New URL and Blog

As evidenced by the banner above, I have a real website now :-) imnotpete.com is where it's at. You'll be redirected there in a few seconds.

Joy

So, today I picked up a movie Ratchet. This guy:



I am inordinately happy about this. I always had Transformers, but just the Hot Wheels-sized ones... this thing is comparatively huge. Will be a great addition to my desk at work (I'll be so popular!). Think it's time to clean up, though... There's a limit to how many awesome things fit on one guy's desk.

In other news: Two months to Fedora 8!

Code Monkey

Disclaimer: This in no way resembles my own job :-)

Careful with your headphones

Just a heads-up to anyone who uses headphones with their PC very much.

This is a picture of the laptop I use 99% of the time:



See how the headphone/microphone ports are right next to a pair of USB ports? With nothing between them?

I was distracted just now while plugging in my headphones. Managed to miss the hole, and stuck the plug in my USB port instead. BAM, computer was immediately hard-shutdown. Not sure what got shorted out, but I would have lost any unsaved work. Luckily, on rebooting everything seems to be working fine.

Now to dig out one of my old beater desktops and see how many "mistakes" like this it takes to do permanent damage :-D

Regularly Scheduled Programming

Now that the Blogathon is over, I'll be moving into a more conventional routine with this blog. I'll start by bringing my "skinning Windows" entries from last night out into one more coherent post.

In the meantime, pledges are still accepted for a few days following the Blogathon. If you'd like to retroactively sponsor me with a donation to Child's Play, I'll leave the banner to your right up for a while.

If you'd like to go back and read my Blogathon entries, click the link below my name.

FINI

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas sit amet ipsum. Aenean lectus tellus, viverra id, varius ac, posuere eu, pede. Suspendisse nec mauris sit amet enim rutrum laoreet. Aliquam erat volutpat. Pellentesque vitae risus. Ut scelerisque. Sed sem. Praesent vestibulum. Proin vehicula, est non dapibus scelerisque, arcu erat tristique est, eu viverra diam massa at sapien. Vestibulum id mi at libero pretium dignissim. Donec nonummy. Vivamus faucibus, erat in iaculis suscipit, leo libero molestie ipsum, nec sodales massa justo sed ipsum. Sed justo. Duis sed justo non elit aliquam lobortis. Fusce aliquam velit molestie est. Maecenas condimentum dapibus lectus. Curabitur rhoncus pharetra orci. Ut erat sem, sollicitudin congue, sollicitudin nec, rhoncus ut, nisl.

woohoo 7:30 post! almost there

*drools over the big fat 8 on the clock*

Mmmmmmm bed. Wonder if I'll make it to bed or just fall over on the couch. Choices, choices...

Dozed off for a few seconds.

That can't be good.

Hmmm... wasted opportunity

It occurs to me I could have spent some of this free time updating documentation for this project. *sigh* as if that's gonna happen now.

If anyone's interested, we use XDocs for our documentation. You write up a few XML files, and then Maven can translated them into a nice coherent HTML website, ready for deployment.

I was going to find links for Maven and Xdocs... but I'll just leave that up to you, ok? ok.

Blech

Ok, this last few hours really aren't agreeing with me. I think 24 hours of chips, pizza rolls, and mountain dew, on top of the sleep deprivation, might not be the most healthy thing I could have undertaken. Oh well... practice for babies, right?

I'm in that state where I can function, as long as I don't have to walk, talk, or drive. Any of those things will double or triple my exhaustion very quickly.

Bed... it calls to me

But I shall persevere. Just 2 and a half hours left... I can do this.... just don't close my eyesif;lajjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj

Transition

When I entered college, I was a nerdy, freshly Eagle-Scout-ified, naive goody-two-shoes who listened only to country (and only 90s and earlier at that) and oldies. Now, I'm a married, gainfully employed, still mostly goody-two-shoes nerd, who listens to Megadeth, Rammstein, and Godsmack. Have I changed? How have I changed? Should I even think about this at 5 am?

This Kid is Awesome

Found the ones I was looking for.

