Older blog entries for bgeiger (starting at number 126)

RossBurton: Looks like there is a bug in recentlog.html. If a user posts more than once, only the latest entry appears on the recent log list. That's not a bug, that's a feature!

Still don't have a replacement HD. I'm tempted to grab my old 5GB HD and put that in there instead, but I had more than 5GB of... stuff... on the dead 27GB HD.

Since I have to reinstall Linux anyway, now might be a good time to try something new.

People have been raving about Gentoo. While I agree that the ideas are interesting, I had always been happy with my Debian installation. Now that installation has disappeared, and it'll be just as much work to set Debian back up as it would be to install Gentoo. And I have to admit, I'm intrigued by the idea of having everything custom-compiled.

Since I started playing DDR, I've seen Paranoia as the 'holy grail' of competence. Now I can clear it in basic mode consistently; so far five times, once with an A.

Onward to more challenges... I've been working on Trick mode, and I have yet to conquer Trip Machine on basic. This should keep me occupied for a while.

Development is in hiatus until my Linux box is set up again. As soon as shots and respawning are implemented, I'll release it to the world at large.

o/~
now I am a grown man
with a child of my own
and I swear I'm not gonna let her know
all the pain I have known...
o/~
     -- Everclear, "Father Of Mine"

Still no hard drive for my Linux box. Dad said he'd get me one a couple of days ago on the condition that I promise to clean my room (I'm notoriously slobbish... I don't think I remember what color my carpet is). I told him that I'd take him up on it after I get my room clean. See, I know what I'm like, and if I get the new HD, I'll be so tied up with reinstalling Linux and getting things set up nicely again that I'll completely forget to clean my room. And that wouldn't be fair to him.

I'm trying to figure out how to get Debian installed again. I have a full set of Potato CDs, but since I'd have to turn around and dist-upgrade anyway, I might as well install from the net in the first place. Then again, since dist-upgrading literally took two days last time I tried it, over my 26.4 modem link, I should install at least a basic system from potato so I can stop/restart the process as needed.

I was actually able to complete a whole set of five songs in Trick mode! (1st Mix doesn't let you change difficulties between songs.) Other than that, no new developments...

None recently... I do all of my coding in Linux, and that machine is temporarily dead.

I'm tempted to install Python and pygame on my Winblows box, just to keep from going insane...

o/~ we'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way o/~ -- Toby Keith, "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue"

My Linux box's large drive (27GB, with all the Linux stuff on it, as opposed to the 5GB Winblows drive) is dying. (It's making chirping noises and I'm beginning to get { Scary KernelDriver Messages }.)

Today I copied all of the data off of it and shut the computer down. It's almost like pulling the plug on a loved one, it really is.

bjf: I've never had a chance to really practice a martial art. However, (as I'm sure you know if you've been reading the recentlog) I've been playing Dance Dance Revolution avidly as of late.

I thought I remembered something about sports in The New Hacker's Dictionary, so I dug out my old third edition dead-tree version.

In "A Portrait of J. Random Hacker", this is printed under "Physical Activity and Sports":

Hacker sports are almost always primarily self-competitive ones involving concentration, stamina, and micromotor skills: martial arts, bicycling, auto racing, kite flying, hiking...

DDR certainly involves concentration (try keeping track of up to eight different arrows on screen while trying to simultaneously press those arrows on the dance pad and maneuver into position to hit the next set of arrows) and stamina (try dancing all-out for 20 minutes straight... the Guinness record is 8 hours, but they stopped carrying videogame records... the unofficial record is 12 consecutive hours). I'm not so sure about 'micromotor skills', but it certainly involves as much micromotor skill as hiking does...

Anyway, as for recent progress: Passed "Brilliant 2U" Trick (5 feet). Full-comboed (completed without missing a step) "La Senorita" (4 feet) and "Stomp To My Beat" (5 feet). I'm happy about that.

deekayen: That sucks... welcome to the world of affirmative action hires.

