Older blog entries for 8bit (starting at number 13)

Sascat is FINALLY done! I'm such a slacker... What with spring break I finally had some time to program and backup my music (55 700Meg CDs! and I'm STILL not done...) Right now sascat is commandline driven and written in python. Soon I'll hopefully have a Tk interface to make restoring files a heck of a lot easier. You can get the code from my website.

*opens eyes* Can I die yet? No? *closes eyes*

Ugh, so much crap to do! No room for what's really important to ME, I'm always doing what I'm supposed to do and things important to others. I just want to program, work on my webpage, eat, consume caffeine and sleep all day, and when that gets boring, read for a week straight (which I've done, much fun but unfortunatly it was the Wheel of Time series and it messed up my speech for a while, burn them *cough* I mean...)

But no. I have to write an essay for a scholarship, study for the SAT, and some unknown ammount of homework by this saturday. THEN I have to apply to colleges, look for more scolarships, write essays for those, etc. etc. What I could really use is an electronic calendar...I could make one...a cgi script of course, for access 'anywhere'...in python, yes. Of course by the time I have enough hours to burn on it I won't need it.

And of course all this leaves me with no time to work on Sascat (aformentioned backup program, Splice and Slice CATaloger.) I hope adulthood won't look like this, else I'd have to live out a dream of mine...become a hobo and walk the railroads.

(: Of course I brought this on myself by not doing a majority of the work during turkey-day break or even before then. Bwahahahaha....that doesn't make the situation any less suckier though. I think this will be the last stop of procrastination before I get back to the grindstone.
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did I mention I have a cold? It makes it impossible for me to concentrate on a thing, and I STILL haven't started to get to work after half an hour of looking at other people's advogato pages. And would DjDanny PLEASE GET A LIFE. 12 year olds taking a 'shaite' before 'work' and thinking people really give a 'shaite' about their bowel movements should not be using the internet, much less pretend to know anything about computers. I'm supprised it's not written in 1337 5p34|< (sorry I don't know what a 'p' is.)

Been a while since I updated here. Heck I forgot about it till I checked apache's logs (yeah I know, shame on me, narcissism.)

I completely redid my website, it looks super-cool now (I wish.) I wrote a bunch of programs, which are available on my website. Pong, Baduk/Go, Blackbox, and a bunch of other stuff for my website (randomness script, coma generator, guestbook...I borrowed the php weblog thing though, I got lazy.) It's all done in Python. Love that stuff man.

I'm writing a backup program...again. I think it's the third time now. *shrug* It's in python and it's more or less complete (I'm not gonna release it until I put in lots of error checking and userfriendlyness, I doing it right this time.) I learned that it'll take 30 700MB cds to backup all my mp3s. Ohh fricken JOY!

On the bright side, Python kicks Perl's ass. It takes seconds to generate a file list of my mp3s with python while perl takes MINUTES. Oi! Or maybe I just didn't write the perl code good enough. Ohh well, I'm sold on Python now.

I think I'm gonna go put my mp3 list on my website (I like to burn music for friends, makes me feel appreciated.)

And now for the next installment of Ramblings on the Stupidity of Beurocrats and Computer Incometent People.

Visiting the local library I found a bunch of computer workstations for people to search for books and use the web. Now here's the stupid part. They're full blown computers. Off the shelf dells and compaqs. And get this, they run it in textmode in a permanant telnet session. Haha! You go you money wasting Beurocrats. They should really hire a competent computer consultant. I'm thinking you could take the crappiest computer of the lot and turn it into a unix server, and put Wyse terminals around the library! Yes, much better. If you're gonna use Lynx to browse the web at the library, at LEAST get the full feel of Unix.

Ahh, the local high school. More chances for money to go down the drain! Every classroom now has at least four computers. That's roughly 100 computers not including the computer lab or the library. Get this. None of the teachers actually use them, except maybe the teachers themselves, but that's only one computer. Humm, dozens of boxen collecting dust, way to spend our money! We could sure use some new books though. Ohh well, I'm sure nothing much has changed in the world of science in the past ten years. Not only do we get computers, but we get BIG SCREEN TVS! Woo. A ~21" `NetTV' that probably can't even be hooked up to a VCR. Yes, every teacher needs a TV to give students notes! Actually, every teacher already has a TV/VCR set, and some even have a LaserDisc. The teachers who wanted to give notes via computer/TV could've done that. (yes, I know at least one who's lost that privelage. It's supprising to find computer savy teachers, but no comp sci classes. Sure pascal is fine, but I wanna get into some OOP. I'm tired of procedural crap.) But NO, the new Computer Use Accountability Form prevents them from installing their own software. Ouch, sorry but you're gonna have to wait for your monitor while we give monitors to teachers who DON'T NEED THEM! Never mind the fact that the math teacher's can't teach math with a monitor because they need to draw fancy graphics that you can only draw with a perfectly good OVERHEAD PROJECTOR or maybe a CHALK BOARD! And then we get to the computers themselves. They all run Win98 w/ restrictive software. No startmenu, `my computer', `network neighborhood', just Office 2000 and Netscape. Understandable. But wait. We have to log into a Windows NT domain. Yes, you can actually do this with win98, but unfortunatly it's not setup right and your newuser scripts are rerun every login. Nevermind, most students don't have their own account cause the library's boxen are always logged in. But wait. Wouldn't NT workstation do all the restrictions you need, AND login right, AND let you update software remotely? Can't do that with win98. Then again, you could always use X Terminals, although that might not work so good when it comes to wordprocessing and running mavis beacon.

