Older blog entries for Phoon (starting at number 9)

Real Life news.

I got the grade back from my last calculus test; I made 88%. It would have been much better if it weren't for stupid mistakes. Oh well, I still have a 94 average in the class.

In order to make an A in the class, I need 75% or better on the final. But the good news is, I can't fail this class. If I don't even go to the final, I still end up with a C.

My dad's painting the inside of the house, and the primer/sealer he's using smells strongly of ammonia. I've been spending a lot of time out of the house, and less time working on programs. At least I can study calculus outside.

U.S. Election news.

Supreme Court stops recounts; public yawns.

Project news.

I'm still not able to login as a developer at SourceForge. Bleh.

Actually, I got an email response from SourceForge. It's a form letter, explaining their situation. While I can certainly understand that updates would be "intermittent", it's been more than three days, with no change in my status. I'm sure I'm not the only person that's been added to a project recently.

What's stranger still is that my account page has me listed as having an account on shell1, even though my logins are rejected.

Still trying to figure out exactly what changes have to be made to the text passed to the Advogato module by ithought, when the user chooses "Convert to HTML". Currently, all it does is replace two consecutive newlines with <p>.

I would try to allow posting the entry title, but ithought doesn't pass the title to modules. I'll get with voltron on that one.

Other than that, no real news.

Musings on MSN Explorer.

I just got done helping the aforementioned friend's parents install MSN Explorer. For those of you who've never seen it, it's basically a drool-proof interface to "the everyday crash", and the prototype for the .NET interface, or so I'm told.

Isn't it interesting that Microsoft goes through all this effort creating user interface standards for Windows, then promptly throws them all out of the window when creating its own programs? "Rules for thee, but not for me." Does anyone remember MS Bob? Does anyone at Microsoft remember Bob?

Musings on Microsoft in general.

I realize now that Microsoft is really just following through on the plan popularized by Apple a decade or so ago: 'indoctrinate early and they'll be yours for life'. However, instead of reaching all the way back to elementary school, Microsoft is concentrating on high school and college. For example, I got MS Visual C++ 5.0 "Learning Edition" for free with a $50 college textbook, about a year and a half ago. I still have it, but it's collecting dust. (I sold the copy of MSVC++ 1.52 that was also included.)

Microsoft is also extremely effective at reaching out with the long arm of FUD and gripping the inexperienced users, especially the older folks. "If you use Linux / BSD / BeOS / MacOS / <anything else>, you won't be able to talk with your friends and family because they're all using Microsoft Windows! (And if those other operating systems *are* ever able to communicate with our stuff, we'll change! And the sheep, err, customers will buy more!)"

Musings on Quake III Arena.

id's recent analysis of Quake 3 for Linux isn't surprising. I admit, I have Quake 3 for WIndows, but that's because it was a gift. Besides, my TNT wouldn't work for OpenGL then anyway.

However, the problem still remains. My choices were: 1. Keep the gift and play in Windows, or 2. Return the gift and buy Quake 3 for Linux instead. If I had opted to buy the Linux version instead, I wouldn't be able to play Quake 3 at all, since at the time OpenGL support for TNTs in Linux was nearly nonexistant. Besides, I rebooted into Windows constantly to play Half-Life anyway, so what's the harm in having another Windows-only game?

Here's my idea. id should have included the Windows, Mac, and Linux binaries on the same CD, perhaps with notice that the Linux binary is officially unsupported, a la Unreal Tournament. I mean, when we buy a game, what are we paying for? We're paying for the game content, not the binaries. Binaries are replaceable.

Speaking of Unreal Tournament, why couldn't the manufacturer simply put the Linux binaries on that otherwise-useless second CD, anyway?

Well. Five calculus tests down, one to go. I either passed today's test with flying colors or failed miserably, because there were no places where I felt I had trouble.

voltron added me as an ithought developer. However, due to SourceForge's ongoing upgrade, I'm unable to commit sources. Right now I'm working on the "database not saved until exit" problem.

I would unlist myself from project amcl, because I haven't done anything to it for so long, but its creator, lobbin, isn't certified yet, and I don't know if the project page will be removed if no one's listed.

I'm going to go to a friend's parents's house and hopefully earn a couple of dollars teaching them to use (eww) Windows ME. Wish me luck.

Got done helping a fellow student with his C++ homework. I had to correct certain problems with his code that are directly due to the professor's lack of experience. The ineffectiveness of the professor shows through in various ways: tests that are incorrect, students who always initialize floats like:

float var = (float) 0.0;

just "because the professor said so", and so on. You'd think that colleges would have stricter hiring guidelines.

No work on ithought or amcl lately; it's kinda hard to work on an X app when you're SSH-ing to your home box from a lab computer. (Technically, I can get into trouble for having PuTTY on here. sssh, don't tell anyone.) Once I have time, the first thing I'll try to do is add support for telnet echo codes to amcl. (Right now, it'll echo your password. I hope to change that.)

I've been working on ithought, robbing valuable time better used for calculus study. But I digress.

Finally, I have the URL-encoding function for ithought's Advogato module working. Now, characters like + and % should be posted correctly.