Insanity

Ooo people like me!

So, XinuReturns really does work. Showed me that the Blogathon monitoring group likes me :-) Mebbe more about that now that I know they have a place to congregate.

The Other Thing I Want, to Go with that Guitar

*drools*

DeLorean to Make a Small-scale Comeback

According to this article, the small company that bought most of the leftover stock of DeLoreans, parts, and blueprints is set to begin building the cars from scratch. Their stock of parts is running low after a couple of decades of being the only supplier, working from whatever DeLorean had on hand when they shut down. The shop only has 20 people, so they're only planning to put out a couple dozen of the new ones per year, but still, if there's a market, that means they'll sell.

Apparently, buying and restoring a DeLorean usually only runs about $25,000. Might have to look into that. (I know, I know, the DeLorean was actually a pretty crappy car. I grew up on Back to the Future. Cut me some slack)

Flex Pass Message to Parent Component - Part 2

Ok, figured it out. There's actually a "parent" object you can reference, like so:


var myParent:UIComponent = new UIComponent();
if (parent is UIComponent) {
    myParent = parent as UIComponent;
}


This gets me everything I need.

Should Security Tools be Generally Allowed and Available?

Slashdot today had a blurb regarding a German open source developer. He is forced to discontinue development of his project (a wireless network sniffer for MacOS) because recent laws in Germany would make it dangerous for him to continue participating. He is encouraging anyone who can to take copies of the source code while his site is still up, so that development can continue in another country.

This is another of a growing list of examples of politicians (thankfully not American this time) legislating things they apparently know nothing about. Making it illegal to develop or possess penetration software will do exactly nothing to curb the tide of tools appearing and being used by crackers. The law is unenforceable without direct access to everyone's hard drive; you're certainly not going to get that access from any criminal element, and hopefully not from any innocents tech-savvy enough to prevent it.

In an extension of, and even better example of, a common gun example, "once cracking tools are outlawed, only outlaws will have cracking tools." As long as these tools are being written (read: forever), it only makes sense to allow the good guys to examine them and figure out how they work, the better to defend against them. In the same vein, how am I to tell if I even CAN defend against a tool if I don't have the tool available to test against? How can I tell if my wireless network is as secure as I need, if I am not allowed to try to hack it myself? I personally have several Linux LiveCDs with a penetration-testing focus; those would apparently be illegal to possess in Germany, now. With modern America's propensity to follow the leader in legal matters, how long till this is implemented here?

Flex Pass Message to Parent Component

So I'm passing the time by getting ahead on some stuff for work (possibly dangerous at this point, I know). I have a method in a .mxml that needs to reference its parent component. The way this was accomplished before was by getting a static reference to the main app, then just doing this:

app.component.whateverINeedToDo();

Problem is, now that I'm pulling the parent component out into a module, I can't necessarily rely on a reference to the main app; I need to transfer information some other way. I could use the EventDispatcher system built into Flex. I've already extended this mildly to facilitate interaction between my modules, but it seems like overkill for a simple intra-module method call. Need to think on this.

Pack-rat-ism

I have boxes full of notebooks full of notes from classes I've taken. These are about 75% full-page doodles, 15% blank pages, and 10% actual notes. I've never gotten rid of them. With any luck, I will be soon.

I have never (before now) gotten rid of anything electronic. Broken? Goes in the broken electronics box. Old, and too common to ever be a collector's item? Push it to the side. Old and possibly valuable in the future? Same thing, just try harder not to kick it as I walk by.

Applies to music, too. I never get rid of a cd or mp3, no matter how much I dislike it. Same for video games.

Clothes? You should see some of the clothes I have packed away. Luckily, this isn't nearly as bad as the other aspects.

But hey, I don't keep dead bugs. That's good, right?

Iain M. Banks

Reading Wikipedia about Iain M. Banks (the author of The Algebraist, as I mentioned earlier), reveals that he has several other books I need to acquire. He has a 6-book + short stories series that fleshes out a universe similar to the one in The Algebraist. He also writes literary fiction (my wife will be so happy), though he's credited there without the middle initial.

