Push

Knife-hit

2009-02-19T15:13:00.000-08:00

[just a quick poem i put together with the fridge magnets]

how the languid moon
manipulates me
wind & shadow they shine
only in black light rains
chanting screams smear the sky
behind honey and meat
delirious I recall
a forest in a sea of wax
& soar

As I sit in Syre Hall & go out to drink:

2009-02-18T13:10:00.000-08:00

[edit: I may polish this up at some point...it almost has a rhythm and needs perhaps a better cadence anyways.]

seven nine five and ten in colors
cryptic and wild from one comrade to another
lovers of life love each other
always ever the after
always ever the more
always ever after ever more

three com data
the typical residential remodeling project
which are something to march
commerce
are somewhat shortfall
was struck by more
than the butter and Congress for me
remove the veteran male
Alzheimer's
a smaller fasteners
are held land claims for the old
walled the start
of friendly walls
British band sometime
maelstrom
newsletter
or user
or said
Leonhardt and purchased into what works
best on a total isn't a book
of what can I can still eleven's
but hundred works for a bit of advice
but the beginning of investor alert

Whatcom Watters has vision hiding behind his fingers
sixteen-hundred watts of vision never seen before
music from Syre is time anyone's done
informal musical talent Watters said
attract people of life uplifted, enriched
We know by experience, Watters said

people call me cheap
I'm charged four-fifty for a beer
I get for two-fifty down the street
I never hesitate
if it means the best deal
It's a fact
I'm cheap.

The God of Rock

2009-01-28T02:26:00.001-08:00

To pass cometh the quiet masses of great Lyndinheim. They dideth upon march the unmuted peoples of Vellinstorpingham. Jeswin sisterking of Vellingstorpingham dideth see Janothyn brotherking of Lyndinehim. Withe water Sacknook gnawen the beaches sisterking and brotherking dideth argue and dispute. Vellinstorpingham of much was din and noise. Upon streets neareth Lyndinheim lay silence and wind. Jeswin sought war with Janothyn and soeth siblings returnen withe grim news to bear.

Neareth the Fern Dale armed foe would meeten armed foe...

Hold the Line (in progress)

2008-12-29T17:48:00.001-08:00

"What I always wanted to see was ground zero, you know. You always seen things like "such and such days later," "the day after whatever," or how the survivors escape or get eaten at the end. But you never get to see what happens right at the start. Right when the zombie attacks start and how people react and how these survivors got to where they were."

I stumbled a little through the snow but kept my grip on a little cylinder of mace. It was nice piece that my cousin had beaded and given to me when I left home. The wind and the cold kept the snow dancing like sand in a spring squall and fucked with my inner ear just enough to make me sick. But I was alone at night and on my way out of downtown; I had no time to be sick.

Walk. Just walk walk walk. I felt my sensations begin to flare. Every step became a chorus: cold feet in stiff shoes connected to sore legs chapped by the wind with my belt tightened too far against extra layers of clothing. My face burned slightly against the alcohol and the cold.

The buzz of nightlife faded away into quiet ice-stricken streets. I lived just outside the downtown core in a historic district. It was poorly lit and kept me on edge every time I passed through.

I held my grip tight on my pepper spray and kept half a breath in my lungs in case I needed to scream. I don't think it would have mattered. It was so deserted because of the cold snap. I kept my head down and just chanted a single syllable to myself over and over again. “Walk, walk, walk, walk...” Every corner around me took on extra significance. Hiding places for malevolent creatures and spirits from old dusty stories my relatives would tell. The trash on the street whispered by and sent a shiver sideways across my body.

I saw my alley up ahead in that permanent amber twilight that comes with snow. I stopped under street light hanging over a corner and dug through my purse for my keys. In the event of an attack I now had a set of keys to stab with in one hand and my mace still on alert.

Walk walk walk. Tromp tromp, slide. At the door, Jon let me in. I stepped in and put him between me and the outside before holstering my weapons.

Source Code Hackery

2008-10-04T16:23:00.000-07:00

Many websites these days hide valuable information from the public in an attempt to turn a quick dollar. "Information" could be porn, sure, but it also could be just about anything else. The internet is information...and some of us want free access to all of it. Fortunately, we (PC users) have the almighty right click and the command menu at our disposal (not to say MAC and other users have no solutions: I'm familiar with my tools only).

For example, I came across a particular website with the usual Question/Answer format looking for a solution to a computing problem I had. The answers were hidden behind some great links to "Get Started!" and "Login" and for "Free Trials!"

