Scott's personal rant space

social networking based news

2006-10-12T04:21:00Z

So, I was thinking, what if someone used social networking to rate user generated news reports. Like slashdot, but anyone could submit news. So kinda like digg. But the users have groups that they can form. Like right wing people would get news they trust. I don't know. Probably fall on its face. Just an idea.

Hero on TV

2006-09-21T03:00:12Z

So I just watched Hero on TV. I remember that when I saw it in theaters it had subtitles. This version was dubed. I much prefered the subtitles.

Reality TV?

2006-07-17T02:21:04Z

Today I noticed something. Lately Ive been watching the news a lot more. More importantly, it not just for information, which is why I used to watch it. Today I found myself wondering what that cool show I had been watching was so I could watch it again, as it had gone to comercials. I then suddenly realised I was thinking about Fox News. It totally suprised me.

And, by the way, I also watch CNN, MSNBC, and read the BBC.

Weird huh?

downfall

2006-07-16T17:51:31Z

Last night I found a program called shrinkingman. Its sorta like downfall, but not enough to use. But, I noticed that it was using glade. I also noticed that it was also programmed in python. So, I'm stealing most of its gui code. Its GPLed, so its all legal. It also means that downfall shold be done relatively soon. Makes me happy.

On a slightly related note, I think there is a monster in my computer. It keeps making really funny noises.

Edgy Eft

2006-07-15T05:36:46Z

So tonight I installed Ubuntu Edgy Eft on my home desktop. I had previously installed edgy on a couple vmware instances to check that I could do the basic things(get a desktop, gaim, epiphany, etc).

So far no major bugs. Muine is crashing. This is not all that unexpected, as muine is ussually broken in early Ubuntu release. Hopefully I can get that fixed. It seems to a dbus issue. I have already bugged it.

Also, I'm suffering from a slight kernel bug. I am currently running on a dapper kernel as the edgy kernels that I have installed are broken in various ways. The first can't boot because the initrd is never generated. The second boots but it doesn't have an associated restricted modules. This is a problem, because my wireless card requires it. So no internet with that kernel. It would seem that Ubuntu is working on the problem (I'm subscribed to the edgy-changes list).

The last bug that Ive found, so far, is a very wierd emacs bug. When I originally booted into my new edgy system, emacs worked perfectly. But, a few reboots later (for the kernel bug), Emacs is virtually unusable. See the bug for screen shots. Emacs works in the terminal with the -nw switch. I suspect its some strange xft bug, but I don't really know how to start debugging it yet. I'll look into it in a couple days.

Also I just noticed that gajim is uninstallable. Time to bug it.

Over all I like edgy. Not much difference between it and dapper, but I'm sure that will change soon. Plus by installing and testing it I can make sure everything I use works and make it a better OS overall. Its pretty nice.

Copyrights

2006-07-09T03:32:48Z

#Copyright

I just saw a great [article](http://lwn.net/Articles/187667/) about
iTMS in Norway. The choice quote is, "Cultural content has importance
to society above and beyond its ability to generate a profit."

I wish everyone would realize that. But then again, some of the
currently produced music is crap(You know who I'm talking about). But
in general yeah.scotth@wildfire:~/Documents/wiki/blog$ cat copyrights.mdwn && echo ""
#Copyright

I just saw a great [article](http://lwn.net/Articles/187667/) about
iTMS in Norway. The choice quote is, "Cultural content has importance
to society above and beyond its ability to generate a profit."

I wish everyone would realize that. But then again, some of the
currently produced music is crap(You know who I'm talking about). But
in general yeah.

Turk

2006-07-09T03:32:34Z

#Hi

Ive descided to update this blog with a few things since
[turk](http://www.lcsee.wvu.edu/~gregoryt/) says he reads it. So here
it goes.

I'm here working at the esb on my mechanisms homework and I'm kinda
bored. I was reading through [planet
ubuntu](http://planet.ubuntu.com/) and found [this blog
entry](http://linux.blogweb.de/archives/223-Amnesty-International-and-Switzerland.html).
Talk about marketing. You should check out the rest of the pictures
[here](http://www.amnesty.ch/d/emind/2006/nichthieraberjetzt/01.html).
The U.S. even made a few of those picture. I'm saddened by that. I'm
saddened even more by the fact that there is no real outcry about it.
I guess the general feeling is that the, "terrorists deserve it," but
they are humans too.

