Rants, Raves, and Ramblings

Where have I been for all these months?

The short answer is simply that I’ve been relaxing. After years of working full-time, teaching part-time, attending school full-time, and handling my little side projects (like web sites and LAN parties), I decided a few months off was in order. I meant to tell you all before, but complete exhaustion beat me to it. By the time I woke up, I was too busy taking it easy to type up a little of intent to all of you.

Well, actually, I still am, but I figure I’d throw you a bone while I had a little time to do so. I know, you’re all just so tickled by that, aren’t you?

To make up for many lost months worth of content, I’ll give you a bunch of short & sweet links to some cool things.

I’ve found perhaps the world’s most discreet WAP; the Windy31. These connect to a system via USB, and can act as either a wireless card or an access point, depending on which mode you set it in. I’ve been looking for something like this for a while, for penetration testing purposes. Could be all sorts of fun – let your imagination run free with the possibilities! And in case you’re wondering, it is b/g.
Courtesy of Bass, I was recently introducted to Driverpacks. These are a huge collection of files you can embed with a Windows installation disc that cover just about every conceivable driver around. Very useful stuff for those of you who do frequent Windows reformats/reinstalls.

I’ve found a place locally that does laser etching, which is surprising given that such services are usually only available in bigger cities. They are called LaserItAll, and I can personally vouch for the quality and friendliness of the people there. It’s really great that we have such a place here in town – keep them in business, check them out!

At The Next HOPE, which took place this past weekend, I was introduced to a fascinating little game called Digital: A Love Story, made by the wonderful Christine Love. The plot, set in the 80′s, revolves around using an Amiga-like system to dial into BBSes, where you soon get wrapped up in a mystery/romance. Highly recommended.

It’s amazing what kind of software we’re building right into browser windows these days. The features and functionality of SumoPaint blow my mind.

Speaking of fascinating browser-based technology, I’ve resumed playing Space Merchant for the first time in about a decade. It’s a free game that I guess falls into the MMO category, though it came out long before such things became popular. There is a complex but sensible set of rules which dictate how you trade goods, build experience, gain money, and even climb into ships to fight other players; the end result is an addictive numbers-based real-time multi-player strategy game.

The code hasn’t changed much since I last played it, and neither have the looks (which entail fairly minimal graphical representations);  this has definitely taken its toll on the player base, since youngsters are always demanding something visual to shut their imagination off with. But there is still a small and loyal fanbase that play regularly, and it’s been fun joining in the fray. If anyone decides to join, let me know and I’ll gladly get you set up with some good tips.

In a similar vein, I’ve rediscovered NationStates, which is not quite a game, but still fun. You create a nation, and are then presented with various issues and positions regarding those issues, which you then adopt. Each decision you make has an impact (sometimes unexpected) on your nation’s population, some of which are fairly amusing. It is a good balance of intrigue and humor, and I definitely recommend it for anyone looking for casual mental stimulation. You can see my nation here.

Now, feast on these morsels, and I’ll be back in the Fall to resume regular posting. Really. I promise.

A collection of various and sundry bits of info:

• According to my work PC’s idle process, the system has been on for 4824 hours, or almost exactly 201 days. I guess I should reboot the thing, but at this point I’m sticking it out as long as I can just to see if I can surpass a year. I’m not sure why, but this waxes my ego quite a bit.

• I’ve been tasked with running some mock interviews for Davis College graduates in the Computer Networking program there. That’ll be fun.

• I read my first James Bond novel last Friday. It was The Man With The Golden Gun, which I chose because it was perhaps my favorite Bond flick.  It turned out to be almost nothing like the movie, but I guess I should have expected that. I decided to read the reviews of it on Amazon after I began reading it (the natural order of things as I see it), only to discover that it is widely considered one of the worst Bond novels in the series. I still managed to enjoy it regardless.

Incidentally, this was the last Bond book by the original author, as Ian Fleming died while the book was just about finished. I’ve since read the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, so I’ve accidentally started at the end and then started over at the beginning of the series.

So far, I’m quite pleased with the books. They read very quickly and keep interest the entire time. I intend to read through the whole series, which at this rate should give me something to do until May.

