Farsong Blog-o-Matic

Yesterday was the last day for prereg for FC, so I jumped on it. Now I need to properly secure lodgings/transportation. It sounds like I can get down there, and it's still early enough in the semester quarter that going won't fuck up classes. So I'm going to try to bust my butt to get down there by the end of January. I'll get to see people, too, which is good.

And really? I need to get away, to do a vacation, to have a change of scenery. Josh and I both agree that it's something I need, since I'm burnt out.


I'm spending the new year's eve watching sci-fi shows because I like them. I'd prefer a laid-back evening with friends and snacks and drinks, but it seems like everyone's going down to First Night, and I'm not in the mood for crowds/live music/stuff tonight. Drawing might be a good thing, too.


I also got 10.6 in the mail. I think I'm a bit of a typography/graphic design geek, since the first and second things I noticed after booting into it the first time were that the subpixel smoothing was smoother and the icons/UI elements were crisper than before (ie, the keyboard selection menu applet), respectively. I believe this is part of the resolution independence in the system. This feature is not yet active, but it's finally part of the design*, though it's not accessible for the average user. At least not yet.

The 10.6 transition was very easy, fast, and even freed up 25gb on my HDD. The core of the OS is 64-bit (finally) on my Core2 arch. I'm not going to say that it's "faster" than before, but it should be better. There were some issues with nonworking 32-bit apps when I first booted into the system, but those issues were fixed easily with app updates (thank goodness for sparkle!) since Devs have had 10.6 in their hands for a while. On the whole, there's not a lot on the top layer of the OS that's new or different, and it all works as it should — besides, this upgrade was all about the stuff under the hood.

Quicktime X is one such thing, replacing the creaky old QuickTime7, it was rewritten from the ground up (with a new UI to match — perhaps the most “new” and “different” part of 10.6). Other new things are the elimination of PPC binaries from the system (at least first party apps), which is one thing that freed up space.


By contrast, I installed Win XP on a creaky, noisy old P4 laptop (so old it has 256mb RAM and an 802.11b Prism2 chipset). The OS preforms well, considering it's limited to an old extra 5gb HDD, but it suffers from the usual Windows issues, as well as odd issues when resuming from sleep (ie, it sometimes it won't resume). I was impressed that WIndows found all the drivers it needed right. Its sole duty is to be a Windows terminal for the father, who has three websites he needs to access to do his job as a realtor, and which work in IE for Windows only.

Windows XP SP3 with IE8 is decent (the IE6 it came with is a positively primitive browser, the likes of which I haven't used in years), but for anything with at least 3/4 of a gig of ram (768mb), a 2ghz Celeron/P4 (or 1.3ghz Pentium M — aka “Centrino” or better), I'd actually recommend Windows 7. It's fast enough, as well as modern. It works decently and without headaches, finding all the drivers it needs easily when connected to a network, and actually running very well as a PnP system. You'll get better gaming performance on an older machine with XP, but if you're still using an old computer with a P4 chip for gaming, you're probably not playing Crysis. Here it is: I'm recommending that Windows users use Windows 7. If you bought a new computer in the last 8 or 9 years**, you can most likely run Win 7 on it, and you'd probably have a good experience.


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* Resolution Independence was one of the features initially slated for OSX 10.4 “Tiger,” but it was pushed back, probably because of other, more pressing things. Still, it's no “WinFS” — it's been present in various stages since 10.4, but it's never been very user-accessible or fully functional.

But this idea of scalable UI is especially nice in this day and age with 2500x1600 resolution displays — the sort that are above and beyond 1080 HD resolutions with small pixel pitches — and for people who may have more difficulty reading screens.

** If it's a PII you have, you're probably better off sticking with XP or moving over to Linux — probably XFCE, but it can handle Gnome, because 7 on a PII is not going to be fun.

Fake Steve on ATT:

“And when I say that “we” have a hit on our hands, I’m really giving you way too much credit, because let’s be honest, the success of iPhone has nothing to do with you. In fact, iPhone is a smash hit in spite of your network, not because of it. That’s how good we are here at Apple — we’re so good that even you and your team of Bell System frigtards can’t stop us. You know what it’s like being your business partner? It’s like trying to swim the English Channel with a boat anchor tied to my legs. And yes, in case you’re not following me, in that analogy, you, my friend, are the fucking boat anchor.”

