JoshMiller.net

The HP Mini 311 Review – Part 3 – The How

2010-03-07T18:08:00.001-08:00

This is the last part of my multipart “review” of my recently acquired HP Mini 311. This is probably the most difficult to put down since at this point, it’s changing on a regular basis. The How, is how things are going to be done, and how things are being done. For example, i am currently typing this using windows Live Writer in Windows XP on this machine. However I’ve spent MOST of the time using this machine in Ubuntu.

So I’ll start at the top with Windows Live Writer, since I already brought it up. This is a program I’ve been wanting to use ever since it was first released. The beef I always had was, keeping everything organized in one place. Probably the primary reason I wanted a computer like this in the first place was for writing. So far it has proven to be an excellent tool for this. Now, i will give you that, because I use a “two fingered method” of typing, the transition to the slightly smaller keyboard hasn’t been much of an issue. If you’re used to touch typing on a full sized keyboard, you may have some issues.

It is perfect for this use however. It’s light weight enough that I can carry it anywhere in my bag. Which means, for example, if I’m out eating somewhere, or at the park during lunch or whatever, i can easily pull it out if I feel like typing something up. This has, so far, only amounted to a translation to writing more blog posts for my various outlets for such activities. I plan to try to transition this into more long form writing. It’s something i used to do that I do enjoy and have lots of good ideas for, but I can generally never find the time. Being able to type virtually anywhere is a blessing for this.

Part of this type anywhere ability, I’ll admit, is the battery. Not the battery size or anything, just that it’s there and works. I’ve had a few used laptops over the years and none of them had a decent battery. So using the computer say, while sitting in bed, required I dig out the cables and find a spare outlet nearby etc. It was a hassle. At this point I’d estimate that I plug this machine in maybe once a day for an hour or so, usually while it’s sitting on my office desk.

Back to Windows Live Writer. It was probably the first program I installed since it’s an excellent tool for blogging. The interface is intuitive, the ability to easily attach multiple blogs is great and in general, it’s something Microsoft should be proud of. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a Linux equivalent. There are Linux blogger tools that are similar, but none of them are quite as robust.

Which leads me to the second part of the How, Ubuntu. I’ve got a long and sordid history with Linux. I do use it fairly regularly however… sort of…. Most of the Linux based set ups I “use” are “set it and forget it” style set ups. An FTP server for work. A file server at home. Occasionally I log onto these machines via VNC and putz around with settings or play around with CURL but for the most part, they are autonomous creatures, I’ve tried using various flavors of Linux “full time” but generally I have little long term success. The other issue is that I’m not going to inflict that general irritation on my family with say, my main home machine.

This is where the personal portable, touch it and die Netbook is handy. I can dual boot with ease. I’m still not really ready to go all in and wipe out my XP install or anything, but I do use Ubuntu way more than I do XP.

Again… sort of….

I’ve also been experimenting with VirtualBox to run a virtual session of Windows XP on top of my Ubuntu install. Can you wrap you head around that? I have an “underpowered” PC that can boot to either Windows or Ubuntu, and inside Ubuntu, it can also run Windows.

This allows me to do things I can’t do with just Ubuntu, like run Windows live writer (eventually). Or play DOS based games like Diablo 2 or Grand Theft Auto.

Ubuntu however should get a post all of it’s own so I’ll save more of the details on that for later.

The Depressing March of Progress

2010-02-24T20:41:00.001-08:00

Maybe it’s the poor economy. Maybe it’s just the changing times. Maybe people just don’t like the place. Whatever the reason, the local video store is closing. My daughter rented some movies from there last weekend and there were no signs up. Today, the day these movies are being returned, they have signs proclaiming that the store is closing.

I’m not real sure about how I feel about this exactly. On one hand, I never cared for the place. 5 years ago, when I first came to this town, we had two video stores. One was this crummy little hole in the wall with a pretty crummy selection. However you could rend 5 movies for 5 days for 5 dollars. Sometimes they had movie posters in a box you could buy for a quarter. So we went there a lot. The kids liked to get their stuff and I’d pick out a couple for me and my wife to watch. The other store was larger and slightly pricier, but it wasn’t anything overly extravagant and wasn’t any sort of chain.

Then the Movie Gallery moved into town into the location where Hardees once was (Maybe it was a Burger King, I don’t remember). This place reeked of Blockbuster. While it’s not the same chain, I despise Blockbuster Video for many reasons and bad experiences. In short, their selection of “library titles” sucked and their prices were too high. But they got 20 of ever big new release in so you could always get a copy. The middle of the road video store (not too fancy, not too crummy) went out of business almost immediately. Oh well, I hardly went there anyway.

Then the cheapo store went under as well.

Now I was stuck paying too much for movie rentals at a lousy chain store carrying mostly new releases. I went back to borrowing movies from my brother or watching them on TV again. Or i just stopped all together.

Then, one day, the Redbox appeared. I was wary of this device initially. Who would want to rent movies from a vending machine? Now I get most of my newer movies from the Redbox.

And so the Movie Gallery, which killed it’s two small town predecessors, was killed by the vending machine. I can’t help but wonder why they don’t try harder to kill it. They have a way better selection. Also they could carry tons of backlog titles. The key is prices. i mentioned earlier that my daughter rented two movies. It cost her 8 dollars for these two movies and she had them for 5 days.

Now, I’ll admit that I did not go into the store with her to pick them out or pay, so it’s possible she got suckered into the 5 night deal over 1 night, But who needs a DVD for 5 nights? Maybe the store can’t compete with a dollar a night rentals but maybe instead try 150 and bead the Redbox on volume and selection. Offer some sort of bulk deal for multiple nights like the old Hole in the Wall did. try SOMETHING.

But why should I be irritated if I didn’t care to shop there in the first place? You see, that’s a whole different issue. The previously mentioned Hole in the Wall store was in a small blue building that used to be some sort of gas station. It’s been an empty eyesore across from the McDonald’s for 3-4 years now.

The other old video store almost faired better. There were signs and promotion of some sort of Cafe opening up. The supposed opening day came and went with no sign of any actual food or drink. I passed by the other day and noticed the signage is all gone, it’s an empty husk with a “For Lease” sign in the window. It sits across the street from another store that used to be the local pharmacy. that pharmacy closed the exact same day the new Walgreens opened in town. The place even sent out letters to it’s customers informing them that they could now get their medicine from Walgreens.

I hate Walgreens. Not for closing the pharmacy but because the prices are too high and the selection is pretty meh.

I hate to sound like or feel like one of those nostalgic doofs who can’t stand progress and change but I’m getting tired of empty buildings all over from businesses killed by big chains or internet giants, The empty buildings depress me a bit and make the whole town look crummy.

It’s not even a phenomenon limited to small towns like mine. Even in the city where I work i see many empty unused stores and buildings. Meanwhile some chain is building a new building in some location calculated for maximum marketability using a design intended to make the building familiar to everyone.everywhere. Walgreens couldn’t open in some old video store or pharmacy building, they don’t LOOK like Walgreens (also both would be too small). Instead they bulldoze a church and a building that had an existing business in it to make a new parking lot.