It’s also inspired me to go back and re-investigate my long dormant fascination with the Bond franchise. The last film I saw was The World Is Not Enough, and I finally broke about a decades worth of disinterest in the films by watching Casino Royale (the new, Daniel Craig one) this past weekend. I was pleased with it, though not ecstatic; 7/10. I’ll definitely be checking out some of the old classics like Goldfinger and Live and Let Die soon.

Out of curiosity, anyone here a Bond fan?

…and we’re back. Spring Break went by without too much of a fuss; a trip to Ann Arbor, a LAN party, another trip to Ann Arbor for a concert on St. Patrick’s Day, a company banquet at the Glass Pavilion. I completed The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and picked up God of War as a new game to indulge in for an hour or two every week. So far, I like it quite a bit.

Now that I’ve gotten all that out of the way, we can get to the meat of this post. I am an obsessive absorber of information – like a thirsty sponge, I seek reading material on whatever subjects I deem to be worthy. Toward this endeavor, I have amassed a mental list of sites that I typically find to be interesting, and that I find myself checking regularly (or semi-regularly). They are as follows:

News
Slashdot – Probably the site I invest the most time and energy into reading. I read all the summaries religiously, plus the comments for any articles that interest me enough. I even comment myself from time to time.
Yahoo! – More or less just a habit from the days of using web portals. I usually check the headlines here to see if there is anything interesting, which there occasionally is.
Electoral Vote – Owned and operated by computer science legend Andrew Tanenbaum, I’ve been using this site as my primary insight into politics since 2004. Fairly objective and profoundly insightful, the site’s major gadget is a graph which amalgamates polls to show you what states are leaning where, along with possible explanations for those trends.
Memory Alpha – Star Trek wiki; I check the news section for word on the new Star Trek film.

Blogs
Bruce Schneier – Probably my favorite pundit on matters of security, cryptography, and computer science. Great resource for links to new research and news stories with added commentary and occasional essays/editorials. After /., probably my most visited resource on the web.
John Scalzi – Sci-fi writer whose work I’ve never read, but I nonetheless enjoy his blog quite a bit. Lots of various and sundry bits that run the gamut of writing advice, amusing anecdotes, social/political commentary, interest pieces, and general geekery. What a blog should be.
William Bennett – Creator/frontman of Whitehouse. Lots of short but insightful essays, observations and opinions on culture, and movie reviews. Always throught-provoking.
Wil Wheaton – Honestly, most of his updates aren’t that interesting to me, and he updates it sporadically on top of that. I guess its just the novelty of reading Wesley Crusher’s blog that keeps me coming back.
Jhonen Vasquez – Creator of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, staple reading for my social group back in high school. Later went on to make Invader Zim. Only discovered last week, but it’s been very entertaining and will likely make it into the usual rotation.

Humor
Somethingawful – Everyone gives me a look when I tell them I don’t read the forums. Just the Front Page News and a couple other sections. Kinda hit or miss, but worth it for the occasional side-splitter.
Seanbaby – Another hit or miss comedy site with treasure trove of great archives that I’ve read on and off for over a decade. Updated every Thursday.
The Best Page In the Universe – Maddox’s page. Hardly updated anymore, but I still dig the content.
GaijinSmash – A site containing interesting tales and observations of Japan from the point of view of a young black man who moved there as a JET student and stuck around after his contract was up. Done now in the form of a seldom-updated-blog, it started as a series of “editorials” that my friends and I read religiously back in 2005/2006.
XKCD – Nerdy webcomic, good for the occasional laugh or interesting diagram. Updated Mon/Wed/Fri.
ToothpasteForDinner – Classic webcomic by Drew, read mostly for the nostalgia I get for the early ’00s when viewing. Updated daily.
MarriedToTheSea – Another webcomic by Drew whose premise relies on adding captions to old public domain images. Updated daily.
Superpoop – Another webcomic by Drew which uses the formula of adding text, other photographs, or both to pictures found on the net.

Now, the big question: what are YOUR daily must-read websites?

It’s Friday night. I’m at a remote campus, surrounded by little more than fields and empty factories for miles and miles. I’m in a scarcely-used building during a quiet weekend, alone except for the fellow watching the desolate computer lab down the hall. It’s dark, cold, and windy outside, with the snow alternating between an elegant declension and a violent downpour.