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the only thing that's keeping me from snapping up an iPhone is ATT (well, that and the price while I'm sans employment, obviously). What matters is that I have no intention of leaving T-mobile any time soon. They've had the best service (in spite of my SMS snafu the other month), and I'd snap up an iPhone if it worked on ATT. As it is, I'll settle for a phone that doesn't suck, ( in this case, a T-Mobile Shadow )

“I did not mean to write an essay detailing all the ways in which slider controls in Photoshop CS4 reveal problems in the design, development, quality control, and management of the product; I really didn’t. I just pulled up the Smart Sharpen dialog one evening and, sighing at its hideousness for the nth time, decided to put together a little joke post. That was all.”

I know exactly how that is. Sometimes you just have to act on the feeling — you can't rest till you do.

Neven Morgen via Daring Fireball

This quarter has been busy. Very busy. I'm taking 17 credithours. It's intense. And I've been busy outside of class.

Anyway, I got back to my room a couple hours ago after heading to town. I went to 1) drop of a disc of pictures, 2) get some new jeans! and 3) setup a computer for my dad.


The first is a series of pictures I took for a sculptor on the dedication of her statue, which looks something like this (I'm not good at making up names. Also, I think that the photos should stand on their own without needing a title, only a description of when and where):


Except for the above, the pictures in this post are unrelated to the content, simply recent uploads I want to share, so it's pretty as you scroll by, like the next one below (which I suppose is also the only other exception) and is larger because it is more stunning that way (seriously, it's more stunning the bigger it is; making it small gets rid of the Depth of Field):



The second are a pair of Levi 501s and a pair of 505s. Classic blue denim. They'll last a year each before the knees get holy like the pair they replace, like the pair that replaced the one before it, like the pair those replaced …


Three: My dad has a great MacBook Pro. It's better than mine, as well as quieter when running Flash. It runs OSX. He recently also started a job as a realtor, and many of the websites he needs to use are the sort that require IE. I tried every free option I could think of: I tried Safari, Firefox, Opera, and even IE for Mac (5.2; it sucked even back in the day when it was the only Mac OS browser). I tried spoofing the user agent strings. I even tried using WINE and running IE through that, but that didn't work either. It was crashy — too crashy for even me to use. I finally gave up after I was unable to get a virtual machine to do the trick, recommending Parallels as an option (I wanted it to be mobile, and there was no way in hell I was giving him back his old laptop — it was too slow and too loud.

I went home this evening to drop off the aforementioned disc, got two pairs of jeans, and a tasty salmon dinner. At home, I dredged up an old desktop machine (slimline tower), because this seemed like a decent solution. I had a computer in the basement, as well as an extra keyboard and monitor (one of my two 19" Samsung SXGA TFTs), so I set him up with a 2.0 Ghz Celeron "Northwood" running Win 7. I had a bit of trouble getting the first drive to boot, so I replaced it with something newer. It's an adequate, functional computer and runs 7 just fine, if a little sluggish — but it's better than XP by leaps and bounds. It'll do the job of printing and accessing ActiveX websites, and it was a problem taken care of with parts I had on hand.

Also a new addition, I got a replacement for my crappy RAZR (which was stolen). I used my backup Nokia 1208 for a couple weeks, but I now have a 2007 HTC T-Mobile Shadow, care of kistaro. It's a good phone, and my first experience with Windows Mobile (apart from playing with my ex's WM5 Motorola Q briefly a couple years ago, but that was a poor experience to say the least). It's slick, but it's been easy to get used to.