Best Short Stories Online

I know lists are nearly verboten on blogs, but I'm tired and I need to post something for this half-hour, so another list is what you get :-p I've got a small collection of short stories bookmarked; I'll share the best of them with you here. Along with Terry Bisson's They're Made Out Of Meat, you have:

All You Zombies— - Robert Heinlein
Harrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut
The Last Question - Isaac Asimov
Everything here - Sam Hughes

Programs I Could Not Live Without

Whenever I reinstall an operating system, there are several programs I must install before I even think about developing.

Windows:
TextPad - The best lightweight syntax-highlighting editor I've seen for windows. Has all the basics and then some.
Cygwin - The basics of Bash on Windows. Write an honest-to-God bash script on windows. Never mess with a .bat file again.
Flex Builder (if I'm developing in Flex) - Self-explanatory
IntelliJ IDEA (if I'm in Java) - Self-explanatory
Innotek VirtualBox - 90% of the features of VMWare Workstation (and growing), at 0% of the price.
Maven (1 or 2) - Why would I ever want to learn how to use javac?
Python interpreter - Just a huge improvement over the default calculator. Sad, I know.

Linux:
Bluefish - Essentially the Linux equivalent of TextPad. Good for files that are a bit large for VIm.
IntelliJ IDEA
Innotek VirtualBox
Maven (1 or 2)

Greatest Combination Ever

TGFRACW (Thank God For Ruffles And Cheez Whiz)





Heaven on Earth. Heat the Cheez Whiz till just the edges in your bowl are barely burnt. Perfection. Oh, and get the reduced fat Ruffles. They taste better anyway.

Cake - Friend Is A Four-Letter Word

It's decided. Our first track will be a cover of Cake's "Friend is a Four-Letter Word." It has banjo, guitar, and trumpet parts. And they're fairly easy. Now we just need a bass and a drummer. Any takers? Also a songwriter would be good; might be hard to earn a living on covers. And I'll really need a new guitar... my cheap Fender isn't gonna cut it. Neither will my 10-watt amp. Mmmm amps.

New Career Path

It's official. I'm quitting my job with Gestalt to play guitar and sing in an indie rock band. I'll have to sell my computers for a decent guitar, and start an exercise regimen so I don't drive away the fans. Anybody want to be in my band? My circle of friends is somewhat lacking in instrumentalists. I have a trumpet/guitar player, and a banjo/harmonica. Not a lot to work with there.

This:

I want.

Science Fiction Short Stories

I have a secret love of short stories, especially science fiction. High on my list of favorite books are compilations of little-known authors' short stories. I like novels, as well, but short stories have so much more freedom to explore. A novel has to appeal to a large enough audience to be worth the sometimes huge investment of the author (writers have to eat, too, you know), but a short story might be dashed out in a day or two. This means that the ideas that never quite make it, the ones even the author can't imagine enough of to make a full-length novel, show up in short stories.

Then there are the stories that would tick you off if you spent a few hours reading, but a few minutes delight you. The Last-But-One Question

Disney

College-age people generally have a like for Disney and Pixar movies, but I've noticed a much higher love in computer nerds. For some reason, the post-modern antics of anthropomorphic animals excites the computationally scientific mind (say that three times fast). I don't know what it is, but I like it. And since I am getting tired at this point, I'm going to stop being academic and list off my favorite animated films.

Lilo & Stitch
Aladdin
The Lion King
Toy Story
Happy Feet
Monsters, Inc.
Ice Age
The Jungle Book (1967)
Open Season

Nerdiness and Cards

So I'm trying to work up a couple of new Magic: The Gathering decks for Monday night (about five of my friends get together and play for a few hours every Monday). Problem is, my collection is somewhat lacking, as is my imagination :-) I have a mildly decent Saproling deck. It's won a couple of games, mainly because nobody was paying attention to me, and picked each other off. I'm building a red DX deck as well as a Goblin deck, but I think I'll be scrapping those by the morning. Neither looks overly promising.

I need to put together a good decklist, and spend $40 on Star City Games for the cards. Just shove myself a level higher, instead of relying on random draws and charity.

