Posted by Hello
2005-03-26
Tiramisu, created by me, based on the recipe found at CookingForEngineers.com I don't know if this makes me more of a man or less. But who cares when it tastes good?
Posted by Hello
Posted by Hello
2005-03-13
The GUI for Phoenix, the open source game I'm working on. Not too shabby. The code isn't that bad either. Once I get some more stuff done, I'll add it as a project at SourceForge.
Posted by Hello
Posted by Hello
I hate Sundays. It's the day before school and I have to scramble to finish assignments. This weekend I'm working on the history ISU (Independent Study Unit) and the Algebra Geometry ISU.
The History essay is on Imperialism in the Congo. I think I'm done, but the teacher will probably say otherwise. The problem with an essay is that you have leave some things out. Most of my sources are various pages on Wikipedia. When I filled out the essay outline and showed it to him, he said one internet source wasn't enough and that anyone can put up a website and he questioned the credibility of Wikipedia. I was pissed. Hundreds of thousands of people use Wikipedia so the information better be accurate and it's easy to go through "real" encyclopedia like http://www.britannica.com/ and fact check. The great thing is that anyone can edit the pages and add new information or remove inaccurate statements. It's a great system and I'm astounded that more people haven't used it and that teachers doubt it. If they don't think the information is correct, they can change it!
The Algebra Geometry ISU is on Complex Numbers and isn't that bad except for the fact that I'm doing it the day before it's due. Oh well.
It looks like I've signed up to update the documentation for the FLTK (Fast Light ToolKit). I guess it's time I start contributing to the open source community and I am using FLTK to design the UI (User Interface) for the game I'm programming. For the game, code-named Phoenix, I've finished programming the basic functions of two classes; Fleet and Ship. I've also written a debug program to test everything. The basic design of the UI is done, and I'll post a screenshot in the next few days. I think this project is going to turn out great. The UI is going to be similar to DopeWars in that there are no major graphical effects. If I can find a plug-in to play movies, I'll create some cutscenes for the game, but otherwise it will be bare-bones.
I made the Tomatoes with Cheese Stuffing thingy on Friday night. It didn't turn out so well. The stuffing wasn't cheesy enough and the tomato pulp overpowered the taste of the cheese. A pic will be posted in the next few days as well. I plan to make Chicken Pot Pie sometime this week. Uh-oh, this might turn into Cooking For Engineers :D
The History essay is on Imperialism in the Congo. I think I'm done, but the teacher will probably say otherwise. The problem with an essay is that you have leave some things out. Most of my sources are various pages on Wikipedia. When I filled out the essay outline and showed it to him, he said one internet source wasn't enough and that anyone can put up a website and he questioned the credibility of Wikipedia. I was pissed. Hundreds of thousands of people use Wikipedia so the information better be accurate and it's easy to go through "real" encyclopedia like http://www.britannica.com/ and fact check. The great thing is that anyone can edit the pages and add new information or remove inaccurate statements. It's a great system and I'm astounded that more people haven't used it and that teachers doubt it. If they don't think the information is correct, they can change it!
The Algebra Geometry ISU is on Complex Numbers and isn't that bad except for the fact that I'm doing it the day before it's due. Oh well.
It looks like I've signed up to update the documentation for the FLTK (Fast Light ToolKit). I guess it's time I start contributing to the open source community and I am using FLTK to design the UI (User Interface) for the game I'm programming. For the game, code-named Phoenix, I've finished programming the basic functions of two classes; Fleet and Ship. I've also written a debug program to test everything. The basic design of the UI is done, and I'll post a screenshot in the next few days. I think this project is going to turn out great. The UI is going to be similar to DopeWars in that there are no major graphical effects. If I can find a plug-in to play movies, I'll create some cutscenes for the game, but otherwise it will be bare-bones.
I made the Tomatoes with Cheese Stuffing thingy on Friday night. It didn't turn out so well. The stuffing wasn't cheesy enough and the tomato pulp overpowered the taste of the cheese. A pic will be posted in the next few days as well. I plan to make Chicken Pot Pie sometime this week. Uh-oh, this might turn into Cooking For Engineers :D
2005-03-08
I wasn't late this morning! For two days in a row! Even though I left at 8:25am and it takes roughly half an hour to get to school. I think it's karma. Probably not.
In Calculus, someone pointed out that the graph of ln |x| (ln -x,x<0>0) looked like a thong (red & blue curves). Pretty funny.
I got Firefox working finally! I had to download the nightly build to get it working, but it has a few cool features. Like it can clear everything everytime you exit Firefox. Pretty cool. Really useful for computers that are being used by everyone.
