| Medidtations on a certain Kung Fu Panda |
[Nov. 17th, 2008|01:55 pm] |
|
Is it wrong that upon hearing the version of Kung Fu Fighting with the rewritten lyrics used for Kung Fu Panda, that I really like the new version despite the... well. Disney-esque santization it's gone through? I mean, it's probably in no small part because I really like Cee-Lo Green, (of Gnarls Barkley fame) but. |
|
|
| Go Sharks! Wooooo~ |
[Apr. 25th, 2008|05:09 pm] |
Linux is dead to me. Take your pick of the following:
*I killed my Linux install.
*I got rid of *ubuntu and moved to Gentoo.
*Windows XP3 finally is coming.
*I killed my Windows partition.
*All of the above.
So that's out of the way.
On the other hand, It's NHL playoffs time! =D
Sharks beat the Flames in seven, blah, blah, old news.
What I've been doing in the meantime, though, is looking over the teams that went to the golf courses for the summer, most notably, the LA Kings and the Phoenix Coyotes.
Especially the Coyotes.
While LA is on the decline, headed down the slippery slope to bottom-feeder-hood, (Which has just been one thing after another for them.) Phoenix was doing some very impressive things near the end of the regular season. Achievements that both teams might accomplish are diminished by the fact that they are playing in probably THE toughest division to play in, with three teams that consistently get to the playoffs, and one of The Great One's former teams.
But I'm fairly confident that if Phoenix can continue their steady growth from here until the beginning of next season, they won't be on the bottom anymore.
Actually, I think that if Phoenix were matched up into any other division, they'd be in the playoffs, easily. Each team plays every other team in their division eight times in a season, and having to play 24 TOUGH games isn't exactly conducive to winning.
But hey, That's Hockey.
But while LA has been slumping and was stuck at DEAD LAST in the Western Conference, Phoenix has pulled themselves up to break .500, moving up to 12th in the conference. It's not much, but it's significant. This next season promises to be tough for everyone in the Pacific Division. Can the Pacific Division support four playoff contenders? Maybe. The Atlantic Division this year had four.
Regardless, I'm looking forward to watching how teams deal with a Coyotes team that isn't so much of a pushover anymore. |
|
|
| The Linux Chronicles, pt 2. |
[Aug. 8th, 2007|04:46 am] |
| [ | Processor load: |
| |  tired | ] |
| [ | Streaming: |
| | Linkin Park - Bleed It Out | ] |
Where was I? Oh, right. Things started to go downhill.
Now, Linux works differently from Linux. Windows has it's graphical interface integrated into the OS as one cohesive unit, whereas Linux primarily operates on a text-based medium, with the option for an external graphical interface to be installed on top of it. And naturally, with such a thing, there are choices.
I made the choice to go with KDE, arguably one of the most popular "desktop managers" as they are called. Why? Because I like to use a program called "Yakuake", which lets me bring down a Konsole window, much like how I would in, say, Counterstrike., by whacking the tilde key. (Konsole is roughly analagous to the DOS-lite command prompts in modern versions of Windows.)
Programs with a graphical interface, sadly, tend to be written for one particular desktop manager or another. And while they might not misbehave *too* badly when transplanted over to a desktop manager that it wasn't meant to run in, sometimes problems can occur. So a-KDE-ing I went.
....I have found, that Kicker is a pain in the ass.
Remember how I said desktop managers run on top of Linux, hooked into it, not integrated into it? Sadly, so are individual parts of the desktop manager itself. Kicker is the equivalent of that grey bar at the bottom of your desktop in Windows. And it would disappear. And never come back.
This combined with the problems that I had getting any sort of nvidia drivers to work with Kubuntu drove me batty.
