Archive for March, 2004
Play Sabacc Online!
This is just cool. You can play everyone’s favorite Star Wars card game online. Check it out — One day I’ll be playing this in real life and getting the Idiot’s Array. 
Good Weekend!
I want to point out this great picture of Godzilla my brother Chris took in Tokyo last week (Chris is switching to a Blosxom blog at the moment, forgive the dust). Also drool-bringing is this picture of Aso Bit City, an electronics store that apparently makes Fry’s seem small. I’ll have to visit Nippon sometime just to go to these sorts of places. 
In other news, I’ve gotten those pictures I promised
December of the
I’ve spent most of the weekend doing homework of various sorts. Lots of discreet structures and digital logic. I also have done most of the hard work in assembling a very professional proposal for my Speaking and Writing for Engineers class. I’ll put the final PDF file up for your browsing pleasure once it’s complete - you can see 30 pages of why OpenOffice.org is a vastly superior document design environment compared to the dated and overly expensive Microsoft Word.
Also, yesterday James, Theresa and I went to WYSIWYG gaming for 5 hours or so. Played UT2004 and Savage. It’s a l33t place. Stephen’s somewhat right that it’s worth patronizing.
Finally, I must weigh in that Gimp 2.0.0 is bad-ass.
No commentsWOO! THE X-43 WORKED!
Let’s hear it for the first successful Hyper X flight! MACH 7 WITH AN AIR-BREATHING ENGINE, BABY!
No commentsWYSIWYG
I went to Gainesville’s LAN center, WYSIWYG Gaming (for you who aren’t computer people, that acronym is from the desktop publishing industry meaning “What you see is what you get”). I spent $10 and played from 12 until 5, about 3 hours of Unreal Tournament 2004 with people there at the gaming center and some people online, and then 2 hours of playing Savage with 5 other people sitting next to me. They have 40 (!) computers set up, all of them top-of-the-line, and 2 huge wide-screen TVs with X-Boxes set-up.
The chairs are comfy, the lighting is low and entirely monitors and black-lights, the monitors big (21″), the games fun! And they serve all your favorite caffeine, including Bawls! I taught one of the guys there how to make a Bubbling Blue Bawls this afternoon (two penguin mints + one full bawls!).
James, Theresa and I are going to have to go patronize that place! Woo!
2 commentsSee the movie that’s controversial, sacrilegious, and blasphemous. But if that’s not playing, see The Life of Brian.
Acwording to thwe BBC, thwe Wife of Bwian is bweing weweleased in thweaters nexth month! In honwor of thwis wonderwous ocwasion, I qwote thwe bwilliant Gwaffiti scwene for youw! Enjwoy!
CENTURION: What’s this, then? ‘Romanes Eunt Domus’? ‘People called Romanes they go the house’? BRIAN: It– it says, ‘Romans, go home’. CENTURION: No, it doesn’t. What’s Latin for ‘Roman’? Come on! BRIAN: Aah! CENTURION: Come on! BRIAN: ‘R– Romanus’? CENTURION: Goes like…? BRIAN: ‘Annus’? CENTURION: Vocative plural of ‘annus’ is…? BRIAN: Eh. ‘Anni’? CENTURION: ‘Romani’. ‘Eunt’? What is ‘eunt’? BRIAN: ‘Go’. Let– CENTURION: Conjugate the verb ‘to go’. BRIAN: Uh. ‘Ire’. Uh, ‘eo’. ‘Is’. ‘It’. ‘Imus’. ‘Itis’. ‘Eunt’. CENTURION: So ‘eunt’ is…? BRIAN: Ah, huh, third person plural, uh, present indicative. Uh, ‘they go’. CENTURION: But ‘Romans, go home’ is an order, so you must use the…? BRIAN: The… imperative! CENTURION: Which is…? BRIAN: Umm! Oh. Oh. Um, ‘i’. ‘I’! CENTURION: How many Romans? BRIAN: Ah! ‘I’– Plural. Plural. ‘Ite’. ‘Ite’. CENTURION: ‘Ite’. BRIAN: Ah. Eh. CENTURION: ‘Domus’? BRIAN: Eh. CENTURION: Nominative? BRIAN: Oh. CENTURION: ‘Go home’? This is motion towards. Isn’t it, boy? BRIAN: Ah. Ah, dative, sir! Ahh! No, not dative! Not the dative, sir! No! Ah! Oh, the… accusative! Accusative! Ah! ‘Domum’, sir! ‘Ad domum’! Ah! Oooh! Ah! CENTURION: Except that ‘domus’ takes the…? BRIAN: The locative, sir! CENTURION: Which is…?! BRIAN: ‘Domum’. CENTURION: ‘Domum’. BRIAN: Aaah! Ah. CENTURION: ‘Um’. Understand? BRIAN: Yes, sir. CENTURION: Now, write it out a hundred times. BRIAN: Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Hail Caesar, sir. CENTURION: Hail Caesar. If it’s not done by sunrise, I’ll cut your balls off.
