: hahaahah
Me: man, we shoulda just said something years ago |
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Let's see. First thing is my new putter came. I'm golfing with it tomorrow. Next, I ordered a bunch of CDs from Amazon (namely some Cracker that I didn't own yet, Nirvana that I once owned about 13 years ago, and Busta Rhymes, which I've never owned), and an electric shaver. It's the Braun 360 Complete with the self cleaning thing. I'm lazy and don't like wet shaving anymore.
Another thing is I ordered an iPod touch! 16 GB. So I'll be able to have all of my music on there still, plus room for about 7GB more, and more battery power, which is the big thing for me. I've wanted a new iPod for a while, and luckily I waited long enough for this beauty. Today, I was the only one in our room at work after 2:30, and I wanted to blast Beastie Boys for the remainder of the day. I went to plug in my iPod to the speakers, and after about 3 minutes of play, it died. I'm pretty sure there's no battery capacity left. I tried to borrow a coworker's USB adapter but it wouldn't charge. I think this model only charges through Firewire, not USB. Another HUGE thing about the new iPod is the interface. Mine shows just a list of Artists or whatever I select, and I can only shuffle all of the songs. Today I wanted to shuffle all the Beastie Boys songs I have, and I couldn't. I'm not sure if I can do that on the new one, but I know you can shuffle songs in an album, so I'm just hoping you can with an artist.
One last big thing. On Wednesday, my employer offered me a full time position as a Sr. Web Developer (really, a Sr. Developer who does a bit of web development and a lot of other development, like our code generator, multithreaded apps, database stuff, etc). I was contracting there for about 10 months over the past year. It's a job I really like, so I'm thrilled. |
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I am a big fan of Amazon.com. I will frequently buy movies or general life needs, like milk, on there. So, I got an email from them saying they've got this new awesome site up called "Askville". I'm like whatever... so I visit it, and there's all these people asking questions and other people answering them. It uses a reward system, kinda like my Vacre Tei site. You get these things called "Quest Coins" whenever you do stuff, like log in, answer a question, ask a question, rate an answer, and other stuff. However, the site that you can use "Quest Coins" on is not up yet. It's called "Questville". Vacre Tei used gold, and you create works of art and sell them...
One site that I saw absolutely no purpose for is twitter.com. It's like, you just say something, and a million people say something too, so whatever you say is immediately drowned out by the other million people saying something. I have no need for that since I find that the most annoyed I get is when I finally have something to say in a conversation, but everyone talks more than me and always get in their 10 "says" before I get in my one. Next thing I know we're 3 topics away in conversation from what I wanted to comment on when there's finally an opening for me to say something. So Twitter is pretty much garbage to me.
I'm still coming up with new technology that I will make a new website with. Unfortunately, that's all I can say at the moment on that.
I'm starting to use Google Notebook. It's neat. Although I think Basecamp or writeboard might more useful, but I'm pretty much committed to Google at this point. The one thing I hate about the web is that everything, before Google, that was useful at all, was all on different sites, with different logins, different URLs, and of course, different user experiences. The last one has come up in work quite a bit, because we're committed to bringing the best user experiences to our clients. But, with different companies, different user experiences are unavoidable, simply because everyone thinks differently. But, after a long while and many successes, there starts to be de facto standards. You have the same thing in first person shooters with movement being WASD and shooting being left click, jump usually being space, etc. You wouldn't want to be the jackass FPS maker that moves that crap around. Although, I was an "arrows" guy at the beginning of my FPS gaming life.
Notebook is neat though because of all the Javascript goodness going on. Also, it's easy to just type up a few notes, save it, and go on with your bad self. There's a plugin for Firefox, so you can have it a click away at the bottom of the browser, open it up, and type in a quick note. Another thing with the plugin is you can highlight some text on any website and click "Add to Google Notebook". I haven't tried this yet, but I'm sure as I use it more I'll find a use for it. The only thing I used it for was to remind myself of stuff that I needed to do or get for the Phillies game tomorrow. I haven't forgotten anything yet :) I'm sure it'll replace my "software ideas" in Google Docs! See, I'm totally "Googlized". No one else has tons of great apps accessible with one sign on.
That's about it. I'm largely difficult to please / impress when it comes to websites / anything / everything. It's not about the technology either, it's about how useful and easy to use it is. |
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It's actually five days with a slight lapse (one smoke) three days ago...
Part of the trick to quitting smoking is that you need to disassociate stuff that you used to smoke a lot while doing. For me it's most things besides going to church or sleeping. Disassociation takes a lot of doing everything that you smoked during, doing it more often and longer than you did when you smoked, and doing it without smoking. The first of the disassociation process for me was video games.
This weekend Beaner and I played the Wii pretty much all weekend. It was indeed another "Wiikend". Tanks on Wii Play is awesome. We pretty much played three games on Wii Play the whole time, which were Tanks, Shooting Gallery, and the one where you have to find Miis. I'm not sure what it's called. Bean made a Mii, too, which looks a lot like him.
Besides the Wii, I played a lot of STALKER, Rainbow Six Vegas, Company of Heroes, and Sid Meier's Railroads! The latter game was played the most because I bumped up the difficulty from where I'm used to playing, and I bumped up the graphics to 1280x1024 with anti-aliasing on. It looked f@%#@$ing beautiful. It's a slow paced game where smoking would be easiest. You're not always doing something with the keyboard and mouse. You'll set up a route and wait until you're able to make enough money off of it to set up more routes. It's a good financial strategy game. Lots of time to sit back and smoke, which is what made it all the more worthwhile to play it a lot.
Did I mention that my new computer is a goddamn beast?! I think it actually runs cooler than my liquid cooled PC. And I'm telling you, Company of Heroes never looked so good. I have it maxed, but the thing that makes the biggest difference is having the effects maxed. So when my rifle guys are shooting their Browning Automatic Rifles, they kick up dust next to the German soldiers they are shooting at. Or when I drop a howitzer artillery strike on an enemy base, the dirt, concrete, and dudes that it hits all go flying. And I'm so damn good. Zatko and I played a multiplayer game at about 12:30 am Sunday on Seine River Docks. It was him, me and a hard computer vs. an expert, a hard, and a normal computer. Zatko was backed into his corner sucking his thumb, while I was trying to make forward progress the whole time. :) It was a brutal match, but I finally broke through the computer's defenses across from me, and eventually made my way through to the other computers. All without smoking. The only bad thing about online multiplayer is that you can't tell which computer is which. Meaning, I would love to know if I had at least the hard computer across from me. Zatko and I were split with the hard computer between us, and the hard computer wasn't doing anything. So he had a good opponent across from him. I know the CPU player across from me was getting help from someone, so it's not like I couldn't take out a medium. The expert was definitely helping. Anyway, after an hour and twelve minutes, the match was over and we emerged victorious.
Rainbow Six Vegas is a fun game, and it also looks terrific. I had started it on the old computer, but decided that I wanted to go through it from the beginning when I got the new computer up. Well worth it. The combat in it is fun. First person, or even third person, shooters haven't really innovated in terms of combat. I can name a handful... FEAR, Max Payne (1 & 2), Brothers in Arms, and Rainbow Six Vegas.
In FEAR, it was just incredible. I have to install that again. Running up to a dude in slow motion and bashing him across the face with your gun could never be equaled in any game. Or throwing a proximity mine then switching to slo-mo and watching it jump up and explode at eye level with enemy. In Max Payne, again with slow motion, diving and watching all the bullets fly was great. Max Payne 2 introduced a more interactive environment with physics, which became apparent from the start when you shot a dude into a tray full of medical supplies in the hospital and watched it all fly all over the place in slow motion. Brothers in Arms had a less interactive environment than both of those games, and no slow motion, but still it was very innovative. You couldn't kill a guy unless you suppressed and flanked. You could sometimes score a lucky shot, but you had to use the situational awareness (pause and view from above the battlefield) to find the best place to suppress from and the quickest path to flank. Each map was like a puzzle. The third one in that series is sure to be a blast, with a more interactive environment (built on Unreal Engine 3, with destroyable buildings and the like).
I just noticed I'm missing some movies. Sometimes my movies will make their way downstairs. I like to watch them on my MacBook Pro, so the best ones are usually in my bedroom. But sometimes my brothers will take them downstairs where they'll pile up until I collect them. Tonight I collected about 30 of them and brought them back upstairs. That's like half of my collection. But I know that I'm missing some, like Minority Report. I should really keep a better catalog... but once I buy a house, it'll be easier to keep track, since I also have some movies in Jeff's room, like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I'll collect them tomorrow. I'll probably end up buying Delicious Library... if there's a way to export it to some format that can be put onto a website easily. That would be a great use of a webservice... send an image with a barcode and get back the details of whatever it is you scanned. Or just a website with an exportable format where you upload images of the barcode (or ISBN for books) and it adds it to your library. The new applications will not be run on my computer, which is what Google has figured out. There's no need for anything but computational intensive applications, or just stuff that you can't do on the web, to be running on my computer. Figure it out, already, stupid internet. I'm out. |
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I will be guest contributing on PlexNex.com (the Complexion Connexion). To start, I put up the post I made yesterday about my haircut. Look for more exclusive posts (which I'll probably link to from here) in the coming weeks and months. Also, the site has two more guest contributors so far, so be sure to read their posts as well. Ben from SolidOffice.org, and Solveig from OpenOffice.blogs.com and GetOpenOffice.org. As you can see here, we demand attention. Now attend to us. Sam is the Senior Editor and will be posting stuff that I and others find interesting, which is why I visited the site in the first place. I'm sure it'll start picking up steam.
Your safest bet would be to just visit it every day and send an email to all of your friends and relatives to tell them where you are going, in case you get lost.
Sam wants to make the site a very highly visited site. Imagine that... something I write might be read by (hmm, zero * infinity is still zero... we'll call it a hundred) a hundred times more people than read my site. That's exciting.
Some topics I plan on covering are baseball, software patents (my new passion), stories where you don't have to know my whole history (like yesterday's), and whatever else happens to pop up in my mind.
Don't worry, there'll still be stuff on this site. Like, all the stuff that I don't want lots of different people seeing. You know, the shit posts. It'll be a good time. Just as long as you visit plexnex.com 8x daily, I don't care what my site stats look like :) |
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Or, at least it should. It will reveal a serious flaw in international standards if that thing succeeds. The basis for my argument is that everyone who opposes it are smart people with no other reason to do so other than the specification is an atrocity. I've literally spent the whole night reading objections to it (simply because advocates for it are few and far between, and also sound like complete morons to me). Here are some links.
Groklaw (which I'm reading more and more every day, written by someone who claims no knowledge of the technical side of the debate, and who seems to side only with the law [not a particular company... a non-biased view])
Rob Weir (an IBM guy who just seems really smart to me)
Miguel de Icaza (who makes no argument at all for OOXML based on how ridiculous the whole thing is)
John Carroll (a Microsoftie who is just blowing his employer... err... his employer's horn.)
This is where it gets interesting. Carroll, in a "blog" post , ignoring all the technical diarrhea that is the OOXML spec (ECMA 367), posts a link to an article by Miguel de Icaza (an open source guy working for Novell which recently inked a deal with Microsoft), about why the OOXML spec should become a standard. Carroll thinks he'll win over MS-haters / Open Source (OSS) advocates because he's posting an OSS person's view on the subject which happens to coincide with his view. So, I start commenting on that post about logical inconsistencies inside of that document, as well as technical concerns I have about OOXML in general, to discredit anything anybody has to say in support of OOXML. On a quest that began after I started posting, I continued reading (I started earlier in work, but had to go home) a document on Groklaw.net that contained all of the objections to OOXML becoming an ISO standard.
