This is a post from my ipod touch it has 16 GB of space and about 9 used up. The iTunes wifi music store is sweet. Enjoy your non iPod touches, suckers!!! I also got Stephen Colbert's book. Should be awesome

So, I've played around with Ubuntu a bit this weekend. Here is my brief rundown:

1. I have access to a lot more of my computer with it installed without having to do anything really, which rocks. Touch pad (the horizontal scroll thing I mentioned before), wireless networking, and sound mainly. I had a problem in Eclipse where if I tapped the touch pad it would paste whatever I had in my clipboard to whatever file I was viewing at the time. A lot of errant clips got into Java files, and I'd get errors on compile and was like "PC LOAD LETTER?!?!" I'd find it and wonder what it was doing there... eventually I found out the touch pad caused it. I downloaded qsynaptics (since all touch pads really use the Synaptics touch pad), and disabled tapping. qsynaptics is a program that basically modifies the touch pad part of your Xorg.conf file in Linux. It solved the problem. I don't use tapping anyway.

2. I've noticed it's a lot slower than Gentoo was running on the same exact machine. I looked up some speed hacks and tried them out. Most of them were for program loadup times and boot times, speeding up internet access by disabling IPv6, etc. It seems my hard drive is a lot slower. I took pride in Linux against Windows because when I ran Gentoo, the ANT script that would take 20-25 seconds to run on Windows now only took 4-9 seconds. I forget what file system I had on Gentoo, but I know the latest Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn) which I have installed, uses ext3. There's a lot of extra data, apparently, that gets written with each file, and my ANT script is all about copying files.

3. I am helplessly devoted and accustomed to my MacBook Pro. After using Ubuntu for two days, which is also supposed to be the most user friendly Linux (from my experience it is way easier than Gentoo), the Mac just blows it away still. I should try getting my development environment moved over to the Mac, but Java on the Mac is weird. I haven't delved down that road yet, whereas I know exactly what I'm doing when I get a development environment set up on Linux.

4. I tried getting a Windows share (SMB) set up on Ubuntu so I could occasionally log in an copy files or whatever. I set it up to where the Mac and my Windows PC could see the computer on the network, but they couldn't connect to the shared folder on Ubuntu. That kind of matters, actually, because I want to get a server set up with loads of HDD space so I can have all of my gobs of data on there instead of on a computer where I only view those files. I don't need to store every file I have distributed over all the computers I have. I'd like to have my music, movies, and a backup of code, maybe a webserver also, running on a server with a free and good operating system.

5. You learn a lot about Linux when you don't run it in root all the time. I had to set up Gentoo, like I said it was like building a house, compared to Ubuntu which is like a fully furnished modern house that you can just move in to. And there's this one part where you have to modify the script that runs when a new user is created, to copy files into their home directory for default settings and whatnot. I could just never get it right. So, I always ran as root. On Ubuntu though, it sets you up to have an account that's not root. You still have root access with the "su" or "sudo" commands when you need it. But you find out more about how security works in Linux. What folders you wouldn't normally have access to (basically, everything except your Home folder), what those other two numbers mean in "chmod 777 filename". All I know is if the first number is 7, and the other two aren't, and root owns the file.. you can't do shit with it. Actually, it's simple. 1 is read, 2 is write, 4 is execute. Or something like that. So if you have all of them, it's 7, or just read is 1, etc. And you notice that it probably took a lot of time to either a) make as many programs not require root or b) catalog which ones need root. Windows hasn't done this until Vista, which it doesn't even do a good job of from what I hear. I'm holding off on Vista until it's absolutely necessary or I can do without it until the next version. Depends what games require Vista, basically.

Probably the answer to my speed-up prayers is a new laptop. But I'd get another desktop before a new laptop, since I can build a desktop, and I can put all those hard drives in it and store all my data. Relatively cheaply too. Time for bed.

Parallels has pleasantly surprised me by not requiring me to use Windows keys in Windows to accomplish stuff. No longer do I have to press "CTRL+C" to copy something, or "CTRL-V" to paste it somewhere. Now it accepts that I am helplessly used to doing things the Mac way, with "Command+C" and "Command+V" accomplishing these two tasks in Windows. Marvelous.

