Month: December 2004

Yesterday was a very productive day. I’m not talking I got in a lot of programming productive, I’m not talking I reoganized my room and cleaned it productive, I’m not even talking I spent 10 hours jobhunting and got a job productive. I’m talking about making an impact on the whole damn planet productive.

(I actually type this post up yesterday when it was all still fresh but stupid Blogger—yeah you heard my Blogger, I know you’re watching Big Brother ;D—wiped out the whole thing when I pressed the wrong key and I lost it all. Since it was really late I was in no mood to retype the whole thing so I decided I’d just do it again today which truned out to be a good idea.)

First of all, I fixed a leak in the kitchen sink, I pulled out all the crap under the sink, cleaned it out, and killed the mold—by yelling at it and kicking it square in the n’uts. Next, my mother had asked for some help with her baked goods. She had made some "candies"—if you can use such a provincial and pedestrian term to label the things my mother makes—for some people and wanted some help preparing them. So I separated, cupped, and wrapped a few dozen of those things which has has yet to name. Finally I sorted, organized, and entered a bunch of tapes.

Next came a big part of the day. Last week, Rockstargames released Grand Theft Auto 2 for free as a download just in time for Christmas. It has been extremely difficult to get it but unlike almost everyone else in the world, I managed to get it yesterday. I wanted to help out but there’s a clause on the download page saying not to mirror it. After some study I decided that the block was their original intention but things have changed sufficiently since then that they would not doubt appreciate a little help, after all there’s plenty of mirrors of GTA1. I decided to help spread the copy I got to some people. I created a torrent and put in my eMule share. Before long I had a dozen people downloading it from me in eMule. Once it was sufficiently uploaded to those people, I pulled the plug. As for BitTorrent, I got a few bites and finished it up for them before pulling out. I checked today and found that they are already spreading on their own. I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised, I mean it IS the Internet. I’ve seen a couple of other sources that are just getting off the ground, but I guess I may be solely responsible for originally helping to releive the stress on R* servers and helping them spread this, especially since yesterday morning when I checked, the file was nowhere to be seen anywhere until after I let the cat out of the bag. I was a little worried about the clause but I figure, if they were harvesting email addresses, then they are in trouble and it’s not big deal since they are not getting any addresses anyway because it doesn’t work. If they are NOT harvesting, then I help to prevent, or rather reduce people’s initial reactions of gratitude from turning to resentment. I did it for Rockstargame’s own good as much as anyone else’s.

Later last night, I contributed a bunch of entries to TVTome; entries that I was particularly proud of for their astuteness. I was particularlly proud of one contribution. A person had asked in the forums about a song that was played in an episode of Malcolm in the Middle. A second person also wanted to know, and I myself was anxious to find out since the song was really great. I had already tried to find out but came up empty. Seeing that others also wanted to know, I checked again and this time I got a hit. I found out that it is called Holla! by the Baha Men. I posted the answer in the forum for them and in the main page. I got a copy of the song but having a need to sing along—I love fast music—I looked for lyrics. Unfotunately, I found that there was not a single place on the whole Internet that contained the lyrics for the song. I resisted a bit but quickly gave in to temptation and took it upon myself to transcribe the lyrics. A surprisingly short time later I had the complete lyrics—although I still had a few little changes to make. I then submitted them to several places. Yes, if you find lyrics to Baha Men’s Holla!, then it’s 99.99999999999999999% likely that it’s mine. 😀

Today was also very productive. My mother needed a few things so we went to some places this afternoon. We looked everywhere for some Chia Cat Grass but could not find ANY Chia product anywhere, let alone the newer Cat Grass. Luckily we found a little planter of already grown cat grass at Loblaws. The best part of today however was that there were ads for two deep fryers. There was a Rival deep fryer at $40 and a Moulinex deep fryer at $40. Now you might say, go with the Moulinex, it’s a known name and you would normally be true. This time however is no different, in fact the Rival is regular price whereas the Moulinex is half price, it’s normally $80, the average price for a deep fryer ($80-$90). The choice was clear. There was however a little snag. At the register it rang up as $80. My mother pointed it out in the flyer to which the cashier pointed out the "1 Day Only Sale: Dec.26" header which was practically unreadable since it wasn’t even text, but rather a big graphic with the "1" so big and red that it blends into the background so that you cannot even see it. Dejected, we left to my surprise since my mother almost never gives up like that; I guess she must have been anxious to find the cat grass. Things turned around in the car though when I mentioned that the price tag on the shelf still says $40. We went back and checked. Sure enough the price tag that was affixed to the little plastic thing stuck on the shelf not only said "Moulinex deep fryer: 1/2 price: $40", but it also said "sale ends Dec.31". If that wasn’t great enough, there was another tag beneath, on the shelf itself that said the exact same thing. I was busting; we were right so much so that I wanted to really stick it to them—especially the cashier who had been so smug—and rub it in. We took the deep fryer to the customer service desk to be rung up, the woman there got $80, my mother took her to see the shelf, they came back and she rung it up for $40 but not before tearing both tags off of the shelf, a little peaved. If we had managed to get the deep fryer for $40 two days ago it would have been nice enough and we would have been happy, but knowing that we got such a great deal after the sale when we shouldn’t have, and that we were right, and that they were wrong, and that they practically cheated with their unreadable flyer, and that we conquered, it just made it so much more sweet.