When I finished that document, I still needed more ammo. I searched the web, as I had promised to do in a comment on Carroll's post, for pro-OOXML arguments. I couldn't find any on a technical basis besides that it supports old .doc formats all the way back to Word 5 (for which a simple converter could be written to upgrade all docs to the new standard...). So I gave up searching. I did come across a few non-MS employee articles that were pro OOXML, but they well... read for yourself (which, like all Microsoft articles I've read, miss the point ENTIRELY on "CHOICE"). After that waste of time, I somehow wound up on Slashdot.org, reading the comments by those readers (largely anti-OOXML) the same MS letter to IBM that James O'Neill's thing mentions. One of them posted a link to a funny article by Rob Weir. So I immediately liked him. After reading that, I decided to read more of what he had to say. Which is when I came across THIS!! As you can tell, it completely rips Miguel de Icaza's argument a new %@#$hole!! Read the comments on that one too. Miguel is the first to comment, asking Rob if he had ever written any software for OpenOffice.org (the frontrunner on the implementation side of ODF (there are many), the competing standard (yes, already an ISO standard) to MS' OOXML), or if he's just an Armchair General. Later down the page, Rob responds with this comment, which basically says "I am qualified to make that statement, dumbass."
Here's where advocates for OOXML miss the point on CHOICE. When ODF people speak of choice, they speak about different applications being able to operate with each other (interoperate). Meaning, if I save a file using this program on this operating system, I can later open it with this other program on this other operating system. Right now there are a lot (OpenOffice, KOffice, StarOffice, Corel, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and a few independent apps) that can read and write ODF. Alternative, right now, there is one program that can read and write OOXML, and it was released 1/30/07 (Microsoft Office 2007). Funny timing, by the way, as OOXML went into ISO "fast track" approval on 1/05/07. So they didn't even have a working application to display it. I digress. So there's a difference in opinion of what "choice" actually is. However, when the average user wants to save an image file from their digital camera, should their camera care what operating system they're using, or what photo editing application they have installed? Likewise, there are a few "standards" for image formats. JPEG is highly used for photos because it can contain more colors to the less-lossy (pixel quality wise) but less colors overall GIF format. It has been argued though that OOXML is duplicating much of the same functionality as ODF, whereas JPEG and GIF are very different in their purposes (GIF is much better for small images and transparency, and JPG for high quality compression of larger images... however, both might soon be deemed obsolete by PNG which covers transparency and a good, near-lossless compression algorithm). In the objections document posted earlier, the final note offers an alternative solution. That Microsoft extend the ODF format with any of their functionality that isn't covered in ODF. This is clearly a good solution, since the base functionality is in ODF, is implemented in many standards, and is a good building block. This is what anti-OOXML people would welcome with open arms. Not a year through standardization on a spec that took 12+ years to fully develop!! ODF took 4 years to ISO standardization. 1 year would be ridiculous.
Quality night of reading overall :) Next, there are these gems...
Here are some letters to INCITS (International Committee for Information Technology Standards)...
Some of these letters from the opposition are the same, but all of the letters FOR OOXML are sent as a "joint letter signed by these 20 members of this committee that has 'Microsoft' in the title". To get a joint letter signed, I'd walk around an office and say "Yo, sign this... it's to get free pizza every Friday." There are three letters attached (in the one from "George LaVenture - International Association of Microsoft Certified Partners (IAMCP)"), each from different offices, each signed by 15+ people (but I can't see the signatures for some reason). All of those letters are the same exact thing, and they make no merits on the technical side. Which is fine, I guess. There are many arguments that either would stand up on technical merits. Although, developing an application that uses OOXML would be an absolute nightmare. The spec is 6000+ pages long. The only argument on the Microsoft side that ODF can't claim (not legally anyway :P ) is that there are billions of documents in old formats that this "document format" can support. As I said, write a CONVERTER.
John Hardin's letter makes the claim that if OOXML were to pass as an ISO standard, the reputations of ISO and ANSI standards organizations would be severely damaged. And that "they will be seen as open to manipulation by sufficiently large companies." In no way do we want that to happen. That would be like the US Patent Office! We don't want that situation repeated in standards organizations.
Another post I read somewhere says that if OOXML passes through ISO standardization, it could be the most costly mistake EVER. (Ahh, found the link here)
It's funny that the only people pushing for it are MS people, MS advocates, and some politicians who are paid by Microsoft, whereas the ODF crowd is many many good companies and lots of brilliant people. It leads one (not me certainly) to the conclusion that people who support Microsoft in this area are complete morons, will never be writing the software to support OOXML, or that they're on MS' payroll (either as an employee or accepting donations through politics). Every Microsoft post I've read is a last ditch effort that practically concedes victory to ODF. Not to mention the lies that they tell themselves (e.g. For ISO adoption, 103 companies vote, only 19 opposed on the first round, so they tell themselves and their employees that "We're almost there!!", when, in fact, 16 of those 19 countries that opposed make up HALF of the vote that MATTERS in the final vote, 5 months away!! SUCKERS!!). Just keep telling yourselves that.
Anyway, this was kind of a review of all the reading I did tonight, with no real guiding purpose or goal. Ok, I had a guiding purpose, basically to vent about how bad OOXML is technically, and that's confirmed by no technical merits from anyone that supports it. And, likewise, to convince anyone who reads this to read all the articles and documents I link to, and to convince them of my opinion... like all opinion writers :P The whole thing's probably way too long and filled with typos, but luckily I can only see the last 8 lines I wrote :P I'm going to bed. It's the Wiikend!!! |
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I have a collection of domain names. Yes, I collect them. Sometimes I'm amazed what's available. Like, when I registered stringed.org, and oftheworldunite.org (which can be a great domain name, if you use stuff like hackers.oftheworldunite.org or stupidpeople.oftheworldunite.org).
Yesterday I had a thought. A simple thought. I had asked Tom about mortgages and financial stuff (way before yesterday). He gave me an answer, but I had an answer in my head already, and it was the same answer, but it didn't come out the same :) Basically, what he was telling me was in the technical terms, and correct by all means. But someone who didn't know about finance and mortgages would have no idea what he was saying. Like me.
A lot of times though, I come across problems where the answer can be explained in very simple, non-technical terms, where anyone can understand. Of course, I've been devoting my time to learning, understanding, and making part of my vocabulary, computer science terms. Very technical. I can't really explain them in non-technical terms. However, with every other area in life, I have no idea except what I'm able to logically deduce by myself, in my head. And these are always in very simple terms. So welcome to my domain name collection, simpleterms.org.
I plan on using all of them, but I take a long time to get around to making something for them, so I may seem like just a collector and a domain-name-hoarder, but I do plan on getting around to using all of them. Unlike the .com variant of that domain name. Which someone basically threw some ads on there, and you can buy it but it will be for about 80x markup. Stupid internet. |
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In writing a web application, I've always found it a pain that no matter how advanced of an interface you try to make, the file upload mechanism is so archaic. This functionality is built into every web browser. It's a text box with a "browse..." button next to it. Upgrading this functionality is the last step, probably, in getting to Web 2.0.
When writing a news post or anything of the sort, where you can include images inline, personally, with my software, I'd have to upload the images before I even attempt to write the news. One way around this is to be able to drag an image from a folder on your computer inline to the document. This works but not as expected. The image shows for you because the URL of that image is pointing to the file on YOUR computer. If you were to save that news and review it, it would look great to anyone who viewed it from your computer, but to anyone else, they'd see the big X placeholders for missing images.
I've read a technical article on including the actual content of the image inside the "src" attribute of the "img" tag. It's the bytes encoded in base64. That makes download times pretty big for an HTML website. This behavior isn't available in the previous example, because javascript can't read the contents of a file on the computer, an that would be the only way you could achieve it in real time. Another downside is that images encoded this way only work in Mozilla and possibly a few other browser, definitely not anything Microsoft based.
Another option would be to upgrade the standard. The W3 standard about how files are uploaded to a website. If I could drag an image, like my example of editing a news post, from a folder on my computer into the text of the news, and have a way that it automatically, and asynchronously, uploads that file to the website, and instead displaying the one on my computer, it displays, after a short delay, the one that's physically located on the server... for lack of a better term, that'd be @#%#@$ sweet. Technically, that would take some pretty complex changes.
Technically, I imagine the only way to accomplish this feat is allowing access to the contents of that file in Javascript. Not to say that when you download a website, Javascript in the website can just access any file on your computer, but when you drag a file onto the web page, a Javascript event is called with the contents (and other specs) of that file. This is a client feature, it would have to be implemented in Javascript. So that cuts out any browsers that a) don't support Javascript, and b) don't have an asynchronous way to make requests to a server (the 'AJ' in "Ajax").
For all I know, the W3 is working on something like this. Right now, there's no way to get this functionality, aside from writing a client app wholly separated from your website code. This is a pain because what do you write it in? With the heterogeneous environment of client computers... there's Java, but still, the whole idea of having to write an app to achieve this functionality is a bad idea, and the way websites do it right now is flawed.
There's nothing Web 2.0 about file uploads today. Any app where you have to upload files to achieve any kind of goal for content will never feel like a desktop application until files can be dragged/dropped in real time. Or pasted for that matter. I'll take anything. |
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Working on something exciting. Everything I wrote in Java, I'm going to convert it to Javascript! That's right. They will communicate to each other through XML/HTTP calls. It will be done in a few steps.
1) Get them talking.
---This involves having objects in JS that correspond to all my objects in Java. Also, a communication protocol, through XML, including updates, deletes, gets, and custom methods.
2) Automate it.
---This involves wrapping each thing in JS functions, like "update(myObj, callback);" which will generate all the XML and make the call, calling the callback function when it returns. Callback will have to have a few parameters, like error message, if it succeeded, etc.
3) Develop custom controls in JS / HTML (Dynamic HTML) for common types (labels, files, to be determined).
4) ???
5) Profit!!
All in all, it shouldn't be too difficult. The Java part was hard. I've been hacking javascript for about a year straight now. I have to say it's my favorite.
There are a few problems with this method that will hopefully be addressed...
1) Security: People who know my XML scheme and the place that accepts it could just write something that posts to the method with the right format of XML and do disastrous things. I have an idea for this, and it will be done before any site that uses this goes up.
2) Search engines won't see it: With everything being dynamic, there's no content on the page when a search engine browses to the site. There's some placeholder html where everything will go, but no content. Unless I have the atom feeds or some meta data in the html.
3) State saving: I will need a system for generating query string parameters based on the values on the page, and also, when someone goes to that page with those values in the query string, it'll load the page how they remember it. This might be tough, or it could be easy.
I think that's about it. Wish me luck, it should be done before Web 3.0 comes out :D |
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I was watching this item on Amazon.com for about 4 days now, and it was fairly expensive, but not expensive compared to other items of the same type. Then, Amazon.com said to itself "If we lower the price, this dude's gonna buy this thing." And you know how websites talk to themselves, right? Through AJAX. It's common knowledge. So, the website heard this from itself, and said "F@#% it, let's lower the price and get rid of this item, we'll still make a fortune off of it." So, after a few moments, I log in and check my cart, and it always alerts you of price changes of items in your cart since the last time you checked. It said "The price of that thing you need and want has lowered to a price where you might think you are stealing it from us." And I said "Where in the hell is the checkout box?!" Seconds later, it was purchased, and shipped overnight for a total of $3.99 extra. That's my Amazon Prime membership at work again. That is, again, Amazon making me think that I'm stealing. I should go to confession. It shipped tonight, it should be here tomorrow.