Oh wait... I just tried to do a few things that seemed to be Windows only. "Command+Space" would be what is used for "IntelliSense" in "SharpDevelop" on Windows, but it opened up my Spotlight. Gotta use "CTRL+Space" for that. Oh well. There's a few others.

DOH! I recently began to question my wisdom when looking at the best games for the two common hand held gaming systems on the market. I have the Sony PSP which has games like Tiger Woods and Virtua Tennis. The other one is the Nintendo DS. It of course has two screens, hence the "DS" for "Dual Screen". And one is a touch screen.

I was checking out the list of the best games, obviously sorted by rating descending. Out of the top 10 or so games for each system, I found myself wanting more from the DS and already having all the ones I'd want on the PSP. That blows. I'm not going to get a DS soon because I don't really have the time for either anyway. But I chose the wrong one or I am in the wrong profession and should have been able to buy both and determine for myself which one is better. This way would likely be the best way. Oh well. That would surely be a luxury item and I can't buy luxury items now. Only after I have tons of loot saved for a house.

Speaking of luxury items... I'd love to have a file server running on Linux or Mac (preferably something cheap to set up), with tons of space on it, like a terabyte or two. For one thing, I'd love to be able to import all of my DVDs and store them on there, and of course have all of my music on there. Then buy an AppleTV and have my Mac reference all of these things in iTunes. Then of course be able to watch any movie I own with a click of a button on either my TV or my Mac. That would be ideal. I've researched ways to import DVD into a format that iTunes and AppleTV can understand. It's possible but the legality is questionable. They're my movies though, and as long as I keep the disks I should be fine. Although the MPAA and RIAA want to make it as difficult as possible to do that, so Apple really isn't allowed to provide the means, I have to find a hack.

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.

But I never tried installing Windows on my Mac before. I bought Parallels and entered the name of the VM, my name, and my Windows product key. Clicked "OK" or something, and moments later, I had Windows installed. Parallels is a neat program, I didn't have to do anything after that to install it, it probably got all my settings from the Mac and used that for certain Windows settings (Timezone, etc). It was sweet. So now I can use it to make money :)

I have a project to do with a local school. I needed Windows, SQL Server, and Visual Studio .NET 2003. Luckily, I bought no new software for this. I own 2 copies of Windows (one is still installed on a computer that I haven't turned on in about 8 months, and one on my gaming computer which is running all the time...), I borrowed SQL Server 2000 Developer Edition, and I am using ICSharpCode's SharpDevelop, which is pretty neat. And Open Source. e.g. Free.

I did all the original work while working for a company about 3 years ago now. I tried to instill some better programming practices in them while I was there, but alas, it's been a pain to relearn how to use all the code. It's coming along though.

I think I'm going to buy a new iPod to celebrate.

I sent that to about 320 people, I was so proud.

If you don't have a MacBook (or a Pro version), you're missing out on tons of fun. Even if you don't do this after the first week. Check it out.

I'll probably stop in a few days, but I've never laughed so hard from software included with a computer before, ever. Ever. (Not even from laughing at the software, which I often do when I install Windows :P )


Also, here's another screenshot. I connect to my Mac from Linux. I have "Gimp" installed on Linux, and it's a killer photo editing app (much like Photoshop but free-er). I use iPhoto on the Mac also, which is great for batch-resizing, organizing, importing, etc. But if I need to do advanced stuff like what I haven't figured out how to do in iPhoto yet, there's always the Linux backup :)

Just search for label "mac" or "mbp" in the Pictures section. You should find at least 6 of them.

My Mac. w to the mother f@%@#ing 00t.

It's so beautiful.

Nov 8, 2006  8:06 AM   On FedEx vehicle for delivery    PHILADELPHIA, PA.

I'm actually sick today, not just waiting for my Mac. It's convenient, but I hate missing work. Another Saturday will be in order. w00t.