Ilan: "To fix, comment out the 'urgh' line in /etc/blargh.conf. Here's a nice three-color picture of a doggy! <img>"

But seriously... what I said to bytesplit applies here as well. This supposed license of yours simply qualifies as bitching. Instead of complaining, how about trying to solve the problem?

Yes, I know there's a distinction between 'complaining' and simply calling attention to a problem. bytesplit and Ilan are simply bitching.

i'll see you at the crossroads (so you won't be lonely)

bytesplit: Either you're part of the Open Source community, or you're not.

• If you are, then instead of bitching at us about some supposedly bad documentation, you should instead ask, "How can I make things better? What have I been doing wrong?" Open Source is all about cooperation, and everyone needs to pitch in if we want to succeed.
• If you're not, then you have no right to bitch.

Seriously, what contributions have you made? What have you done to further the cause?

Also, a person's potential to help and his or her ability to 'be nice' don't necessarily correlate. Case in point: Theo de Raadt. He's generally described as very difficult to work with, but his contributions to the cause have been tremendous. (Of course, most people I've worked with have been gold; however, that doesn't have anything to do with ability.)

I won't put this as harshly as some do (I'm sure I don't have to explain to a "seasoned Windows user" what FOAD stands for), but... GO AWAY.

I sat down a couple of nights ago and started coding. Eight hours later, I had a functioning game, sorta.

Yes, pySpaceWars is a reality. (Well, for me, anyway. I haven't released it to the public yet.)

Spent some time (and too much money) on the Disney's Rave machine in the Magic Kingdom. Almost passed out after showboating on "Night Of Fire" (3 feet). (Don't laugh. I really did a lot more than I had to. Jumping around is tough for a guy who weighs 300 lb.) Passed "Super...docious" (5 feet) by the skin of my teeth... that song gets fast at the end.

I'm off to DisneyQuest to play their 1st Mix machine.

tk: Sorry... I just lumped together all the people I could see that had even responded to bytesplit's garbage. I was just using the opportunity to rag on M$...

As far as the "all OSen suck" sentiment goes, I'd suggest grabbing a copy of "Every OS Sucks" by Three Dead Trolls In A Baggie. Get it from MP3.com: it's free, and they get money.

malcolm: I suggested negative certifications a while back, and the idea got shot down quickly. I still like the idea, for people like bytesplit.

movement: I don't believe I deserve a Journeyer certification. I basically consider myself an Apprentice.

As far as books go, stay away from anything that claims to teach anything in "24 hours" or "a week" or the like. For languages, at least, I think most college textbooks are better than the equivalent book for the layperson. (ORA books are likely the exception...)

Here's another idea: how about expiring certs? People don't tend to re-evaluate their certs often. How about, after six months or so, you get an email reminding you to re-certify, and if you don't, the cert gets dropped?

Just a thought.

By the way, I'm going to go through the list of people I've certified and weed out any that have become inactive. If you're reading this, you're probably not going to be affected. ;-)

I passed "PARANOiA" (6 feet). I know this may sound insigificant to many, but that song has been taunting me since the first day I learned to play DDR.

(pre-posting update: I tried again, and failed again. I swear the machine hates me.)

Also, I went to Epcot the other day. They have a display with their Jungle Book themed dance game. It sucks massive amounts of ass. But, it had two short sections where you get 100 points per step, no matter what pad you step on or what rhythm you keep... so I just pretended it was a really fast L/R run on a DDR song and racked up about 25,000 points... (They also have a DDR Disney Mix setup, but it was down when I went.)

Not much. I'm still trying to figure out how to organize something like this... because I'm learning Python, OOP, and game programming all at the same time. Wheeee.

I wonder if anyone could point me to a "Learn to Write Games in Python using Pygame in 4.2 Nanoseconds" type of tutorial? ;-)

bytesplit, ishamael, tk: can't we all just get along? Why are we all fighting amongst each other when we should be fighting a greater enemy?