On a kinder, gentler note, this weekend I bought an ice tea maker in
hopes that Ill stop buying Arizona Green Tea and soft drinks. Both
contain lots of sugar and I don't really want to be drinking them
anymore. So I bought some white tea bags and honey. So far I've made
one pitcher and its pretty good. It was pretty much unsweetened
because I couldn't get he honey to disolve into the iced tea. So I'm
going to experiment with it and see if I can get some good tea out of
this. I'm even gonna try some peppermint, though thats a lot of sugar
as well. Maybe some pepermint oil?

Also I'm going to be involved in Challenge X again this semester.
I may even get some gain out of it other than satisfaction. More
later, I'm waiting to hear from Nigel about it. Also I didn't get
summer of code because I didn't really turn in any good
entries... because I was working on Challenge X... hmmm conspiracy?

I think I'm going to spend some time updating the rest of my site in
the next day or two. Look out for updates.

Google SOC

2006-07-09T03:29:29Z

So today I signed up for google summer of code. I have most of my
proposals sitting in my private wiki on wildfire and I think I'm going
to try to get Lindsey to proof read them at some point tonight.
Should be fun. I hope I get one. That will be mad sweet.

On a more personal note, I got a new place this weekend. I go to sign
the lease on tuesday. Should be very nice.

Btw, I'm going to start doing more on this wiki/personal home page. I
just need to get in the habit of updating things. Ikiwiki is pretty
sweet, but without web edits enabled its kinda a bore. Ill start
using it eventuall though.

New Location

2006-07-09T03:28:59Z

So, I've decided that I want to move my wiki into lcsee svn space. So
I've done it. I think. I don't know if its going to work yet cause I
can't turn on svn integration. Its kinda cool though because I can
edit my wiki anywhere with subversion. So its a decent trade off.

Motivation

2006-01-12T12:08:15Z

"I'm not doing this because I want to, I'm doing it because I have to."

That statement has become surprisingly motivational to me lately.

Time Management

2006-01-05T02:56:09Z

As many of you may or may not know, I'm horrible at time management. I procrastinate and do things that aren't as important as other stuff. All my life Ive had this problem and Ive tried all sorts of stuff to try to learn time management.

Last year at about this time I came up with a new way of doing time management via a modified ToDo list. Pretty much what other people consider to be tasks on a todo list, I call goals. I then break each goal into a number of tasks. Each task should take an hour or less to do and be pretty straight forward. I then would schedule the tasks and complete them as they came up. Each day I would be presented with a finite list of tasks to do that would get me to my goals.

This worked for a while, but because it was done via paper on a planner, it broke down after some initial success. The problem was two-fold. The first reason was cause it took a lot of effort to schedule the tasks. The second reason is because of having to reschedule tasks and having difficulty scheduling in the first place, the planner became a mess. Also as an aside, I had no formalized process to break a goal up into a task and that got in the way too.

To fix these issues I'm developing a gnome app to do all of this for me. Initially it looked pretty simple and straight forward. Unfortunately it has ballooned because of requirements I have placed on it. It has become pretty clear to me that I'm not going to have this app done by the time I will need it(about two weeks into class). So, I'm significantly cutting back on the features I want for my initial release. I hope to have enough of it done to make it usable by the end of this week and then start working on the rest of the features. The big one that was making it real complex was the ability to change out almost all parts. I wanted this to be there to allow me to access my database and scheduler over xmpp. I wanted to do this, first, to have access to the same database from anywhere. Second I want to get a Nokia 770 and since the scheduler is going to be very processor intensive for certain tasks, a scheduler that lives elsewhere becomes a plus.

As I said, it got complex. But I think I want to have that eventually, maybe for a 2.0 release. But first I have to get the 0.1 release out the door. So far I'm on 0.1.6 and I have a lot of database and scheduler code. Tonight I think I'm going to try to get a lot more GUI code written. We shall see how this goes.

