Life, the Universe, and Everything

I just named this post that because I was too lazy to actually think of something that describes it. Making up for my bad math exam, I got a near-perfect grade on my American Literature final. W00t! The American Government exam was pretty easy, and while I haven't gotten my grade back yet I think I'll do even better then I did on my Literature exam.

In other news, I started writing a novel. Compared to my previous attempts at a novel the detail has gone through the roof. Chapter 1 is 716 words, which is a bit shorter then I would like, but still pretty good for me. It is called "The Death of a Vixen", and here is an excerpt:

She sniffed, and could still smell a human and a dog. A hound. She sniffed again, then listened. They were coming closer. There was no hope now that the human and the dog would miss them in the rain. She would have to try to escape. Grabbing her slumbering kit by the scruff of his neck, she snuck out of the den. The kit recognized the danger and stayed quiet. Crawling over a hill, the vixen listened again, and was disturbed to find that the dog and the man were still drawing nearer. She hurried on. Just a few yards away from another one of her dens, she brushed past some wet branches and a trap abruptly snapped on her leg. Struggling and crying, she dropped her kit who rolled down a rocky hill and hit a tree. Weak and bruised in countless places, he hid behind the inconveniently placed tree where he could watch the proceedings above. As he watched, the hound and the farmer ran up to the struggling vixen. With a smile creeping across his mouth, he triumphantly spoke two words: "Get 'er".

So there it is. Yes, my search engine is still in progress. I just got a python programming book to help me.

Math exam finished

Well, I finished my math exam. And i'm hatin' it. I couldn't about 4 problems, and each problem is worth 4-5 points out of 100. I'll be happy to get 75%. Wah! *sobs *

Oh well. I reimplemented the database in my spider with buzhug, and started the engine.

Oh yeah, and I spilled some peach juice on my keyboard, so my comma key and space bar are sticky. Good thing this is my old desktop and not my nice new laptop.

Computers + Math = Geekishness?

I don't get it. It's always been my ambition to be a massive computer geek, but computers involve math.

I fully meet the requirements computer-wise of being a geek. I run Slackware Linux and enjoy tinkering with it, I like programming, and I have fun rattling off info on the upcoming CPUs from AMD (4x4, in case you were wondering. 4 Athlon 64 FX cores mounted on two CPU sockets (I think AM2). Compare to Intel's upcoming CPU, which has faster cores but will have bandwidth issues because it only uses a single socket), but math is a nightmare to me. I don't know why. Sure, I'm a little accelerated, but it's not like I'm in Calculus or anything.

I have to take my first math exam for this class soon. *sigh*
On the bright side, I did find a cool webcomic.

Queiba Wars

I can't remember if I posted this already, but I started a fictional blog.
The Queiba Wars
Enjoy, and happy thanksgiving if I don't post again!

Big time blog activity & Queiba Wars

While my other blog is getting more hits, since I posted my address in a comment on pandaxpress I've gotten a mind-blowing number of hits. 6 visits, 2/3 from pandaxpress (If you must know, 16.67% from wikipedia and 16.67% from beta.blogger.com).

Thanks, ya'll!

btw...
The Queiba Wars

Yay!

A wave of liberal thought has swept the nation, most likely more because of a reverse-coattail effect then anything else. Republicans have kind of made a mess of the government in the past 8 years.

But I don't care. Tim Pawlenty has been reelected! Yay!

Birthday + Vote!

It was my birthday on Nov. 5! I got a bagpipes CD made by The Band of the Black Watch, two books, and two rats! But my rats are sick...

Don't forget to vote! When I say vote, I mean Mark Kennedy and Tim Pawlenty (If you live in Minnesota). If you support Mike Hatch or Amy-whatsherface, don't vote :D

I'm i80and, and I approve this message.

EDIT: No offense to anyone. I'm just pretty strongly republican.

The Queila Wars

The Queila Wars teaser image is now up!
Only a draft version, but I still like it.

Do you like it? I want to fix the center character's fur, give the flanking characters weapons, and re-render the right-side picture with better textures.

I won't be able to improve it for a while, though. My hard drive crashed, and I didn't have the latest versions of these backed up. My feelings on my hard drive? http://www.reallifecomics.com/archive/040109.html

Search Engine Madness

Long time no write.

Math is hard. Too hard if you ask me. Just finished lesson 2. I'm going way too slowly. Exam coming up. I like pears.

I got fed up with Google and started writing my own engine. It's harder then it looks. It's being written in Python right now, and my algorithms have odd glitches that I can't figure out. Help me. Please.

I found out that MysteriumHouse just got moved to here.

And Mom made cookies. Yum.

Life kind of balances out, you know?