(edit, 5:10 PM, 15 Jun 2002): raph, I agree with atai. bytesplit not only does not serve any useful purpose to the community, he actively works to disrupt it. His comments have had the effect of painting a giant bullseye on his buttocks... and you're the only one here who can swing the boot.

mikeszcz: That was beautiful, man. ;-)

By the way, when you say "a bit over a 4.0 gpa", I assume you mean out of 5 points? Most schools here only go up to 4.0.

I 'attended' the American School of Correspondence. In public school, I was bullied both by other students and by the faculty and administration. Eventually my mother pulled me out of public school and taught me at home.

On one hand, I was able to enter college at 14 years of age... on the other, I never had a real high school graduation ceremony. Then again, I've had two Associate's level graduation ceremonies, so I guess that balances out.

<rant>
People have no sense of ceremony anymore. During my most recent graduation ceremony, people were arriving the whole way through, wearing t-shirts and ragged jeans, laughing, talking loudly, standing, shouting and applauding 'their' graduate (even though the MC asked that people hold their applause)... Also, the speaker (a senator, I think) wasn't talking about us; he was giving a standard "re-elect me, please" speech. I think the administrators need to go to YHC and see how things need to be done.
</rant>

I cleared "AM-3P" (5 feet), then failed "Have You Never Been Mellow" (1 foot). How sad is that?

Still working on my Space Wars clone. It's tougher than it looks; unlike most of the games I've seen, I have to actually have somewhat-realistic acceleration/gravity. Other games have two speeds (normal and turbo) and only four directions. I have to simulate "accurate" gravity. Argh.

My mom's creating the website for the company she works for. She's having trouble with images... she actually had 26 MB of images on a single page. (They were straight from a digital camera; she used the <img> tag's width= and height= attributes to scale them down. It's a common mistake, and particularly forgivable since she's teaching herself.)

Problem is, I don't know how to explain the solution. Part of the problem is the distinction between pixels and inches/cm, and part is the difference in tools (I use Gimp, but she's on Winblows and IMNSHO the Windows port of Gimp isn't ready for prime time yet.)

It doesn't help that she and her company already got ripped off by a former friend and so-called "web designer".

chipx86/bytesplit: Children, children... can't we all just play nice?

bytesplit: In order to have people believe you, you need to have something commonly called 'proof'. Without it, you're simply a crank making unfounded accusations. And since you're making the accusations, the onus is on you. Also, from the point of view of an uninvolved bystander, it would appear that you're simply showing up and making wild accusations and threats, and chipx86 is responding calmly and reasonably. But that's just my two cents.

The scene: Walt Disney World, Disney/MGM Studios. The... uhm... don't know what it's called, but it's a really freaking big sorcerer's hat.

There are kiosks inside, shaped like Mickey's head. These kiosks run Win2k. One of these kiosks has an error dialog open, complaining about some arcane internal problem.

Not as bad as a BSOD, but still funny nonetheless.

I'm working on 4 and 5 foot songs now. "Stomp To My Beat" is fairly easy to me now, but "Afronova" is still a no-go. I'd be able to pass "Paranoia" if I had better stamina... my legs cramp up about halfway through.

I actually drew a crowd at the Magic Kingdom. I was playing "It's A Small World (Ducking Hardcore Mix)" (no, that's not a typo), and when I got done, I heard applause. Looking around, I saw about 20 people who weren't there when I started.

I actually got a home pad to play PyDDR with. However, my crappy Playstation to USB adapter maps the arrows on the pad to axes. This means that I can't press up and down or left and right simultaneously. This is a problem, because most songs include simultaneous button presses.

At this point, I have four options:

1. Buy another adapter, which behaves properly. [They're hard to find.]
2. Buy another mat, one which connects to the parallel port. [I haven't found one yet.]
3. Rewire the pad, making the pads pretend to be buttons (it has 4 spare buttons that I don't use) [Very doable.]
4. Hack on the joystick-handling code to make it handle that properly (P2E, the author of PyDDR, has done this for parallel-port mats, but it doesn't handle USB.) [However, I also play on Winblows; any Linux-only solution won't work.]