It has good battery life with an extra large 3rd party battery, wi-fi for email (my router's WiFi magically started working again, AND I got the G router I was lent working as an access point tied to my hub), and is a decent crossover device. Actually, it's much nicer than the BlackBerry Perl with which I started this contract — faster, more intuitive, more versatile, and more useful, and while it does have a little bit of chunky and clunky, I'm getting more used to the interface; it has its quirks, but it's nothing that I can't ignore as a developer. It's no iPhone, but it's not supposed to be — it does its job just fine, has no touch screen, and does my Email. It can even automatically switch from "normal" to "vibrate" modes based on my calendar.

Actually, I've found that the killer app for it is Google's sync. Google employs an exchange server to copy contacts, calendars, and send and receive email, so moving into the new phone was as easy as setting up Google as an exchange server and BAM! all my contacts and my inbox are there on my phone. I read a message and it marks it read in my inbox. Since I use Gmail's IMAP server for my desktop client, it means that all changes propagate across all devices. Even better than that is the fact that I have iCal linked with Google Calendars via WebDAV, and Address Book syncs to Google as well, so I add a contact on my phone, and he or she appears on my computer. Honestly, this is exactly how computing is supposed to be.

Additionally, it would have been an absolute nightmare trying to coerce Windows Mobile into syncing with anything non-windows-mobile, since I'm almost exclusively Mac/linux.

So, I've been using it to stream internet radio while I sleep (a laptop is overkill for this), and I've got an ebook reader installed on it, too (the Window Mobile version is much nicer than the BlackBerry one). It used to be so nice to be able to have books with me on the bus — especially since I don't like carrying many things with me, and when the Blackberry died, so did a lot of the reading I did for pleasure. Now I can finally fall asleep again reading stories about Honor Harrington and the Star Kingdom of Mantacore.

So, yeah, Windows Mobile doesn't suck — and this is coming from a Mac/Linux user and a design geek (so it's as close to a ringing endorsement as you'll get from me without torturing me with a BB Storm). Believe it!

Hi, this post is about networking.


First, we start with some news. As it turns out, the IEEE finally ratified 802.11n, so that standard is official. And here I am with a 3-year-old MacBook with 802.11 pre-n.


Also, sometime in the last month or so, the wireless radio in my archaic Microsoft MN-500 gave out. It was an anaemic 802.11b (11MiBps), but it's still annoying to be without a wireless access point of my own, under my precise control.

The MN-500 has been a great performer; the wired connection is still fully-functional for now, but the router its self is getting on in years. It's from the early years of wireless networking, too, so the fact that it's been running this long is kinda impressive, especially since I was not the first owner.

Anyway, since I'm a cheap student, I'm going to see about turning my G4-based server (Mac Mini) into an 802.11g (54MiBps) access point using its Broadcom-based PCI card (AirPort Express). Of course, any new router will be more expensive than utilising the hardware I have at present.


Besides having flaky wireless, my connection its self is flaky, thanks to the network's implementation of a policy key. Not only is there a registration to connect to the network, the network requires users to download a piece of software to their (Windows or Mac) computer in order to connect. Said software confirms that all the system's updates are current. It probably eliminates the login screen that I have to fill out every day or so. I believe it's the sign of poor network management when the users are required to download software to connect to the network; that should be handled on the server side, not the user's.

At least the login does not harass me in Linux, though the whole process ticks me off, as siskmarek can attest to when it was implemented the weekend he was visiting.


Edit: Yeah, haven't gotten the wifi card to work correctly yet. Presumably it's an issue with Broadcom drivers in linux, but the card doesn't want to go into Master or Ad-Hoc mode with iwconfig. I do believe this pushes forward the timetable on getting an AirPort Extreme base station.

No. 10, Downing Street issued an official apology yesterday to Mathematician Alan Turing, one of the most-significant, least-well-known computer scientists of the last century.

Turing was best known for the decryption of the Nazi Enigma Machine, but he really should be lauded as the Father of Computer Science as we know it. Turing established the basics that all computers follow these day: the idea of a reprogrammable computer. His name is also the title of the most prestigious award in Computing Science.

His name is probably best known in reference to a Turing Machine — the basic form of a computer. A “Turing-complete” machine would have infinite storage, and modern computers are said to be only partially complete. A true Turing-complete machine is more thought-experiment than a machine intended for actual use — just like the language Brainfuck, which is intended as a programming challenge. He's also known for contributions to Artificial Intelligence (as much Computer Science as Philosophy), and the Turing Test is a test of a machine's ability to, for lack of a better term, “think.”