The HP Mini 311 Review – Part 2 – The What

2010-02-22T11:58:00.001-08:00

So I wrote up a rather lengthy “review” or at least partial review last week for this new machine I’ve been using. The thing to note is that, for the most part, I didn’t mention much actually pertaining to the device.

That’s where this post comes into play.

After careful consideration, I went with the HP Mini 311. In my research, I’ve found that for the most part, most Netbooks have essentially the same specs. There are quite a few options if you're willing to spend more than $500 but for anything less you’re going ot get more or less the same formula.

N270 or N280 processor
1 GB of RAM
160 GB hard drive
Windows XP SP3 or Windows 7 Starter (DON’T GET STARTER)
Webcam
3 USB Ports
VGA Port
9-10” screen
Etc.

The Mini had two main advantages that swayed me to pick it and one minor advantage. The minor advantage is really minor, I like the way it looks. It has a nice two tone black and silver chassis that isn’t obnoxiously colored but isn’t too boring.

The major advantages come in the visuals. Firstly, it has an 11” screen. This makes it slightly larger than your average Netbook but not as humongous as a laptop. The footprint is almost identical to a standard 8.5”x11” sheet of paper.

Secondly is the nVidia Ion Chipset. Basically, instead the of integrated Intel graphics chip most Netbooks have, this has a separate chip made by a company that more or less specializes in graphics chips. According to CNet’s benchmarks, this machine scores a massive factor (think hundreds to a thousand) times higher than most netbooks in the graphics department. A bit of research actually suggests the Ion is a rebranded downsized version of the GeForce 9400 chipset, which is conveniently the same card i use in my desktop machine.

So what does this mean? Two things. Firstly, it runs video better than most Netbooks. Secondly, I can play some 3D games. No, I’m not going to be playing with screaming FPS and ultra graphics settings but it’ll still work. I’ve already tested this with the two most graphically intense games I play, Team Fortress 2 and Second Life. TF2 will need some settings tweaks (I only spent like 5 minutes testing it out) but it’s doable for a quick game. SL is definitely usable and reasonably smooth is less busy areas.

As for other aspects, the wireless rage is decent, much better than my old laptop. The speed is good, I’ve loaded this thing down fairly heavily and haven’t seen a huge dip in performance (more on this in Part 3). I’m even dual booting with Ubuntu, though there was a bit of a hassle making that work smoothly. Battery life is decent and works for 3-4+ hours easy.

In short, I’m pretty satisfied with my experience so far. I’ll go into more detail on exactly what that experience entails however in the next post…

The HP Mini 311 Review – Part 1 – The Why

2010-02-19T14:59:00.001-08:00

Even back when the only option available was the OLPC, I knew I wanted a Netbook. Ok, actually I saw the OLPC for the “mostly a toy” that it is, but the concept of a cheaper “unerpowered” PC was something I’d been pushing for a while. Even with a desktop. The idea being that computer parts just get cheaper, and my old Pentium “Whatever” is still good enough for most of what I need to do, why can’t hardware manufacturers continue producing “old models” and sell them for half the cost of the “current generation”?

A Netbook isn’t quite this. It’s not like the Atom Processor is a Pentium 4, though I imagine there’s some similarities if you break it down. I’ve also pushed the idea of a smaller more modular PC. Granted, that a Netbook isn’t more modular. Anyway, I do think it would be a great idea to build a PC that is essentially just a bank of USB ports inside. Need to upgrade the processor? Just swap out the stick. Maybe add a second one, or a second GPU. Need more Hard Drive space? Stick a few more flash drives into the bays. Basically, I see it as sort of like Star Trek’s Isolinear Chips.

But I’m running off topic…

After a long wait, I have finally managed to purchase a Netbook of my own. I generally don’t make too many large purchases and when I do I tend to procrastinate forever on if I actually want it or what else could I buy. The plus is that I tend to end up pretty well satisfied after excessive research. Not always though, see my LifeDrive, which failed too early in it’s life.

The original plan for the longest while was to go for the MSI Wind u100. Many reports suggested it packed the best bang for the buck in it’s price range of around $300. I really wanted to get something with Nvidia’s Ion Processor inside however. The Intel GMA graphics chips are supposed to be alright but I was hoping for that extra kick. The intention being that I could potentially use the diminutive machine to play some games. I don’t expect to be able to play the latest whatever on PC at blazing speed or at full graphics settings but an occasional putzing with TF2 or the ability to log onto the online world of Second Life would be a huge benefit.

Which brings up a point with choosing a Netbook, expectations. In my research I’ve seen many MANY people suggesting “Netbooks suck”, “Too underpowered”, “Get a real Laptop for $100-$200 more”. The thing is, I wanted a netbook for many of the reasons people seem to be badmouthing them. I don’t WANT to spend hundreds of dollars more for a 14-15” laptop. Not to mention a $500 Laptop is pretty low on the low end and likely the build quality is going to be crap next to a $400 Netbook. We have several people using Laptops at work. The $2500 Microns we used to use were extremely sturdy and robust and lasted for 5-6 years. We’ve got $500 Dells that are almost falling apart that are in rough shape after only 2 years. The point is, buy cheap, get cheap.

There’s also the size factor. Ideally, I wanted something that would fit in my “Nerd Bag”. I have an old full sized laptop. The bag for it is huge and the thing is heavy enough that it makes my shoulders hurt lugging it around. I want something light that’ll fit in a bag that’s convenient that I’d be more likely to carry around with me.

As for underpowered, I’ve been using this device for roughly a week now. No, it doesn’t play TF2 as well as my desktop PC. No, I’m not going to load up Adobe Premier and make it render a 2 hour video. No, I’m not going to watch massive HD videos at full screen. What I can do is type. I can write blog posts such as this one. I can listen to iTunes. It’s got several USB ports and runs Audacity just fine so maybe i can finally start doing that Podcast I’ve been meaning to do. The point is, this device is an excellent tool. for what I wanted it for and for what I expected from it.

It’s also helping me become once again more comfortable with the keyboard. I grew up on DOS. I’ve been working on various Linux projects on the command line for a while, I used to be able to zip around Windows easily without using a mouse but I’ve gotten rusty at it. The fact that I simply don’t like touch pads in general (not just on this device) has helped me harness a skill I’d lost to help my overall computing habits. I’ll argue against the Linux mindset that the command line is superior to a GUI, but I’ll argue for the idea that the keyboard is more powerful than the mouse for productivity.

Anyway, I’m getting a bit long so I’ll wrap things up a bit here. In the end, chose the HP Mini 311. I don’t recall exactly where I first came across this model but it has more or less everything I wanted. The reality is, a LOT of these machines have identical specs. 160 GB Hard Drive, 10” screen, N270 Atom processor, 1 GB of RAM. For a bit more than the Mini, I got the Ion Processor and an 11” screen. The Mini 311 also has a slick 2 tone color pallet going for it.

But I’ll get more into the details in Part 2, “The What”…

Netbook...

2010-02-11T10:10:00.001-08:00

I've been wanting a Netbook for a while. Now, thanks to Tax Time, I'lll be ordering one. After careful consideration, I've decided to go with the HP Mini 311-1000NR .