Surface

Surface got cancelled!
That was the best TV show ever. I've never seen a negative review, either. Only positive.
So, please. If you read my blog, please please please phone NBC begging them to bring it back. It worked for Monk...

Or, you can sign the petition at http://www.PetitionOnline.com/surface/

I think that NBC's phone number is (810)-687-1000.

Matrix/make check

I like The Matrix. I just finished watching the trilogy.

The Matrix was the best, closely followed by Revolutions, with Reloaded being without a doubt the worst.

In the end of Revolutions, Neo gets Xed (If you don't get this, read "A Wrinkle in Time". It bears a similarity)

By the way, I made an error in my last post. To compile software, type:
./configure
make
make check [optional; Only needed by a few libraries]
[Login as root]
make install

Slackware/Compiling

Ok ok, I admit it. Slackware is cool. That goes for easys, too.

I have to be fair, and I am going to update my last post. easys is easier to use then slackware. Very much so.

easys taught me to no longer fear compiling programs. For the first time, I finally found the pure joy of compiling software. If you havn't experenced the joy of this, I beg of you to download a simple program's source code, like ClamAV, and then do a good old "./configure", then a "make check", then, at last, "make install". Know that sometimes you can use "make uninstall" to remove a program.

No point in doing this all the time if you have access to YAST or yum or apt-get or something, but compiling can make the program highly optimized for your system, and can be quite rewarding.
Keep in mind that apt-get and such can give higher success rates.

Enjoy! Remeber the three steps (not counting unarchiving):
./configure
make check
make install
------------
-To uninstall:
make uninstall

easys Linux (formally Pocket Linux) Review

I have recently tried easys, and found it usable, but lacking in ways.

easys is meant to be light weight, simple to use, and unconfusing with a policy of one application per task. Does it succeed? Well, maybe.

It is light-weight while still looking attractive with a custom KDE Light desktop (Openbox instead od kwin, etc.), and I must complement them on having only one application per task. But the terminal choice makes no sense (qt based, Konsole is installed, but they use aterm?!), the menu is impossible to edit without going all 1337, and they don't have enough tasks. For example, easys comes with networking preconfigured, but no dialup program, and it has xchat for connecting to chat servers, but no IM program like GAIM.

Software installation is a pain with slackware's slackpkg (although I grant that the update function worked like a dream), which involves either 1) Using the tiny slackware repository, 2)downloading packages at linuxpackages.net, or 3) Compiling programs yourself. Considering that slackpkg doesn't handle dependencies, non of these options are very user-friendly, even if the desired program is in the slackware repository.

Configuration is a nightmare in easys. Well, a nightmare if you aren't a huge geek. The installer is decent enough, but it didn't let me add a user, so I spent the next ten minutes fumbling around looking for the GUI tool that wasn't there. Finally I just looked up the command line tool, adduser, which worked fine. Also, the sound never did work. It did find my sound card, but no sound would ever be played. Finally, it used VESA on me. I had a GeForce 2 video card, which should work fine with nv, but no. It used VESA.

I can't say it was all bad, however. It was lightweight, slick, and professional. The theme was quite presentable, and Firefox would actually download plugins by itself, which is something that was broken in Xubuntu 6.06 and SUSE 10.0. I also have to say that the login screen was nice and matched the theme nicely (unlike KateOS).

All in all, this is a nice alternative to Slackware (Easier to use), but I wouldn't want to use it if I was a newbie, or if I wanted it to just work without fiddling. Yet somehow, despite all of it's flaws, I can't help but like it.

Ease-of-use: 3/5
Hardware detection: 1/5
appearance: 4/5
Stability: -Still testing- 3.5/5
Tilt: 5/5
Overall: 3/5

What do you mean "evil" is two syllables?!

After re-reading that last post, I realized that the first line has too many syllables. One too many. Oh well. This is a blog. What can you expect?

Just pretend that the first line says "Darkness shrouds music". Not the same I know, but good enough.

mp3 Haiku

mp3 is evil
ogg is always good and kind
The evil must fall

Ok ok, mp3 isn't evil, but evil seemed to fit into my Haiku nicely.

mp3, ogg

I don't like mp3. What I mean is that I don't trust it. What I mean by that is that I don't trust the legalities. If you don't know about the questional legalities of mp3, go to http://www.mp3licensing.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3.

OGG has a better compression ratio, and better quality.
It can be implemented for free, and is open source.
So why is mp3 so much more common when many users fear being sued just because they legally bought a disk of mp3?

The same goes for DVD's, you know. I'm scared to use DVD's because of the legalities. A lot of other OSS people are being sued because they tried to watch their "Matrix" or "Shrek" DVD's that they bought at Best Buy.

Please people. DON'T use mp3s. Use .ogg whenever possible. OGG has been helped by wikipedia incidentally, who made it their official media format.

