Cranky-D

Earlier I wrote that I was watching the Perry Mason series. I have discovered since then that if you stream them from the CBS site late enough at night, the streaming works pretty well and it isn’t too glitchy. You have to watch a few commercials, which is okay with me. My big problem with streaming is that it is usually too damn annoying to put up with, since I had never watched a show that didn’t either freeze up all the time or drop out entirely during the playing of a given episode.

Technology that does not work as advertised annoys me considerably.

I was watching CSI Los Angeles last night, and one of the plot points was this device that you can sit next to a computer and it will pick up all sorts of sensitive information without ever being connected to the computer. Right. Even if you can swallow that, they were trying to figure out what the code did, but they couldn’t tell because it was in Chinese.

Jeebus.

Machine language is machine language. I don’t even think there is a Chinese programming language (doubtful, because Chinese is not alphabetical, but you could still do it somehow if you like torturing yourself), but even if there were, it would still compile to binary, and disassembling that binary would result in assembly code in whatever language you would like to have it in (again, I don’t know if assembly language has been translated to something else but I highly doubt it).

Don’t believe anything you see on television. They get the stuff I know wrong all the time. That means they are getting plenty of other stuff wrong without me, or you, knowing about it.

Here is a good article on how one might create a theory and “verify” it with some statistical analysis while not proving one damn thing. No math is involved, though you have to understand what is meant by a “p-value (my interpretation is it measures the correlation of the theory with the data).”

I don’t watch television as it is delivered because commercials drive me insane. Instead, I tend to avail myself of alternate delivery systems for teevee which allow me to watch the shows on my fantabulous 30in widescreen computer monitor (which, by the way, I ended up buying from my former employer because I really couldn’t give it up). So I am right now watching the CSI NY from last week(I guess) and they have car racing in the show, which is great because I like cars and machinery in general. However, they came up with this insanely ridiculous idea of a “Velocity Injection Chamber” which somehow stores the kinetic energy from braking and allows you to re-apply it to the wheels at some later time.

As I said on teh twitter, what a load of horseshit. First of all, braking converts the kinetic energy of the vehicle into heat, which is then dissipated to the surrounding air. Storing heat is really quite difficult. If you wanted a direct conversion, you would need a good way to store the heat energy in some other form and then re-apply it later. Good luck with that. Now, it’s possible to use the kinetic energy to power a generator and then store the energy electrically, and indeed hybrid cars do that to a greater or lesser extent to re-charge the batteries. That would not work on a race car.

Whatever. It did give me a huge laugh, which is always welcome. However, it should also serve as a reminder that they crap you see on teevee is often completely insane and unworkable. Most writers don’t know a whole lot about anything. Keep a skeptical mind.

I’ve been getting back to my roots, as it were, since I’ve been unemployed. I have been a long-time fan of the Perry Mason teevee series, and have seen them all many times. However, I have probably never seen them as originally broadcast as they were about 52 minutes long and most of the time you are lucky to get 45 minutes of them on the telly. However, if you know where to look, you can get them for “free.” Yes, I’m a bad boy. If streaming video actually worked as promised I would just watch them on the CBS website, where they are all available for free, but streaming video still bites the big one as far as quality goes. I cannot abide hiccups in the delivery.

Anyway, I just queued up an episode, and I knew who the killer was within about 20 seconds. I paused it to write this. It’s really more about the process to me, since I usually recall the killer soon enough. I am hardly ever surprised any more. Still, it’s a lot of fun.

I’m that way with Star Trek: The Original Series as well. I can name the episode from watching the teaser. Yet somehow, I forget if I’ve taken my asthma medicine for any given morning. Early onset alzheimer’s, or just normal forgetfulness? Your call.

I just saw the movie “New Moon” at the local cheapo theater down the street. I was curious about what the teenage kids like these days.

Wow. Just wow. That movie dragged like you wouldn’t believe. They could have cut 30 minutes out and not done it any damage. The only reason I can think to give it so much space is to give the little girls time to get done crying before the next plot point scene takes place. And the protagonist wallowed so much in her misery it was damn annoying at times. Sure, she had a reason to be upset, but she seemed to relish it.

Every young male in her life seemed tough but still sensitive. Her father was a doddering idiot at times. And we have 100 year old vampires going to high school for frel’s sake. Jeebus. I wouldn’t be going to high school. I’d be dressing up in period clothing from 200 years ago and wallowing in decadence and killing humans and stuff like that. I mean, if you’re going to hell already, why worry?

It could have been a lot better with some editing. The story was quite predictable, but it had some good action scenes. More of that would have been welcome. It really wasn’t as bad as it could have been, I guess, and it was pretty much what I expected, except too gosh darn long. Rent it if you’re curious.