The original plan was to go with an MSI Wind, but I really wanted something with the NVidia ION graphics chip in it. Also, the HP has a 6 cell battery. Try as I did, i couldn't find an affordable U100 with a 6 cell battery.

Sure,t his one costs a little more than the planned U100, but performance wise it'll be better. The plan is to dual boot XP and Ubuntu.

DDR for 2/20/2010

2010-02-10T04:28:00.000-08:00

Light Standard Heavy Oni
2nd Mix - Smoke - Standard Mode - C
2nd Mix - Butterfly - Light Mode - B
6th Mix - Candy Light Mode - A
6th Mix - Cowgirl - Heavy Mode - FAIL
6th Mix - Look to the Sky - Standard Mode - B
6th Mix - Healing Vision Angelic Mix - Light Mode - D
8th Mix - A - Standard Mode - A
8th Mix - Jana Jana - Heavy Mode - FAIL
8th Mix - R3 - Heavy Mode - FAIL

Some Notes...

I remember once time in college, a bunch of us go together to play at someone's house as opposed to the arcade. Myself, my roommate, his girlfriend, and 3 Japanese exchange students we hung around with. We got tot he point where one of the Japanese girls was absolutely determined to beat Candy on light and played it like 30 times in a row.

On Cowgirl... It took me FOREVER to learn how to properly "Gallop*" in DDR. I can still move and twist properly, I can still to turns around the board, I can still hop and do a 180 spin, I can still do a lot these useful DDR skills. I cannot Gallop anymore... at all...

A on standard is one that I used to ALMOST be able to stealth** because I played it a lot and it has some easy to remember turns in it.

R3 was a long shot last song. At the arcade in Springfield, for reasons unknown, it was one day suddenly the top ong on the board. And people continued to play it constantly. It is alsoone that I was getting close to having memorized.

* - Gallops in DDR are a useful move to be able to do though they only show up in maybe half a dozen songs. Cowgirl is a good Gallop practice song because it's not super difficult other than it has a ton fo gallups and it's "Gallup themed" being about a Cowgirl. These steps are something like the following.

An example of Cowgirl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jDsv08Rjd0 for the DDR uninformed (This is not me). The Gallops appear at the begening, though it's not toally obvious becuase he's very smooth at it. It comes off as a "BadumP Badump Badump" sound. This is DIFFERENT than the steps he does a few minutes later where you see him deliberately "Bum bum" the same arrow twice in a row. I see a lot fo people try to do Gallops with the straight deliberate "bum bum" method when they first see them. The problem is it's a lot fo work and very difficult to do this way. Galloping makes these steps a breeze.

** - Stealth Mode = Arrows turned off ie from memory

Dance Dance Revolution or My Personal Fitness & Wellness Part 1

2010-02-09T08:16:00.000-08:00

So, like many people, I am slightly worried about "becoming fat". Not really because I think being fat would make me ugly or anything, mostly I just find that the higher my weight, the more sluggish in general I become. The reality is I weight the same and look the same as I have for more or less the last 5 years+.

I also must be doing something right overall because I weight (slightly less) than I did in High School but look generally "less fat". If that makes sense.

What I'd like to do is get more close to my college weight and size. Back in college I weighed 25-40 lbs less than I do now. I'd be happy with 25-30, I'm shooting more for like 10-15.

There's two key factors in the shape I was in during college and one odd stand out "anomaly". Firstly, the anomaly. When I was in college, I ate like crap. The cafeteria was basically all you can eat so I'd regularly consume 6-10 pieces of bacon for breakfast and 2-3 heaping plate fulls of buttery egg noodles. I ate quite a bit of ice cream as well. Who needs vegetables when there's a Belgium Waffle maker?

On the flip side, I also had a LOT of exercise, both necessary and recreational. The Necessary was the fact that I walked literally everywhere. I never measured it but I imagine I walked 5+ miles each day, probably more. Going to class, going to the comic shop, going to the student center to wander around. I was on my feet a lot.

On top of this, my roommate got me addicted to Dance Dance Revolution. You know,t hat dorky arcade game where you get to look stupid while moving to the beat of goofy foreign music and smelling like old gym socks.

The reality is, I never got REALLY good at DDR until after I left college and played locally, that is, before they went and closed the arcade. Still, I played it a lot. It's actually an excellent work out and I find it fun.

Fun enough that many years ago I spend a good chunk of change to buy the parts to construct my own personal "Hard Pad". You see a Hard Pad is different from what you get when you buy a DDR game at Wal-Mart (IE a Soft Pad). With a Hard Pad, you don't have to worry about the map sliding across the floor. More importantly, you can also play it while wearing your shoes, which is a necessity to get good grip and speed on more difficult songs.

I made some steps to overcome the shoes and sliding issues of my softpad from college by duct taping the thing to a piece of carpet then duct taping the grid of arrows on the surface. You still don't get quit the same satisfying tactile feedback with the carpet method however.

Anyway, the point is, I build this thing, then real life caught up with me and I havn't use it much. Now, tghe plan is, to use it again, int he mornings before work. The nice thing is, morning excersize really does help boost your energy level during the day. It helps get the blood flowing so to speak. Two slight issues, one, I tend to be very hungry when I wake up, but I like to do any sort of work out before food. It's something I can get over. Last summer I was walking/jogging in the mornings so it's something I can get used to.

Also, something Ic an get used to, it means waking up roughly a half hour earlier. However, as I mentioned, the work out aspect helps to wake you up. Secondly, I'm generally up at 5:30 ANYWAY because my wife gets up to go to work at that time and she is generally completely unable to "not wake me up also" despite many protests. So i can be productive this way instead of a crabby bed blob. This does lead to another slightly minor issue int hat, when I'm up early like this with my wife, befoe she leaves, she always asks me to take care of things like amking her breakfast or starting her car when it's cold. This eats somewhat into the excersize time.

So anyway, I may post some here about some progress and thoughts on the whole fitness and wellness issue. Also I plan to go back to jogging some in the future, whent he weather isn't freezing. We own a treadmill but it's in storage since we don't really have room for it. Also the treadmill at home isn't all that nice. Not liek th eones at the fitness center I used to go to anyway.

COMODO EasyVPN

2010-01-22T06:24:00.000-08:00

You always hear about good programs, why arent't here more negative reviews of these things? I guess it's hard to rip on a free program. You didn't pay for it, it didn't cost anything other than time to use it, why bad mouth it?

And why should I really? On the other hand, maybe there's ome hope that the creator fo the program will hear and may look into some of the issues that a user has had. This free program, EasyVPN (Free for personal use) is one that I've had issus with lately. So I'm removing it.

This program will create a "Virtual" VPN connection betwen two computers. Hey, you just said "Virtual Virtual Private Network, isn't that some sort of double negative style issue?" Maybe so, but that's the best term for it. Generally a "real" VPN involves two firewalls, or a firewall and a program. The point is, at some point is a piece of physical hardware that manages this thing. This is two pieces of software that communicate over a 3rd party's management.