Oh, by the way, it's the HDTV that is a prerequisite for the Wii and PS3! 26" 1300x768, HDMI, ATSC tuner built in. Got good reviews, but again, I don't need the best TV ever, it's replacing a 16" TV. Now I have to buy Christmas presents... |
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I haven't emptied my spam folder in about 2 weeks.
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Today, I'm going to make it even more of my routine to not use Office software that needs to be installed on my computer. To kick this off, today I created an online spreadsheet at Google Docs. I find it to be very convenient for my purpose, which is updating a client on the hours that I've worked on the current project. I added them as a "viewer" of the spreadsheet, and it's golden. Only problem was that it doesn't currently support Safari, the default browser on the Mac, so I had to install Firefox. Which is fine by me, except that I have two browsers installed. Oh well.
Also, I'll be using the word processor found at that site. That can be convenient for getting my ideas into English format, which could then be shared with anyone, but more importantly, I don't have to use the excuse "Oh, that document is on my computer at home... sorry." It also happens to be a great place to keep my resume.
Only thing is "Lock-In". We all hate it. Buy a song on iTunes and you can only play it on Apple stuff and with your account (lest you strip DRM from it). Buy a PS3 game and you can only play it on PS3s. Buy a car and you can only drive it on the road and within the limits of the law. That kind of stuff. It sucks. But oh well. As long as I can export it. That would be a good idea for Apple too. To be able to "export" purchased songs into another form of DRM, if you were to switch. It goes the other way as well. Buy songs on xyz, export to Apple format. Just recently, the cell phone companies allowed you to carry over your phone number to another provider, this wouldn't be much different (not technically, of course). Freedom is great. |
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| The future is upon me. I got the wireless router last night, hooked it up, got WPA security working, and hooked my Mac up to it. It works. It supposedly transfers at 300 Mbps, which is 3x faster than 100 base T... without wires! That's crazy. I hooked my PSP up to it with no problems, downloaded the new update released yesterday in record time, and that rocked. This paves the way for the PS3 and Wii, which both have wireless. Before any of those, though, I have to get an HDTV. Not a big one though. If I can find 23" or 26", it's enough. It will replace a 16" TV. |
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Like for online casinos. But no more.
However, "people" will still be able to add comments with no problem. It's sort of a "CAPTCHA" (search google for "Turing Test") design, but without the images. My site's not big enough to make actual "people"'s lives a pain, so this will just get rid of the most low tech comment bots.
I've been playing with the idea, as simple as it is, for a while now, trying to figure out if there's a better way to determine if the "thing" posting a comment on my site is actually a "person", and not a bot. I'm sure this method will be hacked, and I'm sure I'll have to write some more complex solution, but for right now, it'll get rid of them. Unless they already have that work around. We'll see. Great thing about them being "bots" is that I could even post the code and they'd have no idea :P
And the ultra-super-best thing about it is it doesn't reveal itself as an error. There won't be any error message, it'll just say "OMG GREAT COMMENTZ!!"! and go to the home page, so if the bot doesn't verify that the comment has actually been posted, the author of the bot will have no idea, and be like "w00t, more free advertising of my uber awesome casino site... man, that jasontconnell is such a sucker." |
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| I started a new site and I'm going to link it here, even though I said I wouldn't tell anyone about it. I'm just too impatient. It's not for young audiences, which is why I didn't plan on linking it here in the first place, since this isite is so f#$@ing clean. Anyway, it's an online comic with characters that have no names or history for that matter... pretty much whenever you read one you won't be lost. You can view the latest at www.addictedcomics.com. It'll be fun, and cover just about everything under the sun. |
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I plan on using just "Atom" as it is the W3 standard. As you can see here:
public class AtomSource {
private AtomCategory category;
private AtomPerson contributor;
private AtomGenerator generator;
private AtomUri icon;
private AtomUri id;
private AtomLink link;
private AtomUri logo;
private AtomDefaultText rights;
private AtomDefaultText subtitle;
private AtomDefaultText title;
private AtomDate updated;
}
Implementation to follow, and I'll have a link up of the feed and some readers, although I highly suggest Google Reader. I'm just implementing the bare minimum to be valid and readable by Atom readers because I have more important crap to do. |
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Thanks to my host working on Sundays (shout out Nexpoint), the game is up! Just visit Vacre Tei and sign up. Make sure to read the about and privacy policy things at the bottom first.
w00t.
That rocks. Of course, as I'm uploading the site, I have new ideas for it. Damnit. Good ideas too. I'll get to them, no rush. |
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Beaner came over yesterday to record some music on my Mac Mini. He had a microphone and a 300 W mixer, and his acoustic guitar. When he was done, he left everything on my bed. Instead of doing what I wanted to (or supposed to) do, I picked up the guitar and started recording stuff. It sounds pretty good, the mic picks it up decently. But during all this, I wondered "What about a music log?"
You hear of all new types of web logs ("blogs") coming out... Video logs, photo logs, podcasts, etc. What about writing a song each week?
I know a band called "They Might Be Giants", they're fairly famous. I can't find the article right now, but a record producer or a friend challenged them to record a song about every city they visited on tour. So it's possible.
I just think it would be fun, if I could sing, to record a song that's like a podcast. It would be challenging, which would make it more fun.
What would be cooler, though, is if my site had a "jingle". |
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Close call on this one though
Gmail says 11 hours ago though, but obviously, it was within milliseconds of turning to 12. |
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I just found this site, The Daily WTF. Your average computer user won't find much use in it, but programmers love it! They post pieces of code like this:
if (errMsg.indexOf("Violation of UNIQUE KEY constraint 'UQ__mbrs_pwd'") != -1)
return "The password entered is already in use. Please enter another.";
And there's always some terrible thing wrong with it. The post with that code is called "Uniquely Secure".
I notice users on there that have trouble grasping what's wrong with the code sometimes, and it's good that they visit this site every day or whatever, since it's not only funny, it's a brain teaser every day.
Here's another quick sample:
function executeQuery($string)
{
GetDatabaseConnection();
$result = mysql_query($sqlText) or die(
"Query failed " . writeErrorToLog(
$_SESSION['USERNAME'],
"Query Failed: " .$sqlText . " " . mysql_error()
,$scriptName
));
return $result;
}
function writeErrorToLog($owner,$description,$script)
{
$script = str_replace($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'], "", $script);
$sqlText =
"INSERT INTO errorLog (ownerID,time,description,script) " .
"VALUES ('" . $owner . ",Now(),'" . $description . "','" . $script . "')";
executeQuery($sqlText, $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);
return "";
}
At first glance (I think it's PHP) it doesn't seem like much is wrong, other then they do the cardinal sin of writing to the database to report an error when there's a database error! But anyway, you will notice that if a piece of code fails to write to the database, it will always infinite loop! The reason for this is that, for one, there could be a database connection problem, and it would never succeed, but more interestingly, there seems to be a missing apostrophe (') in one of the values in the sql statement when writing an error! So no matter what, if it fails once, it's doomed for infinite loopage.
And the site has one of these per day, and I love reading stuff like this. I recently bought a book called Java Puzzlers: Traps, Pitfalls and Corner Cases. They're fun brain teasers, and most of the time, in the Java one, you can't tell what's wrong (having 10 years programming under my belt, that's odd!) and then you go read the solution and it's like some bit can't be set when calling a certain function. Java's a pesky language :) I still love it though. |
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| This guy is an idiot. There's too much proof to list any. Just read on. Although, you have to give him credit, he gets paid for being an idiot. |
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| After weeks of begging and pleading from friends, I finally joined MySpace. It was against my will. Anyway, if you feel like adding me, I'm at SixStringed. Mainly I'll be using it for linking to this page, and posting comments on friends' pages, but everything worthwhile will be on this page still, or finally, maybe. Shut up :P |
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| Not really but close. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has me hooked, it's a wonder two years haven't gone by already. I can write up a huge description of it, but just go visit my Google Pages page instead!! There, you will find nothing related to Oblivion. The end. |
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Check out this GEM!!! I can't believe out of the 7 billion people out there, I am the first (with $35 and Internet access, and English speaking, and an interest in "movements" and domain name registering) to think of it!
OfTheWorldUnite.org
With a little Sub-domain action, it's a bazillion domain names in one!!
HockeyFans.OfTheWorldUnite.org
RedBeardedPeople.OfTheWorldUnite.org
StupidPeople.OfTheWorldUnite.org
PeopleWhoNeedMoreExamples.OfTheWorldUnite.org
You get the picture. If not, visit that last one, it's for you. |
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I go to install OpenOffice.org (Commonly just referred to as "OOo"), and the install package for Linux is in RPM format, which is a RedHat invention, basically an installation package (usually you're just compiling source :p). I type in "which rpm" to see if I have rpm to install this thing. It says "No rpm in $path". "F@#%@#$#. I can't install OOo 2.0?!?!"
Ahh, but then I type in "emerge rpm". Gentoo has a software management tool called "Portage", and how you use it is to simply type in "emerge" followed by the software that you want. F@#*^ing A!! It takes a little while, since it checks for the dependencies, downloads all the source code, compiles it, and then cleans it. But, I'm talking 10 minutes ago I started this thing, and it's almost done. There were 2 dependencies to install before RPM. Take that Windows!!
Other times I've needed stuff on other Linux distributions, I'd have to search the web... pfff. That's like 2005 technology.
After 12 minutes, I try again...
which rpm
/usr/bin/rpm
It's miraculous
Wow, on another topic... OOo 2.0 is pretty sweet. I was using 1.1 or something forever. It has definitely improved, interface-wise. And I saved my first "OpenDocument" file!! I just opened my "Attachments" document and saved that as an ".odt", or "OpenDocument Text". Free, awesome stuff kicks ass. |
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| You Passed 8th Grade Science |  Congratulations, you got 8/8 correct! |
* Pats self on back *
Of course, this comes as no surprise to me. I just saw this thing here and had to see how much I totally ROCK at science. Not joking though, I subscribe to "Scientific American", and I regularly watch The Discovery Channel and the Learning Channel. Another reason for the complete devastation I razed on the 8th grade Science Quiz is that Math and Science were my favorite topics in school. NO WAY am I not ACING 8th grade science.
Oh, and possibly one more reason. My degree is in Science. I am a "scientist"... a "computer scientist", officially.
I never do those things, but I had to do this one... too much dedication to Science to ignore it. Like, if a show is on about Einstein, you bet your ass I'm watching it :) |
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My site's been on and off very randomly. Today I went to add this awesome, funny, crazy news post, and my site was down, and now I forget what I was gonna say... but, I go to the website of my host, Nexpoint, and go to log an error, and I get this message.
And I'm like "Dang"... I tried to write down what I was going to write about, but all I could muster up was the following
So, as you can see, I'm distracted easily and apparently had nothing funny to add to the internet... nothing worth remembering for 9 minutes, anyway. |
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I took out the "Book" form for now, otherwise it would be a gigantic cluster@#%@@#, and I limit the file size to 1000 bytes (less than 1KB). Other pictures here and here.
And with that, stringed.org's underlying software is ready for some major overhauls!! There's this whole huge thing I want to do to it yet. |
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Yes, I installed it (but only at work). Mozilla still wins. (This is based off of the default install).
Best feature of Mozilla, the one that I use every day, is to save a group of tabs opened as a single bookmark, and a single click will open that same group of tabs. IE7 allows you to save a group of tabbed websites, but it saves it to a folder. You can't click the single bookmark and have each site open up in its original tab. I find this extremely useful in opening up all of my email websites in one window. Both Hotmail and Gmail open up with no effort.