That was such a chick flick, I think I just ovulated.

from here

from here

from here

taken from xkcd - A Webcomic - Tech Support Cheat Sheet

I found out about, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” at Ace’s blog. It’s a web-only musical written by Joss Whedon starring Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion. It looks rediculous at first, but it kind of grows on you.

I recommend going here to watch it because you can watch it full-screen. I had to select the low-resolution mode to avoid stuttering issues at full-screen mode, but I have a 30in screen running at 2560×1600 resolution, so YMMV.

BTW, the screen? Awesome. If you sit in front of a computer all day, especially if you write a lot of code, it is a great investment, though it cost more than a really good big-screen television. In my case, however, my employer got it for me (I work out of my house), so you cannot beat that price. If he suddenly took it away, however, I think I would have to buy one anyway.

83% Geek

Created by OnePlusYou

I’m a little disappointed that I couldn’t do better. I mean, I have a piled higher and deeper in geek, for frel’s sake.

There is a petaflop supercomputer currently running at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Awesome!

There is at least one supercomputer being built in the U.S. at any given time; at least, I’m pretty sure of this, since that was what was happening when I was an intern at one of the National Labs. It seems like there is a trade between Labs with respect to who gets the next one. A supercomputer requires special facilities that include enough cooling ability (the new petaflop computer needs 3 Megawatts of power to run it, and that means a lot of heat is generated) and also the required security. This can take a while to build, and of course the computer itself takes a while to build.

These supercomputers are used for simulations of a classified nature, and when they are operating the room is closed of to those who don’t possess the required security clearance. The simulations allow for scientists to understand, for instance, what happens to nuclear weapons as they age without actually having to set samples of them off.

The fact that these supercomputers exist allowed the U.S. to agree to not doing any live testing since they make testing pretty much unnecessary. They probably have other uses but I prefer not to speculate about things not publicly admitted to; I did not have the clearance so I don’t know and even if I did I would say nothing. Some secrets exist for a reason.

The older supercomputers to not go to waste by any means. They can be used for less intensive computations. Also, at the facility I visited they had set aside a portion of the older supercomputer for anyone’s use. That was pretty much the only time I did any parallel programming.

By the way, apparently Bush was behind the initiative to get the U.S. back in the supercomputer business and currently we have the fastest ones on the planet. I don’t agree with a lot of his domestic policies, but this one was a good one. The U.S. is about high-tech, and we need to keep up on that front, lest we become a country that only exports entertainment. That would not be a good thing.

Link found in the sidebar at ace of spades hq

I wrote a little blurb about the direct to disk movie over at Protein Wisdom. There are also plenty of old posts over there whose linkiness changed at some time, so they are no longer linked properly in my archives, but you can find them, if you’re interested, by searching on my handle, “cranky-d.”

Basically, my day consists of reading blogs, watching some teevee, playing RPGs on various Game Boy incarnations, and writing code (the last one is what pays the bills). Mostly it’s writing code and reading blogs, but some days, like today, it is more reading blogs and writing code.

Anyway, I bought a DS a while ago, and I finally started using it last week after I completed yet another run-through of Dragon Warrior III. Right now I’m playing Final Fantasy III. It’s an amusing little RPG. I find myself using the touch screen a lot, since the game kind of encourages it. So the screen is smudged and will likely remain so for some time. I have no idea how long the screen protectors are supposed to last, but you definitely need them. I have seen no reason to use the stylus so it’s just naked oily fingers instead.

What’s sort of funny is that I have started about four or five final fantasy variations and have yet to play one to completion. This has more to do with what interests me about the genre than me not being able to finish anything. Once you’ve done all the pre-requisites, the only thing left is to level up enough to tromp the last “boss” and win. I only finished DWIII this last time because I thought there was supposed to be more coming afterwards. I guess I took a wrong path or something. However, I played DW I-IV on the 8-bit system and finished them all many times so I already know what happens. Obviously I get replay value from the series.

FFIII is probably not supposed to be a complete level grinder but sometimes that’s how I play these things. Today I had to go to the laundry, so I used that time to grind away to increase the stats. Oddly enough, I have never played D&D, and I have only played a smattering of computer-based RPGs; that probably puts me in a minority among my peers. I’m still considering moving on to WoW. I would probably like it, and when I bought the laptop I’m using to write this I made sure it could play WoW just in case, but it seems that I don’t have the time since I waste too much of it doing other stuff.

If that’s wasting it. I’m not sure.