Took the practice exams for the next chapter in my C++ class. The tests haven't been updated; the author still believes that numeric arrays (in this case, multidimensional numeric arrays) are always initialized to zero. I've personally tried this on gcc and Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0, and neither have initialized the array. When will students remember that they are not there simply to absorb knowledge, but to question and expand it?

These are the people that will go on to become MicroSerfs.

(Let's see if this WORKS this time.)

Had a C class yesterday... it was surprisingly tolerable. In the practice tests, I found at least five errors; apparently the author of the textbook we use, Diane Zak, has this mistaken belief that numeric arrays are always initalized. Also, she neglects to mention that the null character terminating a string can be overwritten. Questions like:

If char name[5] is initialized to "Peter", what does the last element contain?
A. 'P'
B. 'r'
C. '0'
D. '\0'

Of course, the correct answer is B, but D is listed as the "Right" answer.

I added a rudimentary 'convert to HTML' option to ithought's Advogato posting module. I'm using it right now.

Well, I've got to go research for my chemistry paper. My topic? "Cow Farts^W^WMethane Pollution". No kidding.

I see while I was fixing my last entry, I was certified as an Apprentice. Thank you, to all... umm... all three of you. :-P

(The ithought (not ithink, that's my ISP!) post didn't work too well. Maybe I need to learn to use it correctly. If not, maybe I need to fix it, or at least break it to fit my needs. ;-)

Well, here we are again.

I had a depressing experience the other day. I spent some time writing a patch to AMCL, version 0.7.0pl1, since that was the latest release. Not minutes after I sent the patch to the author, then I realized that AMCL had its own CVS and had already gone through one major revision!

So, I had to redo all the work. At least it was mostly cut-and-paste from the old source.

It's kind of disorienting, going back and forth between school and the 'real world', trying to remember what you're supposed to know at any given time. At least my hated C++ class is ending soon, and I can go back to actually learning C++.

First, some good news: I got my score back from the AMATYC math competition, round 1. I got 15 points, which is the highest from my calculus class, at least. (It's a 20 question test; you get 2 points for a correct answer and -0.5 points for an incorrect answer. I answered 10 questions; you do the math.)

I've noticed a catch-22 in the programming world. To become successful, you must become a master coder. To become a master coder, you must first gain experience. To gain experience, you must first work on a project. But, to be hired onto a project, you must first be a master coder!

In other words, how do I bridge the gap between "Hello world" and production code? I've tried working on XChat, and I'm completely lost.

Well, there's always the option of getting a MCSE or a lobotomy (or both!)

Well, here I am. I guess I'd better start by introducing myself, or brain-dumping, whichever this turns out to be.

I'm 18 years old, five feet nine inches tall (in my shoes), and two-hundred-and-mumble pounds. But I'm sure no one cares about that.

I'm a Linux user, have been for about 5 years. My first Linux was Red Hat 4.1, followed by 4.2, 5.0, 6.0, 6.1, then 7.0, for about a week. Then I switched to Slackware because Red Hat 7.0 was so godawful. IMHO, Slackware is better overall than Red Hat, but I haven't tried Debian or SuSE or any of the legion of other distributions, so I can't make any "Slack is the best distro in the world!" claims. Yet. ;-)

Yes, I've tried FreeBSD, never really got into it yet. Maybe later.

Yes, I use Windows. No, I'm not proud of it. And I use it a lot less than I used to, especially since getting Unreal Tournament running in Linux. Next is Quake 3.

Programming has fascinated me ever since one of my teachers sat me down in front of an Apple ][ in second grade. I've always had tremendous respect for those who write the wonderful software I use every day, but I never thought I would interact with any of them. That's why I'm glad I found OPN and this site.

Now, on to my question.

I'm in a really bad CS program, in a community college in Florida. Just for an example, I'm required to take an "Intro to C++" class to graduate. The problem with this is twofold. First of all, I've already had equivalents of this course. Three other times, in fact. Twice at Young Harris College and once at North Georgia Technical College. Not to mention the extracurricular study I've done.

Second, this is as advanced as the programming courses get. Nothing theoretical, no other languages, nothing on algorithms or data structures... just "Hello World! I can write a loop that adds up numbers!".

(Maybe I didn't mention that in this class, "C++" == "C with iostreams", or "C++" == "Microsoft Visual C++".)

I can't test out, nor can I skip class, for each class missed beyond the first is THREE letter grades off the final grade. No kidding; an A turns into a D for two missed classes. (He counts absences by the hour, and it's a 3 hour class once a week.) I have half a mind to complain, but since it's already so late in the term it's not even worth it.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. I guess my point is, my current college has a horrible CS program, even for a community college. And I'm impatient, so I don't want to wait until I enter a university to begin learning what I need to know to program 'in the real world'. Could anyone suggest any resources to allow this fledgling coder to spread his wings and fly into the world of open source software?

Feel free to respond via email, or flame me to oblivion, or whatever.

(Obligatory spam-bot feed: rbl@mail-abuse.com uce@ftc.gov )