Your Score: Nemesis 33% Extroversion, 66% Intuition, 100% Emotiveness, 42% Perceptiveness
You are a normally quiet person with very strong convictions and a marked activist streak. You have a clearly defined sense of right and wrong, and you like seeing people punished for their transgressions. You are Nemesis, goddess of punishment. You are a champion for the defenseless, you love poetic justice and, if karmic retribution doesn't have its say, then you'll have yours. You are astute, rarely fooled, and idealistic.
|
|
|
| The Linux Chronicles, pt 1. |
[Aug. 6th, 2007|08:57 am] |
| [ | Processor load: |
| |  F{beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!} | ] |
| [ | Streaming: |
| | Ray Charles - Born to Lose | ] |
It's no secret that I, as well as millions of other people in this world, hate Vista, and hate it with a passion. It was a few weeks ago that I decided, by jove, that I wasn't going to take it anymore! And that I was going to head on over to Linux, before XP support ended.
Now, you have to understand a few things here.
Granted, yes. I have used Linux before, but mostly in a GUI-based environment, (KDE is... *was* my preference. More on that later.) with minimal use of the command-line.
I've been saying over, and over, and over, and fucking over to people, the full extent of my Linux knowledge can be summed up by:
1) Insert Knoppix disc in drive.
2) Boot computer.
3) Use gpart.
4) ????
5) Profit.
Quite literally, too, since I was using it to recover thrashed partitions on hard drives, and the like, and make a few bucks on the side.
Don't get me wrong. I've been poking around with open source software and Linux for at least a year and a half, and was confident if I could get a GUI-based system up and running, I wouldn't miss Windows at all, expecially if I could get Cedega (Windows emulator for games) to work. After all, I'd already replaced Microsoft Office with OpenOffice, Photoshop with GIMP, and was already using a free firewall and AV to begin with. So off I went.
First thing I did was go through my computer and pruned. I wanted to bring down the amount of extraneous files I had. Between cleaning out my old downloads, remnants from old programs, duplicated documents, old archives, anime I no longer watched, music I didn't like, I wound up with an extra twenty gigs across two hard drives.
Next was the defrag. Yes, I know, neither of these steps have anything to do with an actual Linux installation, but they're still important anyways, mostly since 1) I was going to partition my drive, I wanted to have the largest contiguous amount of space possible to do it with, and 2) I later found out, that I was going to have to specify an actual swap drive, until such time that I could make Linux use a swap file. Ask your friendly neighborhood Linux Geek what these are!
And then downloaded Kubuntu. Now, you'd like me to start spewing horror stories here, wouldn't you? You want me to scare you away from Linux, further relegating it to the realm of They Who Know What Non-Geeks Were Not Meant To Know, wouldn't you?
I'm not. (K)ubuntu, I was pleasantly surprised to find, ran, looked, and felt very much like Windows, except... better. Ubuntu seemed to load faster, run better, and seemed as though I hadn't left Windows at all. I now see why Dell decided to go with Ubuntu as their distro of choice when beginning to offer PCs with Linux installed on them. I highly recommend Ubuntu in all of its flavors for anyone who is not intimately familiar with Linux, and wishes to migrate over to a system, without any special needs. (And by "special needs", I mean gaming, not accessibility.)
And that's where things started to go downhill. |
|
|
| I TOLD YOU SO! |
[Jun. 24th, 2007|11:35 pm] |
| [ | Processor load: |
| |  blah | ] |
| [ | Streaming: |
| | Fort Minor - Believe Me | ] |
Behold, Stalkerati.
It scans Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites for personally identifiable information, enabling you to investigate people based on who they say they are.
Don't say I didn't warn you, because I did. |
|
|
| Okay, enough stupid. For now. |
[Jun. 4th, 2007|07:25 pm] |
| [ | Processor load: |
| |  nerdy | ] |
| [ | Streaming: |
| | Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train | ] |
For now though, I just *have* to ask.
Korean MMOs.
My god, they proliferate like hypersexual bunnies on..... on....... $drug.
(*facepalm* God I am such a nerd.)
Anyways. We all know about WoW, DDO, LotRO, EQs 1 and 2, ACs 1 and 2, EVE, AO, DAoC, and FFXI, which in itself is a mind-boggling array of games spanning the entire gamut of genres, but...