I also learned something about myself. At the end of the day I was so happy that I figured out that it’s not what I’m doing specifically that makes me happy as long as I’m being productive, creative, and accomplishing something worthwhile.

Yes, a very productive two days. We got some things, I learned some things, I impacted the whole world.

I was testing my Internet connection just now and ended up at a Microsoft mouse web page. It was about their horizontal scroll technology. Basically it is a mouse with a scoll wheel where the scroll wheel can be pushed left and right to scroll horizontally as well as scrolling vertically by rolling the wheel. I watched a little demo for it and was bemused by their actions.

Horizontal scroll wheel movement is not new. In fact many years ago I saw an ad for a mouse that actually had TWO scroll wheels in it; one to scroll vertically and one to scroll horizontally. Unfortunately the horizontal scroll wheel was mounted vertically beside—and shifted slightly down from—the other one.

The thing that I cannot figure out is why they keep using wheels. If people want to be able to scroll in all directions with their mouse then why does someone not step up and take the wheel out altogether and replace it with a small trackball? That would be one heck of a useful input device; A MOUSE WITH A BUILT IN TRACKBALL. You could then do all kinds of crazy things. Of course there is always the fact that with a trackball it is difficult to scroll perfectly in line like it is hard to move the mouse perfectly to the left or up or down or to the right. I’m sure however that with the right programming this would not be a problem and that there are in fact some of these already out there. However, Logitech needs to get around to doing it to get others to see the light.

I have been lite light—hehe—on the computer recently. The past week or so I have been busy with a bunch of stuff that has kept me away from the computer and the Internet and thus news—although I don’t care for news anyway. Today however I was getting ready to do some work but in a split second decided to check a news site for the heck of it and was taken aback with what I saw. I read that Suprnova—and several others—had been indefinitely closed and could not believe my eyes. I was shocked the same way I was when Sharereactor died. The magnitude of the news was overwhelming. This in itself however was not a problem, well at least not in terms of killing my night. The problem was that it fired up my need for information and quickly spawned over a couple of dozen browser windows. Two hours later I had finally managed to close all the browsers—of course I had to read the information in it first—and was left with a few things.

First of all I was left with a yearning to do what Prince Roy Bates of Sealand did and find an abandoned island, claim it as my own, and create a new country. Then again I’m too busy and too lazy to do all the work that would no doubt be needed to create a nation, but I suppose I could call it a “project”.

Second, I was left with feeling of loss due to the closings of so many big hitters in the world of Internet piracy. Like many others who cannot afford to purchase things I rely on bootleg media which means finding them through these sites. Fortunately I did not panic like so many of the amateurs do. I have been around long enough to understand that if a desirable and successful technology goes down, a new and better one will soon pop up to take it’s place. I have seen piracy take many, many forms over the years and am not concerned.

When Napster died, many people freaked out but then eDonkey came along and people said woo. Then Sharereactor came along and people said woo hoo. Then Sharereactor died and people freaked out again. Next BitTorrent came out and people said HUH!? This is useless. Then Suprnova came around and people said HOLY COW! A few more torrent sites came along and people said this is awesome! Now that Suprnova and several of those torrent sites died people are again freaking out. So what are we to do? Nothing, just sit tight and hope that nothing—or rather not too many—big things that we really want gets released until the next alternative comes along.

Finally I was left with a feeling of sadness and anger. Sadness because I actually—choose to—feel a little bad for those greedy bastards like the MPAA and RIAA because when you look at the above paragraphs you realize that they are fighting a losing war. They keep hitting back and making a little progress but in the end the only win little battles but the war always stays in favor of the pirates by the very nature of the fight and the people on the two sides. The anger I felt was because of the timing. After looking through hundreds of posts by many dozens of people it seems that I am the only person who had any thoughts about how this recent strike is happening during the holidays/Christmas. It makes sense that they would want to shut them down to force people to go out and buy Christmas gifts instead of burning CDs of stuff but it also shows how greedy and heartless they are. Instead of being kind during the holidays they attack.

Nobody can say that they didn’t see any of this coming and yet we are all surprised when it happens nonetheless… interesting.

A few weeks ago I put up half a dozen ads around campus. They are for tutoring and I list about 20 courses that I can teach in Computer Science, Psychology, and Math. I waited paitiently for the first requests but nothing came. After almost three weeks, I got my first bite. Someone called asking for help with the 3rd (and final) CS305 assignment. After talking with him a bit about what exactly he needs help with I learned that he wanted me to write the whole thing for him, not just help him with it but do the entire thing myself and hand it to him so that he can hand it in. Obviously this is not good, I cannot do that on moral reasons but more importantly I cannot do it because I do not have access to the UNIX/Solaris machines in the computer labs on which the assignment must run. And, of course I cannot install UNIX on my own machine at home because it would require waaay too much work and time just to set up and get everything running, the assignment deadline would pass twice over before I could even start.

Anyway, I got a second bite a little later. This second person also wants help with the 3rd CS305 assignment. I’m currently reading through the relevant chapter in the text book to review the section since I took that course about five years ago. I doubt I will be able to help him though. I can help teach concepts for tests and stuff but assignments are not easy to help with.