October 2006 Archives

This is an XSPF embedded Flash Music Player ... hurrah, who cares.

But here's the cool part. You can make your own XML-based playlist -- yawn, right? No! Because the XML playlist can play tunes by URL ... so what? So, I can put MY playlist WITH TUNES up online, you hit it with your player and you just play my tunes without downloading them.

So, that's nice -- hurrah.

Now imagine the indie music community doing that. And making their channels and playlists available at a Site like this one!

It's a Good Good thing.

There are 4 people who have my name in the US. Check yourself out.

Return of the Mac as a major place for all alpha geeks, is a pretty good article outlining how the major players, MIT geeks and so forth, all have Macs (like me).

Use a Mac? Use iCal? Have Growl? Growl Notifications for iCal is for you!

Total sleep: 52 hours

Watching a bunch of movies, having a nice time. Giving a bunch of prayer for the YG in my absence. All is well. It's all about the rest ... it's beginning to dawn on me that I only have a few days of rest left -- so I'm gonna use them.

Total hours of sleep to date: 23

I've been here two days, seen two movies (I saw Red Flag on the IMAX screen ... pretty cool).

I got a massage, which helped with the pain in my back. Hmmm... had a nice cuban cigar ... and ummm... ate some food.

So far, pretty good. Enjoying stuff.

Might go get a Video Ipod tomorrow :)

Work hard, play hard :)

God Bless.

So, it would seem that I AM actually pretty tired. I slept for about 13 hours or so last night -- and will probably do likewise again tomorrow. I got up at about 2pm, which was wild for me, and now it's 8pm and I'm thinking about dinner or something.

I saw the The Illusionist last night, which was a pretty good movie. It was a little funny going to the theater near my hotel -- it attempts to equate being run-down and under-managed with "avante garde" and artistic.

There was a fan running on the ceiling of the theater the whole time going "squeak squeak squeak" ... which was slightly less than enjoyable, and they had glue traps set up for mice right in the main entryway to the theater (which was kinda funny in a gross way).

I went and purchased two games for my computer -- Civilization IV and Sims 2

Two older games, I'm sure -- but something to entertain. Not a LOT to think about or report -- just some basic calm brain-healing. Wasn't aware how tired I am.

Given some time, I might consider updating the look and feel of this website or the company website -- probably company one should come first.

I have a personal pet peeve -- I never realized it before, until I just happened to see one in the wild and realize what I was looking at.

I personally loathe "non-helps" online that pose as knowledgable help. You see, I tend to go online a LOT to find other people's notes to otherwise arcane errata. I try to do the same thing if I find something worthwhile that's undocumented, and get it into the general "group mind" of google search or some such... so if I'm installing an ancient version of Sendmail, on a Compaq, and the CD won't read the older version of file architecture, I go online to see if someone's "been there, done that" and wrote the answer down. If I find I'm the FIRST to find this bug (a rare happening, I assure you), I try to get it onto a blog, a wiki, or something... so OTHERS can find it.

That having been said, during these "hacker library searches", I tend to run into a LOT of meaningless drivel and noise from stupid people trying to look smart and well -- it bugs me. Here are a few examples:

The "Empty Observation"

For example, one of my favorites is the "that's a problem" observation.

Let's say you're up a tree, picking apples and your ladder fell. So you go to Google and search for "ladder fallen fall tree retrieve problem help error" ... which usually returns valuable data, plus some meaningless gibberish about buying tree shaped ladders and stuff like that. But usually, our friends at Google are pretty good, and they get things up in the first 10 hits with titles like "Re: help, my ladder fell while picking pears" ... usually from mailing list archives online or some such.

Now, you're excited, so you go to read the answer to your problem and you get a meaningless observation.

'Oh, your ladder fell? Well, ladders are made to climb, it shouldn't have fallen to begin with.'

In a real world example, you might get "oh, you can't find that file? Well, if you're running dumbOS, it should be installed automatically."

The "Are you a Fool?"

The next winner in my rant-o-thon is the one where someone who is clearly less experienced than you are asks you not only a silly question, but one that you understand from your years of expertise as being an assumption that you're a moron.

So, for up in my tree, I might find "hmmm... did you check to see if the ladder is just pushed over to the side and hanging from a branch?"

Which in real life would be:
'Did you possibly delete the main kernel page file? I know that's an important file.'

Idiot. Go home.

The "Tease"

This one is the most painful and most prevalent barb. You're up in the tree, someone GETS it, has the ANSWER, but doesn't really TELL you.

Tree analogy: "Hmmm... you know, there's a way to use your pruning hook to grab the top of the ladder, but be sure to get it on the right rung or you might lose your hook too."

Real life: "Oh, yes, if you have accidentally corrupted your device driver, you can reinstall them using a driver reinstall application. Be sure to figure out which driver you want to install before you start."

The "Hate Gate"

I hate that stupid site "Professional Only" or whatever it's called. The one that says "click here for the answer". Die.

The "Manglish"

Now, I'm NOT talking about people who have English as a second language -- those of you who actually go to the trouble of answering problems in a foreign language -- God BLESS you.

No, I'm talking about the people who clearly speak English as a first language, but didn't bother to learn it on their way to becoming major masters of computing.

Tree: "When the ladder doesn't fit on the floor amke it go to the top of the tree for another try with the pole."

Real life: "Don't make the file first t othe home directory because you're bound to finding the one in the other directory first if the path doesn't change in your file."

Please -- put your computer down and go read a book or ten.

and finally...

The "Victory Dance"

Someone who goes to the trouble of POSTING a problem to a list, then comes back to say they fixed it, but DOESN'T SAY HOW!!!!

Tree: "Hi, I'm up a tree, please help, my ladder fell."

Tree2: "I just wanted to write back to everyone and say I figured it out, thanks!"

Real Life: "My database is still running, but I don't want to stop it until I do a dump and I can't get a second prompt because the OS has been hacked. I know the data is in there, but I don't know how to generate a dump from inside the database ... can anyone help?"
Real Life2: "Oh, nevermind -- I got it. Thanks!"

Please -- follow the idea that the military teaches -- always leave it better than you found it for the next person in line.

In other words -- if you FIND an answer, share it -- if you HAVE an answer -- SHARE it -- if you just want us all to see how smart you are -- shut up -- because you don't HAVE the answer and thousands of people are just saying "stupid stupid stupid -- shut up!"

But hey -- why are you reading this anyway -- there's no answer here.

Animated Day� is a cool video filled with Old School game sounds and pretty decent stop-animation.