Have you people freaking *seen* the list of Korean-developed and/or published MMOs? And how pervasive they are? A large percentage of which are FREE?! They span from:
City of Heroes/Vilains. LineageI, II, and III. Ragnarok Online. FlyFF. Guild Wars, and it's iterations. Tabula Rasa(when it comes out), Auto Assault, MapleStory, Rakion, Gunbound, Gunz, Granado Espada(when it comes out stateside), Pangya, ArchLord, SpaceCowboy Online, Tales of Pirates....
....y'know what? Come back after you've grabbed a drink, this could take a while.
(In the meantime, is it just me or are the ONLY MMOs that are being actively developed these days the Korean ones?) |
|
|
| The Curse of IT. |
[May. 22nd, 2007|07:14 pm] |
| [ | Processor load: |
| | bitchy | ] |
| [ | Streaming: |
| | The sound of cars whizzing by on the freeway, two blocks away. | ] |
Being the IT guy in the family sucks.
Can I get an "A-MEN!?"
If you know even *anything* remotely about how to fix any form of electronics, people within your family will, invariable, seek your aid whenever things break. And when things break in this day and age of technology, it ain't pretty.
I'm not going to rehash the horror stories. You can go out to any disgruntled geek's blog and read their accounts there.
What *I* am about to hash out, on the other hand, is that high-school students need to have basic computer education, how to freaking use their goddamn computers.
Teenagers need to be taught that regular computer maintenance is not an option, but is a requirement. Just like an oil change.
Why the emphasis on teenagers? Well, in the back of my head, I'm hoping that the lessons taught to the kids will probably filter upwards a little bit, to the parents, but I'm not counting on it. My parents and I have never communicated well in terms of technology, (or anything else, for that matter) and never will, aside from, "This computer suits your needs. Buy it."
I'm just hoping for a future when every person knows how to put together and take apart a computer, do basic setup and maintenance, just as they would riding a bike. |
|
|
| Don't Be Evil. |
[May. 17th, 2007|08:16 pm] |
| [ | Processor load: |
| | Bzuh? | ] |
| [ | Streaming: |
| | Eagle Eye Cherry - Save Tonight | ] |
Google has revamped their front page.
I.... I'm not sure I like this at *all*. To fine my formerly spartan and snappy-loading home page with the categories moved up to the upper-left-hand corner, and a tastefully understated blue line delineating between the categories, email login, and the rest of the search functions? On *my* internet?
Blasphemy, I say.
(Edit: And the first one of you to finish the rest of that overused meme gets their ankles chewed on.) |
|
|
| On Security, part 2. |
[May. 14th, 2007|03:59 pm] |
| [ | Processor load: |
| | geeky | ] |
| [ | Streaming: |
| | JXL vs. Elvis Presley - Little Less Conversation | ] |
I found out the other day that a friend had been rejected for a job because the employer had found their MySpace page, and the photos on it.
....Yeah, I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Keep no personally-identifiable information on the internet.
Least of all your *real names*, you damn MySpace pinheads!
I've related this story before. To demonstrate to a friend what they were doing with their Myspace, Using Google, and nothing *but* Google, I deconstructed a random Myspace member's identity, such that I now know their name, present, and two prior places of residence, a post-office box, and several phone numbers presently or previously associated with the name, and the last four digits of their Social Security number.
While I'm not about to advocate disconnecting your internet, curling up into a little ball, and hiding in the corner, it still stands to show that as search technology gets better and better, so increases the amount of relevant information in regards to search queries.
Fortunately for me, somebody else uses the username knalty, one Kurt Nalty, instructor at Austin Community College, in electronics engineering. Not to mention Kevin H. Nalty, whose birthday was two days ago, on May 12th. And Kathleen Nalty, professor at the University of Denver law school. And the list goes on.
Do yourself a favor. Google yourself, right now, using as many of your previous aliases as you can remember, find them, and strip out any and all personally identifiable information from it, *if you can*. By and large, the large majority of the masses on the internet do not need to reveal who they are, but there are a few, like my much-beloved Calc, f'rex, who needs to, in order to keep his business running.