I spent my spare reading about Film Noir. It's a great genre that includes films such as The Maltese Falcon, Pickup On South Street, and Citizen Kane. I love the cynical stuff. It's so dark and forboding and that's what I enjoy about it.
I went to lunch with a few friends and we haven't gone out for lunch together for a few years. We had a falling out of sorts, it was very odd. I think it's because I'm too much of social democrat for them. MARCH 19th 1pm! NATHAN PHILIPS SQUARE! ANTI-WAR RALLY & MARCH! Sorry. Just the democratic socialism talking.
Anyway, back to work.
In Calculus, someone pointed out that the graph of ln |x| (ln -x,x<0>0) looked like a thong (red & blue curves). Pretty funny.
I got Firefox working finally! I had to download the nightly build to get it working, but it has a few cool features. Like it can clear everything everytime you exit Firefox. Pretty cool. Really useful for computers that are being used by everyone.
I spent my spare reading about Film Noir. It's a great genre that includes films such as The Maltese Falcon, Pickup On South Street, and Citizen Kane. I love the cynical stuff. It's so dark and forboding and that's what I enjoy about it.
I went to lunch with a few friends and we haven't gone out for lunch together for a few years. We had a falling out of sorts, it was very odd. I think it's because I'm too much of social democrat for them. MARCH 19th 1pm! NATHAN PHILIPS SQUARE! ANTI-WAR RALLY & MARCH! Sorry. Just the democratic socialism talking.
Anyway, back to work.
2005-03-07
Today was boring. I woke up at 6:50am, and I typed up a blog entry. Left for school a little, but was miraculously still on time. Probably the first time that's happened in a week. The computer science assignment is 90% and the history that I worked on over the weekend was peer edited. It's supposed to be 1200 to 1500 words long, which seems a little long, but I'm certain I can write that much bullshit. It's going to be in chronological order, listing the problems from each period of time in the history of the Congo.
Thankfully, the morning went by in a blur of boredom, but the afternoon was no better nor worse. English was, as always, slighly entertaining. Economics was full of repetition as the student teacher kept asking students to explain the concept of the Bank of Canada moving government money into chartered bank accounts. After having five students tell you, I think it's safe to kill the subject and move on. We spent more than 20 minutes doing that. When I came home, I started playing some OpenTransportTycoonDeluxe. It's a great open source game that uses the data files from Transport Tycoon Deluxe, an old DOS game, and recreates that game in Windows. It's pretty cool, and the great thing is they added all these settings so you can adjust just about everything in the game.
And that leads up to now, where I'm editing history, writing this blog entry, and editing my OKCupid profile. Firefox is acting fracked up again, and keeps crashing. As far as I know, no else has had this problem. ARGH.
But I've sorta planned out my March Break, the beginning of it at least. I'm going to see a 3d Studio Max and Combustion 4 Show-off presentation on the 17th, and I'll probably check out the anti-war stuff on the 19th.
Sleep time.
Thankfully, the morning went by in a blur of boredom, but the afternoon was no better nor worse. English was, as always, slighly entertaining. Economics was full of repetition as the student teacher kept asking students to explain the concept of the Bank of Canada moving government money into chartered bank accounts. After having five students tell you, I think it's safe to kill the subject and move on. We spent more than 20 minutes doing that. When I came home, I started playing some OpenTransportTycoonDeluxe. It's a great open source game that uses the data files from Transport Tycoon Deluxe, an old DOS game, and recreates that game in Windows. It's pretty cool, and the great thing is they added all these settings so you can adjust just about everything in the game.
And that leads up to now, where I'm editing history, writing this blog entry, and editing my OKCupid profile. Firefox is acting fracked up again, and keeps crashing. As far as I know, no else has had this problem. ARGH.
But I've sorta planned out my March Break, the beginning of it at least. I'm going to see a 3d Studio Max and Combustion 4 Show-off presentation on the 17th, and I'll probably check out the anti-war stuff on the 19th.
Sleep time.
It's 7:18am right now. I just checked my email and I had sent an email to someone and they replied at 11:58 last night! I mean, holy crap! I found a few good Winamp Internet Radio streams. Like these two comedy streams, Defcon Radio and Khaha.
The weekend went by very quickly. Even though I spent more than 12 hours on the computer typing up my history and computer science. Of course I also chatted, listened to internet radio, checked email, and generally killed a few half hours.
On Friday night, my sister went to the the My Chemical Romance concert while I stayed at home. I don't mind because I like the music, but I really don't think I could stand a concert like that. Wanted to go out on Friday, decided to stay home and killed hours playing Morrowind on the computer. It's a great game, big world, hell of a lot of quests to do, a little too much walking. I went to sleep at 1 or 2am, reading Norwegian Wood. Amazing novel, first fiction book that isn't cyberpunk or sci-fi I've read in a few weeks.