My Mac has arrived at Anchorage, Alaska, after a long voyage from Shanghai, China. Soon, it will be in the actual USA. Yes, Alaska is more of a state than Connecticut, but it's not considered part of the "Continental" United States. So therefore, it's worthless to me. And I don't even like crab that much. Actually, I sorta consider it part of the "Continental" USA because it's on the same land mass. Not like that other place with all the surfers, and pretty soon, judging from a recent science show I watched, not that other state with a lot of surfers and the govenator. That would be funny, because Apple is located in that other state. I'm probably offending everyone, but we all know that PA is the best state, because it's the only one. The only real one ;-)

Of course, it could be argued that your "State" is "decent" if the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States both originated there. I mean, talk about monumental documents that define a state.

I got an email today that my MacBook Pro had shipped. I took a brief glance at it and got the impression that it had shipped from either "Canada" or "Connecticut", so it shouldn't be too long. Later in the day I wanted to get a better idea of when I can expect it, since I'll be either taking off of work early or getting in late. I look again without reading the name of the city that it shipped from, but I do notice that the last entry in the ship-log was one 11/06/06 at 10:25 pm. It then hit me that today was 11/06 and it was not yet 10:25 pm. It was almost noon. So I look again at where it shipped from... f@#%@ing Shanghai, CHINA. "CN" was used, and I later remembered that Connecticut, as insignificant as it is (I mean, cripes, they don't even have an Apple warehouse!! They might as well not even exist), has never gone by "CN", but "CT". I knew that, but assumption and lack of coffee/brains made me think it was shipping from this continent, so I just threw Connecticut in my brain and left it at that. But I'm positive it'll be here by the 8th or 9th. I had a slight panic attack because if it had shipped from Connecticut, I have a deadline tomorrow, and I wouldn't have been able to be home for the delivery. Anyway, I'll keep making posts about its progress around the world.

Have to help pay for certain recent purchases (see previous post...) I can't wait til that thing gets here.

Basically what I plan on using it for was everything that I used my Mac Mini for (until it blew up), which is like watching my X-Files DVDs at night to fall asleep to (as well as any movie I have), recording music on there using Garage Band, keeping my photo collection, editing movies from my digital camera (I have a Quick Time Pro 7 license that's currently not being used), browsing the internet, chatting, and getting started with Ruby and Rails.

So basically my other two computers currently in commission will only be tasked with one responsibility each. Actually, the Linux Laptop will be my primary Java programming machine as it is now, and the gaming PC will no longer have any software installed on it other than games, but that's also my large capacity storage machine, since it's the only one I can actually add hard drives to, seeing as the other ones are laptops. It's got about 330 GB of HDD space. Right now it holds my music collection, all the backups of everything I've ever done with computers (including my original websites, both in ASP and Perl! They're a blast from the past), and tons of other random stuff like images and screenshots from college. The new Mac will have 160 GB of HDD space, so I might have to get a dedicated backup drive to put in the gaming PC.

It's funny too, because most people are all about having multiple monitors for a PC, as it leads to higher productivity since you can read a spec on one screen and program on another. Everybody at work has multiple monitors. I fear that I'll need to do that at home if I get used to it, so I'm the only one in work that has a lone monitor. That and my current video card setup can't support more than one. It could get expensive, since right now I'm using a 19" Sony that I bought for 350 bucks a few years ago, and it works marvelous for my purposes. I'd much rather have multiple PCs than multiple monitors. A network leads me to be very productive. A KVM switch is wonderful. It's all about how quick you are on the computer. I can switch between computers in a bat of an eyelash, depending on the KVM switch.

Although nowadays with multiple cores in CPUs (my first multi-core CPU will be the Mac), you can easily run two computation-intensive apps at the same time. But still I'd much rather have two multi-core computers, and KVM between them in order to get shit done :D

MBPRO 15/2.16 CTO
2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM-2x1GB
160GB Serial ATA Drive@5400rpm
SuperDrive 6X
15" Widescreen Display
BkLit Keyboard/Mac OS
Country Kit

That is one fine piece of machinery, right there.