Wow, you gotta love those politicians. Computers are NOT the future for schools unless you're willing to give out laptops and buy tenative ebook software and untraditional etextbooks.

But wait! I'm not done my tirade just yet! Why do we shun the past? Maybe it's just me and my nostalgic obsessions, but the library example. Think about it. Using past, proven technology would work just the same but is more cost effective. It really pisses me off when I see things like this happen. But I'm always happy when I go to the family doctor. They use Wyse terminals hooked up to a modest server running SunOS (dunno what version exactly.) It's probably because they can't afford to `upgrade', but gosh darnit, it works perfectly and they probably agree that it would be superfluous to use a fancy graphical system.

That concludes this installment of ramblings. Next week: ideas for wearable computers!

Screw it.

In an attempt to find better ways to occupy my time I will not use a computer until December 1. Yeah, yeah, nobody cares, but this is my ranting page and I'll spew crap till I die. I'm not saying computers are bad, I mean I like looking at the same sites over and over, day in day out, but it just doesn't cut it anymore. I've been neglecting some books I'd like to read. I'd especially like to take the time to fully comprehend and digest Walden (and I thought only code can be obfuscated, talk about a random discourse jeez!) So whatever. I'll just yank the power plug out and neatly stow away the keyboard/mouse. Now.....what to do? Ohh and no TV. That too is becoming evily monotionous.

I got langmast back to the way I had it before, only now in GTK-- (config file w/ checkboxes to modify.) Okay, so it's a tad bit more advanced in development now (creates tab in notebook for each language in config.) I ran into a little jam, but hopefully I can get it out of the way by monday. I haven't been programming for a while cause recently I've been extra lazy. I set up a simple perl script to display text files in a textarea so I can edit files from school. The java ssh app screws up the vi session so badly I can hardly stand it. Now all I gotta do is bug my bro to install gtk-- so I can start developing. Humm, but I can't actually RUN it from school. >Stupid though< I'll modify the vnc server (vnc no like firewall) so it displays a single window as a gif w/ an imagemap. Clicking on the imagemap makes the xserver click there on the x app and reload the page w/ the results. Text could be entered with a small input form. hur hur hur, boy I have some stupid ideas. Maybe though...maybe.

I recently switched back to WindowMaker from E, and this time I'm accepting the dock (but not the clip.) Becuse I'm using the dock I have to rewrite a modem control app I wrote a while back. Most of the code was ripped from Beej's Network Guide, but it does the trick. I have a crappy little 486 dial on demand server and I wrote a set of apps to turn on and off the modem w/o telneting in using UDP. It's very insecure, so if you feel the urge to trash the system look around magpage.com for a box called rooter. Yep, I have a dynamic IP, so I pretty confident you can't do much. Maybe I'll package the whole system so lazy people and non-programmers can have the luxury of not logging in.

I'm reworking my webpage. Right now there's nothing, just a stupid coverpage. I dunno, should I go ultra-graphical or keep w/ the simplicity. Ohh well, I guess it depends on what I want to put on the page (programs I made for sharing and braging, and that's as far as I got.) Ohh well.