Saturday morning: Woke up. Argh. Have to do work. With that, I started typing my history essay. It's not perfect, but I lacked the essay outline, which the teacher had because I forgot to pick it up. The essay thesis is the Congo was destroyed by imperialism and the effects of imperialism still linger even after independence. A background on the Congo is given, the atrocities of Leopold II are not very detailed, but once independence time rolls around, a lot of detail is there. The Cold War, the US, the Soviets, the Belgians and neighbouring countries all played a role in the continuation of chaos in the Congo. Besides the history, I worked on the computer science assignment a bit. It was like sitting in a chair for hours and having radiation seep into my every pore...wait, that was how I spent my day.
Battlestar Galactica was watched, after I missed it last week. It's an amazing sci-fi series and I recommend it to everyone. Great acting and a great plot make this probably the best sci-fi series on TV right now.
Sunday was the same shit with a different number. Anyway, time to goto school.
The weekend went by very quickly. Even though I spent more than 12 hours on the computer typing up my history and computer science. Of course I also chatted, listened to internet radio, checked email, and generally killed a few half hours.
On Friday night, my sister went to the the My Chemical Romance concert while I stayed at home. I don't mind because I like the music, but I really don't think I could stand a concert like that. Wanted to go out on Friday, decided to stay home and killed hours playing Morrowind on the computer. It's a great game, big world, hell of a lot of quests to do, a little too much walking. I went to sleep at 1 or 2am, reading Norwegian Wood. Amazing novel, first fiction book that isn't cyberpunk or sci-fi I've read in a few weeks.
Saturday morning: Woke up. Argh. Have to do work. With that, I started typing my history essay. It's not perfect, but I lacked the essay outline, which the teacher had because I forgot to pick it up. The essay thesis is the Congo was destroyed by imperialism and the effects of imperialism still linger even after independence. A background on the Congo is given, the atrocities of Leopold II are not very detailed, but once independence time rolls around, a lot of detail is there. The Cold War, the US, the Soviets, the Belgians and neighbouring countries all played a role in the continuation of chaos in the Congo. Besides the history, I worked on the computer science assignment a bit. It was like sitting in a chair for hours and having radiation seep into my every pore...wait, that was how I spent my day.
Battlestar Galactica was watched, after I missed it last week. It's an amazing sci-fi series and I recommend it to everyone. Great acting and a great plot make this probably the best sci-fi series on TV right now.
Sunday was the same shit with a different number. Anyway, time to goto school.
2005-03-06
Apparently, the BSA (Business Software Alliance) has announced that "Small and medium firms in the creative industries, the hi-tech sector and professional services were the worst offenders [pirates]." According to that article, penalties ranged from roughly $13 000 to $400 000(USD). Holy shit! I think the problem is the high cost of software licenses.
Let's look at Microsoft for example. The cost of buying individual software packages is very high to say the least. Office 2003 Professional Edition sells for $499, Office 2003 Standard Edition is priced at $399, and the lowest priced one is the Student & Teacher Edition priced at $149. What improvement does Office 2003 offer over, let's say, Office 2000? Shit, I'm still using Office 2000. For 300 PCs at an educational institute, it costs roughly $7 200(USD) to have Office 2003 Professional. How about the cost of Adobe Photoshop? That comes in at around $649 (USD). Pretty pricey for a photo editing program.
And so no one can say I just complain about problems and don't offer a solution, here's a list of open source alternatives to a few popular programs.
Let's look at Microsoft for example. The cost of buying individual software packages is very high to say the least. Office 2003 Professional Edition sells for $499, Office 2003 Standard Edition is priced at $399, and the lowest priced one is the Student & Teacher Edition priced at $149. What improvement does Office 2003 offer over, let's say, Office 2000? Shit, I'm still using Office 2000. For 300 PCs at an educational institute, it costs roughly $7 200(USD) to have Office 2003 Professional. How about the cost of Adobe Photoshop? That comes in at around $649 (USD). Pretty pricey for a photo editing program.
And so no one can say I just complain about problems and don't offer a solution, here's a list of open source alternatives to a few popular programs.
| What You Have Now | Open Source Alternative |
|---|---|
Microsoft Office 2003 Professional Edition | Sun Microsystems Open Office |
| Microsoft Instant Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger | GAIM, aMSN, Skype |
Adobe Photoshop CS | The GIMP |
Adobe Pagemaker, Adobe Illustrator CS | Scribus (Linux Only), Open Office |
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