Imagination... not sure how I'll boost that.

Ooops. Half Life consumed too much of my attention... almost forgot this blog1

Why is it that all science fiction first-person shooters MUST have zombies? Half Life has the headcrab zombies (which get even worse in Half Life 2). Halo has the Flood (so, zombies). Far Cry I had high hopes for. No hint of zombification about it, but it seemed mildly scifi-ish. But no. The mad scientist was making gorilla zombies.

Sometimes, I'd just like to shoot a HUMAN with a laser. Is that so hard to comprehend? I'd even take a modern (not futuristic) FPS.... tired of choosing between zombies and Nazis. But all the take-place-in-this-decade games shooters I can find are squad-based. I just want to be a soldier, not necessarily a commander. :-/ Any suggestions?

Gretsch Guitars G5120 Electromatic Hollowbody

This is all kinds of awesome. More than that, it is perfection.

Webcomics

Anyone read any decent webcomics? I've got a couple dozen I read regularly, but I'm always on the lookout for more good ones. My current favorites are:

Irregular Webcomic!
Ctrl-Alt-Del
XKCD
Order of the Stick
Questionable Content
Mac Hall (Discontinued, but still funny)

Any you like?

What is important in a phone?

Looking at phones and contemplating actually picking one I want raises the question: what do i actually want from a phone?

I mean, obviously I want to make calls. Since I have no land line, my cell phone needs to be reliable, preferably on the best network (currently, this seems to be 3G). I want Bluetooth capability, as it would be nice to have a hands-free device. I drive a stick, so you can imagine how much fun it is. Music playing would be wonderful, as my current iPod is my laptop. I definitely want to be able to load mp3 ringtones; sick of paying for crappy 2-bar tones over the network. A camera phone would be a plus, but definitely not required. As I get into higher-end phones, I definitely want to be able to run video game emulators on it (NES and MAME for sure, SNES/Genesis if the phone has enough power). I even have a use for Exchange calendar reminders now.

What do you look for in a phone? Just a phone, or a true multi-purpose device? And what do you do with it? I have a coworker who runs a Palm emulator on his WM5 phone, just so he can run an insulin-calculator he has (he has diabetes).

Shout out to Elegy

Hi!

Just wanted to let me know I see and appreciate your comments. Blogspot isn't giving me enough information to actually respond to you, so I'll just use an entry. Hey, gives me something to say for this half-hour anyway :-)

Hope you're enjoying my geekiness.

The Algebraist

I've been reading an actual book (*gasp*) for the last couple of weeks. The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks is a science fiction novel, and one of the better ones I've read. While it takes place "only" one or two thousand years in the future, it depicts a history that is much longer. As far as I can tell, it fits mostly within the realm of "hard" scifi; IE, there is little to nothing in it that directly contradicts current science, and there are no humanoid aliens (except one race who are actually bipedal cats, and another species that was actually created through genetic engineering). One of the other races involved is purported to have existed for fifteen billion years, and now inhabit 99% of the gas giant planets in the galaxy.

The book shows some of the interaction between these veritably ancient races who have settled into their patterns, and don't concern themselves with much, collectively known as the Slow; and the Quick, such as humans, that go to so much trouble to devise quicker ways to move place to place, and cause (and fear) death so much more. These Quick also generally last only a few thousand years once they discover galactic civilization, before they either annihilate themselves or evolve beyond themselves.

I won't reveal any of the plot here, but it really is an engrossing book. Check it out.

Severe Thunderstorm Warning

How exactly am I supposed to keep posting every half-hour if there's a power outage? This house seems to lose power at least a bit during every thunderstorm... One time, the transformer for the whole block blew up.

I guess if I disappear, just wait and I'll try to catch up when I get back :-D I can at least write, since I have a laptop (and pen and paper), but what am I going to write about? I NEED THE INTERNET.