Sorry for the long entry. Also if anyone wants to help me on this your welcome. Also an interesting thing is the reschedule algorithm. That one is going to be difficult and Id love to talk with anyone who is knowledgeable.

Peace.

funniest site ever

2006-01-04T04:15:46Z

Chuck Norris

Merry Chistmas

2005-12-25T22:54:49Z

Just wanted to say Merry Christmas to everyone.

Also I got a new Kids in the Way album. Its currently playing in muine, and look you can see that I'm listening to it right now. Brought to you by the magic of dbus, 10 lines of python, and muine. Thanks.

Laptop broken again

2005-12-20T05:40:02Z

So my lappy is broken again(it has been for a while, this is the first time I feel like posting anything about it). I have found someone who is willing to fix it for me. I hope I can get it fixed. I think my parents are going to pay for part of it. That should be good.

writting

2005-12-11T02:11:31Z

Ive missed my pen.(I feel so emo, I need to go wash)

This just in

2005-12-07T02:58:30Z

Winter continues tomorrow, more on News at 11.

End of an age

2005-08-06T21:42:18Z

For those of you who do not know, when I first got my ibook from apple, MacOSX lasted on it for all of 2 weeks. After that I could not stand going without Debian much longer, and my harddrive could not support dual booting because it was too small. Fast forward a year and a half and I had to replace my harddrive. I took the liberty of increasing its size as I replaced it. Now that I have a significantly bigger harddrive, Ive installed MacOSX again, after many long trials of course.

The reason I'm installing MacOSX is quite simple. Wireless. Currently Ubuntu does not support wireless like I should(though no fault of its own), so I must use MacOSX to get on the University wireless. I'm not there yet as I need to go buy a Airport Extreme card, but its only $70 and I should have it by the next pay check.

All in all, MacOSX was far harder to install that Ubuntu is. Maybe its because I'm used to installing Ubuntu, but there was far less questions on the Ubuntu install and when Ubuntu booted, I had a fully working distribution with most of the software I needed. Also I can work far faster on Ubuntu. I hope I can get this MacOSX ext3fs driver working, then Ill be a happy person. I know I won't be working with MacOSX much at all anyway, but it will be nice to have all my files on my Ubuntu partition and not have to duplicate anything. Anyway, I'm out. Peace.

Music Players

2005-06-21T14:44:16Z

So the past fwe days Ive been looking for a new cool media player for Gnome. Rhythmbox wasn't quite doing it for me. It didn't let me manage my music nor did it help in play list creation, so it had to be replaced.

In my search I found two canidates. Muine and Quod Libet. Muine is a album based player written in C#. It has a few nice plugins, and its got a very easy to use interface. Creating a play list is a joy and I can find my music easily. It also has an interface to Audioscrobbler, so I can get music recomendations and everything. Additionally, there is a cool automatic play list generator. It uses data from what songs youve played in the past and audioscrobbler to generate playlists on demand. You tell it how many songs or how much time and it gives you a play list. Additionally you can tweak what values it puts into it generation. Like more by the same artist or same genre or how much it uses audioscrobbler. Its muy cool. The only other thing that I wanted was a good interface to my iriver. Well I'm willing to write one, but Muine is written in C#, which I don't know. So on to the next canidate.

Quod Libet looked much like Muine, but it was written in python and already had an interface to my iriver. It looked like smooth sailing, atleast till I actually tried it. Its interface is half way between the Rhythmbox/iTunes interface and that of Muine. Its definately a step in the right direction, and if I had found it first it would be my new player, but I found Muine first. Also the iriver interface was very bad. All it allowed was the upload of a single song at a time. I can do this with gnome-ifp. So that is no good. Also Quod Libet doesn't have a good automatic play list generator. So I tossed it.

Back to Muine. Its currently playing and I'm happy with it. I'm using its automatic play list generation and interface to audioscrobbler. Ive descided those were worth more to me than a crappy inteface to my irivier.