This is how we begin SPRING BREAK! (kind of a misnomer, isn’t it?) here at Owens Community College in sunny Northwood, Ohio!

Due to some awkward scheduling decisions by the goblins in the President’s Office, I won’t be seeing my students for about three weeks. Weekend classes have their advantages, I suppose (for students and teachers).

What are YOU doing with your Friday night?

A couple weekends ago, I assembled a new computer for myself. The one I had been running was only a couple years old, but it was a bare-bones deal from TigerDirect that I got for $500 just to be functionally capable of playing UT3 when it came out*. It came in a tall, ugly, unwieldy case that has one of those stupid doors on the front which needs to remain open all the time so you can stick flash drives in it and eject the optical drive tray; a pointless encumbrance that looks tacky when taken off, and is functionally annoying when on. Needless to say, I never got comfortable with that machine in the way I like to;  there is something rewarding about knowing that a machine is what it is because of the parts you personally chose for it.

A little after I got it back in 2007, I promised myself that some day, when I had the money, I could go out and buy myself a new computer that fit me. And I guess that time came late last year when I started ordering parts. Here’s what I ended up with:

CPU: AMD Phenom x4 9750 2.4GHz – NewEgg had a sale. I figured that a quad-core processor for $80 isn’t a bad deal, even if it doesn’t come with a heatsink/fan.

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H – Matched all my other parts, and included an integrated gigabit NIC (are any integrated NICs NOT gigabit these days?) Also got brownie points for having an HDMI, eSATA, and Firewire port which I’ll probably never use, but will be pleased to know I could if I wanted to.

Memory: 4x 2GB Crucial DDR2 800 – I dig Crucial for hosting their insanely useful Memory Advisor. I went with this particular memory stick because it ended up being a relatively cheap 8GB of RAM.

Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar 1TB – It feels good to finally break the terabyte storage barrier. I’ve needed this for a while, actually, so I can better organize the placement and storage on my WD Passports, which act as backup drives (320GB and 500GB).

Optical Drive: LG 22x DVD-RW w/Lightscribe – Generic. Nothing special here.

Case: Cooler Master Elite 334 nVidia Edition – I never realized how many cases were either hideously malformed, had doors on the front, or incredibly boring before I went shopping around for one. I liked the look of this one, and saved myself something like $30 by ordering it from Amazon instead of NewEgg. Got free shipping, too, which is where buying a case usually really hurts.

Monitor: Asus MS238H 23″ 2ms Widescreen LCD – I broke down and purchased a new monitor for I think the first time in my life. I’ve really fallen in love with this monitor, though the ring stand base makes me nervous sometimes.

Keyboard: Lite-On SK-1688U/B – Finding a good keyboard is hard these days, too; I like a big backspace key, stands that actually angle the keyboard up a significant length, and an otherwise clean setup (no multimedia keys or whatever). I ordered three of these, and I’m really, really happy with the results. **

Operating System: Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, 64-bit – running XP inside of VirtualBox. I intend to install a Windows 7 VM at some point and see if its worth bothering with.

The mouse and power supply were taken from the old PC, while the heatsink/fan was some fancy-ass Zalman deal that I bought from Computer Renaissance. It came in like 20 pieces and had no instructions, so I ended up spending about an hour with it before realizing that most of the parts were there for other socket types. Embarrassing, but I guess I learned something.

Also, I did get a PCI-express video card of some kind for nice graphics, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was. You can see how much I care about gaming on this machine (it runs all my Compiz settings just fine – thats all I really care about).

Eventually, I’ll purchase and install a card-reader/floppy combo drive (oddly enough, the motherboard I got features a floppy drive channel). I always think my case looks empty if there isn’t a slot to insert some kind of media hanging around smack-dab in the middle of it’s front.

I spent the whole weekend installing software, migrating data, and tweaking settings…and I actually enjoyed doing so. Some notes on this process:

• Running Windows in a strictly virtual environment is kind of an experiment for me, but so far I haven’t had any major issues aside from being unable to do full-screen YouTube videos inside of it.
• Installing UT2004 on Ubuntu was of course needlessly difficult, but I found my salvation in this guide. The only thing left is getting audio to work smoothly in it. And maybe installing UT:GOTY as well.
• I really like how Ubuntu has incorporated nice themes, wallpaper, screensavers, etc. into their OS. I’ve mentioned it before, but the “cool” factor is important in any software experience, and the Ubuntu people have done a good job in this regard.
• Compiz, as always, made the experience that much more engaging. I found a great animated skydome that still makes me giddy to see in action.