*huddles in fear of lack of internet*

Traitor to Linux

I am a hardcore Linux user. I've had Fedora (7, and Core 6 before) installed as my only operating system at work and at home. Unfortunately, for our Flex development, I need to use the Flex Builder IDE. Which is only available for Windows and MacOS. I had it installed for some time in my VirtualBox VM of Windows XP, but the latest update is having issues. I'm not sure if the problem is with Flex Builder, or the way VirtualBox is sharing my host filesystem with the guest. In any case, I've had to reinstall Windows in a dual-boot capacity.

Long story short, I feel so dirty. I have used Windows essentially exclusively for about 2 weeks now. I haven't even reinstalled Grub! It's just simpler to stay in the one OS for everything, since I have to use it for some.

I guess there's no real point to this commiserating, just wanted to bring everyone else down with me. I suppose I could try to run it in Wine, but I doubt it will have much luck. Plus it's been nice not to reboot to play Half Life (had a few ad hoc games going after work for the last couple of weeks).

Hmm.

Cingular 8525

My wife's cell phone contract runs out next month, and I'm already out of mine. We're going to go ahead and merge our plans into one with 2 lines, and get new phones. For the first time, I should be able to afford to buy a phone, instead of going with whatever free one sucks the least. Having gone through Cingul--- I mean, AT&T's offerings, I think this one appeals the most.



● Tri-band UMTS/HSDPA; Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE for global use
● Microsoft® Windows Mobile™ 5.0 with Messaging and Security Feature Pack
● Mobile Instant Messaging - Yahoo!® Messenger, AOL® Instant Messenger, & Windows Live ™ Messenger (available via MEdia Net download)
● 128MB ROM / 64MB SDRAM
● Samsung 400MHz Processor
● Sliding QWERTY keyboard
● 2.8" QVGA 320x240 64K Color LCD Touch Screen
● Push to Talk capable*
● Bluetooth v2.0
● Integrated WiFi (802.11b/g)
● Micro SD expansion slot for greater storage and expansion
● Take advantage of Windows Media Player 10 Mobile to take your favorite music and videos with you.
● Log in to Pocket MSN – Hotmail, MSN Messenger and more!
● Optional 2.0 mega-pixel camera with built-in flash and video capability


What do you think? Not sure what third-party apps I'd want, other than an NES emulator and PocketMAME (an arcade emulator).

$200 for a reburbished one, $250 new (w/ 2-year contract). Thoughts?

A Priest, a Rabbi, and an Athiest Walk into a Bar

A penguin is driving through the desert when his car starts making horrible noises. He manages to get the car into a small town before it finally stalls out in the middle of the street. He gets out of the car and, hiking through the hot desert afternoon, sweat pouring down his penguin brow, he locates the town's car repair shop.

"Excuse me, sir," the penguin says as he approaches the mechanic. "My car's broken down a little way down the street. I was hoping you could help me."

The mechanic pauses for a moment, then shakes his head. "No, I can't help you," he says.

"Why not?" asks the penguin.

"Because you're another hallucination, and I have to close the shop down now and take my medication and maybe take a nap so that it can take effect." The mechanic slams the door in the penguin's face.

The penguin, stunned and dismayed, wanders around town for another hour, but he can't find anyone to help him. Unaccustomed to such sweltering, overwhelming heat, and unable to find shelter of any sort from the intense afternoon sun, the pengiun soon succumbs to the heat and dies.

- Jokes with Realistic Endings

Programmer's Beverage Choice?

What is the beverage of choice for you geeks out there? I follow the somewhat stereotypical path of Mountain Dew. Several others I know only drink Bawls. What's your choice?

What's most important? Usually, that seems to be caffeine content. What about taste? You know, that thing that Bawls lacks?

I need more of whatever it is.... tiredness is setting in a mere 7 hours into the Blogathon.

Skinning Windows - Part 4

So here's where I'll tell a few extra things that I couldn't get screenshots of.

You know the Windows logo you get while you're booting up? With the little progress bar underneath? Did you know you can change that? BootSkin lets you copy in themes (available on deviantART! woohoo!).

From the same company, LogonStudio lets you skin your Windows logon screen. deviantART has some great skins (as if I needed to tell you that).