But Turing was forced out of his work, ostracised and indicted simply for being gay. He spent the next two years depressed, miserable, and took his own life in 1954 (though the circumstances were somewhat fishy and some suspect foul play). And since he hasn't gotten any proper recognition, the museum has fallen on hard times these past few years.


Excerpt from the statement:

2009 has been a year of deep reflection - a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ - in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence - and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison - was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later. [ … ]

This apology goes a long way to ameliorating the grave injustice done to this great man, but one certainly wonders how much farther the field of Informatics would have progressed if he had not died far too soon — but it is safe to say computing would be vastly different were it not for him.

Number10.gov.uk, the official site of the Prime Minister's office.
via Pharangula

This is very strange. I seem to have stepped into an alternate universe.

Yes, I am now using Gentoo. Before you kill me, hear me out. I know that it's a crazy distro, but I chose it for a reason: ( There's a good reason for all this ricing — I am using a G4, and support for PPCs is spotty at best )

Here's how my main workstation, a 1.8ghz, 600mhz FSB PowerMac G5 (PPC 970FX), stacks up to its x86 replacement, the xeon-powered MacPro:



I think this is the definition of "blown out of the water."

( For reference )

Why yes, it's called Pidgin (it's called Trillian if you hate FOSS and like paying to get all your features — and it's called Gaim if you are a hermit and live in a hole).

It's surprisingly infrequent when a song captures my attention and gives me shivers. This song did it, complete with some pictures of the voyager craft, old (pre-hubble) nebulae, etc.




It was actually good enough to pull me out of working on getting my server to google a youtube video. I was busy updating software repositories on my server from Debian Lenny/stable to the testing distro (currently named “squeeze”). I needed to switch repositories because the version I had contained older versions of the Bazaar versioning control system and the subversion VCS plugin (bzr-svn) was giving me errors when importing a trunk from a svn server. This error has been fixed in the latest releases, but I didn't have those.

Aptitude is now updating packages for me, so I'll soon be able to download the the trunk for the red5 streaming video server, which was the original intention. I could have probably avoided this by installing subversion too, but I'd rather not have more than one VCS on my machine. I could have probably also avoided this by using Gentoo and simply compiling what I need, but Debian is fairly hassle-free and quite stable — more stable than an Ubuntu LTS release. It's also the only distro that still ships with KDE3.5, as opposed to the new crap that is KDE4. Debian is not cutting edge, but it's rock solid and fast: ergo, perfect for a server.

Things have been downright busy. Finals week this week, and on top of that, I've been feeling sick the past week. Not just cough-cough sick but the downright head-throbbing I-need-some-nyquill sick. Fortunately, I since it's finals week, I've had the chance to catch up on sleep (ie, sleeping more of the day than I'm awake). I can't use the nyquill during the day, at the very least, but I feel nearly as strung out on the Pseudoephedrine and ibuprofen as I was on the NyQuill. So, I'm feeling okay, but marginally dazed, which makes the day actually quite fun.


In other news, I have acquired a computer that actually can run games. By most standards it's pretty old (a 2.53ghz P4 with an Nvidia GeForce 7600 AGP card), but it runs steam games well (ie, i finally got the chance to play the portal game, and also have been working, albeit slowly, playing the first Half Life game -- interestingly enough, it would have run well on my old PII back when it was released). I still don't really consider myself a gamer, casual or not. I feel like I spend a far greater amount of my time reading than gaming, and I cherry-pick the games I play (usually the well-recieved ones).

So, anyway, I have a steam account. I haven't touched it in a week or two, because of final projects and tests and stress. Same reason I haven't drawn anything, as I haven't been motivated and a slice of life comic would probably be just several panels of me sleeping.