I've used a few solutions similar to this, the problem is, they often don't quite serve the same need as efficiently. For example, I use Live Mesh for syncing files in real time between several machines. It's great for backing up as well. I use Sync Toy at hoem to make back ups of the "My Documents" folders on my PC to a secondary larger hard drive.

I picked up EasyVPN for one purpose. I wanted to sync my iTunes library between two PCs (work and home) using SyncToy. With EasyVPN, I could map shared folders between these two machines over the internet securely. The sync can be a bit slow since there's some delay in the folder scanning across the internet so I set it up to run in the middle of the night.

The problem is, for whatever reason, the connection seemed to break every night. I'd wake up and find that SyncToy was sitting on my desktop telling me that it had failed to run. Neither machine is set to go to sleep or anything since I strongly dislike "Sleep Mode" and "Standby Mode" so that's not part of the issue. IT's just a straight reset of some kind, every evening.

So I'm dumping it. I've used LogMeIn.com's Hamachi in the past and will probaly go back to using this since it works better anyway. I just was hoping for a slightly more efficient solution. Why iTunes doesn't let you do this on it's own (or just allow you to sync an iPod to more than one library) is beyond my comprehension. Part of that annoying "Apple Control" issue.

State of My Blog Network

2010-01-12T06:48:00.000-08:00

One of my "New Years Resolutions" is to get back to actually regularly posting to my multiple blogs. With that in mind, I figure I'll do a quick run down of what I'm currently updating and working on and maybe point out a few things that are dead. This is mostly organizational for myself because honestly, of all of my Blogs, this is the least popular.

I've moved everything, once again, off of my own hosting. This time it's all on blogger.com however instead of Wordpress.

Anyway, we have JoshMiller.net, which is here. This is mostly my "Personal Blog". Other than "Random occasional life observation", I sometimes post technology or computer related articles here.

Next up we have Lameazoid.com. I need to fix a lot of the image links and for reasons unknown "lameazoid.com" without the www is not working even though it's all set up to work, but I'll get that fixed. This is "Games and Toys and Geek/Nerd stuff". Anyone who has known me for any length of time will likely know what Lameazoid is and will know it is my "Flagship blog". It's currently in a state of "Team Fortress 2 + Other Random funny Youtube Videos".

Thirdly we have Opinion Stated As Fact or OSAF for short. I've had an increasing interest in worldy news and politics these days and this blog serves as my outlet for that. It's also a bit of an attempt to get back into my more popular "mildly inflammatory writing style" of the days of yore. So far it's pretty weak in that department, but I'm getting there. If you're a fan of Lameazoid and have an interest in news, you'll probably like OSAF.

On the subject of dead projects. Over the course of 2009 I've killed a few of my other side projects. I'm using Twitter exclusively for "Microblogging". I experimented with Plurk and a few others, but I've found I've been over reaching on the social networking so I've been cutting back with a machete.

I've also more or less killed my use of Posterous. I was experimenting with ti as a Mobile Blog platform and only updating it with photos and musings from my phone but I've had a few annoying roadblocks with that and quite honestly, it's something I could just use Flickr for. I like Flickr, I pay for Flickr, I have been severely neglecting Flickr.

Some may remember my short lived Everyman Tech blog. I've dumped that too. I don't care about being a "helpful Tech Enthusiast" enough to update it regularly. Those posts are now part of Joshmiller.net.

On another note, I've been doing a bit of "Outside Work". Outside being "Not something I directly control". I've done a few episodes of the Gitmo Nation Roundtable Podcast. I've also been posting some articles to my employer's website (Not all of these posts are mine).

Finally, I'll close with some upcomming ideas and projects and some direction fo where things will be heading in 2010. First off, Audio and video are comming. I say "First Off" like there's any other angles here....

Anyway, I have a shinny new video camera and a strong desire to do a regular Podcast I havn't quite desiced on if this will be weekly or bi weekly, and I'm not quite sure of if it's going to swing more OSAF or more Lameazoid. It will likely be a mix of these two areas of discussion. I plan to make it a solo venture but I'm not totally adverse to the idea of guests hosts.

The Podcast will be audio only. The video camera I mentioned will be for new Video Reviews for Lameazoid. Sort of... Everyone is doing crummy video reviews these days, I don't plan to do many straight out video reviews. More likely, I'll use video to augment text reviews. I prefer text reviews all around, I've just been extremely burnt out on doing them.

I also am looking into doing a few "Audio Mixes" for some audio streams that some of my fellow GNR peoples are working on. I'm not quite sure if this will pan out but it' something I'm toying with. The main issue is looking moe into how copyright works. Most likely I'll end up using Podsafe Music. for these mixes so it'll be stuff you've probably not heard before.

Anyway, that's a look at the year ahead.

2010 Ongoing Video Games List

2010-01-12T06:15:00.001-08:00

This page will ocasionally be updated.

Currently Playing

GTA: Chinatown Wars (NDS)
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (NDS)
New Super Mario Brothers Wii (Wii)
Team Fortress 2 (PC)

Completed

World of Goo (PC)
Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box (NDS)

2010 Ongoing Reading List

2010-01-04T09:21:00.000-08:00

For the last several years I've been keeping track of my reading consumption and Video Game Consumption. This was slightly easier with Wordpress' pages but this post will work allright for now. This page will ocasionally be updated.

Books Rolling Over from 2009Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (Audio)
The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum

2010 Books Finished
Falling Up by Shel Silverstien (170pages)

The New Location of Joshmiller.net

2009-10-26T11:34:00.000-07:00

In case anyone has shown up here, previous readers may notice I've moved to Blogger, new users should know, I've moved to Blogger. Also I'm still in the process of importing old posts. I'm not real sure why some of the images aren't showing up anymore as they worked earlier this morning.

I'll get the bugs worked out. I've got maybe 100-150 more posts to import over the next few days. Google only lets you import 50 per day.

Moving JoshMiller.net to Blogger

2009-10-26T08:49:00.000-07:00

For various reasons, including the fact that self hosting a website is generally unreliable, I'm moving my personal blog to Blogger.

I'm also planning to move Lameazoid.com to Blogger assuming things go well with this.

If you're subscribing to the Feed, please add this feed....
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Joshmillernet
... in it's place. I can update the Feedburner feed take anything no matter where I'm hosted so it's your best bet anyway.

A few reasons I'm moving to Blogger over Wordpress...

I've actually always preferred Blogger to Wordpress. Mostly I like Wordpress' ability to create static pages.

I have several other Blogspot blogs going now already. This will simplify them.

Blogspot is owned by Google so you get the benefits of Google with less work.

I can map my Domain names properly for free as opposed to Wordpress.com's "charge you an obscene amount yearly" plan.

Blogger supports Scripting in posts and the sidebar. I can properly embed videos from non Youtube sources.

Blogger lets you run ads, if I ever feel included to do so in any serious manner.

Blogger gives you full access tot he page code for Tweeking. Wordpress.com does not.

Now granted, half of these do not apply to THIS blog since it's locally hosted but it's more of a set of reasons why I'm not moving back to Wordpress.com for free hosting and instead have chosen Blogspot.