Anyway, if you like RPGs you could do worse than get a DS. The graphics are pretty nice, the screen is bright, the unit is small but is still okay for adult hands, and it plays GB advantage games as well so there’s a catalog of games you can play. Plus, there are walkthroughs on the tubes if you get stuck, and the ones I’ve seen are usually pretty good. I have found that ebay is a good source for older games, but I tend to buy new if I can because then I know that the cartridge hasn’t been in and out of the unit a lot of times. There are a few titles out on the DS right now, and it looks like Dragon Quest IV will be released in the US fairly soon (DQ IV is the same as DWIV which was on the 8-bit NES); someone has already discovered that the chip released in Japan has an English translation already on it. I’m hoping they follow with DQV and DQVI, which I have never played but look forward to. They are definitely going to be released in Japan, but I’m not enough of a fanboy to deal with a Japanese-only version of the game.

I still have DQVII and DQVIII to play on the still-unused PS2. Maybe when I get back home “for good.” Somehow I think I’ll still be here in S0-Cal a lot more than I was before. Such is life, I guess.

So. My sister is working for H&R block this tax season. She wanted to look at what her schedule would be this weekend, and it didn’t show up properly in firefox. We’ve all seen sites like that, and we all know the solution. Use explorer.

Of course, explorer wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Instead, MSN explorer was parked in its slot, and it wanted to set me up with a new email account and stuff like that. Bye. I had to dig through the menus to find explorer, which I consider odd since we’re talking about the dark empire here. Still, this is on XP Home, which is a sub-optimal O.S. in my opinion. Don’t even attempt to “repair” the dlls if you know what’s good for you. Trust me. I did it once, and it was such a disaster I wondered if I could get the machine working again. I haven’t touched it since.

The amazing part was, my sister had no idea how to type a URL in. Seriously. She apparently uses google all the time to find things, and then pulls the URL out of the list google presents you. The whole process of typing “myblock.com” in the topmost bar was shocking to her. Even though I just showed her you can do that, I’ll bet it never happens again.

What’s really scary is she is actually pretty intelligent. One wonders what the stupid people do. Bang on the keys and hope for the best, or only go to sites that are in the browser history, I guess.

Lately I have totally gone insane with geekiness. I bought a gamecube, ps2, advance sp, and a ds. I already had a regular advance, but the last time I went back to Southern California I bought the SP because I hated the incredibly dim screen on the advance. At first I thought that was a bad move, but as it turned out, the DS will not play game boy games and I have a lot of game boy games.

The DS is the latest purchase. It just arrived today. The gamecube is cool because I also bought the adapter off ebay that plays gameboy games on it. The ps2 is there because I wanted to play all the final fantasy games and they are mostly exclusive to the ps2. I also got the grand theft auto 3-pack. So I went from pretty far behind in console land (8-bit nintendo and sega genisis) to one step behind the curve. One step behind means the consoles are pretty damn cheap to buy.

The DS has a nice bright screen. I think I’ll use it a lot. If not, so what? If I use it just a little while, that pays for it. Plus there are a lot of new role-playing titles that will only be on DS. For some reason I really like those kinds of games. I will replay them just for fun. I play all four Dragon Warrior games on the 8-bit nintendo when I had my surgeries so long ago. They really helped pass the time and make me forget about my body which was not doing very well at the time.

I haven’t been getting much sleep, since I’m worried about my father. I’m constantly tired. I hope that goes away eventually.

It isn’t that I have nothing to write about, it’s that I have nothing to write about that holds even my interest.

Since the last time I’ve been back to Southern California again on another working vacation. That laptop is probably one of the best purchases I have made in a long time. With it, I can not only get a lot of work done, I also don’t interfere as much with the normal life of my father, which involves using the computer often during the day. Of course, he just looks at email and plays solitaire, but it’s his thing.

My old game boy advance was such a help in getting the time to pass on the airplane, I decided to buy a game boy advance SP. I have wanted to get another advance for a while since some of the games I play require you to link two game boys together to transfer information from game to game sequel. I would have bought a DS, but you cannot link an advance to a DS. I will probably have to buy a DS anyway to play the latest role-playing games which are, of course, only coming out on that hardware.

I also went nuts and bought some console games. I hit that popular online auction site to get a gameboy adapter for the gamecube before I even owned a gamecube. I also decided to get a lot of games exclusive to the gamecube. Then, of course, I had to get the gamecube. It seemed natural. And, since there are a few titles you can only play on a playstation, I bought those titles and then the hardware. I bought as few used games as possible, and I hope they work. The only thing I didn’t buy online was the playstation, since I know what happens to $ony products; they break early and often. I bought retail so I could get a replacement warranty on the thing. I get 2 years full replacement for defective hardware. By then I hope the ps3 is cheap enough to consider, or that I will be tired of the whole thing and sell all the games. Again, almost all the games I bought were role-playing games, except for a few shooters and, of course, the evil grand theft auto.