Oh, and of course it goes without saying that you must go out and find a Firefox theme that matches everything else.

So that's it. All that, and you end up with totally personalized, much nicer-looking Windows install.

I didn't intend for this series to become a rolling ad for deviantART, but you really should check them out. They have just about anything you could want (including more traditional art, not just software skins and customizations). Really good site.

Skinning Windows - Part 3

Go back to my previous post if you haven't seen it yet.


So now I have Windows and Winamp set up with matching skins. At work, I typically have an external LCD hooked up to my laptop, to more than double the screen real estate I have available. To make it simpler to find things on my screen (I get a lot of windows going), I wanted a second taskbar on my external screen. UltraMon gives exactly what I'm looking for: A taskbar on each screen, that only shows windows from that screen. Also, it adds a button to the title bar of each window that moves it to the other screen, and it even lets you put different background pictures and screensavers on each screen. Very nice program, which is good since it is the only program I use for skinning that costs money (USD 15).




For the nice clock, system information, and volume control I have sitting atop the other windows, I use Konfabulator (previously known as Yahoo! Widget Engine, previously known as Konfabulator). This allows you do download and run any number of small widgets, that do everything from quoting Yoda to counting down to the next Super Bowl. You can find widgets in Konfabulator's gallery or at deviantART (are you seeing a pattern here?).


For the MacOS-esque quick launch bar at the bottom, I use Y'z Dock with transparency set to 100%. Just install it, and drag any files you want to launch from there onto it. Very slick.


Y'z Toolbar replaces the toolbar in Windows Explorer with something a little less plain. Custom iconsets are available from Studio28, among others. Incidentally, Studio28 also has some good Windows and Winamp skins. Great stuff.

Skinning Windows - Part 2

Here's the link to my full screenshot.


For the skinning itself, I had to replace uxtheme.dll in C:\WINDOWS\system32. I downloaded a "hacked" version and used Replacer to copy it in, bypassing Windows's protection of system files. The patched uxtheme.dll allows third-party skins to be used.

Once that file is in, go download a skin from somewhere like deviantART or ThemeXP, unzip it, and copy it into C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes. Now, when you go into your Display Properties, the new skin should be an option under the Appearance tab.


I then went looking for a matching Winamp skin, again from deviantART. This is much easier to install, as when you download it, Winamp should automatically open it and install it. Then, just right-click on your Winamp window, go to Skins, and select your new skin.

Skinning Windows - Part 1

I had a request to blog about how I skinned Windows. To start with, here's a screenshot of what I have. The black bar in the top left is because I took this on a laptop with an external monitor (of a different screen size) plugged in.

Pretty, isn't it? :-) Click it to enlarge.

phpDiplomacy

Lately, I've been playing Diplomacy. The site is a PHP implementation of the classic board game. It's still a beta, and not everything works, but it's still quite fun.

Diplomacy is a board game somewhat like Risk (as in, turn-based world-domination). Differences are that there is no chance involved; you only successfully attack if you actually have more forces involved in the battle. Also, the card aspect of the game is not there.

In this implementation, each phase is 24 hours long, allowing you to go and submit your moves whenever is convenient for you. There is also chat functionality, so you can arrange alliances and the like.

Go check it out. My username is Vollmond there.

Fun fact: Diplomacy is the game most played by mail in history, second only to chess.

Every Blog Needs to Perpetuate a Meme

I like lolcats. Here are some. Enjoy.

My Employer

I work as a developer at Gestalt, LLC, in the Joplin, MO, office. We mainly work in Java, with a bit of Flex on the side. As an example, we are working on a Java web service that interfaces with a Flex client embedded in an HTML document. Some of our other offices are working in C#, as well as other languages. We mainly focus on DoD projects, with some Energy & Utility work, as well. As we use an Agile process (mostly based on Scrum), the work is fast-paced and exciting. Every month, your 3- to 7-person team bites off another chunk of the overall project to work on. You then take that chunk to completion, before working on anything else (instead of taking all parts of a program a bit at a time). The developers are essentially in control of the implementation, as the only direction given by a solution owner is what capabilities he wants; technical direction is up to the team. Development is also fairly democratic, as no one on a team really "outranks" anyone else.