On that subject, I'm going to ask the Muine mailing list for some help in that area. They seem to be very responsive to user requests and I'm going to try to get them to make an interface. That, or I'm going to learn C# myself and do it. Either way I want something nice and simple. I want to be able to either upload the current play list or use the automatic playlist generator to upload playlists that Ive freshly generated. Basically I want to be able to manage my iriver just as another audio output device to my music player. I want to be able to generate play lists and either play them on my computer or my iriver and have no difference on how I make that play list. I think this should be easy to do. So that makes me happy.

Anyway, as for life, life is good.

I'm So FULLLL

2005-05-08T23:31:18Z

Ugh, Fox’s Pizza steak and cheese subs are soo good, but there is so much and they are not really the kind of thing you can save and reheat later on. So as a result, my stomach hurts.

Cowards

2005-05-06T17:34:09Z

In the past day or two some cowards have taken to posting anonymously on my lj. Well I don’t read them. I just delete them, because if they aren’t man enough to leave your name then your opinion is not valid. Additionally, if you keep it up then I will turn it into the abuse department of lj as a harassment complaint. Then your ip address will be logged and they will give it to me. At which time I will turn you into the University for harassment. Please get a life.

Three Party Politics

2005-05-06T11:37:30Z

I suddenly wish the U.S. was more like Great Britain. No, not for the queen or the fish and chips, but for their politics. Yesterday the brits went to the polls and voted. Well, its pretty clear that GB is now a three party country. I just wish there was similarly more choice in the United States. I really don’t like either the Republicans nor the Democrats. Oh well.

Oh, btw, the anonymous cowards who Bethany keeps getting to post to my lj, please stop, I don’t care what you think.

Another day, Another lj post

2005-05-06T00:23:54Z

So, I just got off the phone with Bethany and apparently she is a little pissed at me for what has transpired the past could of days. She seems to think me saying stuff on lj was bad. In a normal world where my friend isn’t ignoring me and getting pissed off at me cause other people are pissing here off, I wouldn’t have to make an lj post about my feelings. I would just be able to call her up and say what I feel. Additionally Bethany always has to be right so she doesn’t listen to me anyway. Now to think of it, the only time Ive seen girls act the way she is acting, are jealous girlfriends. That of course makes no sense, but I really don’t care at this point.

Of course all this hubbub about my last lj post has nothing to do with its actual content. If Bethany really knew me she would realize that much of that post had been brewing for a month and a half, but no, she doesn’t know me.

Also the sad part is that now Lauren is pissed at me for partially unspecified reasons. Apparently her and Bethany spoke last night and, “Came to some conclusions,” and when queried if they were about me, she said, “No shit shirlock.” Or something to that effect. Well she also asked me about where I slept last night(in my bed) or if I was doing any “non-christian” things last night(no). Well I used my deductive reasoning and reasoned that Bethany had told her something last night. So I call up Bethany and of course she doesn’t answer so I proceed to leave a nasty message about how she needs not be telling lies about me or telling things I told to her in confidence. About half an hour later she calls me back all pissed about the message saying that I was completely wrong in my conclusions. I’m sorry, but does anyone really think I jumped to the wrong conclusion?

In anycase, the phone conversation ended with her basically saying the friendship was over. That really hurts cause I really liked having Bethany as a friend and she was really fun to hang out with when she wasn’t being a “Giant (DELETED DUE TO THREAT OF TURNING ME INTO THE SCHOOL FOR SEXUAL HARASMENT EVEN THOUGH I WAS QUOTING ANOTHER GIRL)”(Thanks Hana). But as I said in my previous post, if you don’t want to be my friend I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. If she ever wises up and comes to her senses then she knows my number.

Oh, back to Lauren. I hope she wises up to. If she can’t bring her problems with me to me and ask me about it before she gets pissed off(or while she is pissed off) then apparently there are some serious trust issues there. I have never lied to Lauren and Ive always tried to be straight with her. I would think that would account for something.

Either way, thanks to swos and Hana for letting me let off some steam and cheering me up. Also thanks to the few that know who you are for accepting me the way I am and hoping that Ill be a better person. I forget who said that that was what love was, but now I see their point.

Oh, and Bethany, if your reading this. I tried saying this stuff to you on the phone, but you hung up on me. Chances are you are also ignoring me now, but I don’t really want to put the effort into figuring that out so I’m just going to jump to that conclusion. Is that a bad conclusion as well?