Tabs in my copy of Mozilla only show up when there are *other* tabs. If there's no other tabs opened, it looks like a standard browser. IE7 always show tabs, so you lose real estate.
Scrolling. I opened up slashdot with my crappy computer in IE7. It's really choppy! Mozilla works much better with my limited hardware.
IE7s default search is Google, which is fine. But, didn't Microsoft create its own search engine? Are they giving in to the popular search engine with the funny name? It's what the people want.
At the bottom of slashdot, there's a huge black space in IE7. Mozilla's version of slashdot is fine. Wonder what that's about.
I know this is a beta, but it's the latest beta, and will closely resemble the final version. I do notice some cool features, though.
IE7 will scan a page for links to RSS feeds. It has a button that becomes enabled at the top that is a quick way to link to those feeds. It then shows a nifty screen with the latest news from that site, complete with filtering by the rss category, and sortable by date, title and author, along with a search. I'm too impatient to see what it does when one of those sites is updated, so I'll assume, for Microsoft's sake, that something awesome happens. Flashy lights and a marching band, for instance.
That seems pretty much it for the UI experience. Mozilla owns IE7 still. There's no developer tools in IE like there is in Mozilla. DOM inspector, color coded source viewer (it still uses notepad), JavaScript debugger, built in Calendar, etc. Microsoft loves to make developers miserable, despite what they say...
This is only biased because Mozilla rules. |
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I realized the other day that I am no longer addicted to the internet. It was fun while it lasted, but then you get bored. You see the same stuff everywhere (excluding the personal sites).
It wasn't a very long lasted addiction. During my senior year of high school (1996-1997) was when it started. I would go on our dial-up to Prodigy and go into chat rooms, because that's really all that Prodigy had, as far as I was concerned. I'd chat with people, meet "girls", talk up my mad guitar skillzzz, exchange emails, etc. Then came college.
I wasn't a very education oriented person. I found nothing in high school that interested me (except physics and math of course), so I had average grades (except in physics and math of course). By the end of high school, I was getting good grades because I basically beat the system. I knew how to do the minimal amount of work and still pass with Bs. This didn't necessarily involve studying, neither did it involve cheating... basically, I just paid attention in class and did the homework. Most of the time. See, Bs didn't require full attention and one hundred percent complete assignments. It was fun. So, when I got into college, I had to go to a "summer school" of sorts. You go there for the summer, take 3-4 classes a day, and if you pull a 2.5 average, you're in for the fall. Well, this summer, as you can imagine, was a blast. 2.5 is lower than a B! I was and probably always will be shy. However, I saw a kid there that I knew I could be friends with. One day I saw him on the computer in the computer lab, so I went in and joined him. I noticed he was in a chat room, so I asked him what chat room he was in, and he told me. We hit it off after that, being roomates for two semesters, one of which being "THE semester". Tom and I got our best grades ever during college our first semester together (Spring '98). We had Computer Science I (one) together. I whooped in that class. Put it this way, when the final came around, I was the first to hand it in, 15 minutes after I started, and Tom said it was 20 minutes before anyone else left. I aced it. I ended the semester with a 3.5 average or something. I was taking other courses, like writing and Calculus II. While Calc was extremely interesting, it was a B@#%@!! So, I got out of that year, and into the next semester, "THE semester".
The Fall 1998 semester started off really bad. During the summer I was working for my Dad as the assistant to the computer guy, saving up money to buy a computer. I got it later that summer, and that's when my life ended. Basically. The Fall '98 semester was not my best one. In fact, it was by far the worst. We're not talking "missed a few classes" here. We're talking, from around late September til the end of the semester, I went to a handful of classes. I was nocturnal. During one stretch, I slept 12 hours a day. I was the bomb that semester though, both socially and electronically. Socially, I was friends with everyone on the floor. Our room was the hangout. We'd have people in there at all hours. Our most was 14 people at one time. Electronically, I was the bomb too, as I had downloaded software (I forget what it's called) that allowed you to run a P2P server. I had so many people on that server, downloading files, uploading files, chatting with each other, leaving me messages, etc. All told I left that semester with about $12000 worth of software that was not paid for, and about 1500 mp3s. (I should mention that I no longer found any of that software useful and deleted it all).
This server ended my chance to graduate college ever. Or so I thought.
After that semester, I convinced my parents to let me go back to school. Luckily, they bought it. I went back and graduated with a B+ in my field of study, so it worked out. That semester was also my enlightenment period. I had Computer Science II, and was completely lost. However, towards the end of the semester, just playing around (because I didn't go to classes, but still loved writing programs), I became enlightened to Object Oriented Programming with C++. The s@#%@ just made sense after that.
That was pretty much the strongest point of my internet addiction. After that, it dwindled down to what it is today, where I can't f@#%$#$!$12 stand the internet. I can read the news though, or a handful of personal sites that I visit, or slashdot, but if I find myself just clicking s#@%$ mindlessly, I'll just walk away most of the time. The other times, I'll close my browser and do something else, like program. Or play a game. Or go outside and play with the dog.
That's one addiction that I'm happy to get rid of -- the internet in general. I have to kick this email addiction next. I check 34,859 times a day. Although, I will easily go a few days without it, so it might be a matter of just throwing out my cable modem. Share or link your stories below! |
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Money is incendiary. That s@$%@# burns right through anything I put it in. Has my whole life. Not like I spend it all, but when I get money, I have to buy SOMETHING. Well, not all the time. Like, now I'm trying to save. Thanks a lot Amazon.com...
I head there today, and there's a "4 for 3" deal, buy 3 books, get one free. Well, if that's just about as ignorable as a punch in the face. I have to buy books now. I need KNOWLEDGE!!! Bad timing on their part. I just placed an order yesterday, but not for books! Sweet! I've always been great at justifying purchases.
But, yesterday I ordered 2 movies and the 2nd season of the X-Files. The first one was outstanding, I recommend it to anyone. Oh, and I ordered a video game (Lumines for PSP). There's nothing like feeding your addictions with a few clicks. Ask the mice who repeatedly press a button that injects them with cocaine. I saw it once on Discovery.
So, today I'll place another order. Good thing I signed up for Amazon Prime all those weeks ago. Now I can get free 2nd day delivery, so it doesn't matter. I can place order after order after order... after order. And they have to ship them for free, since I paid that $79 for the year. They lose out on that one.
I'm getting to a point where I don't have to have a video game within 4 nanoseconds of the exact nanosecond that it is released. So I'll probably order more games online that will be coming out soon. Of course, those game makers should just be selling their games online so I can download them... but, that might take just as long as ordering online and getting free second day shipping.
[Update] Bleh, just found out that no books that I want for knowledge can be classified under any of the following (the only books under their 4 for 3 deal):
* General Fiction
* Mystery
* Romance
* Science Fiction & Fantasy
* Baby Books
* Kids: Ages 4-8
* Kids: Ages 9-12
* Teens
What a bummer. What, "Game Programming" isn't generally accepted as a "Kids: Ages 4-8" book? I guess I should stop trying to teach it to my 6 year old niece :) Although, they should really fall under "mystery", since I'm buying them because I don't have a f#@#@$ing clue about the subject matter... because if I already knew, then I wouldn't be buying it! |
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I reported a bug to Google the other day regarding Gmail. It was to do with their new "Contact Groups" feature that I have been waiting for since forever. Now that it's there, I was a bit surprised when I couldn't create a new group, considering the normally above par standards that Google upholds. This was a simple bug, but, obviously it shows the extensiveness of Google's testing practices, at least for this feature.
What happened was, I went to create a new group, and it couldn't read the email addresses after I used the neat drop down list that Google has on their pages that suggest what you are trying to type in, and make it easier for you. When you choose an email address that you would like in your group, say "Wootzor von Leetenhaxor", it drops in the name in the format "Wootzor von Leetenhaxor" <wootzor@stringed.org>. Don't ask. However, to easier find the people in my list of contacts, I've stored them as "von Leetenhaxor, Wootzor". (HAHA That name cracks me up, I just thought of it the other day. It's my handle on Slashdot) The problem lies in the way that Gmail expects contacts to be in the list that will be added to the group. When more than one contact is added (hence, a group), it uses commas to separate them. So, I would have commas in my names (yet, inside quotes), and separating contacts. And apparently Google didn't expect this. Which is why I said it leads me to believe that their testing practices are not as extensive as I would have thought. Maybe they just missed this one... hopefully.
Today, I tried to add these contacts again to my "Drinking Buddies" group, and it still failed. To get it to work, I have to delete the names from the "Last, First <email>", or just delete the commas, from each contact in the list before creating the group. I still have commas in the names in my contact list, I just had to actually delete them from the textbox containing the contacts to add to that group. So, if you come across this, just erase the commas from that textbox. It shouldn't be much of a problem, they are fixing it, as they say in this email to me:
Hello,
Thanks for bringing this issue to our attention. We have forwarded the information you provided to the appropriate team for further investigation. We appreciate your patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Sincerely,
The Gmail Team |
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I signed up for Amazon.com Prime yesterday. Should be a money saver, although it hasn't yet paid for itself. However, it definitely will. Free 2 day shipping?!?! I've probably paid an average of like a bazillion dollars a year on shipping from Amazon.com, and this only costs $79 per year. They will surely lose out on this deal. Suckers!
Druel:
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Yesterday, I connected to GameSpot to read the review on Fable: The Lost Chapters, after I had beaten it. It connected in no time. Now, I started loading an article on Day of Defeat : Source, and it's taking forever. The thing is, they changed their site last night. It's now a little bit better looking, but it's slow as HELL. I'm looking at a white page and it's been loading for about 3 minutes. When is a software upgrade not worth it? Probably when it takes a lot more time to process and when it takes a lot more time to transmit. They're all about looking good. Who the hell wants to look good when it's compared with loading fast?
Reminds me of a story, a story that was the reason I spent literally 2 years devoted to visiting CNN.com. You remember September 11th. Well, I wanted to browse the web as well as watch TV because I wanted all the information I could get. Well, obviously, about every person with internet in the country was visiting news sites. I visit a few, even like MSN, and all of the pictures are on the site, making the site take forever to download. Even their stupid little background pictures, their logo, everything. This was on every site. Until I got to CNN. They had taken down all of their images, their logo, and everything else, and just had text describing the events. Not too much on one page though, just enough, with links. Everyone always just wants to look pretty, but they don't realize that it's not the same as looking good. What do people want? Not pretty buttons, but information.
[Update] Thankfully, GameSpot's site is much faster now. They must have been having server troubles. |
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I came across an article in my favorite tech news site, ZDNet, that said Microsoft had predicted 10 years ago that the Internet is the next platform. But, Microsoft still spent bazillions of dollars making Windows XP and the new Windows Vista. Meanwhile, under Microsoft's radar, 2 Stanford students develop something in their dorm room, a search engine, and in 2005, they are big. HUGE. Google. With Google's way of innovation, and their ideas and having the top minds in the field (except they don't have me yet :p ), they are developing a lot of things, and they are not platform specific, but they are for the internet. Gmail, Maps, etc. They have more, and you'll see them by visiting their beta section. So, now Microsoft is feeling the heat. Without having a specific operating system, you can use any of Google's Internet products. Microsoft just wants to take over the world, so they will fight this, and start doing their own, or they just don't want Google to get too big, because then they can go stealing all their smart employees, paying them the big bucks, giving them the Presidential Suites, etc, and using them to develop products specifically targeting Microsoft products, instead of Microsoft doing it to them. The playing field is leveled a bit.