Also, I've been growing increasingly angry at my phone; it has gotten slow for no apparent reason to the point that it is continuously giving me an hourglass, texting takes an agonisingly long time, and now I can't even answer phone calls. Even better is when it passes its uncaught exceptions to the screen. Showing me a dialogue box with a "Uncaught Exception: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError" was not how I was taught to handle exceptions*. It's not worth the hassle any longer. So I've been doing research on the net phone I'm going to get.


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Seriously, RIM, that's poor form.

I would give my opinion of the new Safari 4 beta, but I would only be repeating Daring Fireball, and I don't like wasting words.

Then there was that pun about Turing machines vs touring machines (aka, touring cars).


I'm a huge geek.


I've also been drawing all evening. And the computer's been rendering video for days, on the side. I think I'm getting better at three-panel comics. Also: other comics that are more panels.

More comics in the coming days. Maybe also no sleep.

Homeland Security Advisory System: We have identified a bug in this system that prevents the threat level from dropping below Elevated (Yellow). The code for Guarded (Blue) and Low (Green) has been commented out. We are testing the fix and hope to have it in by the next patch.

I still don't understand those WoWcraft player terms like "Aggro" — and this list was obviously compiled to be funniest to WoWcraft players, of which I am not (it might help to play it to understand, but it seems boring, and my eyes glaze over when people start talking about it) — but it is still funny for anyone who installs system updates or codes. Patches are the same the world around.

Patch Day! via gas_mask_dragon

Oddly enough, the last day or day-and-a-half haven't been utterly terrible. I'm not to certain why, but I just haven't been as depressed. Which is a good thing; I'm not complaining.

Though I have a lot of work to get done over this coming three-day weekend, and I still need to sleep more than I do.


In other news, I spent several hours with my phone plugged in to install the latest version of the Blackberry OS, version 4.5. It's decent, and it is a little more polished than 4.2 that I was running. For one, the SMS/email screens are cleaner, there are a few more great fonts (including a great serifed font) that render well on the screen. The system also supports HTML formatting for emails, and there's a spell-check/autocomplete. Also, I find that the system is somewhat faster (faster in the user's perspective meaning responsive), but this may only be due to eliminating extraneous language files that were taking up needed megabytes of the system.

Those are the pros. The cons (and there are a few) do not outweigh these, but are quirky: The new message indicator light sometimes sticks "on" instead of "off" after reading messages. The "sleep mode" is disengaged by the "menu" button. I also notice that, as it's a BlackBerry 8100 "Pearl", the system hangs for longer than I'd like when loading menus or files, simply because the phone doesn't have enough CPU power.

While it does have these quirky drawbacks, none of them truly impair functionality, and some things have been noticeably improved. The presentation is much more polished in all places, though I will still have to see about the battery life, and whether the increased strain on the CPU draws more load, discharging the battery faster. Thus far, it's a decent upgrade, and the phone works for SMS, email, photos, and telephone on my GSM network.

This is important to note, as this upgrade hasn't been officially sanctioned by T-Mobile, and the OS download for the phones through T-mobile won't support more than 4.2, which it came with. Blackberry.com also won't support downloading of the OS (probably because of the low speed of the processor and the quirks I've mentioned). Regular users don't like "quirky" things.

I should also mention that I was required to use a Windows machine to do all this. I don't know of any updaters for the Blackberry on Mac that are capable of upgrading the system. If someone knows of one, I'd be pleased, though I don't hold out much hope.

Anyway, it's nice, but it's no iPhone. It'll hold its own for a while, though.

Seriously, Spokane? Seriously?

I think we have more snow out there than in the last few years combined. Yes, I still like the stuff, but this is somewhat ridiculous. Though District 81 has let students go home until the new year, even they shut down classes Thursday and Friday before break. I have to echo cubecrazymonkey's sentiments about the snow days, though. I was fortunate enough that my classes ended a week ago*


The only time I remember classes being shut down was back in 1996 — yes, that was Ice Storm (though it is a little surprising that I've lived in Spokane for nearly a decade-and-a-half). Temperatures were somewhere in the order of -20°F, and everything was coated in a layer of ice a quarter-inch thick. It brought down powerlines and brought the city to its knees right around Thanksgiving; we were without power for about four days. They finally reopened schools because that was the only warm, powered place a lot of kids had.