So, I'm trying to write a Space Wars clone. I've been working on it for a few days, and all I have written is a 2-dimensional Vector class, something any programmer worth his salt could write from memory.

It's just that there are so many things to consider.... most of the sample games I've looked at have constant speeds and rectilinear motion. This game, however, requires a somewhat-accurate model of acceleration and velocity.

I'm not saying it's hard... just that it's difficult. ;-) For me, anyway.

o/~ when you think you've had too much of this life, hang on.. o/~ -- R.E.M., "Everybody Hurts"

raph: I'm using cmiller's advodiary to post this. It works nicely and lets me use XEmacs.

Maybe Advogato should go to something more like LiveJournal's setup: by default people should use a client and the web form is only there as a backup.

thomasvs: I don't take any offense to the name, but I'm male. Then again, "bitch" is about the mildest gender-specific insult I know; a lot of women are using the term as a badge of pride (which IMNSHO is wrong, but that's another entry).

amars: I like my IBM PS/2 clickety-board. Then again, my hands are "freaking huge, I mean monstrous", so I want a board that matches. I wish I could find more... my other two boxen have soft-touch crap piles that I wouldn't otherwise touch with a ten foot pole.

djcb: I like configuration options. For example, some people like focus-follows-mouse. Others like sloppy focus. I like click to focus. Who's right? No one is. It's agreed that a reasonable set of defaults is necessary, but if I don't like the defaults, I shouldn't have to live with them. (No, I can't just "change to another", because it'll have its OWN set of unchangeable defaults, and unless all umpteen thousand options are correct, it will be just as nerve-grating.)

lindsey: Computer Security has not been considered a significant issue within CS. Nor has large-scale system configuration. Isn't that what Computer Engineering does? Or Information Systems? Seriously, though, it's like the difference between physics and engineering. Physicists get the equation and they're done; engineers take the equations and turn them into... stuff. CS people create the theories, and computer engineers turn them into useful systems. (Then again, I may not know what I'm talking about, being a lowly undergrad and all...)

Ouch.

Yesterday I played on four separate machines: 4th Mix Plus and DDR MAX (6th Mix) at Rocky's Replay in Oviedo, 5th Mix at FYE in Oviedo Marketplace Mall, and (many many games on) US 1st Mix at DisneyQuest. The last one is free. Gotta love free DDR, and free games in general, but my feet and legs are paying the price today.

I'm hoping to use DDR as my primary form of exercise. Granted, the songs I play don't have much movement, but I'm working on passing 4-foot songs, which are typically faster and/or have more steps. I've also been playing "double", which means one person plays steps on both sides. This is even more of a workout since I have to go back and forth so many times, instead of just standing there bouncing.

As soon as I save up $300 or so, I'll get a PS2, DDR, and a dance mat. It'll save me money in the long run.

The USF application is on the way. My transcripts have been requested from my previous schools. Today I turned in some financial aid paperwork. It's one less thing to worry about. Then again, infinity minus one equals infinity.

It turns out I've been "chosen for verification" with regard to my financial aid application. In other words, it's being audited. It seems like every year this happens.

I'm gonna go jobhunting tomorrow. Radio Shack is hiring; every burger joint seems to be hiring; computer stores and repair locations, however, are not hiring. Drag.

I've been learning Python, but not doing much yet. I can't think of a decent project that hasn't been done a million times already.

I put this section first because I actually wrote a tiny bit recently. I compressed a 250+ line Perl script into 15 lines of Python. It's a script for XChat to get the currently playing song from XMMS and report it to the channel. I can't say it's a fair comparison, though; the Perl code had to get the filename then go parse the ID3 tag manually, but the Python module can just ask XMMS for the title. (This also means that it works properly for Ogg Vorbis files, as well.)

In very related news, I'm learning Python. I'm pondering writing a simple game in it (probably using pygame). Someone suggested a SpaceWar clone; it's always interested me....