It's an interesting concept, the Internet as a platform. How I picture it, the possibilities are endless. Before I had that vision though, and before I read that article, I had pictured something a little different, something like Google's platform, the latest desktop search. Plug in components into a base platform, and the base provides a lot of the functionality that the components need, providing quicker development. Think of Mac's Widgets. There's a widget container that can provide lots of functionality to the widgets, and then there are widgets that you can plug in. I always imagined something like an application container. I could have small apps that plug in, and you can open any of them from this container. I had thought of this before Mac's widgets, but instead turned towards internet applications. My main reason for this thought process was because of how Java works. I didn't know if you could make a Java program automatically run by double clicking it, you always have to open them with another program. Of course, have everything run under one program. (I later found out about JNLP, Java Network Launch Protocol, which launches 'JAR' files containing a Java program)
Sometimes solutions are so obvious for one problem and they aren't even considered for another problem.
What wasn't obvious to me is that this idea had already been done! In fact, everyone is doing it! When you visit a website, you are typically using an application written for the web. An application. Written for the web. My container application, the platform for running every program I write, is in fact your web browser. This seems like a great platform. Some obvious aspects that you have to watch out for are backing up data, security, limitations of certain web browsers, certain web browsers not following web standards, downtime, scalability, application flow, user experience, and users. Some great benefits to web applications are deploying, updating everyone's version instantaneously, data stored in a central location, and if you secure the server, it's virtually unhackable... if you develop it to be that way. Having a client application obviously has its benefits. You can access local resources (disk drives) and do stuff that you can't do in a web application, like video games and accessing hardware, and stuff that would kill the resources on a web server if too many people did it at once... intense applications. Basically, it depends on the application, whether you should make it a client application or a web application, and whether you can make it a web application.
There aren't too many downsides to writing a web application, but they are pretty big downsides. There is another one. HTTP. HTTP is pretty primordial. HTTP is the protocol in which web servers communicate with the world. It consists of numbered codes and data separated by line breaks. It was developed before XML. However, XML has its obvious downsides. It's heavy, lots of text. Depending on your data, XML can double the size. It's mainly used for text, so you wouldn't normally go storing your images in there. I only bring this up because of client/server applications, or server to server communication, which still falls under client/server. This is why SOAP was invented. SOAP is an XML format that was developed for multiple applications, infinite applications, to send XML data over HTTP. A standardized format is a good start. HTTP can stay as it is, as long as everyone uses SOAP. This was the advent of web services; small applications written to run on the server and communicate with the client. Usually just a function or two. There's a huge history there (search the internet for RPC or "Remote Procedure Call", you'll see what I mean), and the idea was to make a standard way, rather than hundreds of developers fending for themselves, all writing a different way to call functions over the internet.
One of the important downsides I mentioned with writing web applications is user experience. This isn't about making users laugh or showing help or different messages. This is about "perceived speed" of an application. Who wants to watch a progress bar at the bottom of the screen? Or watch as the whole website goes white and takes a few seconds for something to pop up. In client side programming, you typically develop a multithreaded application to improve user experience. Things appear to happen simultaneously. However, these applications run on a web server, and the only protocol for speaking between the web browser and the server is HTTP, which makes requests only at the user's request (hence the name) and provides responses, how in the world do you expect to make an HTML web page seem "multithreaded"?!? AJAX. You may have heard of it. It's "asynchronous" using JavaScript and XML. That's pretty much what the acronym stands for. This way, I can have JavaScript make requests back to the server without the user's interaction, typically on a schedule (every 5 seconds, every minute, etc), and get that ever-so-desired perception of multi-threading in a web application, significantly improving a user's experience.
Google has realized this. Maps and Gmail use AJAX extensively. It is the way of the future, and it is important enough that soon every browser will have it. But this isn't just about writing a web application that appears friendly to the user. It's about writing many applications that are all friendly with each other, and that all appear friendly to the user.
Imagine an internet portal, a website that you go to as the first page you visit on the web. It has everything. News, stocks, your email, messages sent to your IM client that you missed, emails from other accounts you have, voice mails from work and from your cell phone, reminders about events in your calendar, and anything else you can think of. This is Google's vision... probably. Imagine having all this personal data on one website, collected from many different web applications, each using SOAP to communicate with each other, sending XML to the user's browser on each AJAX request, and reading all this personal data on the fly, determining which advertisements to show that user. Advertising is Google's main source of income still, besides selling stock.
"But Google's also buying up loads and loads of dark fiber and buying wireless internet technologies and WAPs" you say... Yes, they have invested in a company that can triangulate exactly where you are when you connect to a wireless network. So you can search for the closest guitar shop to the exact point on which you are standing. This on a portal full of all of that other information I mentioned would just be showing off.
This is where I think Google is heading. As with its search technology, I think the Internet can do better. I must emphasize this. I've mentioned this before, here. I think all of Google's web applications will supply their data this way. I quote myself:
"Imagine, if Google, instead of just reading all of the HTML through a website url, can just ask a website "Yo, what's your deal?!" and the website can respond back "Dude, I am a guitar shop, here are my wares.""
RDF is this for news. Somehow Google is able to extract prices of goods on websites as well, and build a shopping cart around them. But instead of Google just being able to search these results for items you may be looking for, what if there was no website that actually sold this stuff, but Google just read data from a server, through another protocol, and did everything: shopping cart, credit card processing, etc. Google would be the only online shop. Or, what if someone else did this. Like me! No, there's an "end of the world" scenario in there somewhere. No more online shops, just Google, and less jobs, and less money, and more Google. It could be bad, let's hope that they're only doing the portal mentioned above :) |
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Ok, maybe I sort of drew that after I edited someone's image after that someone deleted Bush's original bathroom message and put a funny message, and then a journalist got a hold of it and maybe kinda started a contest. I won't win, surely I don't deserve to, that thing took me about 3 minutes to do. |
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That's internet speak for "business". My website is now working on my Gentoo Linux laptop. I had no data in there but recently ran part of my software that exports data that can be imported into a blank database. It's pretty neat. It exports it to XML. It's easy too. Anyway, this weekend, in moments of consciousness and soberness, would be a good time to update my website. I actually fixed a bug yesterday that was the culprit for me not having an "About Me" page on this site anymore... minutes of hard work and thinking right down the drain, overwritten by the Points of Interest page in the blink of an eye. Also, I'll be adding stuff. But more importantly, I'll be starting the software architecture for stringed.org. I'll be reusing much of the stuff I wrote for this page, reorganizing my packages, adding features, fixing bugs, getting rid of redundant stuff, etc. It's going to be lean and fast, and powerful.
More about the XML export. Right now I have to restart my webserver after I set some settings that tell the software to export every object in the system, and it'll do the export, then I have to reset the settings back to tell it to not do the export next time. That's one thing I'll be building: a web-based management tool for "dumb". That should help out a ton. Export all the data? Sure, click a button. Or export certain data? Which ones? Click. I only since thought about only exporting certain data because my software generated an XML file that was 487KB!! That's huge for a text file. Although, in college, I had a list of every word in the English language for a project, and it was around a megabyte. 1 million characters! I was working on a program to solve cryptographs, those things in newspapers, but I had only reached Computer Science 2, so I had not learned of neat or efficient things like "hash tables" and "regular expressions". If you don't know these things, I suggest that you never learn them, as to allow me to keep my current value to employers :) If you can, make the people who know them forget about them. Please. Thanks.
I have a story for tomorrow. Just you wait. |
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So, I'm trying to get my laptop ready for more development. As you may have read, I've installed Gentoo Linux on my laptop recently. This has turned out to be quite a learning experience. Gentoo is no self-installer. You end up learning a TON about Linux, boot loaders, file system, device drivers, configuring a kernel, compiling a kernel, setting up partitions for boot, swap, and system, mounting the system, and just about everything you can imagine. There is one thing I can't figure out though. Laptops have a touchpad for a mouse. Most of these touchpads are one brand, and that's Synaptics. Gentoo has drivers for these devices, and there are other drivers out there. I can't get it to work. The mouse part of it works, like basic movement and clicking, but mine also has a scroll "wheel", which is actually a touch scroller, and I can't get it to work. The thing is, when my system boots up, I can see that Linux has found the Synaptics touchpad, however, the drivers don't recognize it. It sucks because the reason I was so fast at working on that computer is because of the mouse setup. So that's keeping me from working on my website. I can work as it is, but I want my mouse damnit.
Another thing that's keeping me from working on my website is that my website isn't working on my computer. I set up MySQL and configured it, so that's not the problem. I can compile it in Eclipse, so that's not the problem. And Tomcat works fine. The problem is, Tomcat stopped development on the 5.0.x version and is only working on 5.5.x. The new version of Tomcat only works with the new version of Java, Java 5. I got all that to work fine. The thing is a software problem. When I run my website, the thing tells me it can't find this one function in this one Apache class. I know the problem, the new version of Tomcat uses new versions of Apache classes, and JavaServer Faces apparently uses an old, deprecated version. Or they're just completely different. For a new version of software to not support the old version is practically a bad enough crime to seek the death penalty. Apache knows this, so it leads me to believe that they are just different. I have the old version that JSF used to reference, and references for compiling, but I'm not about to overwrite the newer Tomcat's version with it. That screams bad news.
One last reason that I can't work on my website is because of video games. They're too fun. |
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Download Google Talk. If you don't have an account, you can email me at jasontconnell [the AT sign] gmail [the dot] com and I'll gladly hook a brotha or sista up. Apparently they are opening gmail soon though, or it is open, I can't tell. I have six accounts, I have no need nor desire to find out. :) It's a clean interface, no ads, no nothing. Just a list of contacts. Click a contact and you can type to them, or click the "call" button, and start talking through a microphone and they will hear it on their end. That's really all there is to report.
I'm glad it's simple. Everyone else tries to get everyone to use their IM client by packing it with webcam stuff, extra toolbars and everything (I'm looking at you MSN Messenger), popping up windows to a "Today" page with news, crap, junk, garbage, and email alerts. Google's philosophy (which has worked wonders for them, cripes, look at their corporate website for Pete's sake... nothing but an image, a textbox and a few buttons and some links below all that, and then some company info), is make S@#%#@$ simple. This philosophy is shared among many many companies, but only Google manages to excel at it. |
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I ran across an article that called Google's new "Desktop Search" for Windows a "Mini Operating System". I posted a reply. When I think "Mini-OS", I certainly don't think of a program written to run on an operating system. When I think "Mini-OS", I'll tell you what I think: Embedded Linux. That's "mini" and that's an "OS".
So what does an operating system do exactly? The first and foremost job of an OS is to interface with the hardware; let you save files on disk, use your monitor, your modem, your attached peripherals like printers, digital cameras, webcams, and anything else. This includes interfacing with your network card and implementing the TCP/IP stack so you can connect to the internet. Also, it includes a "platform" for writing software, an Application Programming Interface (API). Lately, operating systems have included all types of goodies, like integrated search (Mac OS X) and widgets (Mac OS X). This is simply "value added" stuff. Since an operating system might come with these things built into them, it does not change the definition of an operating system. Even if adding "Mini" to the front of it makes your observations less serious, you still have "OS" at the end, invalidating your generalization. How about call it a "program". That's what I call it. A program that happens to search your files and have plugins for stuff like weather. I don't even use it and I know that it's not an operating system.
One comment came from Google.
--- "We're really trying to make this into a platform"
---- Nikhil Bhatla, product manager for Google Desktop.
That can be confusing. I'll have you know that Eclipse is called a platform. I don't boot my computer into the "Eclipse" OS, though. It's a Java editor. A very great one. What this person means is that they will be developing programs on top of it. Which is why Eclipse is called a platform, you can write PLUG-INS. Technology is so misunderstood.