I'm in the process of importing all of my posts over and eventually Joshmiller.net will simply point to this blog and I'll loose the joshmiller.net/blog. Unfortunately I can't import comments. It's a loss I've decided to take. I can fake my own static pages through various methods as well. Basically though I'm tired of my blog being "down" a lot. Technically I shouldn't be self hosting anyway as my ISP probably would frown upon it.

In short, this will be the last post on the blog in this form and for anyone using this RSS feed. Anything else will push through Feed Burner.

Twitter on the Way Out?

2009-10-15T10:10:00.000-07:00

I’ve noticed a growing trend recently that can best be described as “Twitter Backlash”. Basically people quitting Twitter or just in general getting irritated by it. I personally know that several times in the past few months I’ve considered dumping Twitter completely outright.

But why is the internet’s Glory Boy starting to loose favor? I can see a few factors at work here that likely have something to do with it.

Bloggers Want to Get Back to Long Form

Several years ago, I killed my Livejournal. Not really because I don't like Livejournal, I actually do rather like the way it works and the community aspects of it. No, I killed it because it had become a series of half paragraph updates and links. I promised myself I would move to a new platform, start again anew and make sure I never ever posted inane useless link based blog posts ever again.

Basically, if I didn't have something to actually say or add to the conversation on a topic, I didn't need to bog it. The rise of Youtube has changed that a bit so I do occasionally post blog posts that are just Youtube videos with a few lines of commentary but that is a bit of a different medium. Also I've more or less replaced this link based blogging with my Shared Google Reader page, which is what that system is designed for.

So now, what have I done? I've gone and gotten engrossed in Twitter which BY DESIGN is basically pointless short often link based "Blog Posts". So now, often, if I find something interesting where I SHOULD be doing a full commentary and blog post on it, I write a short one liner glib and post a link to Twitter and forget about it.

It just doesn't have the same impact if anything because Twitter is just so full of pointless crap and of course....

There’s No Control Over What You See

One big problem I have with Twitter is that there’s not good filtering mechanism. TweetDeck is the closest thing I can think of but Tweet Deck takes up a massive amount of screen real estate and requires me to install yet another “Helper Program” in the form of Adobe Air. Java, Acrobat, .Net, Flash, Silverlight, Air, How many of these damn programs do we really need?

Silicon Valley addicts are pushing the idea of “The Fire Hose of Information” that you “dip and sip” from. They suggest that you simply can’t consume all of the information. Frankly, that’s not good enough. I don’t want to consume it all but I do want to be able to put the fire hose through a system that gives me the choice bits.

Twitter just isn’t going anywhere or innovating. Of all of the web services I uses and even the ones I’ve dropped Twitter has changed the least. It has done absolutely nothing to solve most of it’s problems other than I get less Fail Whales these days. Sure, it’s good to keep it simple, but it’s easy to keep it simple with optional add ins if you want to use them. The simplest and most obvious way to do this would be to add Groups. I hear they are testing this currently on some users but it may end up being too little too late. The problem is...

Twitter is NOT RSS

I’m sick of people touting that “RSS is dead” and Twitter is its replacement. Without RSS, Twitter would be nowhere. Do you think I manually post Tweets when I add new blog posts? No, I stick my RSS feed into TwitterFeeder and let it do that work. I guarantee you CNN and the New York Times and CNet and all of those other big players are doing pretty much the same thing.

There isn’t anything wrong with pushing your RSS feed to Twitter, I’m just saying that RSS is the backbone of Twitter’s syndication model. Without RSS, Twitter has nothing for syndicated content.

The thing is though, my RSS reader is considerably more versatile than Twitter. I can group my feeds. I can selectively mark posts read as I go through them, I can mark them to return to later easily. Twitter has none of this. Every morning I get up and I run through 200 or so RSS posts over the course of a half hour. I don’t read all of them but I read a decent chunk. With Twitter, if a Tweet isn’t in the top 20-40 Tweets, I don’t ever see it. Who knows what decent information or link I’ve missed. The thing is...

I Don't Care About What I Missed

I can't. I used to but trying to keep up with every single Tweet of all of my followers got unwieldy after I passed 30 people I was following. Now I have lots of interesting people but some of them are in other countries so the majority of their tweets are from overnight feeds or I have a dozen or so News sources all of which I have to be in the right mindset to skim through the links.

The most frustrating time is when I check Twitter from my phone and I see a decent looking link. Ideally, I'd be able to mark these Tweets on my phone so I can come back to them on the PC since reading links on my phone sucks. The only process I have is to follow the link then email the article back to myself.

I guess what it comes down to is Twitter just isn't scaling well. I mentioned earlier that they weren't innovating. That's what I mean by not scaling. When it was little and you followed a handful of people it was great. Now that everyone is getting on it and there's no decent filtering mechanisms to work with it's just flat out unwieldy.

The Celebrity Death Phenomenon

2009-09-15T07:08:00.000-07:00

Patrick Swayze is the latest. Michael Jackson was the biggest. There was also Billie Mays, Bea Arthur, Dom Deluise, Farrah Fawcett, Ed MaHon, John Hughes, Les Paul, Ted Kennedy, and countless other lesser known celebrities have died this year. Celebrities die all the time though, why does this year feel different?

People are starting to make a big deal about how these celebrities are dropping dead left and right. I have a few ideas about why this phenomenon seems like a huge deal. It’s essentially a convergence of several otherwise incidental concepts.

First off, possibly the biggest deal, the heavy penetration of Social Media. In the past, some celebrity dies, maybe the morning radio show is talking about it, maybe you spot an article in a tabloid newspaper while waiting to check out, basically, news just didn’t travel as fast.

Now we’ve got news that travels literally at the speed of light. I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, because I’m not and I don’t care, but I was probably one of the first hundred or so people to tweet “Michael Jackson is dead”. Why? Because the television station I work for shows TMZ. TMZ broke the story on their website and immediately sent out an email telling us we needed to get a reefed of the show with “breaking news”. I get these sorts of emails all the time. The point though is that almost instantly, (in fact before it was confirmed because TMZ was being ambitious), this news had gone across some news desk, out into email, out to my Twitter and the spreading across my web of followers. This same stem of information was spewing from hundreds of other sources as well.

Within maybe, 15 minutes, essentially everyone would know that Michael Jackson had died. The news spreads through Twitter and Facebook and personal IMs and IRC and across the news. You don’t have to wait until you hear about it on the news or the Morning zoo, then wait till you drive to work to discuss it with your coworkers. It’s all nearly instantaneous.

But the social web isn’t the only factor. Look at that list of names. When were these people stars (for the most part)? The 1980s and 1990s. The 1980s saw a massive increase in the use of Cable Television. It also saw the advent of the VHS VCR, allowing us to watch these people over and over. It saw the advent of pop culture pushers like MTV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV), E!, People Magazine (actually the 70s), and in general, it was the rise of the concept of “celebrity”.

Previously we had the concept of “The Star”. These would be people like The Beatles or Frank Sinatra, or John Wayne. They were popular icons of entertainment but for the most part our exposure to them was limited. Suddenly we had television out the wazoo and magazines telling us every detail of the glamorous life of Hollywood.