mwuahahha. it do be the night of the dead. Ohh well, who cares. As my classmates go out trick or treating (yeah, it's sad hearing 16 and 17 yearolds talking about what costume they're gonna wear), I have better things to do. I got a new mouse :) My old mouse kept on screwing up and I ran out of mouse buttons to replace the broken ones with, so I got a Logitech Marble. I don't really like the idea of a mouse not haveing three buttons, but I can get use to it. I'm also getting interested in Darwin. Seeing how I only have Intel boxen, I might have to learn and do some kernel programming :) That should be fun. With MacOS X I just might get a Cube :) If I only had that kinda money (*drool* .5gig ram, 40gig hdd, 22" theatrical display *goes comatose*) As for language master I'm not getting much work done cause I'm too damn lazy when I get home. I try programming at school, but the librarian doesn't like me using a java SSH applet, she wants to know what I'm gonna do and what exactly SSH is. I'll do what I damn well please on my computer and not explain it to anyone. I REALLY hate it when people ask what I'm doing on the computer because it's usually something stupid and embarassing to explain ({sarcastic gay lispy voice} I'm picking out themes. *tisk* Don't you just LOVE this façade?) or too complicated to explain to someone who doesn't really care (I'm writing a one-liner to download all the pictures from this site and then generate a webpage for it by using some basic unix shell scrip and perl, but for some reason it's not working. Oh, I forgot the semicolon! Duh! *other person nods and says `yes' and runs away frantically*) So that's pissing me off. So far she'll let me use it, but she has to contact her supervisor. *thwacks head* So annoying I can't find words to express it. Okay whatever, I'm done with me weekly ranting. I have to pluck my gray hairs (yes it's true, I have gray hairs.)

After careful consideration, I've decided to learn Gtk--. I figured that if I used a work around I'd only have to make another one for other things, so Gtk-- will clean that up (hopefully.)

There's this OneVote thing at school. Channel-One (a stupid morning news program that they play during homeroom,) wants all the highschool students to vote for president, governer and district rep. They're doing this to get us interested in politics. Bah! They didn't even have a write in box (votes done via web, yep their server crashed after all the schools had their students do it at the same time :)! I want to vote for McCain (you heard me,) but no. They had the independent part buy and the Green party (the heck? green?), but NO write in. Ohh well, I voted for Bush if you had to know. I know he badmouthed the net, but so does every other politician. Bush was just being flat out honest on his position.

Okay enough politics. Another thing is I finally got gNapster and tried it out. I must say its impressive, this whole p2p thing I mean. My philosophy on it is this. Abstract things should be 100% free. Information, knowledge, books, music, photography and other visual arts, movies, etc. That doesn't mean source code mind you. They can keep their code so long as its freeware. (but idealy everything should be public domain.) Pretty much anything that can be expressed in 1s and 0s is free. Of course we get into more complicated matters such as authers rights, but pretty much things are copywritten, so don't plagurize, and if the author wants money he can publish his work on hardcopy. Hardcopy isn't abstract, so that's gonna cost. Just thought I'd put my 2 cents on this issue.

Now if y'all excuse me, I have some Jimi to download.

ack! I finally get started on language master and I run into a jam. It seems GTK doesn't like people using class members as a callback. I have two choices, I make a non- class callback and use a struct data pointer that has a pointer to a class function, language number and toggle state. OR I can use gtk--. I dunno, it might be worth while to learn gtk--. I think I'll take it easy for a while longer. I just might try studying with these notes I collect. I dunno, in the past reading notes did nothing, and I still they they're a waste of paper.

Ho hum, loads of things to do, but I think I'll just sit and wait for nothing. Got a new project I wanna do. BIO: Biologically Intelligent Organism. A gameboy game, and obviously far far down the line. Right now I got a couple firends willing to help, but I don't plan on doing anything till winter vacation, and maybe not then either. Language master right now only has a GUI, I need to shove a config file reader in there and some preliminary word-list editor, dictionary and tester...then I can work on fine tuning the good features. I learned about class inheritence, some wacky stuff there. Right now I'm so lazy I think I won't even make this program, or any other for that matter. I'll just ease into my cozy routene of wake, eat, school, homework, tv, sleep and be done with the world. Well, no. One of my goals in life is to make a mark on the world. Not so much as having a household name, but to change the world globaly for the better. HAH! The only things I can think of to acheve that is to do a cunning coup and take over the world, impliment a shogun system for a government with me pulling the strings. Or I could just work to fight stupid patents, get people to write PUBLIC DOMAIN (screw open source, you know not to plagurize, it called COPYRIGHT...GPL this, EULA that!) and tell rich fat-cat artists to cram it! I thought that artists did it cause they like to entertain, but no, now it's all about the money. And that's another thing: MONEY! The cycle of money in Joe Shmoe's life. Birth, play until age four, go to school to prepare for a job, get job, work until too old to continue working, retire and lose money with no income, die. There is NO room for fun. You don't understand real FUN when you are younger than four. When you are old and retired you are too old and feble to have FUN. And when you are in between everything truely fun takes months and years to do and experience. But you only have a two week vacation every year to relax. No room for fun, just room to relax so there isn't a big prole-bourgeois riot. Well FAH! I think I'll become a hobo, thank you very much. Ohh to hell with it, I'm just gonna watch some TV and go to sleep.