I'm a stickler for technological phrases used in the right way. I'm sure doctors, architects, lawyers, and every other profession will get just as upset if you butcher their terminology. Like, if a man finds a person murdered in the alley, and calls the police and says "We have a grand theft auto here." I'm not the only one :)
Here's another thing about it. That site, "paidcontent.org", is apparently a pretty highly visited site, and one that is as qualified to interpret that Google quote as I am to interpret Shakespeare. They call Google Desktop a mini-OS. People who read that are going to just go ahead and agree, usually. Unless they study. And they'll make posts on their websites, and it's like that game we would play in 2nd grade. One person starts the chain by thinking of something to whisper, and it goes around til the last person, and the last person says what the message is. I don't care if it starts out as "An apple a day keeps the doctor away", it'll turn into something like "A quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." Somehow. Let's just call into question every term that every past computer scientist has defined. I've run across at least 3 sites that refer to that post, and also call it a "Mini-OS".
This is another problem with the internet. If the facts are right, it's a beautiful filtering process, eventually making its way to everyone. But if it's wrong, it's like cancer. |
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| If all you ever knew about me, you read from this website, then you would be shocked. You would probably think I'm some loud-mouthed kid, talking all the time, squeezing in a joke here and there, and sometimes keeping quiet to get some programming done. This is almost completely opposite from the truth. See, I'm as quiet as the next deaf-mute. I listen a lot. But when I do want to say something, I get impatient if you talk all the time. All the sudden, some people are like 5 topics ahead before I have a chance to add my wisdom, and this makes me look stupid. Rarely have I ever seriously considered myself to be stupid. Then if I do just blurt out what I'm thinking, I'm all of the sudden rude :) That's why I have this place on the web. People can be like "Hmmm, I wonder what Jason has to say...", and hop on in and leave completely disappointed or with a chuckle, and maybe a gold nugget of wisdom. The thing that I do a lot though, which is why this site ever even came to be in the first place, is think. I'd say 99% of the day I'm thinking about stuff that is important to me. I like to think, it makes my day. And it makes it go faster :) |
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Man, that would be awesome to dress up as a website for Halloween. Or software in general. "What are you?!" "I'm Mac OS X" or "I'm www.jasontconnell.com, jeez, isn't it obvious?" I think that's where this whole internet thing is going. It was a pretty good idea, but in the future it will just inspire a clothing line from some unheard of clothing company, and they'll become bazillionaires and take the internet offline, so even more people will buy their clothes to remember what they used to waste so much time doing. "Hey, that perfume is great, what is it?" "RosePedals.com!" or "They're a cool pair of jasontconnell.coms! I'll bet they're comfy on your feet!" "Yeah, and I can jump so much higher now!"
You get the idea. It's brilliant. |
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| It only took a year or so for a movie about e-mail. I was in college in 1997 when I first really started using e-mail. You've Got Mail came out in 1998. I don't know when this "web log" phenomenon started up, really. The original jasontconnell.com was up in Mid 2001. They're now huge, so we should be seeing previews for a movie about them shortly. I can't imagine what to call it. Perhaps "Publish to the World" or "You Got Published!" or "Media of the Masses" or "For the People, By the People" ... I don't know. Post your ideas. Whatever it's called, it's gonna be awesome, and I should be listed in the credits. I think Johnny Depp will be the leading role, with Jennifer Connelly playing the supporting one. That would make a good flick. I anticipate it like a guy dressed in a Darth Vader outfit at midnight 2 days before the opening of the latest Star Wars. I'd be out there with my laptop and dressed up as my website. Don't think I don't have the costume already... it's in my closet. |
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Fridays always sneak up on me now. Before, at other jobs, it would always seem like months had passed before you would get a few days off. Now, it's like HOURS. It's wonderous.
So, to kick off the weekend, here is a list of some funny things and some trying to be funny things:
40% of the internet population would refer to this website as a "blog". I don't care what you call it, I don't call it a "blog". Here is a comment I made on this topic earlier today:
"We have to come up with a better term than that."
Amen. As if not being considered anywhere even close to cool wasn't enough, now I have to contribute to something that 40% (+) of the internet population classifies as a "blog". Wonderful.
One popped in my head: "Vulcan"... That planet!! In Star Trek! ;-) Honestly, having never watched Star Trek, I still think that's better than "blog". My girlfriend from a few years ago was the first person to use the term "blog". When she got sick after drinking a lot, that's the sound she made.
Another one popped in my head: "Iceman". This would create better situations at the bar.
Me (to girl at bar): I write an iceman.
Girl: Awesome! Like Val Kilmer?!!? Here's my number.
And there you have it.
Next. I don't think Terrell Owens will be an Eagle this year. He might play a game or two, but Andy Reid will get sick of his B.S. and trade him.
Next. I play video games. Last night I played Battlefield 2 on my newly rebuilt computer. It was neat. On one map, I climbed to a roof behind the other team's base, and picked off like 9 guys before running out of ammo, jumping off the roof, parachuting down (you always have a parachute on you), and reloading all of my ammo, only to be killed by an artillery strike. I laughed at that one though. It was like I had just reloaded all of my ammo from a supply crate that dropped from the sky, and thought "Alright, time to go kick some more ass!"... The first artillery shell is what got me. I had no idea it was coming! At one point, before refilling my ammo, I was shooting 100 yard shots with my pistol! I only got a kill or two with that thing.
Next. Linux and the mug still hasn't arrived.
Damn, I know I had more. Here, let me check the newspaper...
Hmm. First headline : "T.O.'s tirades could signal trade envy." Nope, already commented on that one. Second headline: "Owens heads to Atlanta." Nope, I've said everything I can about that one. Third... "Owens errs in telling his Super Bowl story." Nope, can't think of anything to add to that one. Man, the media has to stop writing about T.O.... honestly. Shut UP!! Hehe, get it. Like T.O. and Andy Reid said to each other?! Read the paper, you're bound to find an article or two-ZILLION about it. Cripes.
More video game news. Yesterday, I also bought "Fantastic 4" for the PS2, so Jeff and I or Bean and Jeff or Bean and I or whatever, can whoop some ass together. It's fun.
Don't trust Microsoft's benchmark tests. Here is a security comparison between Windows Server 2003 with SQL Server 2000 vs. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 with MySQL. Seems like a fair test? Well, download the PDF. Nowhere does it mention that the current version of MySQL (even at the time of the test) and the version of MySQL that is used in the test differ in version number by 1 MAJOR VERSION!! How big is the difference of 1 Major Version? Well, SQL Server 2000 is actually SQL Server Version 8.0. SQL Server 2000 was actually released on January 19th, 2001. SQL Server 7 was released in late 1998 or early 1999, I'm not sure. I couldn't find it. So, that's a difference of at LEAST 2 years. Plus, Red Hat recently released Enterprise Linux 4.0, so maybe Microsoft should do another security test? This goes for most of their tests. And you can't blame them for fixing the results, but you can blame them for writing inferior software :)
Next. Thinking back on a certain state's decision to elect a certain Hollywood action star as its Governer, I began to realize the obvious good and bad in that. A good thing is no stupid Arnold S. movies have been released in a while! A bad thing, Hollywood had to find a replacement, so there are still stupid movies, but without Arnold's style of awful acting.
Next. I'm starting to hate Rounders. If you watch it too much, you'll just find Matt Damon to be another awful actor. It's funny, that movie also stars John Malkovich, one of the best actors. When I watch a movie, I want to watch it and say "That's Teddy KGB" not "That's John Malkovich". But every movie in which Matt Damon stars, he's always the same. Whatever happened to the great character actors, and why aren't they all famous, if they are still around. Another way to look at this quality in an actor is to watch a movie with an actor, and then watch another one with the same actor, and not see the previous character one bit in the new character. If they can't do that, I consider them a bad actor. No offense ;-)
Maybe I'll have more, if you're lucky. |
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I never reported this, but I broke my motherboard on my very expensive gaming computer a few weeks ago. This is how I described the mishap on a forum I visit:
my F#%$@#!ing motherboard broke... it was my fault though. stupid crazy ass place for a 5 gallon bucket of paint... i'm kidding, i tried to put in a pci card but there wasn't room, and i snapped one of those little chip things that sit on the motherboard and make them work...
Woops. So, eventually, after like a month, I decided to finally replace it because I want to play video games like I do sometimes. So, I ordered the motherboard. Here is that forum entry:
I miss playing games sometimes, but I want to play F.E.A.R. more than anything. The demo is out. So I ordered that b@#$%@ today. Plus, I have a 250GB secondary hard drive on there, with no room in my other computers for it, and I need the space. I hope I got a good one, it'll definitely be better than the last one though... it got a score of "5 out of 5 eggs" on newegg.com. plus it has a very similar layout to the other motherboard, which is HUGE. the last thing I want to do is empty out my liquid cooling and recut tubes to make that s@#$% fit.
It's thundering and lightening here pretty bad, I'm scared so I'm gonna go under my desk. (19th floor is a lot closer to that stuff than the 1st floor).
hopefully, by friday, you'll hear me mumbling sweet nothings to you on teamspeak after I put a bullet through your mother F@#%@#$ing dome.
A few liner notes. Teamspeak is a program used for talking to other people over the internet for free and in real time. There are a few people that I talk to, but I haven't been on in a while, because it's normally used for trashtalking in games and coordinating strategies in a first person tactical team based shooter. FEAR is going to be a cool game. And a motherboard is a very necessary, very fragile computer part. I ALWAYS censor myself, on any webpage I go to. Anyone who knows those words can tell right off the bat, but what if little kids visit? I can't make them not read it, so I figure I'll just make it safe for everyone, for the most part. These posts are "as is".
The other part of this story is my converting every other computer I have to Linux. When Windows Vista (formerly Longhorn) is released, I won't and can't go buy a copy for each computer I have. If they're lucky, I might buy one for the gaming PC. Here is the post about me ordering Linux. So that's also on the way.
It's a race (as the title indicates). Linux and the coffee mug are somewhere between San Pablo, CA, and Drexel Hill. They left San Pablo on August 6th at 5:01 AM. It's anyone's guess where it is now. The motherboard was ordered yesterday, and left Los Angeles, CA at 9:16 AM today. However, Linux and the mug were shipped through UPS, and the motherboard was shipped through FedEx Saver and is estimated to arrive on Thursday, August 11th. Obviously the UPS package has a bit of a head start.
Place your bets! |
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Recently I wrote about how the Internet was going to hell, and I had mentioned that one reason was the fact that the sheer amount of information available on the internet will be an overwhelming amount for any search engine to handle. One complaint I had was when I typed in my name, my website didn't show up for at least 7 pages. Well, I've taken a look at Google's method of at least trying to solve this type of problem: Personalized Search.
Essentially, personalized search keeps track of all of your past searches. You can either search the web, or as you search the web often, and your history builds up, you can search your history. However, searching the web does not also show results in your history, which I think they will change.
Also, I noted this. Being the anniversary of the lunar landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, Google now has a maps.google.com type of satellite picture of the moon, pinpointing the locations of various important places on the moon. It's cool. And funny! Zoom in all the way, you will see Google's humor once again.
Apparently, maps.google.com isn't integrated with moon.google.com so this directions request didn't work:
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Here are a few reasons why you can't blame Mozilla for its SpreadFireFox.com site getting hacked.
1) They didn't write the server software that it uses to publish the website with. The software that they use doesn't actually have a security hole. It was PHP that had the security hole, a server side scripting language.