The last console I bought was the sega genesis, back when I was… a lot younger. It was relatively new on the market at that time. So I think I’m entitled. Even if I am not, what is done is done.

Not a lot of time to play games, of course. I’ll have to work on that. It’s a matter of organization, I should think, and setting a proper schedule for myself. I probably have enough games to last me a good long while, years at the pace I’ve been playing lately. Plus I’m still considering signing up for World of Warcrack. It sounds like my kinda thing, really.

Right now we’re in limbo waiting for a reply on a funding option. If it’s yay, we’re set for a few years. If nay, we’ll have to find someone else. Giving up is not an option.

In other news, I’m pretty sure I have a new roommate. I did not invite him or her in, but mice are like that. I had a mouse two years ago. I didn’t mind having it running around until it found my almost full can of peanuts. By then it was too late, of course. I tried to catch it humanely, but then the mouse became mice and that was all over (I think I just heard my roommate now, skittering through the junk). I ended up having to kill four of them.

Tomorrow I will buy some Reese’s peanut butter cups. Mice really like the peanut butter in them, and I of course like it as well. I still have the killer traps.

I feel sorry for the mouse, but he is going down hard.

Halloween party this Saturday. I bought a wizard’s robe many years ago under the assumption that it would be my permanent costume. It’s airing out now. I starting growing my beard a few weeks ago and it’s filled in nicely, gray and all. I should look the part.

Update: Confirmed mouse sighting. I set a trap with Jalepenio Cheddar. We’ll see if he likes it as much as I do.

There was a time when I only used Windows when there was a program that wouldn’t run anywhere else. The blue screen of death was my constant companion. Windows 98 would choke frequently and choke hard when it did. I ran down Microsoft like all the other hard-core geeks did, and used linux whenever I could.

Then it got better. I used 2000 server for a long time and it rarely died. I finally switched to XP and I don’t think it has crashed once after service pack 2 came out. Sure, it still has memory leaks, but my machine will stay up for weeks at a time. I happen to be using XP64, and the only problem I have now is that youtube crashes firefox every now and then. However, since firefox put in the “restore session” feature, it doesn’t bother me much any more. My new laptop uses XP and I have no intention of changing that. I added cygwin to get all the linux-like features I want, and I keep the functionality of the laptop that linux cannot provide yet.

There was a time when I thought that all programmers should be taught using minimal tools so that they would be able to handle situations in which they didn’t have anything other than a text editor and a compiler. I still think that, but since using VSTO I have turned into a complete convert to decent IDEs. I have to admit, even if you only know very few features (like me) you can still get a lot of help from it.

There was a time when I would reliably say, “Real languages compile to binary,” and laugh at garbage-collected languages as inefficient and not useful in reality. The world disagreed with me, and due to my shortsidedness, I lacked the skills to get work. Now I program in C#, the newest of the non-binary garbage-collected languages, and will avoid any work that isn’t in either C# or Java, because those are the languages that get you noticed by HR people.

There was a time when I refused to run Outlook because it is a giant security leak. Now, I’m working on a project which is an add-in for Outlook.

There was a time when I thought databases were clunky and unnecessarily complicated. Now, I’m going to push that we add a simple database like SQLite to the project to get rid of the issue of using XML to store data.

I know my future, and it is everything I tried to avoid in the past. I am going to end up writing code associated with Office products that uses a database, and it will be for the rest of my programming career.

It’s inevitable.

I saw from some postings at Lileks’ blog that pays that the iPhone is out. I cannot tell you how thrilled that makes me.

It’s not that I reject all things Apple because I didn’t drink the kool-ade. I don’t. I merely consider it overpriced and overhyped hardware that does not enjoy the software support a PC clone does. Even though the new machines will boot XP, I still consider them costly for what you get from them. I got tired long ago of supporting hardware that lacks a software base. Amiga, anyone? I still own two, and they still, probably, work, though I haven’t booted either one in many years.

My real issue stems from a bizarre notion that a phone’s job is to be a phone. My cell phone does one thing; it provides a verbal interface between me and whoever I’m talking to over the ether. It does not take pictures, I cannot surf the web on it, and while I imagine I could text on it if I wanted to, I really cannot see the point. I have never seen a phone that has non-phone features that did any of them well. Plus, I don’t care for the fact that actually using those additional features costs more money. The way I see it, air time is air time and it doesn’t matter how you use it. The cell phone companies, on the other hand, have convinced people that those features are worth paying even more money for.

One day my phone will cease to work properly, and I will have to replace it. I wonder what dubious features I will have to put up with when that day comes. Maybe, if they have the camera perfected to the point that it’s as good as my digital camera (unlikely), I may actually find those additional features useful. But I doubt it.

And hey, you kids, get off my damn lawn.