There is a certain joy in exploring new hardware and software that is difficult to appreciate if you’ve never been in that position before. Trying to get disparate things to work together and then actually succeeding in doing so is an immensely rewarding experience – the kind where you walk away knowing not only that you’ve picked up some new skills, but also had a lot of fun doing it.

*This turned out to be a fool’s errand, given that I ended up playing UT3 maybe three times before not caring anymore

**As a side note, prior to ordering these I’d been using an old grey PS/2 eMachines keyboard that was cracked from me slamming it repeatedly against a desk in anger. The weakened plastic and uneven feet caused it to bounce a little bit every time I typed on it.

…because I absolutely despise the word “blog”.

You may have noticed the new look and feel of the journal. That’s because I have officially caved and switched over to using WordPress. I know, I know…this is backpedaling somewhat on my initial grandstanding over coding my own journal. But I feel I made the right decision in converting, and here’s the big reason why: I wasn’t getting as much posted as I wanted to on the old journal.

As stated in my previous posts, I actually do have a lot of entries I’ve wanted to make – some for well over a year. But I found myself not really having the time or energy to flesh them out – at least, not a satisfactory degree.

My hand-coded stuff was a pain in the ass to work with; everything had to be done in raw HTML, including line breaks and text formatting, and editing entries or comments after the fact required going in to phpMyAdmin to manually tinker with the data. I didn’t have an easy way to store drafts or proofread, and the aesthetics, frankly, looked dated.

These are all things I could have fixed – believe me! – but just didn’t have the time to sit down and mudge together. I barely had time to type out the entries I wanted to post, much less go through and fix up a bunch of code. And hey, I didn’t make this journal as an experiment in php (well, not as a primary reason, anyway) – I did it to 1) archive my ever-so-humble insights and observations, and 2) to keep in touch with friends, acquaintances, and former students. The real mission of the journal was suffering, and that was unacceptable.

So, I got a commercial blogging engine.

But why WordPress? I’m glad you asked.

When shopping around for a new back-end, I decided to look at what some of the blogs I read regularly use: William Bennett uses Blogspot, Bruce Schneier uses Movable Type, Wil Wheaton uses TypePad, and John Scalzi uses WordPress. That narrowed my options down to four simple choices. In the end, I found Blogspot to be too obviously templated and blase, while Movable Type failed to excite me in any way. TypePad seemed very viable, but I was kind of turned off by how heavily it touts integration with social networking crap like Twitter and Facebook. WordPress won the trial.

And I have to say, I really like WordPress so far. My biggest complaint with them a few years ago was how every WordPress site looks the same; I’m happy to report that they have done a great job at providing a good selection of layouts. Everything else is pretty solid; there’s no annoying ads, a very easy to use dashboard for managing the blog, plenty of bells and whistles, highly configurable…I’ve had plenty to play with over the last weekend.

The most time-consuming parts were tweaking the layout and moving the old posts and comments over. It was kind of interesting to get some numbers for the last 2.5 years worth of blogging (32 posts and 125 comments, for an average of 3.9 comments oer post). I also like that my little text editor includes a word count (currently up to 533 for this post); it’s made me curious what the average word count is on all my posts combined. Haven’t found that feature yet, though.

All in all, I hope this move doesn’t shock or repulse anybody who loved the old setup. The end result should be more posts more often, which is how I originally intended it to be, and which I hope you look for as well. I would like to hear what everyone thinks of the change, especially the layout. For example, I know I’m kind of iffy about the calendar feature over there on the sidebar. I need some outside opinions to help me decide what to do.

What do YOU think about it? Like it? Hate it? Like some parts but hate others?

It has been way too long since I’ve made an entry. Believe me, I’ve wanted to make entries detailing all of my little projects, adventures, and insights – I just haven’t had the time to sit down and type them all out. A rather privileged problem, if I may say so. And it has the bonus effect of resulting in about a dozen good entries just waiting to pour out of my skull. So for anyone looking for new posts – don’t get too discouraged by the relative silence here. There is plenty brewing.