2) They don't write server software. They write browser software. Yet still, ZDNet writes
"The hack is an embarrassment to Mozilla, which uses security as the main selling point for the Firefox Web browser."
That's a joke, right? An insecure server software that you didn't write is on the opposite end of the spectrum as a secure web browser that you are proud of writing. Please.
3) It's some server admin's fault, not Mozilla. Whoever was supposed to keep the server software up to date obviously didn't do their job. This shouldn't reflect on the quality and security of Mozilla's web browser.
4) Microsoft claims to be on a "Secure Computing Initiative" for their operating systems, and yet you can still hack the f*#^% out of them.
5) Here's an analogy (since I love to use analogies): A car company, who stresses their cars are the safest, has an accident on the assembly line, causing a worker to die. Sure, they're not the safest place to work, but if the industry says their cars are the safest, does this make them not the safest? It absolutely is their problem, and a big one, but it doesn't take away from the safety of their cars in the least bit. People who believe this... well, I feel sorry for them. It's public image, but the public is stupid.
I will continue to make love to their web browser, as sexy as it is. |
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I've recently become enlightened to the fact that there are actually interesting websites out there on the internet. Out of all this time I've spent browsing the internet since its inception, I was sure that I've visited everything. However, I recently came across 2 fascinating sites (well, not exactly sites).
In high school, I had heard of Nirvana. It wasn't until after Kurt Cobain's death that I really got into them. My music phases post talks about this a bit. I listened to "In Utero" for a long time, on the walk to and from school, in a tape walkman I had probably stolen off of one of my brothers. I wouldn't say I became obsessed with the band, just the music, but I would buy a few magazines that had Kurt in it. I probably don't have them any more. I remember that day back in 1994, in April, at Jim's house, our friend called and said Kurt Cobain had died, rather, had killed himself. I was like "Who's Kurt Cobain?". No lie. Apparently, if you read more and more into this story, it soon ends up not looking like a suicide, but more of a homicide. I found a site, In Defence Of Kurt Cobain (that's how they spell "Defense", they must be a Brit). There are tons of facts there, leaning towards the author's implication that Courtney Love murdered Kurt. Form your own conclusion.
On to the next one. We all know of the events on September 11, 2001. What everyone doesn't know is exactly every piece of information that was available. Until you watch this movie called Loose Change. Search the internet for a downloadable version of it. The movie is pretty good, but can seem a little bit far fetched. It opens with the perfect disclaimer, "For Your Consideration". It simply points out that most of the world was given enough evidence to make the conclusion that al Qaeda attacked us on September 11th. But there is more. Take it as entertainment, or let it convince you. I find that the picture it paints is too shocking for me to believe it, but the evidence, or lack thereof, is there.
I might try to find other interesting stuff and post it here every week, but we'll see how long that holds up. |
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Since I'd rather not use my dedicated Linux server as an email server as well, and catch tons of spam eating away at my 1000GB monthly bandwidth, I have a few free email accounts and one not so free. Namely, 4 or 5 gmail accounts and a hotmail account. There are probably others. However, I'm starting to hate hotmail. I pay $20/year for it, and will probably still pay for it at least one more year. I am going to try to completely convert over to my gmail account. They have better spam filtering with NO initial setup! For instance, only one email that was junk got into my inbox, but NO emails that weren't junk went into my "spam" folder. Hotmail basically has no idea. Gmail is smart. The one thing it's lacking is email groups, but it's underway. Everything else is solid. I've started using labels to categorize mail, which is cool. The one thing that I don't like about Gmail is that all of your mail stays in the one folder. I see where they're coming from, and perhaps if I use more labels and more frequently, I'll start to see the beauty of them, and won't care as much about the one folder thing. The one extra extra strong thing that gmail offers is it'll automatically store sent messages. I sometimes like to read messages after I've sent them along to make sure I wrote them perfectly, sometimes laugh at my own jokes that I wrote in them, or just simply waste a few minutes of time. I always forget to check the little checkbox in hotmail to store a message that I'm sending. I hate it. Gmail is good where I want it to be good.
So if you have me as a contact in your mail program, please update my email address to :
jasontconnell [the at sign] gmail [the dot] com
So, email me already.
This process has started. Yesterday, I copied all of the worthwhile contacts from my hotmail account, saved them as a csv file after much pain and suffering, and did an import into gmail. Works like a charm. That contact groups thing hurts me, because I wanted to send an email out to everyone that I drink with. I would create a group called "Drinking buddies" and send it a message. Gmail doesn't have great contact support, either (or "yet"), like it only has Name and Email address fields, but it's a beta (meaning, it's not finished). So later on they'll probably have phone fields, extra email addresses for people, pictures, quick facts (like, "This guy can't hold his liquor"), and other neat stuff.
If you want to try gmail out, send me an email, although I can't imagine anyone who spends more than 30 minutes a day on the internet doesn't have an account... |
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Podcasting is basically radio shows made by anyone and stored in mp3 format and downloaded by people. They are called podcasts because a) they're radio-show-like (broadcast) and b) because people would copy them to their iPods and listen to them.
So, Apple has welcomed them with open arms and developed an add-on to iTunes to let you download, subscribe, and listen to Podcasts (not necessarily in that order). I heard of them long before last night though. But, it wasn't up until last night that I actually listened to one.
Please, point me in the direction of a good one!
So basically, I'm listening to a few random ones (there are 3000+ on iTunes), and I must have bad luck, because out of all the ones I tried, I didn't like any of them. I won't say "they suck", even though I think they did, but they weren't for me. I'll leave final judgement to the masses.
I did listen to Al Franken's and the guys from WDVE in Pittsburgh. They're both just clips from their live radio shows, which is fine. Jim Krenn and the guys at DVE are hilarious. I have a CD of theirs called "Former Altar Boys" and there are some skits on it that are hilarious. Tom (my old college roommate and good friend) let me borrow it, joined the Air Force, went to Iraq, and apparently forgot all about it. His Loss!! Sucker.
So please, point me in the direction of something good. Except Zatko, don't post "Microsoft News Log" or any of those. I'll mail a box of rotten eggs to your house. |
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For the last day and a half, I put some pretty major work into this website. However, the only parts you'll see are in the comments section, and now a News post can have multiple categories associated with it. The thing about the last one is it's not easy at all. You need a few things.
#1 Table structure
#2 Change all your code that uses just a Subject in the news table
#3 Create a dual select box (which I needed anyway)
#4 Create a data list control to list each subject associated with that news post underneath it.
Numbers 1 and 2 were simple, but time consuming. However, numbers 3 and 4, with a new technology and very little documentation out there to go on, can be particularly daunting tasks. In the end, the amount of code written was not at all proportional to the amount of time spent on it, but that's usually the case in Computer Science and programming. You think and think and think, then the easy work begins, unless of course you're using a technology that you aren't too familiar with, like JavaServer Faces. I've written web controls in the technology before. The menu control, for instance, and the calendar control. However, unlike the menu and calendar controls, the Dual Select list is an input control, and the Data List control is an interation control, neither of which I had developed in JSF, up until this weekend.
Here is what the dual select list looks like:
And here is the short amount of JSP code that writes out all of the categories under a news post.
Now the code to "plop" a dual select list onto a page
Simple.
Now I just have to go through all of my news posts and properly categorize them. I'd rather drink gravel. |
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Wouldn't it be cool if there was a program capable of having you input, say, a news post, and take all of those words and make something really cool out of it? Or just have a different way of showing it? Rather, an alternative way? Maybe a picture made out of words and then you click a button and they move into text form... that would be rad.
One example comes to mind. Say you have a post about the Eagles. The first thing you see is all of the words moved around, twisted, flipped, and mangled to form an Eagles logo. Then, you click a link to make it the actual boring paragraph/sentence form that we are all so used to and loathe, but they move there in an animated, rad way. That would bring to life any web page.
I'm going to try it. Gimme a week on this one. It's probably not too easy :) |
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You know the things...
"Copy these questions into a new email, answer the questions, and forward it to 10 people and something will pop up on your screen."
Forget about the "believing that something will pop up on your screen" bit... that's just plain gullable. So those things where you answer questions about yourself, they're actually gaining new life, except not in "forwards" of emails, where there was once a mass conspiracy about what happened with those and where they came from... i.e. companies would start them, send them to people, those people would forward them, etc etc etc, and if one branch of the email eventually made it back to the originators, they'd have like 9 gazillion email addresses that they could spam profusely. Now these marketing companies just spider the internet for email addresses, which is probably more successful.
Anyway, so these "forwards" have grown into a culture of sorts. They are answered and plastered on web pages, in forums, and anywhere on the internet where people who are not editors for a major company-that-needs-editors can post. They're email-less, so spammers are not that happy about it. However, these are much more desireable than the email forwarded version. Stemming from my "Freedom to Ignore" Act in the Bill of Rights, it's a lot easier to ignore a post on the internet than one that's stuffed down your throat in an email inbox.
So I have no problems with them. I won't do any though, they are not my cup of tea. I don't think anyone cares what the last 5 movies I watched were, or my last girlfriend's name, or whatever, I can't think of anything funnier than what they actually ask you :) |
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In a digital handbasket.
Have you ever gone to Blogspot and just clicked "next blog" for an hour? Well, this brings upon some enlightening thoughts about where the internet is going. Every other site is spam. Every third site is some young kid who uses sentences like "ive bin bz lol and work sux lol and my cat dide lol". Once every 10 clicks or so you'll find a nice, intelligible person who writes in proper English (or almost, like me), complete sentences, and has something meaningful to say. The rest of the sites are in some other language, so I have no say on them.
There are numerous sites out there that let people have a website and write thoughts on it. That's all good and dandy. But it's like a guy at the beach wearing a speedo, when you know that guy shouldn't be wearing a speedo, and no one will tell him that he shouldn't be wearing one. So, it's not against the law, but it's not pleasant for anyone... His daughter won't even be on the same beach as him, the wife is hiding under an umbrella, pretending to be asleep and/or reading a book, you know the scene.
I have nothing against free speech, free press, free anything. There are consistently low quality performances in all walks of life. Some movies suck, video games, books, tv shows, the Phillies, etc. Some are expressions of emotion, like a "blog" would be. There are also those on the extreme opposite end of that spectrum. Like, for one thing, the Eagles rule. Also, Plato's books rule, and I'm sure there's a good video game out there somewhere.
Obviously, I don't have to view those websites, and that's the other freedom granted in Free Press, Free Speech, and everything else free. The freedom to ignore. God Bless America.
OK, so while the Internet isn't going to hell from all the n00bs out there posting incoherent ramblings using long-ass sentences consisting of words of no more than 4 characters in length, it's still going to hell.
So, I'm going to look for a domain name to purchase to park this site at, and I try like a hundred different things that might closely resemble something that I would be proud to have as a domain name. I search the WHOIS database like nobody's business, finding all these domain names taken. I have to investigate, right? I visit the first domain name, and it's a "GoDaddy" site. The next one is a "Register.com" site. This happened for about 10 different domain names and at least 4 different registrar sites (like Network Solutions also). So many people, or "abstracts" even, own so many domain names. Luckily I was able to get the ones I wanted because of a cleverly inserted hyphen :) I say abstracts because these people buy domain names, and then try to get a sucker to buy it from them for at least 10 times what they paid. This just sucks for the future of the internet. It only costs $35 (max) a year to keep a domain name and not use it. Domain names are allowed to be pretty long (you can pretty much find the history of the internet on this site), so there are infinite, or close to it, permutations of domain names. I'd hate to know someone at an newly established domain name 20 years from now. Hey what's your website? Oh, it's www.mydomainnameissolongbecausethestupidpeople
inyourdayboughtupallthedomainnamesandididnothaveabazilliondollarstobuytheoneiwanted.com
Great. So, how do I email you? It's bob@my... no, I'm not going to type it again. That wasted 5 minutes already.