Naturally, I wasn't going to pay thirteen bucks a month to a website I would probably never see again for an a solution to a massively trivial problem. Out of pure curiosity I pulled up the page's source code (the entire page is right-click friendly) and skimmed through. About halfway through I found these peculiar lines (I used the HTML code for "left bracket" and "right bracket" to prevent the code from executing {Internal side note monologue: I came across a defunct tag that was intended to display HTML without executing: <XMP> and </XMP>, view it in action [link]} and yes those are my italics using good old <i></i>):

<div class="answerer"> Accepted Solution by <a href="/M_1010672.html">JohnChapin</a>:</div>
<div class="answerBody quoted" id="EchoTopic">

Somewhere in your loops put a change to a form control (label or textbox).<br />Then right after the change put a 'doevents' to be sure it registers on the screen.<br />Put it in the smallest loop if you want to see a lot of activity.<br /><br />HTH John</div>

Clearly this is the answer hidden behind the ads. There's a secondary solution just after the first answer that is also revealed in the source code:

<div class="answerer"> Assisted Solution by <a href="/M_1539809.html">Idle_Mind</a>:</div>
<div class="answerBody quoted" id="EchoTopic">
In your <span class="searchTerm">code</span> you probably have a loop running for x iterations or until some condition is met. Inside that loop you need to place a "DoEvents" to allow the application to respond to messages and to allow it to refresh its screen. <br /><br />If you want to be able to <span class="searchTerm">pause</span> the <span class="searchTerm">code</span> from within the program then create a boolean variable and toggle its value from true/false when a button is pressed. Inside your main loop for the genetic algorithm, check the status of the variable and make the loop wait in a Do...While loop until the variable is reset. Again, you will need a "DoEvents" inside that Do...While loop to allow the application to process messages like your <span class="searchTerm">pause</span> button being pushed. A Do...While loop with nothing but DoEvents in it will cause the CPU usage to ramp to 100% but the app will still be responsive. Just thought I would forewarn you.<br /><br />Idle_Mind</div>

Once more, with the code executed (notice the relative/referential links in the posters' names and the problem this causes on this particular website):

Accepted Solution by JohnChapin:

Somewhere in your loops put a change to a form control (label or textbox).
Then right after the change put a 'doevents' to be sure it registers on the screen.
Put it in the smallest loop if you want to see a lot of activity.

HTH John

Assisted Solution by Idle_Mind:

In your code you probably have a loop running for x iterations or until some condition is met. Inside that loop you need to place a "DoEvents" to allow the application to respond to messages and to allow it to refresh its screen.

If you want to be able to pause the code from within the program then create a boolean variable and toggle its value from true/false when a button is pressed. Inside your main loop for the genetic algorithm, check the status of the variable and make the loop wait in a Do...While loop until the variable is reset. Again, you will need a "DoEvents" inside that Do...While loop to allow the application to process messages like your pause button being pushed. A Do...While loop with nothing but DoEvents in it will cause the CPU usage to ramp to 100% but the app will still be responsive. Just thought I would forewarn you.

Idle_Mind

I don't feel comfortable just giving out which website I pulled this simple trick. This has just been a small exhibition of rudimentary information system, breaking and entering.

Moving Out!

2008-09-12T21:25:00.001-07:00

So, Facebook has gone to its new and improved layout. Mandatory changeover for everyone, of course. It's honestly a step back in terms of aesthetics and ease of use. Though I admit, it's vast increase in resource usage and advertisement placement strikes a mix of fear and awe.

Basically, Facebook no longer is lightweight enough to be a part of my scatterbrained computing. I always have several tabs open in different web browsers, music playing, writing, bit-torrenting, downloads, games, my Vista Sidebar, weather updates, instant messaging, Google Earth, notepad.exe, a calculator, a music editor, and sometimes more humming along.

It's mostly all an excuse to pull away from another networking site. I like my sites clean and to the point. Xanga, Myspace, and now Facebook have all fallen into that bulletpoint engineering style. They take a look at similar products and take all of the features and slap it into their design. Tabbed browsing, apps, status updates, moods, comment walls, embedded music, photo albums. It's just another list. A long boring list of features that all the social networking sites steal from each other until you have this homogeneous mess.

I don't want in, honestly. I'll just hide over here with my blog, minimize my foot print in Facebook and try to find some solutions for my writing, photo albums, and everything else tied into FB.

Spore

2008-09-08T19:16:00.000-07:00

I've been playing Spore off and on for some time now. It's a simple game, insulting so sometimes, but it's mostly fun and exciting to see procedural concepts in action. The online portion of the game, a massive sharing site, is still single player but introduces the creations of thousands of other players into your game. Neat!

The game certainly lacks polish in some areas, but the entire package has enough mediocrity to make it good. On a scale of 1-10 (1 being forgotten bargain games, 5 being games that are interesting enough to warrant at least one play through, 10 being a game so incredible and godly it will be considered a touchstone of its genre for generations to come), I give Spore a 7.

The first five points from the interesting first playthrough with decent stability, graphics, design, etc. The next two points are a personal tilt. Spore has pros, cons, but not enough substance (too much free creation and the lack of a story or long-term goals) to keep me interested for long.