We have 9 offices:
Joplin, MO
King of Prussia, PA
Camden, NJ
Orlando, FL
Jacksonville, FL
Hampton, VA
Fairfax, VA
Las Vegas, NV
Toronto, Ontario

If you would be interested in joining us, send me your résumé at samljones@gmail.com and I'll pass it on to the appropriate people.

Hello World in Python

Python is a very high-level interpreted scripting language. I have a personal interest in learning it, as it seems to be a great rapid prototyping language. You can quickly and easily write your logic in Python, just to see if it works. If it does rewrite the whole thing (or just resource-intensive chunks) in a compiled language like C++. When I say "quickly and easily," I'm serious. Here's an entire Python Hello World program:

print "Hello World"

As that doesn't tell you much, I'll add some variables and an infinite while loop:


var a,b = "hello", "world"
while true:
    print a + b


As you can see, Python has essentially no punctuation requirements (braces, semicolons and the like). It is entirely newline- and whitespace-delimited. Blocks are indicated by indentation. The command is done when you go to the next line. No more debugging a missing curly brace (yeah, yeah, IDE's catch that. Still, it's slick).

The other thing I can see Python being good for (and it's used for this in several schools I know of) is an introduction to programming. It gives you the basics of statements and control structures and loops and even OOP, and it even forces good programming style with the indentations, but it doesn't saddle you with learning all the intricacies of C++ or Java, for example.

How Does Your Blog Rank?

Being new to this blogging thing, I'm still getting the hang of how it works. I Stumbled across this automated website rater-thing. XinuReturns takes your site URL, then serves up a page of statistics. It takes a screenshot of your site, and tells you things like your Google PageRank and whether you're XHTML and CSS compliant. Also gives a diagnosis of how well your site is SEO'd (for instance, tells you if there's room for more metadata keywords). Pretty interesting stuff, actually. Being the programmer nerd that I am, the XHTML/CSS validator is my favorite part, especially since it actually links you to the page that lists the errors you have. Apparently, this blog has 156 XHTML errors... I'll have to go work on that.

More Movies I Haven't Seen Yet

So here I'll continue the list from my last entry. More movies I don't have time to watch.

The 2nd and 3rd Riddick movies
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (Really want to see this)
The 2nd and 3rd Matrix movies (I know, I know, they're horrible, but I haven't seen them, and I must finish the trilogy!)
Paycheck
Planet of the Apes (any version... I haven't seen any of them :-()
Hollow Man

The Downside of Being a Geek

I've discovered a problem with being a married geek with a full-time job. I never have time to go to the movies. When I'm not working, I'm either spending time with my wife, or doing other geeky stuff that I have less time for now. When else am I supposed to build my Magic: The Gathering decks? When do I spend 3 hours looking up astrophysics and gardening on Wikipedia?

In any case, here's the list of movies I haven't taken the time to see, just because I don't seem to have the time. Enjoy; and if any of these are horrible, let me know and I'll yank them from my list. (I did get to see Transformers this week -- Great movie)

TMNT
Fantastic Four (both of them)
Schindler's List (what, this doesn't fit the theme?)
Blade Runner again (Didn't quite understand it the first time
28 Weeks Later (I saw 28 Days Later, and honestly disliked it, but I did like the premise, so I may as well see the sequel)
Spiderman 3
Superman Returns
Idiocracy
The Island
Doom
Man With the Screaming Brain

I'll come up with more later... this is just the last 2-3 years, from Wikipedia's list.

Flex - Generate a ModuleLoader at Runtime

I spent most of a day running up against a problem in Adobe's Flex 2.0. Flex 2.0.1 introduced the concept of modules. With this, you can stick a <mx:ModuleLoader> component in your .mxml file, then load it with the url to your module .swf file when you need it.