Other reasons the internet is going to hell...
Spam is too obvious. Worms are too obvious... Virii is a cool word, but it's still too obvious. Fraud... too obvious. Porn even... what else is bad with the internet?
I'm not a lawyer, but open source is good. Knowledge sharing is good. Being able to easily find something that you're looking for is great. With the internet growing at a rate that it is (google is now indexing 8 BILLION+ websites, just a few years ago it was at 2-3 billion), there won't be any tools capable of searching the internet and bringing back relevant results. I searched for my name, and figuring I'm searching for my name, it should return my website. I got to the 7th page before I gave up. One of these days there will need to be artificial intelligence of the human kind to be able to search the internet. Not that AI is bad (unless you think the Matrix is real :) ), but it's HARD! I'm no genius, but I worked with AI in college. VERY interesting subject. Mind boggling, even. Exciting. Fascinating. It's awesome. But anyways, back to the internet...
One thing that comes to my mind when I hear the words "The internet is going to hell", is the obvious notion of compatibility. Sharing information between sites can now be done in a thousand ways, as long as those sites share their methods of sharing information. Let me list them... SOAP through Web Services, plain XML, RSS, ATOM, XMLRPC, RPC, Remoting, and anything else that someone may want to program. Granted, the WWW Consortium is trying to get a grasp on all of these methods, almost none of them are standardized through them. The happy internet is the standardized internet. Imagine, if google, instead of just reading all of the HTML through a website url, can just ask a website "Yo, what's your deal?!" and the website can respond back "Dude, I am a guitar shop, here are my wares." And google says "Awesome, Jason Connell was searching for guitars the other day, he wanted a new stratocaster, I'll email this to him right away. He found one for $500 but judging by your prices, he's gonna crap his pants. In fact, let's just place the order now, shall we? I have his credit card and mailing address..." Without standardization in server methods and in browsers, we won't even come close to that point :)
So, that was my very compelling argument on why the internet is going to hell. I hope you enjoyed it. Please comment below. |
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Netscape 8 is out now. I'm set in my ways with the Mozilla Suite, but I'll give my initial reactions on Netscape 8 anyway. From what I've read, it can use Mozilla's rendering engine (which is Netscape's, it's called Gecko) or IE's rendering engine which, from what I know, doesn't have a cool name (Do any of Microsoft's products?? Longhorn, Whistler, Yukon, ... No, none of them have cool code names, and all of their product names suck). So judging from this style of compatibility solution, I wouldn't use it. From what I can tell, Microsoft doesn't have the security background as some people may think, they also piss people off.
I don't think a hybrid solution will work. Ahh, here's a nice piece of crap information. Take the tour of Netscape 8, go into "Security", click the right arrow 2 or 3 times... you'll find that the browser will render safe sites using "the Internet Explorer method" for "maximum compatibility"... Oh man, Netscape's hit the bottom, they're now kissing Microsoft's butt. First off, Mozilla is the "standards compliant" browser, however, most web developers write their Javascript and HTML to pretty much only work in IE. ECMAScript (JavaScript's other name) was invented at Netscape and later taken and seriously altered by Microsoft, so now there are two versions. You can learn about Javascript here.
In conclusion, Netscape 8 uses IE so it inherits all of its flaws with respects to standards compliancy. Eventually, IE will need to conform to these standards, but it will still have the security flaws. Mozilla or FireFox are based on these standards, which make web developing not as complex as it used to be, back when the browser market share was a tight battle between Netscape and Microsoft, coinciding Windows 98 which came with IE4 and Microsoft's version of ECMAScript. Mozilla based code doesn't even know what an "ActiveX" object is, so it gains a TON of security advantages there. It's the safe way to browse the web on a Windows machine. |
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Now that I have the gmail accounts and domain names all registered, I can start to share them. I'm going to have some logos and images designed so I can be cooler. The names and email addresses are : (drum roll)
Caffeine Fueled
Digital Tattoo
Email Caffeine Fueled
Email Digital Tattoo
Being a non-schizophrenic and also not having all the time in the world, I will pretty much only be using one domain and email, and that will be caffeine fueled, since I am caffeine fueled. The other one was just too cool of a domain name to pass up. I had to get it, Mom, I had to. How cool is a "digital tattoo"?! I can't even grasp the concept. Of course, in that analogy I say a domain name is a digital tattoo.
So, if I get offers for the domain name, I'd consider selling it. It could be a good name for a graphics design company, or software, probably anything in computers. If that's the case, I can't hold back the dreams of an entrepreneur, and will practically give it away. I don't do this for money, do you see ads on here? :-P |
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I went to sign up for another gmail account today, and the default desired login name made me laugh...
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| Besides the fact that this site just looks a bazillion times better in Mozilla or Firefox, Internet Explorer has been exploited again. This worm encrypts all of your files and places a ransom note on your computer that tells you to pay $200 to get the files unencrypted and usable again. Use Mozilla for Pete's sake. It's based on standards and it's well implemented. But always be careful when downloading a file, however, with IE you can install software on a client computer without having them download a file... |
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I don't like blogs, so I'm not going to call this a blog. It's partly to do with the word "blog"... it's a buzzword almost. Everyone's doing it. I've always tried to stay away from stuff that the masses are doing (except that one time in sixth grade when I had to get Reebok Pump sneakers). Look at the big picture of this. When you say "blog" you encapsulate EVERY site out there that has one to a few people's thoughts written in a format that always looks the same. Even down to the font. Of course, there are a lot of thoughts out there, but I'd rather read humorful ones... ones that are like mine, ones that smell nice, ones that talk about Philly sports and guitar and programming... this site isn't another blog. It's a personal site, but not a blog. There's more than a "log". This news part might be called a blog, since it is blog-like. I tend to look at things in terms of technology. In that way, there's no way that the whole site is a blog, blogs don't have s!@#! :) I put too much into the technology behind this site to just have it classified with around a billion other sites :) Now I know how people feel when they are stereotyped. I don't want my little site to be stereotyped!
Ok, I've vented. Thanks for listening. It's not a blog. |
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I never really refered to this site as a blog. I developed the first version way back in early 2001, even late 2000. I'm not sure when "blog" (short and mangled form of "Web Log") was originally coined, but I only started hearing the term last year. I guess this is a blog though. There are some "blogging technology" that it's missing, but I have more stuff than your average blog... downloads and photos being the major things. I could make it look more like a blog, but there's more to it. Most blogs usually blog about something specific. I've seen ones that are political blogs, music blogs, news blogs, techno blogs, etc. I lack the interest and expertise in any one specific topic to dedicate my blogging to just one topic. The approach I take is just talk about a ton of stuff, let the 1 to 2 people a day read it and criticize it, and post some music and photo albums. My website also lacks a cool (or weird) name. I've got some ideas floating around up there, but they are all based off of Cracker songs or are corny. Yes, corny. Or they are too topic specific. Like if I called my site "Philly Web Hacker", then people would come on here expecting to read about web hacking or something. So the name can't be a noun. Nouns are bad. So I need a good verb or adverb, maybe even an adjective, or a conjunction, or possibly a pronoun. e.g. ifandthe.com is a good one, but it's probably taken. Post your ideas...
[Update] On the topic of a new name, I think I have one. Tonight when I get home, I'm going to write it down on a piece of paper and stare at it for a few hours. That's how I always decide on something. A domain name is like a digital tattoo. You always have to make sure it's what you really want, it will be your mark on the giant body known as the web, but unlike a real tattoo, you can just let it expire. |
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| I have this worm. My computer sent out a ton of emails. I didn't know it was on there until I got emails back from an email server saying that something around 40 email addresses where mail was sent to from my account were not found. If you get emails in German, don't open them. The title of mine was something about the bombing of Dresden 60 years ago, and I'm a sucker for history. I'm not sure if opening the email really caused it, I think somehow it got through somewhere else, because the news site it was linked to was a legit German news site with an interesting article about how bombing Dresden was not necessary, but it's a valid argument from either side. I think I've found the source of the worm and it's gone from my computer now. |
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| So, I have a new debit card that no one else has except me and my bank. The money is back in the account as the company said it would do. Looking back on it, it wasn't that bad of an experience except for having to get cash out against my credit card, but I paid it off since I knew I had money in the bank and the credit card goes against just your routing number and bank account number, not a credit card. I got money out at a branch of our bank before we went to Lewes this weekend, and more importantly I had money for Friday night. That was a great time meeting up with a bunch of people I worked with two jobs ago. We always end up having a good time. |
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| This server now has 1000 GB monthly transfer. I have an 80 GB hard drive on here, if I could fill it up, I could transfer the entire contents of the hard drive twelve and a half times. Or, more practically, if I have 100 MB of stuff on this website, i could have 10,000 people a month view everything I have on here. Even more practically, I'll never use 1000 GB a month. That total, however, includes my FTP and SSH usage, although SSH is really no percentage of 1000 GB. Using SSH, I may transfer 1 GB every 10 years :) The cap used to be 100 GB and I never used it, but the websites I have on here before this one hardly got used, although this one isn't used much either, but I visit it everyday :) Anyway, feel free to hoard my music. |
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This sucks. I went to deposit a check today, after hours at the branch, and I can't because I realized you need a MAC (ATM) card to do it. And I won't have one until later this week. So, I probably have to go to the one in Center City tomorrow at lunch. That should be fun. I need it in there because I have bills to pay, but every bank has these awful hours, like 9-4. I need to be in Center City by 9, and I can't leave before 5. No way I'm making it to a bank before or after a work day. Saturdays they are open from 9-12 but this past Saturday was rough, and it can't wait until this Saturday.
This fraud person really screwed me this week. The closest bank to my building is half a mile, perhaps I could take the bus because walking is just plain out of the question :) I hardly have the "walk on the sidewalk" part down in the city, crossing the streets is a whole other matter that I'm not ready to partake in. |
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Today, I log into my bank account to see if I have any money, and there's this charge on there that I didn't make. So I call my bank and they say contact the company on the statement, which turns out to be this internet payment services company. So I call them, not knowing what to expect, and I get this nice girl. We eventually figure out that it was in fact a fraudulent charge, and she cancels the order and says I'll be refunded, and I should just call the bank again and get a new number. So I do that. I call the bank again, tell them it was a fraudulent charge, they shut down the card and are shipping a new card to me this week. All that took less than 25 minutes, and I won't lose any money.
My problem is though, that now I'm all flustered, I didn't think that would happen to me, so I'm typing this all shaky and stuff. Also, what about the person who made the charge... they have records, an address, phone number, and everything. Will that person go to jail? How did they get it? This still sucks. But, I won't get any more charges on that card. I pretty much only order from places with a trustworthy name, encryption, and all the other good secure stuff. My card is completely shut down, I'm going to have to borrow money from someone to get me through the week until this card comes. Those A-HOLES. Plus, they have to be dumber than a box of nails. Like, with the internet, and online banking, anyone can find out anything that goes on with their account in about .00001 seconds. Sucker. Judging from the site, it's a software sales place. I'm sure the company will pursue the fraud because they now have software that they didn't pay for. $81 worth of it.
But, I have to thank the companies involved for being quick to act, being open on a Saturday, and getting things done. Hopefully those A-HOLES will get a job and pay their own money for stuff in the future. Alright, I'm not as shaky as I was when I started typing this. Just, be careful with how you use your credit card. There are cheap, desperate people out there. I like to call them criminals. |
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| July 2010 |
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