Awesome Web Comic

I just found the most awesome web comic. Never again shall I be able to see humor at the pathetic likes of "Dilbert", "Foxtrot", "Get Fuzzy", and "Pearls Before Swine".

It has snappy political humor, satirical comments on America and the school system, brilliant character gags that flow naturally, and a drawing style so wonderful and gives so much life to them that you can't help but be cheered studying the drawing.

In conclusion, it's my new favorite comic. Even better then Real Life Comics!

It is called Ozy and Millie.

Stupid indenting

I was trying to get a CEGUI program running, and Python kept telling me that it could't find my quitApp function. Hours and too many experiments later, I figured out that I was indenting my function wrong.
Instead of

def quitApp(args):
 self.keepRendering = False
 system = cegui.System.getSingleton()
 system.injectKeyDown(evt.key)
 system.injectChar(evt.keyChar)
 evt.consume()

I wrote:

 def quitApp(args):
  self.keepRendering = False
  system = cegui.System.getSingleton()
  system.injectKeyDown(evt.key)
  system.injectChar(evt.keyChar)
  evt.consume()

That has to be one of the dumbest errors of all time (yes, believe it or not, there is a difference in Python).

Here Lies E3, RIP

Rest in Peace, E3.

E3 just announced on July 31 that E3 was to be invitation only, and it shall be called E3 Media Festival. Now only around 5,000 people (All press and professionals) are expected to visit, down from this year's 60,000. This, they said, was by request by several large companies. Finally, E3 plans to use two hotel's instead of the convention center of old.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=18659
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E3
http://www.e3insider.com/portal/

Elephant's Dream

Well, now that my blog's tenth post celebration is over, I wish to offer my view of Elephant's Dream. It's been all over the internet, and there are plenty of references and reviews. So I finally got around to watching it. It used to be called the Orange Project, and is the first high-quality movie to make the claim to fame to be a open movie (It is actually called The Open Movie Project). By open, I mean that all of the textures and Blender files are free under the Creative Commons Attribution license, and that it was made using all open-source tools (the only exception being MacOS X, which was used on the render farm, -they used Ubuntu for development- and the music synth software.

On to the review.
It was made mainly to show all that OSS tools can make, so I won't be too hard on the plot. But the plot really wasn't that interesting if you don't want to get into some very interesting debates about what it was about. Really, half the fun of it was arguing with my brother on the symbolism of the Machine. But I will summarize it in one sentence: Two men, Proog and Emo, are wandering around a giant machine, Proog trying to convince Emo of the beauty of it, but Emo sees nothing.
It makes a lot more sense if you read the script (Good luck. Wordpad messes the font up), and see that when Proog is saying "And if you look to the right you see", that is the prolog. Everything after that is a flash-back.

Overall Artistic Beauty: 5/5 - Beautiful, a masterpiece.
Character Animation: 3/5 - Sub-par at first, but gradually gets better.
Static CGI: 4.5/5 - Motion blur, textures, etc. are excellent.
Voice Acting: 3/5 - Of reasonable quality, but worse then in most feature films.
Music: 5/5 -Perfect. I really though that is was orchestral for a while.
Plot: 2/5 - This varies. It was very abstract, and requires much thought to extract any sense,
but some (like myself) enjoy it despite it's rather vague nature.
Overall: 3.75/5 - Enjoyable, but only to artists, animators, deep-thinkers, and music lovers.
Did I enjoy it: Yes.
http://www.elephantsdream.org/

Now, YOU, my readers, get to choose the next post: should I a) Try to interpret Elephant's Dream, b) Do the same, boring, thing.

Not dead

Nope, I'm not dead. So you can return all those flowers.
I've just been a little busy lately with the afore-mentiened math, added to learning PyOgre (I wrote the Wikipedia stub).

I've posted three articles at the MCGT Daily. Enjoy!

7000 feet

No, I didn't find 7000 severed feet somewhere. That would be like twilight zone or something. I climbed to 7000 feet on mt. Rainier. It was cool. Yeah. Nothing new, no tech news of interest. Oh, wait, Micro$oft decided to rename IE7+ as IE7 for Vista, and IE7 as IE7 for Windows XP.

Mysterium 2006

Wowowowowow! Coolcoolcoolcoolcool! I'm at Mysterium '06!
They have everything here!
Costumes, every Cyan Worlds game ever, too cool!
The place is really nice, too. Great garden in the back, manicured lawn, waterfall.
And cones! They have cones (keeping eager fans from bothering the QA people)!

So, yeah. It's cool here. My Dad got me a Myst tee-shirt signed by Rand himself! My heartburn is bugging me though.