Now, I wanted to allow the user to load arbitrary modules at arbitrary times, and then load those into a ViewStack component. The problem is, no matter what I did, I couldn't seem to get the dynamically loaded module to obey sizing (IE, height="100%"). Here's the solution: You have to put the ModuleLoader in a Canvas, and then add the Canvas to your ViewStack. Also, you must use percentWidth and percentHeight in your <Module> tag (not width and height).

Okey dokey

It's 8 am on July 28.... Time to start the Blogathon!

I picked up a 4th sponsor overnight; thanks Brian! This makes $30 in sponsors. And now I try to blog every half-hour for 24 hours. My wife is participating as well, so this'll be a great party :-D

Stay tuned.

*coffee*

Blogathon 2007 - Last chance to sponsor me!

Ok people. This is your last chance to sponsor me for the Blogathon tomorrow! Let's get those pledges in! Link is to your right.

And be here, 8 am Central, when the party gets started.

(I lied. You can make pledges anytime during the event. But wouldn't you feel so much better if you did it now? Yep, you would.)

fit-PC as a Development Server

Passing the time with StumbleUpon, I came across a reference to the fit-PC. This computer is a very small form-factor (about the size of a paperback novel, according to the website) PC that comes pre-loaded with Linux.

This PC has a 500 MHz processor, 256 MB of RAM, and a 40 GB hard drive. Also, it's fanless (the case acts as a heatsink) and draws just 5 watts of power when under load (3 when it's idling).

Now, this box isn't going to win any performance records at this point, but it occurs to me where it could find a niche: a development server. Think about it: right now, I use virtual machines (with VirtualBox) to run guest OSes with whatever server code I need running on them. My life would be simpler (and better-performing) if I had this router-sized box sitting on my desk, running that code without slowing down my laptop. Give me a KVM switch (or even just ssh), and this thing would be my best friend.

Blogathon 2007

As a way of kick-starting this blog, as well as supporting a worthy cause, I have decided to take part in Blogathon 2007. The object is to raise money by recruiting sponsors, similar to Relay for Life. The difference is, instead of running around a race track for a certain period of time, I must write a blog entry every half-hour for 24 hours.

The other difference is that the participants choose their own charity. I have decided to support Child's Play. This charity, created by the gamers who run Penny Arcade, donates games, toys, and money to hospital pediatric centers around the world. The best part is, there are no administrative deductions. One hundred percent of each donation goes to the hospitals.

If you would like to take part by sponsoring me, just click the banner to the right. That will register your pledge and give me a reason to live! (er, blog)

EDIT: Almost forgot. The 24 hours in question are Saturday, July 28, 8 am to Sunday at 8 am. Plan to show up!

All your data on hand

The BBC has an article about storing data by manipulating a carbon crystal (a diamond, specifically) at the nanoscale level. As the article states, "One gram of this substance could store 10 to the power 21 bytes (887,808 petabytes.)" Now, the article goes on to discuss whether it's even ethical to save this much information, as only 10 petabytes would be enough to save a year's worth of continuous audio and video. A person's entire life could be recorded in a minuscule amount of space. We could, as a race, lose the ability to forget. Trying to remember someone's name? Just load the video for the last time you saw them, and there it is.

Anyhow, what most interested me was the potential for mobile computing environments. I know some of the more recent trends seem to be going the way of storing everything online (Google Apps, anyone?), but imagine if you could store all the data you ever accumulate in the jewel you (maybe) already wear everywhere you go, anyway? Build a computer with a flash chip for the OS, and a diamond reader, and no hard drive. Give it a couple of readers, put a ring on each hand, and voile, RAID 1 mirroring.

Forget PortableApps; install every program you've ever needed or ever will need on the crystal.

Worried about security? What if you get mugged? Not only did you lose a ring of some value, all of your data is completely possessed by someone else. But, what if there was a way to lock or unlock the data store based on biometric data read by sensors in the ring?

I think I was born in the wrong century.

Wow. They made a movie out of it.

One of my favorite short stories is (obviously) Terry Bisson's "They're Made Out Of Meat." It's a short dialog between two alien intelligences observing Earth.

I've just discovered a film short of the story, and have to pass it on. Watch for the alien in red to almost lose it at the end.