Its been a while

2005-05-04T01:15:03Z

Its definitely been a while since my last post, and much has happened. Most of the happenings have been in the past few days and really suck. But lets start with some less sucky things.

Some of you may know that I use Epiphany as my web browser of choice. Well, when I setup my work machine I started using Firefox because Epiphany had really annoyed me in many respects. Well the final straw was finally laid upon the proverbial back. Epiphany lost all my book marks. As such I copied over my .mozilla directory off of momo and I am now using Firefox full time. I found a way to use bookmarks in Firefox that is at least usable, if not as good as it was in Epiphany.

So, now on to the fun stuff. Ive been going over what I’m going to put here over and over and over again in my head. I don’t know why I have, but I guess its rather important to me. Basically it all amounts to the fact that I’m too dependent on certain people for the wrong reasons. I’m also far too involved with too many people. My boundaries are way out of wack and I’m realizing that what I consider to be ok with friends wouldn’t even be ok with a girlfriend. Its really messed up the way I feel about certain people and why. When I have to say “fuck this person” in my head to be able to walk away from them when they are being a bitch without my heart feeling like its breaking, I think the relationship is wrong. I don’t think its wrong because of the other person(s), but it is because of the way I feel and the way my emotions are setup. So I’m going to break that habit because I can’t live anymore like this. I can’t have my mind consumed worrying about someone or fighting to make them feel better. Its just not worth it and I can’t take it anymore.

Thats another thing. When I’m trying to make someone feel better and they start taking it out on me and snapping at me, I’m just going to say, “Ok {name}.” That will be the end of it. I have no problem being there for people who appreciate me and who won’t try to bitch at me for it, but if you want to sit in your gutter, from now on I’m going to let you.

I’ve always been too attached to girls and not wanted to let them go. That ends here and now. As for friends, they will remain friends as long as they meet me half way. No more getting the short end of the stick. Also no one is a prospective girlfriend and I’m not going to be looking for a very long time. I’m tired of the way I have been and the way I let other people affect me.
There are about 2 people in this world who know me, the real me. And unless you know what I’m talking about when I say the real me, then you don’t know the real me. I’m all smoke and mirrors to protect myself. I don’t need to protect myself like that anymore. If you want to know me, then get to know me, but if you just want to talk about yourself, then I don’t care.

Remember back in January or February when I blew up at the cult of Jawz? Well now I’m blowing up at everyone. To my friends, I’m sorry that this might hurt you, but I need to do this for my own sanity.

Btw, I think I said something about, “Hacker, Hack Thy Self,” a few months ago. I just want to go on record as saying that is complete bull shit. I’m way to complex for me to ever understand even small parts, much less change the whole me. So what do I have left? God.

Today

2005-04-16T21:43:53Z

This week has been very interesting and very busy, but now its kinda calmed down. All week Ive been working on tests and homework and projects. Its been so bad that I didn’t even sleep Thursday night and I ended up sleeping way in this morning. But I think I got through it and Dr. Huebsch extended the deadline for our CFD project, so that makes things a little easier. I still need to get to work on a few more projects this weekend and into this week.

Today I went to the Blue and Gold game and I’m actually optimistic about our team this year. I don’t have a prediction of how well we will do, but I’m hopeful. I got a look at all of our new quarter backs(except Adam Bednarik, cause he was sidelined due to being injured I think). I like Pat White(I think thats his name, number 5). He seems to be a good passing quarter back with some legs. I think he scored once running and like 2 or 3 times passing. I think every pass I saw coming from him, the receiver had a chance at the ball. I few of the passes were exceptional. He was doing stuff like throwing the ball low and away so only the WR had a chance at the ball. If he is our QB next year I think we will do alright. Of course, if Bednarik is better and he gets the starting job, then I have no problem with that cause Ive heard good things about him. For some reason though I think we will see White in there.

Also our defence and running game was looking good. Like I said, I’m optimistic about it. We shall see how things go. Anyway, got more stuff to do. I’m out. Peace.

Oh yeah, one last thing. This is cute.
http://primates.ximian.com/~federico/news-2005-04.html#15

I wanna be like that one day with my wife.