The pass is closed, too, which means that my Aunt isn't coming over for Christmas. Somewhat tragic, as she's not been having a great end of the year, but there's not much that can be done now.

All-in-all, yeah, it's a lot of snow, but the city should have been able to take care of this far better than they did.


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* Actually, they ended Tuesday at about 11:00, after which I then went to get a cheeseburger with oneeyedseer and began to get an actual layout in my head for the city of Cheney. Seriously, it's taken me about three quarters to realise that the entrance of the Computer Science doesn't point north, it points west, and that Washington street, at the "back end" of campus runs north-and-south. This was the same time that I should have gone to check out the surplus sale; I heard second-hand from someone who went to the surplus and bought a fancy widescreen Sony CRT — the kind that were originally $5k — that there were also some G4 PowerMac towers there, too. I would have liked to have gotten one of those, as a G4 > P4 IMHO, especially for server duties, and the Power architecture is still vastly superior to x86 architecture. In fact, for a long time until the Xserve came out, regular tower PowerMacs were also utilised as workgroup servers, but if I do intend to run a PPC server, I should probably also use OSX server, with the awesome load-sharing capabilities of Xgrid, though I might switch my G5 over to be a server after I get a better desktop (a MacPro, that I could setup with parallels for the simple Windows Dev stuff I need; dual-boot OSX 10.6 and XP, which is beginning to feel as dated as Classic to me). I also heard that they didn't sell, which is crazy, since they're great machines. It would actually be fun to get a few and convert them to desktops and resell them to people on ebay as functional desktops; I'm fairly certain a dual 867mhz would outperform a single 1.5ghz G4. Plus, I should be able to spec the G4s just by the case design since a Sawtooth looks different from a Quicksilver from a Mirror Drive Door. And if there's a cube there …

Web Server works. FTP probably does, but after a small permissions fix, SSH is more than adequate. Also, no additional software required (above and beyond a unix terminal, which I require).

For note, the system it's running on, because I find specs delightful:

• 2.0ghz Celeron (Northwood Core)
• 20gb HDD
• Ubuntu Server 8.10
• 768mb DDR RAM
• Intel chipset

( other geeky things I can do with a server! )


Since the server next to me works, I'm going to bed. The ambient music is on and I'm already drifting.

Coming soon: code to write and end-of-the-quarter parties to attend. I'm trying to be more social. I'm also doing a lot better since finals are over and that stress has been removed.

A collection of things I don't really know where to put, and which are too short to be blog entries, but too long to be tweets, so we'll have a list:

( If you can count to twelve )

And more helpful:


(I did my best, but the fonts on the second one are all messed up. Thank goodness it was 10.5, and not something older — making the dialogue box background out of the pinstripes and getting them to align would have been a nightmare! Then again, it would probably be easier to write a bit of code to create a dialogue box in Objective-C than to do this copy-paste-coverup-font bit, and it would look better, with the fonts all rendered right, and it would work on the older pinstripes without headache, too)

The fact that the “display piece” is a mesh trucker hat seems sort of apropos of the whole rebranding and “I'm a PC” ad campaign, riding in on the coat-tails of an ad campaign that's getting long in the tooth. It seems slightly desperate, and too serious about its self. I mean, I've never seen any “I'm a Mac” merchandise.

It's not bad, it's just a misinterpretation of the “Get a Mac” ads in which computers are personified. The “I'm a PC” flips that abstraction, making users into computers and defining them explicitly by the machines they use.

Putting “I'm a PC” branding on a trucker hat is the equivalent of saying “this is Joe Average Computer” and “this is hoi pollois, the computer that everyone else uses.” And for most users, good enough is just that.

Though, I will say that the "I'm a PC” ads are far more well-concieved than these ones for Novell's lacklustre parodies with wooden actors*.


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* This is the point I mention that OSX is *nix-based and works like most Linux/BSD systems. This is also the part where I point out that Macs are PCs — the term is generic, meaning “Personal Computer,” as a distinction from “Terminal which ties into a mainframe (aka server).”