Move ahead 10-20 years and throw in the internet. Now you can find entire websites dedicated to telling us every tiny detail of the lives of people like Paris Hilton or Angelina Jolie. Every act, no matter how insignificant is documented by at least a dozen obsessive fans.

Also, keeping with the time frame of popularity in the 80s, Many of these people were already 30-40 years old during their heydays in the 1970s and 1980s. That was nearly 30 years ago, these celebrities are now in their 60s and 70s. Traditionally, people in these sorts of positions don’t tend to lead the most cautious lives when it comes to keeping up their health. Many of these celebrities are simply reaching the point when they are ready to kick the bucket. His coupled with the increase in the number of celebrities hanging out in the public eye for longer periods of time makes it seem like there are a lot of people dying all at once.

The end result is that this increase in popular celebrity deaths isn’t something that is going to go away any time soon. I predict that it’s only going to get “worse” as the year rolls on and increase even more so in the years to come.

A New Type of Star or Fifteen Minutes of Fame on Steroids?

2009-08-19T13:41:00.000-07:00

There’s a list going around about the top 100 Search Terms Used by Kids. Granted, these are kids, but there’s some interesting insight into the world and possibly the future of stardom when the list is examined.

Let’s just list the top ten…

1. YouTube
2. Google
3. Facebook
4. Sex
5. MySpace
6. Porn
7. Yahoo
8. Michael Jackson
9. Fred
10. eBay

Ok, the appearance of “sex” and “Porn” are probably worth a while article on their own, but the focus here is number nine. “Fred”. Fred is a kid who makes silly videos on Youtube where he talks like a chipmunk. I only know this because my own kids have watched his videos. He’s number 9, just below Michael Jackson and one of only two actual people on the list. Obviously Fred is “kind of a big deal” if he almost beat out the “King of Pop whom has been all over the news lately. In fact, Michael’s death is probably the only reason Fred DIDN’T bet him.

If you look at the complete list (here), you’ll notice that Fred did beat Miley Cyrus (in both Hannah and not Hannah forms), as well as Taylor Swift among other celebs. These are of course Celebs with the millions of dollars in publicity surrounding them. You can buy Hannah Montana T-shirts and Posters and dolls at Wal-Mart, you can’t buy Fred anything, anywhere (probably, at least not in Wal-Mart).

The thing to consider though is that in a month or two, Fred probably won’t even be on the list while Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers likely will. So while Viral media online is quick to hit hard, it ends to have low staying power. Sure, some of us nut balls will still going around saying “All Your Base Are Belong to Us” or watching Chocolate Rain, but how many other internet memes have been completely forgotten?

One little side note, Number 21, Norton Safety Minder. I find this rather interesting though I can understand why it’s on there. Basically, parents are starting to wise up and use this sort of filter program, and the kids are trying to find a way to break it.

The Complete list can be found here.

http://onlinefamilyinfo.norton.com/articles/schools_out.php

As Old Traditions Die....

2009-07-28T07:59:00.000-07:00

I came across two interesting articles this morning. They are a bit related though maybe not quite as obviously as one might expect.

First is this article here, which talks about how no one writes in Cursive anymore. I've never much looked into the history of handwriting but I know that I personally don't write much manuscript style. I pretty much use block print for everything. I even went through a phase during high school where I wrote everything in all caps because I liked the look better. the most interesting thing I didn't know in this article was that script predates "print". Not "print" as in news paper print but print as in "not cursive".

This makes sense though. If things started to decline when books came about, then it also makes sense that it would decline even more with computers and iPhones. I personaly don't care for script because it varies too much from person to person. I used to get irritated when my mom would write script notes and I couldn't read her handwriting.

While we're on the subject of traditions the internet is killing off, here's another article that has to do with the dying Postal Service.

They mention of course the rise in email and cell phones and text messaging of course. There are some other factors to possibly consider. I personally, don't care much for holidays and don't sent out too many random cards. I find often that some fo these underlying sentiments are reflected in others. So I guess the point is there may also simply be a decline in "extra/pointless mail". Also people are so sick of junk mail which likely isn't very effective anyway so that industry is declining or moving online as well.

Then there is a third article from a few days ago. More of the results fo a survey from the website Lifehacker.com. This has to do with a more modern "tradition". In the past, it was always beleived that desktop based email was grossly superior to web based email. In the past, this was true.

However modern programming techniques have caused the interface and design for webmail to grow by leaps and bounds. Yahoo Mail looks very much like Outlook Express and Gmail's own slick interface isn't too far off. According to the results of thier survey, Web Based email is on the rise.

Now, there is a bit of an issue with this survey. Lifehacker tends to promote web based email and portability in lifestyle, whcih means it's audience is more likely to be "into" these sorts of things. Still, I used to tell people they wanted to use Outlook Express or the Netscape Messenger. Now I just recommend Gmail. I don't use any sort of desktop basd email other than an ocasionall backup.

It's interesting to watch old tradition die to be replaced by new ones.

Everything's Amazing & Nobody's Happy

2009-05-27T07:49:00.000-07:00

Watch more SpikedHumor videos on AOL Video

Hilariously True.

One Year of the Samsung Blackjack II

2009-05-11T07:23:00.000-07:00

I’ve felt inspired a bit. Inspired by my phone and how much I love it. You can keep your iPhones, I like my Blackjack II. Roughly one year ago I decided to bit and upgrade from a basic cell phone to a Smartphone with data. This came just before Botcon which was perfect because it allowed me to do some live blogging from the con. Fact of the matter is, my hotel Wifi never worked properly and this was my only internet connection for the entire weekend. Not that it was a huge deal, half the people I keep contact with online were at the con anyway.

This isn’t about Botcon though, this is about my Blackjack and how much my use of the thing has grown and evolved. Initially I mostly used to just for email and Twitter. I still use it for Twitter and email but I’ve added so much more. It works as a quick GPS and phone book with the Google Maps program. I use this anytime I am out of time and want to find a particular restaurant.

More importantly, I’m not using it as my primary media player. My Sansa (which I won from chipchick.com) and loved bought it when it went through the washing machine. Truth be told it might have survived except I opened it to help dry it out and then proceeded to accidentally crack the screen when I reclosed it. Oops…

Anyway, so I decided that instead of burning hundred dollars on a new player, I’d spend ten on a headphone adaptor for my Blackjack. It works great. I can sync it with Windows Media Player, the interface is all right. It remembers my place in Podcasts. I can make play lists.

Even better, I can now Scrobble my plays to Last.fm. Something my Sansa certainly could not do. Also the wifi allows me to stream internet radio using a program called Mundu Radio.

Having mobile internet access is also great on it’s own right. I can check my bank online, I can read and post to message boards anywhere. I can blog from my phone easily as well.

In general, this whole mobile internet concept is certainly great. The only real downside I can see is that the price is a little steep. For my $30-$40 data plan I use maybe 2 gigs of bandwidth per month. I have set up my phone for Laptop tethering but I don’t have a laptop (currently) to tether and supposedly they will detect that and slap you with some enormous over charge. Still, if you enjoy the internet, I highly recommend getting a data plan and smart phone.