I know that I’ve professed my lack of interest in video games before, but that’s mostly to deflect the incessant talk about video games that invariably occurs when you admit that you like them within hearing/reading distance of a game nut. Back in the ’90′s, I used to play a lot of console games; it was a major hobby of mine. For the last decade, I’ve found myself relegated to playing the occasional PC game – not for any deliberate reason, mind you, but because games simply don’t interest me like they used to.

I think video games are a fascinating medium, and certainly one of the most engaging. I do predict that the video game industry will one day (in my lifetime) be on par with that of the movie and music industries, in terms of money and popularity. I just hate how playing video games has become so popular that a substantial portion of the population somehow find it worthwhile to talk about minute details of the industry that bore me to death. I have approximately no interest in what publishers are doing, what new technologies are coming out, or what gossip is going on about some big game. I just like playing a specific handful of games – that’s it.

That being said, I was recently reminded of some old games that I felt warranted a little reminiscing about.

As I was moving into my new house last summer, I rediscovered my Nintendo 64, and in doing so also found some old games that, once upon a time, I spent countless hours indulging in. Super Mario 64, GoldenEye, and Bomberman 64 – all favorites of mine from the late 90′s. I instantly hearkened back to Jason Scott’s fantastic talk about Super Mario 64 at last year’s Notacon*, and before long I was playing the game from the beginning.

SM64 really is a timeless classic, and I found it every bit as fun as it was in 1997 (okay, maybe a little less so – but still very close). It has aged well, and Mr. Scott’s musings about the underlying philosophy of the game rang ever so true to me as I went through and got all 120 stars (with a little help from my friend Jade).

GoldenEye, which I still count as my favorite game of all time, was a blast to play through again as well. I was pleased to find that all the little details that made it fun and all the secrets that gave it intrigue were still intact. I even managed to defeat every level at every difficulty alongside gaining every cheat, which was a first for me. GE will also hold a special place in my heart for being the focus of my first regular Internet forum, which was ostensibly centered around discussion of the game but eventually devolved into anything but.

Bomberman’s virtue is held in its uniquely Japanese styling; everything about it, from the maps to the characters to the music screams kitsch Japanese. It’s a fun enough game, especially in multiplayer, but I think I enjoyed revisiting it mostly for the memories of high school that became associated with it.

I couldn’t find two other games that I recall playing a lot, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (which I ordered off Half.com last week) and the almost universally hated Quest 64 (which I ordered right after I finished typing the title). I did hook up my old Sega CD as well, but only played a limited amount of Sonic CD before losing interest. Still hungry for old games, I went out and bought a Playstation 2.

Now I hated Sony forever for entering the video game market; I was a Sega loyalist until they got out of the console business, and after that, I got behind Nintendo. I always saw Sony and Microsoft as heralding the entry of true corporate interest in the video game market, and still fault them for introducing the current dismal state of video games which has kept me completely uninterested in the field for about the last decade. Still, I did spend quite a few hours at the houses of friends playing games like the original Resident Evil, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and GTA3. Plus, I had just finished reading John Nathan’s fascinating biography of Sony, which sparked my intrigue in them just long enough for me to pay GameStop for a refurbished system.

As the Fall semester began, I found myself playing less and less as I had to concentrate on all my usual duties, but I hadn’t completely forgotten this temporary rebirth of gaming interest. Over the Winter break, I downloaded ZSNES and played a Harvest Moon ROM for a few weeks, making a valiant attempt to complete the game for the first time since playing it on ZSNES six years ago. (I never owned a Super Nintendo – just played a few ROMs on an emulator during the summer of 20020).

I guess all that’s left is to pull out my old Game Boy and Pokemon Blue cartridge. God help me.

The 90′s were indeed the era of console games for me. Somewhere in the very early 2000′s, I completely lost all interest in console gaming – overnight. I haven’t looked back since, unless it was at games or consoles that came before that time, and even then it was done on a strictly nostalgic/non-serious basis. On the other hand, PC gaming became a cool new obsession, and I did indulge myself in that particular pastime for a bit. However, I’ll save the details of that particular journey for another post…

*You can actually see me in this video, as I was right up front for this particular talk.