Blender Water Simulation

I just finished a fairly cool water simulation in Blender3D. While it isn't the most dramatic scene I've ever made, -- my best render would go to a publicity shot I made for A Realm Divided, but never published -- I still kind of like it. The only reason I could make a simulation this complex is by virtue of my new Lappy K8 (So much better then Strong Bad's Lappy 486, it makes your head hertz!). I've uploaded it to http://i80and.googlepages.com/WaterSim3.mov.

NOTE: At the time of this writing, for some reasen my upload broke the movie. When this note is removed, I'll have gotton it working.

WWII, Hogan's Heroes

Every time I watch Hogan's Heroes (Not very often; I've only seen about one episode all the way through), I keep wishing that every WWII prisonor of war camp officer had been as lenient and forgiving (and as dim a bulb) as Colonel Klink. The lives that could have been saved...

Open Micro$oft?

I read this. My opinion: Whoever leads marketing at Micro$oft should get an award.
The deal is that for years (starting '04, I believe), the EU has been prosecuting Micro$oft for not giving out enough information for interoperability purposes. So they've racked up over 350 million dollars, and finally agreed to give out some info (although the EU is still pressing them, and is going to double the fine to over 600 million). So then the marketing geniuses at Micro$oft (I'm getting tired of writing that. Is there an abbreviation?) decide to turn it into good publicity. Not that I'm complaining, of course. It makes OSS developers lives much easier. Nor am I saying that every change they've made for interoperability was because they had to. They may have also gotten pressure from the ISO's decision to use the open ODF format instead of Micro$oft's OpenXML, and decided to just go full out with transparency. I just find it interesting how they turned a defeat into a win.

vnunet.com comments
dailytech.com comments
forbes.com comments

Math, Rise of Nations tactics

First off, math.
My Dad is getting me into a collage Pre-calculus (pre calculus?) 1 program as pass-or-fail. I'm not too sure how well I'll do in that, especially because of my sever chronic heart-burn (I'll blog about that someday, I'm sure). Fortunately, it's pass-fail so my grade won't be recorded.

I played another game of Rise of Nations today. Maybe the first game ever that I won AND was the top player. Of course, it was on easy...

Laptop is still holding up. The polish and shine is going away and being replaced by finger-prints. Oh well. It also keeps making these odd clicking and whirring sounds I've never heard come from a computer. But the most annoying problem so far is that the right mouse button keeps popping off. Again, oh well. It's worth it for the frame rates and ray-tracing times.

Sound on Compaq V3000Z

Ok, I have no clue what's up with the sound on SUSE 10.1 Live x86 on my Compaq. It doesn't work, but then, when I plug it into a wired Ethernet connection, the sound works. Unless I try to change the volume. For some reason, that doesn't work period. More on this later, I hope.

Decent day today. I figured out a strategy in Rise of Nations that actually allows me to play a half-decent game (e.g. Without my being slaughtered mid-game).

Laptop Replaced

Well, I got my laptop replaced. Works great. Runs Uru: Ages Beyond Myst (the newer URL is http://www.urulive.com) at a very playable speed with ultra overall quality and full anti-aliasing + reflections. AOE III is a little more demanding, and I don't even try to push it very far. Anyway, I'm pretty satisfied with the laptop.

Model: Compaq V3000Z
Price: ~$950
Special Features:
HP Inline finish
Built-in stereo mic

Pros:

(40% faster then comparable Intel Core Duo)



Lots of RAM (1024mb DDR2)
Decently sized HD (80gb)
High-end integrated video card
Wide-screen display

Cons:
Poor Linux compatibility
Low-end Turion 64 X2 (1.6ghz; fastest is 2.4ghz)
10gb of HD is reserved for system restore and QuickPlay
WAAY too much junk pre-installed


Linux Notes:
I haven't tried installing anything yet, but I have run two LiveCDs:
SUSE 10.1 x86 LiveDVD:
Video card picks up GeForce Go 6150 and widescreen display without flaw
Wireless card fails to function
Sound fails to function
Built-in mics fail to function

Kubuntu 6.06 AMD_64 LiveCD:
Uses VESA drivers, complains about nv driver not working when forcing a change.
Wireless card fails to function
Sound works fine
Mics not tested

Broken Laptop

Sigh. I just got a really slick laptop from Circuit City (Cool sales rep. Did you know that the Cell can be oc'd to 90ghz?), got it home, everything was working beautifully, but about 35min after turning it on, it shut itself off. Repeated attemps to turn it back on (including with the QuickPlay button) failed, and even a system restore didn't help. Oh well. My dad can exchange it tomorrow.

Laptop Specs:
Compaq v3000z
AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-50
1024mb DDR2 RAM
80gb 5200rpm HD (In benchmarks, performed as well as your average 7200rpm)
nVidia GeForce Go 6150 (LE?)

Review