A tangent: The publisher of Spore, Electronic Arts, includes SecuROM software with almost all of its new games to curb piracy and to potentially reap more profits. Basically, SecuROM hides on a computer and monitors any activity that could compromise the security on EA's software. Users often complain of SecuROM disabling their CD burning hardware and software and of SecuROM refusing to recognize their PC after periodic software, firmware, and hardware upgrades. To top it off, Spore's SecuROM allows only three installs before requiring its end user to call technical support.

Surely this, along with Spore's online aspect, should prevent piracy. It's not the case, and in closer inspection, I don't think that was EA's intent. Requiring online activation and giving only three installs basically cripples the used game market. I can't sell my copy of the game without involving EA if I've hit the three install limit. EA basically wants all users to pay them directly for access.

There's been some fallout over EA's use of SecuROM over at GameFAQs and on Spore's Amazon page.

EA made the wrong move with SecuROM. They hurt legitimate users with their ethically gray piece of software, while pirates walk away with full and unlimited access to the game.

Great job EA! /sarcasm

Yay! First Post!

2008-08-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

America (the country not necessarily the continent) is a mixed bag of -isms. White is right. Men are on top. And our ideals tend to the straight and narrow. Entire cultures evolve through difference and the need to shelter us from each other.

This goes beyond the normal, vague, grand, lawsuit inviting concepts of racism and sexism. We have musickism: judging people by the music they enjoy and understand. Movieism: calling people out on their film tastes. Job-ism, car-ism, hobby-ism, cell phone-ism...the list surely goes on. I can't think of one aspect of a person I wouldn't judge.

The issue isn't that we do something as natural and automatic as judge. The problem is bringing fire to the table and deciding that every difference of opinion is a life or death ordeal. Opinions can be deadly, and it's been through generations of effort that our society has broken the lethal aspects of much of our bigotry.

The process is ongoing and we're certainly not done elevating our thinking yet. The turn of this last century has seen a new push for gay rights and everyone else who falls into the exceedingly broad category of sexual deviance [deviance here taking on its statistical, sociological, and hopefully neutral, meaning of "not the norm."]. There have been a few pockets of resistance, like Oregon, and a few pockets of la résistance, like Massachusetts.

A new front has opened up that gay rights advocates and detractors may not know about. Over the last twenty years, video games have blossomed into a fully realized industry capable of influencing society on moral issues normally reserved for traditional media. Drugs, violence and good old fashioned sex mostly steal the spotlight for their alleged corrupting effect on youth [See GTA: Vice City GTA: San Andreas GTA: 4]. I see a collision course in the near future, however, of gay rights and video games. Already games are exploring homosexual themes and it's only a matter of time before a highly conservative individual gains a TV spot to complain about the newest wave of degenerate media.

Under the direction of Will Wright for example, the Sims [and Sims 2] franchise views homosexuality as absolutely normal. In this life-simulator, adult Sims are allowed romantic interactions with either sex. In fact, one look at an individual Sim's data file shows zero preference for either sex. It's technically asexual, but it usually ends up expressed as bisexual since the game rules dictate that Sims learn their preference through experience.

From developer Bioware, two prominent franchises contain subplots that explore homosexuality between the protagonist and a supporting character. Knights of the Old Republic, often KOTOR, contains such a story arc, but it's Mass Effect that executes it's subplot with a degree of professionalism good enough for film. Surprisingly, or maybe not, Mass Effect was the center of attention at the beginning of this year over it's "full digital nudity and sex." Fox "News" severely misrepresented the game and generated a storm of controversy. I highly recommend the original airing from Fox and the rebuttal from now renowned TV host Adam Sessler from G4TV.

In the original Fable from Lionhead, homosexuality was just another quirky piece of RPG in Peter Molyneux's Action-Adventure game. Depending on who you were currently married to, the game declared you homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual on your stats screen. When the original was released, Peter received a lot of negative backlash from the gaming community when the features he touted were cut from the final game. In the upcoming sequel, Fable 2, Peter has decided to play tight and honest with the information that goes public and at this point the gaming community is certain that the Player Character (PC) can either be a man or woman, gay or straight, and can raise a family regardless of sex or orientation. The actual mechanics of raising a family as a gay character, speculation abounds, in Fable 2 haven't been fully revealed as far as I know.

It's an election year, and the voting season, September through November as a rough guide, also happens to be one of the hottest seasons for video game releases. I can see Iraq, the Economy, and other Big Politics overshadowing this fall, but I'm hoping for at least one big story linking video games with the "gay agenda." The more exposure the entire GLBT [please excuse any letters I may have forgotten] movement gets the better we can see our own illogical and inexcusable behavior.

Let's face it, this isn't some neo-hippie, peace and love bullshit I'm trying to push. This is a slap in the face to all the ignorant and blinded people who hate just for the sake of hating.