Cory Doctorow on DRM

2009-05-06T11:25:00.000-07:00

This video is long (like 25-30 minutes) but it's extremely interesting. Also it's a little too wide for my Blog format.

Creating My TwitterBot

2009-04-29T09:54:00.000-07:00

I must admit, I’ve been inspired somewhat by Adam Curry and his crazy NoAgendaStream bot in this quest. I like the idea of using Twitter for “something more”.

So I’ve set about to create my own Twitter bot. I already have a web server that is always on, and now that server has it’s own Twitter account at twitter.com/Selphiebot. At the moment, it doesn’t do anything too exciting. Actually, as I write this it does nothing. I’m writing this sort of as I go along with the set up, partially just as a note taking device.

The other inspiration for this is my desire to easily download embedded files by putting the URL from the code. My browser always wants to auto play them and there generally isn’t a link to right click and “save as”.

My first goal on this note will be to enable Selphie to attach to wget and download files that I feed it via direct message. I’m also going to set it up to output the server’s uptime every 24 hours, mostly so Selphie has something to say. Heck, maybe I’ll go ahead and set it up to output every hour.

The first hurdle I’ve run into is that Selphie’s version of Ubuntu (Gutsy) went out of service ten days ago and I can’t get apt-get to work or any updates. So as I write this now, Selphie updates itself in the background to Hardy.

Here’s what I see needing to do, I plan to use Curl &Bash Scripts which I have zero experience with. I want to set up Curl to check periodically for new @ tweets. When it sees a new tweet, it should parse out what the @tweet says. Initially it’ll just say (more or less) if(URL)then(download).

I’ve already got thoughts for other options. I’m thinking if(torrent)then(OpenWithTorrentProgram). Also maybe if(youtube)then(DownloadWithListentoYoutube.com). For now, I need to simple download any URL passed to it with @ or DM. For now, the bot is public but if spam starts building up I’ll make it private. Alternately, I’ll set the bot to only work if I send into to it.

These are all future plans. For now I‘ve got it set up to tweet the uptime of the server as read from a text file. I’ve been having some trouble getting the scheduler to work properly unfortunately.

I’ve also gotten the basics of a preliminary conditional tweet system worked out. The next step will be to set the bot up to parse out the tweets it receives. That is however a post for another day. I’ve let this one stew long enough.

5 Problems I have With Apple & Macs

2009-04-23T08:51:00.000-07:00

I almost got caught up in it. The flurry of fun and publicity Apple has been getting for the last year or so. Market share for Macs is at an all time high, people are complaining about Vista. The iPhone is all over the place.

Fortunately I’ve come to my senses. I will say that yes, I am a “Windows guy”. I’ve been a Windows guy forever, and in the sense of Windows I literally mean “Forever” since I used Windows 1.0 or 1.1 or whatever the version number on the first release actually was.

The point is, I might be a little biased. On the other hand, I have “given Mac and OSX a try and I use Linux pretty regularly on a server and a laptop. Also people who compare Windows to Mac aren’t really comparing Apples to Apples since one is an OS and one is a platform.

anyway, here are some issues I have with MAC and OSX.

1 – Macs are More Expensive

You can argue what you want about build quality and design and stability, they are still really pricey. You can generally expect to pay 4-5 times as much for a MAC vs PC with comparable specs. If you’re consuming parts in an upgrade from a previous PC (such as drives or power supplies or software) to build a new one, this margin increases even more. There have been many charts and layouts regarding the “Apple Tax”.

2 – Macs aren’t as Easy/Cheap to Build/Upgrade

When I hear people mention how much it costs to buy replacement/upgrade parts for MACs I want to laugh at the fraction it costs me to buy the same part for my PC. Not to mention the options and compatibility jut isn’t there overall. It’s effectively impossible to “build a MAC from the ground up”.

On the Stability issue. I have no idea where this argument comes from. I have run many many Windows machines with very little to zero stability problems. Several years ago, when I first started using XP I used to brag because I had run it continuously without reboot for like 6 months. I’m pretty sure the reason I had to reboot was I wanted to install some program that required it. Even this aspect of the install process is going by the wayside in the newer versions of Windows.

3 – MACs Don’t Play Games

Ok, yeah, SOME larger release games are starting to get MAC releases. Also I’m sure there are complicated hacks to get some popular older games working on a MAC. Still, not everything is an option or available. If I’m buying a machine that is going to be used mostly for web surfing I’m going to get a Linux based Netbook for a tenth of the cost.

4 – Apple is Pushy with it’s Software

Back in the day, RealMedia was a pretty big player in the streaming media business. Before flash and Youtube, if you wanted to stream something, you were probably using Real Player. the problem as Real Player was a bloated piece of garbage that came coupled with a bunch of adware and insisted on throwing icons all over your desktop and Start Menu and Taskbar and likely in every Folder in your computer.

Apple’s Quicktime is/was almost as bad at the time. If I could avoid it, I’d not install these programs. Inevitably though someone would put out a .mov and I’d be forced to get Quicktime.

Jump to modern day. iTunes is a popular music organizing program. I kind of like iTunes. However I’ve recently decided to boycott it completely on my home PCs. I only keep it around at work for it’s great Podcast integration.

Why would I avoid this? For starters, Windows Media Player is much better than it used to be and I prefer it. Secondly, the Apple Updater keeps trying to push “Updates” for software that isn’t even installed on my PC. I don’t want Safari or Bonjour installed. I’m happy with IE and Firefox. Stop tying to “Update” my PC with it. These programs inevitably all fight to be the default which just get to be an annoying hassle. Quicktime is TERRIBLE about taking over file types from preferred players.

5 – MAC Users are “Kinda Snobby”.

Back in high school and early college, ten years or so ago, I used to go around trolling Linux snobs. It was quite a bit of fun, they were always self righteous jerks who couldn’t understand why the masses couldn’t see the beauty of running everything in a terminal. I spent many many years of my computer life in a DOS terminal. Trust me, GUI is better. It’s not the most efficient, but it’s better, especially for easy comprehension by a wider amount of people. I can look at a bunch of jargon and commands and code and see what’s going on but most people just don’t function that way. Fortunately for Linux, this is changing.

MAC users on the other hand tend to be snobby for the sake of snobbyness. They have a more expensive machine and therefore must be better somehow. Also Steve Jobs is the second coming. I’m not saying all MAC users are snobs, but the most vocal of them certainly are. Let’s face it, my PC does more than your MAC and Steve Jobs is an eccentric nutball control freak.

BONUS 6 (originally #4) – Vista Doesn’t “Suck”

Not so much a smack against MAC but more a pro for Windows. Despite claims, Vista is in fact really good. Windows 7 will be even better.

Sure, Apple is all the rave these days and they are making money hand over fist but much of that money is driven by the iPhone. PC sales are down all around and with everyone broke I really don’t see the MAC being able to keep up with it’s previous popularity with it's excessive expense. Sure it looks shinny but after a while you realize how limited it is.

Time to Blog

2009-04-01T08:23:00.000-07:00

I really need to get off my ass and just write. I like doing it, I always just end up putting it off until a topic becomes irrelevant.