I am now officially addicted to Dance Dance Revolution.

Thanks to having two usable machines an easy drive away, and one of those being free (in DisneyQuest, which my Premium Annual Pass gives me free access to), I've gotten better at it.

Imagine, if you will, a 300 pound geek hoofing it on an arcade machine's dance pads, trying to keep up with a song that insists on going a few steps ahead, sweating, fighting muscle cramps, and having the time of his life. That geek is me.

Actually, PyDDR is what I tend to play at home. Well, I pretend to play it: I try to hit the "pads" in the right order, but since I don't have a dance pad yet, the game doesn't know about it. I can't find a dance pad that hooks up to a PC, or a PSX/USB adapter (which would be preferable since a friend actually has a PS2).

At least I'm getting some exercise now.

Trying to get out of the bureaucratic hassles the University of South Florida has been presenting to me. I'm guaranteed admission, due to the Associate of Arts I received at the beginning of this month, but the paperwork is piling up.

I have to go sleep, so I can hand-deliver some documents tomorrow. It's only a 35 mile drive each way. (That's to Lakeland. If, for some reason (which I'm sure they'll conjure up) I have to drive to Tampa, that's a good two hour trip, not including the time I'll inevitably spend lost in traffic.)

Please take your seats, we have a lot to cover today.

Well. I'm finally a college graduate. Again.

My mom, my brother, and one of his friends came down to watch... and to go to Disney World. I figure we spent about two and a half days there.

deekayen: I still know even if they hadn't, they'd be able to work Word proficiently.. Heh. I still get ridiculed because if someone asks me, "How do I apply an AutoFormat to a document in Word?" I can't immediately rattle off the correct menu items. I haven't memorized the intimate details of Word, a program I hope never to have to use again.

However, I can sit down and figure out that information in a reasonable amount of time. While others may have the specific knowledge, I have what they lack: the ability to learn instead of having to memorize by rote. One of the school's Microserfs and I could sit down in front of a program neither of us have ever used and I can almost guarantee that I could become proficient in a lot less time than (s)he will. I use Emacs, for crying out loud!

By the way, I agree that Advogato is fairly bereft of dumbshits. (Unless you count the occasional troll, and they don't stay long.)

The results from the AMATYC Student Mathematics League competition are back. I placed second within the Southeast Region, and first in the State of Florida, based on individual scores.

A friend came in 8th within the region, and the school as a whole came in 5th.

In case I haven't mentioned it, I've been listed in the 2001-2002 editions of both Who's Who Among Students in American Junior Colleges and The National Dean's List. Either of those is an honor; to be listed in both is humbling.

I actually wrote something today! Yay!

Well, I have to confess, I borrowed most of it. Someone on irc.openprojects.net/#labyrinth wanted something that would take a URL and some search terms and determine what rank the URL was listed on Google for the given terms. I borrowed someone else's Google search Perl script and munged it to do what I needed.

SOAP came in handy. I never thought I'd say that.

I swear, I'm addicted to that game. I can't dance for love or money, but it's still fun to try. Especially when it doesn't matter what you look like, only whether you can keep up...

I have ready access to three different machines. All three are in Disney establishments (one in the Magic Kingdom, one in Disney/MGM Studios, and one in DisneyQuest). I've played on them all. (I try to stay away from the Magic Kingdom one, because it's kind of hard to impress people when you're up there trying to dance to "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah".)

My CD-RW died. I replaced it.

For some reason, the old one would give me strange errors when trying to start a new track, or finalize a data CD. Also, it wouldn't read those new black CDs that everyone seems to love. Somehow that makes me think that the laser could be going.

If anyone has any suggestions, let me know. (By the way, I cleaned it, with no effect.)

Tried to install FreeBSD on my Athlon box. Not pretty.

I need to try again later, once I've taken the time to back up everything important on the Winblows partition (hey, I need my games).

o/~ take a breath and hold on tight, spin around one more time and gracefully fall back to the arms of grace... o/~ -- Lifehouse, "Breathing"