I MUST SEE THIS AS IT WAS MEANT TO BE SEEN!
Operations on n-ARY relations
This portion of my discreet structures textbook is discussing how to get a particular row out of a database. WHY MUST THEY MAKE THIS SOUND SO COMPLICATED?
Let R be a relation of degree m and S be a relation of degree n. The join J_p(R,S), where p <= m and p <= n, is a relation of degree m+n-p that consists of all (m+n-p)-tuples (a_1, a_2,…,a_(m-p), c_1, c_2,…c_p, b_1, b_2,… b_(n-p)), where the m-tuple (a_1, a_2,…,a_(m-p), c_1, c_2,…c_p) belongs to R and the n-tuple (c_1, c_2,…c_p, b_1, b_2,… b_(n-p)) belongs to S.
What the hell did that just say!? I’ve been performing complicated database operations and even writing complicated database programs for more than 5 years and I don’t understand that bloody important definition.
At least I know how to do the problems, if not how to read the chapter… arrrrggh….
No commentsWoo! Panda AntiVirus is my FRIEND!
I got 59 messages marked as spam in the last 15 minutes. ALL of them contain some nice viruses. Here’s the BEST one though:
From: info@rottentomatoes.com
To: pug@ibu02.com
Subject: Re: Order
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 09:29:30 -0500Thank you for your request, your details are attached!
+++ Attachment: No Virus found
+++ Panda AntiVirus - www.pandasoftware.com——=_NextPart_000_001B_01C0CA80.6B015D10
Content-Type: audio/x-wav; name=”message.scr”
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
What follows is a happy little virus of unknown type (because I’m lazy) in an executable file called message.scr.
Hehehe… Panda AntiVirus. Cute, huh? I’ll trust the attachment because the virus tells me it has no virus! Woo!
No commentsAnnouncing: IMFavorites - IMMS Magical Favorites Collector
a useful tool for filling CDs/DVDs/Mp3 players with what IMMS already knows you like.
IMFavorites queries the Intelligent Multimedia Management System database to figure out your favorite songs, then symlinks them to a place of your choice.
What the?
If you’ve used IMMS for more than a few days, it’s already gotten a decent idea of what kind of music you like and what kind of music you do not like. That information is stored within its database, dripping with desire to be useful. This program simply uses that information to find your favorite songs (as IMMS knows them), and then do the hard work of compiling a CD, DVD, Mp3 player full of your favorites for you.
- IMMS Website: http://www.luminal.org/wiki/index.php/IMMS
- IMFavorites Website: http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~jcjones/src/
- Pending Freshmeat Entry: http://freshmeat.net/projects/imfavorites/
Anyway, that’s what I was doing last night when I should have been doing more homework.
So this project joins my GKrellM Countdown Plugin, my University of Florida customized replacement perl script for the GKrellWeather plugin for GKrellM, and P-Guide, a WYSIWYG UI generator for PUI as being >95% PugCode. Of course, HID-commander will be an important one once I get it working. As will Gpremacy… Some day…
My top 11 songs over the past 3 weeks
In honor of IMFavorites, a utility for IMMS I wrote last night, I give you this list of my top 11 songs over the past 3 weeks, in no semi-alphabetic order (because the idea of a top 11 list with no order amuses me), for your incredible enjoyment:
- ./Albums/Best of the Gypsy Kings/06 - Volare.mp3
- ./Albums/Stewart-and-Lunn-Dublin Lady/02-Where Are You.mp3
- ./Albums/Stewart-and-Lunn-Dublin Lady/01-Take Her in Your Arms.mp3
- ./Albums/Train-Drops of Jupiter/03 Drops Of Jupiter.mp3
- ./Albums/The Return of the King/howard_shore-into_the_west_performed_by_annie_lennox.mp3
- ./Comedy/the_chenille_sisters-why_do_fools_fall_in_love.mp3
- ./Artists/Frank Sinatra/gold/sinatra_frank-niceneasy.mp3
- ./Artists/Niamh Parsons/Loosely Connected/07 - We Two People.mp3
- ./Artists/Niamh Parsons/Loosely Connected/09 - Play A Merry Jig.mp3
- ./Artists/Niamh Parsons/Loosely Connected/05 - Man Of Arran.mp3
- ./Artists/Niamh Parsons/Hearts Desire/06 - A Kiss in the Morning Early.mp3
I’ll give a full announcement of IMFavorites later, and tell you all about it.