I have this folder in my bookmark’s toolbar called “Blog Topics”. If I find an article or topic I want to blog, I put a bookmark to it here. This way, in theory, when I want to write something, I just pop this up and pick what’s next.

The key is actually motivating one’s self to do this action. Every once in a while I’ll purge a few articles out that have become irrelevant. In the image to the side there is the silly “PETA Sexiest Vegan” vote that has been finished for a while.

Still, if I want to poke at PETA there is the whole “PETA Kills Animals” controversy going around now.

I tend to end up with this problem of “having too much to do”. Yeah, I could use say, my lunch hour to drum out a post every day.

Bu I also like messing with OpenSIM at lunch, or checking for new toys around town. Or just flat out getting out of the office so I don’t get roped into working through lunch.

Half the time I just end up pissing away the lunch hour at the park playing my DS instead of doing something more productive. Of course none of these things I’ve mentioned are really productive to anyone except my self.

Programming (Part 2)

2009-03-30T08:38:00.000-07:00

I promised a part two so here it is…

The first post can be found here.

As previously mentioned, my previous self taught programming experience involved BASIC and whatever the TI-85 uses. I had my first official taste of taught programming in College a couple of years after High School with C. My Engineering degree required I take “Programming for Engineers” which was basically C programming to solve iterative math problems. Most of the programs we did were by the book style involving arrays and graph style equations. The book for the course was actually two books and we only got through maybe one of them since Engineers aren’t computer programmers.

This was fun but at the time I was rather busy with school so I didn’t to doo much beyond what was required for class. A couple semesters later however was different. I finished my Associates in 2.5 years meaning I finished in December. I wanted to start the Bachelor’s track in the Fall since it makes all of the class schedules work out better so I had a semester to kill. So in addition to working a whole bunch, I took two classes just for fun, Basic electronics and Computer Science 101.

CS101 was essentially C++ Programming for beginners. There are some keys here. I’ve had experience with C, which is very similar to C++, especially at this level of programming. Also The TI-85 language is reasonably similar to C at this level of programming. Basically, I’ve had a decent amount of experience at this. The end result was that I excelled in this class, I did better than everyone else (most of which were actual Computer Science Majors). The teacher also set up a side class for whomever wanted to attend learning some visual windows based elements.

The fun was in the larger assignments though. Most of the quick assignments didn’t leave much room for creativity. “Mr. Shopkeeper needs a program that will calculate 7% sales tax for his sales. Make a program that takes the total bill in and outputs the total with tax” doesn’t leave much room for expansion.

The larger assignments were all simple games with variable elements that allowed for much more fun. We also got more time to work on these, maybe a week or two. I could easily code the basic assignment in a day leaving me, well, a week or two, to code “extras”.

This is where I created my first three “real games”. Note the scare quotes. Truth is, these are all rather buggy as evidenced by the fact that they don’t like unexpected input and are generally pretty crummy.

So I present to you, Tug of War, Pearl Diver, and Let’s Win at the Races. All of these titles were given out by the class as was the basic premise of the game.

The parts that I added was anything graphical, even if it is ASCII graphics. The requirement was only for a text based input and output. Ok, yeah, it’s pretty simple, big deal.

I’ve done a few other projects that never got completed, the most ambitious was a PC based sequel to my previously mentioned Dragon Quest series. This one was somewhat Zork like with a text based interface only it added a one on one random battle system like Final Fantasy and a level up system similar to Final Fantasy 2 where skills build as you use them and class is based on your skills. I got as far as completing the map (without descriptions). So you can wander around an empty world in it’s current state. One day I hope to get back to it.

My other self taught programming project involves HTML, if you want to call it programming. A better word is probably “coding”. Back in 1998 when I first started building webpages I started in MS Frontpage. I noticed there was a lot of flack for people who used Frontpage so I bought this big fat HTML book (HTML Complete, $20, great value). So I taught myself basic coding of HTML. These days I don’t use this skill as much since blogs make things much much easier but this skill does come in hand a lot when I’m trying to manually tweak my Wordpress templates.

Programming is something I enjoy when I have time though my main complaint is always finding a decent free compiler. The only free C++ complier I’ve ever found was by Borland and it is absolutely TERRIBLE for user friendlyness. I plan to do some additional programming in the near future for fun it’s mostly a matter of finding time. I’d love tog et into more visual element and make actual graphics and program that run in Windows. Also there are quite a few more modern languages out there now.

Anyway, if I build anything new, you’ll be surely seeing it here.

Creating Virtual Land

2009-03-24T07:20:00.000-07:00

A while ago, I remember hearing about his project, Open SIM. This was probably a year or more ago, sometime when it first showed up. I remember installing it and messing around with it for a few minutes and then abandoning it. It was very early, there was no persistence to the world and the avatars didn’t even pose properly.

Hmm, actually looking back this may have been a different project.

Anyway, I like Second Life but I dislike the high fees involved if you want to own any land. I went through a stint last year of renting a series of places and I’ll just say, there is nothing more liberating in game than knowing you always have a landing place with your stuff in world.

This is part of why I like to support Open movements in Second Life. Here’s hoping one day I can hook my personal SIM up to the main grid and access it with my main account. It’ll have to be private for security and bandwidth reasons but the ability to have an entire region for free is a very compelling idea.

I’d been setting up a PC (named Eiko) to use as a media center to play ROMs and Hulu on my TV. After my primary PC bit the dust Eiko became the temporary primary PC. Turns out Eiko doesn’t play Hulu very well so I’ve scraped that project for a while.

Since I now have an extra PC, I’ve decided to set up my own independent SIM. At the very least it’ll be a good testing ground for textures and models. It costs me 10L apiece to upload textures even if they end up not working out. Not a prospect I really like to go with.

The initial set up is pretty simple. I simply followed this guide. Set by step, word for word, it’s very straight forward though you don’t actually need the visual MySQL interface unless you plan to do more than the basic set up.

This set up gives the newly created personal world “persistence”. This means that when I log off, close the sim, even shut down the PC, everything will return when it’s all powered up again. Plus it works, I’ve tested it.

There is a catch to the set up I’m running though. This PC sits on the floor behind my TV with no monitor or Keyboard. All interface is done with LogMeIn or VNC. It wasn’t too hard to figure out that I needed to replace localhost in “-loginuri http://localhost:9000/” with the network IP of that PC from my main machine in order to connect. Still, I landed an odd issue upon connecting where it was connected but nothing worked or showed up beyond the log in screen.

Turns out there is a file on the server that need to be adjusted at c:/Program Files/opensim/regions/default.xml . The line “external_host_name” needs to match the machine’s local IP.

The next trick is to get outside world access since most of my available time to mess around in this virtual land is on my lunch hour. I know how to set up my firewall but I wanted a simpler solution. This is where LogMeIn’s Hamachi service comes in. Hamachi allows you to create a virtual VPN tunnel using software. I already use Hamachi on all three machines. So, after altering the “external_host_name” to be the Hamachi IP address and changing the new SL shortcut’s IP, i should be able to connect through this VPN.

And sure enough, everything works out fine.

My next job will be to populate this world with some nice set pieces and textures, but that’s part of another future story…