But by Bob, not everyone needs to see what you were doing in Tijuana during Spring Break back in College. |
|
|
| Testing stuff. |
[May. 10th, 2007|12:19 pm] |
| [ | Processor load: |
| | apathetic | ] |
| [ | Streaming: |
| | Nanne Grönvall - Håll om mig | ] |
I'm giving the ad-supported version of LJ for a while, just to see.
It is here that I will make my own advertisement:
Get Firefox. |
|
|
| On internet security. |
[May. 10th, 2007|01:13 am] |
| [ | Processor load: |
| | aggravated | ] |
| [ | Streaming: |
| | Foo Fighters - End Over End | ] |
It should be known that I'm a stickler for privacy and security when it comes to things that I do on the internet. If I do anything, I insist that people refer to me by username, rather than my real name, even if you're my best childhood friend from the town I grew up in.
There are legitimate reasons to keep one's identity a secret. It's bad enough that you have to expose your real name, address, and phone number to a publicly searchable directory when registering a domain, but to have my name thrown out and bandied like so many letters? Nuh-uh, son. Think again.
It's also one of the reasons why:
a) I am deathly allergic to Wi-Fi of any variety, and even more so in corporate or small-business environment. Not only is it murder to ensure perfect coverage over a given area, but still is suicide to secure, even the WAPs are on the outside, and you require users to VPN into the traditional, wired network. With a wired network, the only dang way you're going to get in is via the Internet, and that's a big enough security risk as it is.
2) I never drink. There is a history of alcoholism in my family, and I don't intend to ever start. Never ye mind that it's a whole lot harder to keep your behaviour and private information secure when you're drunk.
C) I am going to kill ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ignitedcrisis. |
|
|
| Hmm de hmm hmm hmm..... |
[May. 8th, 2007|02:11 pm] |
| [ | Processor load: |
| |  bouncy | ] |
| [ | Streaming: |
| | The Protomen - Unrest In The House Of Light | ] |
So. It's Tuesday. Do you know where your Webwolf is?
Presumably not. I would hate to think that any of you *actually* worry that much about me. o.o;
And I'd find it just a little creepy to boot. o.0;;;;;
Regardless, I must share to you one of the most awesome things I have encountered in many a year: The Megaman story, retold in ROCK OPERA form, in a dystopian future, ruled over by the evil dictator, Wily. Hell, just the Big Brother-esque "We Will Keep You Safe" posters with Met-themed stormtroopers ALONE is worth it. =D
!
!!
!!!!!!!!
<3
I feel oh-so-dirty to link you to their myspace, but it *is* tastefully done (as tastefully as myspaces can be, which ain't sayin' much, dontchaknow), and their band page is undergoing a redesign, so:
Link to myspace. Unrest In The House of Light, which I'm presently listening to, and Will Of One are must-listens. =D
Link to band page: At the moment, all you can access are the merch, the forums, myspace, and email, accessibly by very, very dark buttons next to the red "The Protomen" logo. Also, a countdown, revealing something new come the next month.
Additionally. I'm tinkering with the layout a bit. Still going to be grey, of course, but seeing as how I likes me my fixed-width fonts....
....Anyone know how many userpics we free users can use these days? |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[May. 3rd, 2007|12:54 pm] |
| [ | Streaming: |
| | Eric Clapton - Layla | ] |
I live.
I really have to quit practicing my LJ necromancy, damnit. I'm a NG Cleric, not a LE Necromancer!
Anyways. |
|
|
| Lest I forget. |
[Jul. 24th, 2006|05:23 am] |
| [ | Processor load: |
| | Someone-shoot-me-it's-hot | ] |
| [ | Streaming: |
| | Fort Minor, feat Bollo & SoB - Believe Me | ] |
Because someone wanted me to put up a birthday gift-list:
* Bluetooth headset.
* Eagle: The Making of an Asian-American President, complete set
* House M.D., seasons 1 and 2
* Stargate SG-1, complete set
* CamelBak H.A.W.G., or Havok. >.< Bought MINE just BEFORE they came out with these for 2006.
* Monopoly board game: Nintendo version
* Sandisk Sansa e280 MP3 player
* A flash cart for my DS
Edit: Stuff added. |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
