Perhaps you wondered why I haven't updated my blog as of late. Well, its quite simple. I had 42 posts. And as everyone should know, 42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
So there you have it. Now I'm up to 43, no longer an answer.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
Random Musical
As some of you may have figured out by now I've got an odd sense of humor; especially when it comes to random acts. While on my mission I would randomly break out in song during district meetings and as a result was unanimously voted "greatest district leader ever" by my last district. So when I saw this video I knew I had to share it with you.
The Mission: Create a seemingly random musical in the food court of a Los Angeles mall.
The greatest thing about it is that nobody knew what was happening.
Enjoy this latest find!
The Mission: Create a seemingly random musical in the food court of a Los Angeles mall.
The greatest thing about it is that nobody knew what was happening.
Enjoy this latest find!
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Computer Infants
As Clifford Jr. begins to approach his first birthday it is hard to miss his basic forms of communication. When he wants a bottle he will whine and then point to it when he finally sees it. When we wants food he will whine some more and then point again to his desire. I was pondering these actions today and I realized something; most computer literate people are computer infants.
Admittedly the computer language is not very developed as of yet. Computers have even had their own form of the tower of Babel, there are multiple languages available for use. But when it comes to everyday interaction with a computer we are simply infants. When I want to read email I first must point and click. For some there is whining before the pointing and clicking. When I want to download software I must first point and click. In order to update our computers we must all point and click. We can only communicate with computers on an infantile level.
As a result we have developed elaborate means to accomplish tasks. We can't simply tell our computer to turn on our favorite music or to dictate a letter for us. Instead we have figured out how to tell our computers that we are pointing at multiple files. We have found out how to communicate with each other via these infantile actions.
The command line interface is looked at as being archaic. We think to ourselves that because we can look at pretty pictures while we interact with our computer that progress has been made. What if the graphical user environment that we have all come to love and enjoy has been major step backwards. What if we decided to suddenly stop speaking to each other and only point and grunt every time we needed to communicate? Wouldn't that be considered a step backwards in communication?
Yet all is not lost. We still have the ability to reverse our major graphical blunder. I'm not saying we should discard it, as it has proved itself to be quite useful. Perhaps we should instead learn to communicate with our computers through a command line interface. At this point in time there are only a few words and simple sentences that we can use.
The bash, sh, korn, zsh shells are just a few options to communicating with our computers. Those of you using windows, a majority of you, will unfortunately not have this available to you. The lack of a good command line in Windows is really unfortunate. I have learned to communicate with my Linux computers via the command line, thus making some tasks much faster to accomplish. Batch image editing and processing. Batch file renaming. System and installed software updates. These are all things that I have been able to do much more quickly through the command line than I ever could through a graphical environment.
For instance, on a Linux computer it is quite simple to update the operating system and all installed software with a simple sentence written in Bash.
Now consider that you downloaded hundreds of pictures to your computer from your digital camera. Also consider that the filenames do not represent what is contained within the picture. You can either go through your graphical environment and click every picture and change every single name seperately. OR you could speak this simple sentence:
Imagine, if you will, that we could communicate with computers as we communicate with each other. Perhaps you wanted to listen to Bach's 3rd symphony, eroica. Lets say you didn't want to listen to all of it but only wanted to hear the 3rd movement? Wouldn't it be nice to simply say, "Computer, Bach's 3rd symphony, 3rd movement" and your computer would begin to play the tune at a comfortable sound level?
Alas, I digress. Star Trek technology is still far from being reality.
Admittedly the computer language is not very developed as of yet. Computers have even had their own form of the tower of Babel, there are multiple languages available for use. But when it comes to everyday interaction with a computer we are simply infants. When I want to read email I first must point and click. For some there is whining before the pointing and clicking. When I want to download software I must first point and click. In order to update our computers we must all point and click. We can only communicate with computers on an infantile level.
As a result we have developed elaborate means to accomplish tasks. We can't simply tell our computer to turn on our favorite music or to dictate a letter for us. Instead we have figured out how to tell our computers that we are pointing at multiple files. We have found out how to communicate with each other via these infantile actions.
The command line interface is looked at as being archaic. We think to ourselves that because we can look at pretty pictures while we interact with our computer that progress has been made. What if the graphical user environment that we have all come to love and enjoy has been major step backwards. What if we decided to suddenly stop speaking to each other and only point and grunt every time we needed to communicate? Wouldn't that be considered a step backwards in communication?
Yet all is not lost. We still have the ability to reverse our major graphical blunder. I'm not saying we should discard it, as it has proved itself to be quite useful. Perhaps we should instead learn to communicate with our computers through a command line interface. At this point in time there are only a few words and simple sentences that we can use.
The bash, sh, korn, zsh shells are just a few options to communicating with our computers. Those of you using windows, a majority of you, will unfortunately not have this available to you. The lack of a good command line in Windows is really unfortunate. I have learned to communicate with my Linux computers via the command line, thus making some tasks much faster to accomplish. Batch image editing and processing. Batch file renaming. System and installed software updates. These are all things that I have been able to do much more quickly through the command line than I ever could through a graphical environment.
For instance, on a Linux computer it is quite simple to update the operating system and all installed software with a simple sentence written in Bash.
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgradeLinux users can also tell apt-get to clean it's room after its finished:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get cleanAt first you would look at these nonsense words and symbols and think that it is not worth it. However, imagine the time I save knowing that I can update my operating system along with my office suite, instant messenger, web browser, media players, email program, photo editing, and photo organization software, all with a simple sentence. I know many people who are more than willing to grunt around the internet pointing and clicking their way through update after update to get the newest software.
Now consider that you downloaded hundreds of pictures to your computer from your digital camera. Also consider that the filenames do not represent what is contained within the picture. You can either go through your graphical environment and click every picture and change every single name seperately. OR you could speak this simple sentence:
ls foo*.jpg | awk '{print("mv "$1" "$1)}' | sed 's/foo/bar/2' | /bin/sh
Again you would look at it and think, "What crazy nonsense!" But I assure you that this crazy nonsense will save you hours of time. What if you needed to create thumbnails of all these pictures you just downloaded for your sweet new website or blog? What sounds better - Opening each file separately, resizing it, and then saving it as some other name, OR a simple sentence in Bash:
Convert foo*.jpg 180x110 *.jpgI think I'll speak to my computer a little and then sit back and relax. I'll be finished with the thumbnails for my website just as you are getting started. Point, grunt, want, click, don't want, don't want, grunt, grunt, grunt, whine...
Imagine, if you will, that we could communicate with computers as we communicate with each other. Perhaps you wanted to listen to Bach's 3rd symphony, eroica. Lets say you didn't want to listen to all of it but only wanted to hear the 3rd movement? Wouldn't it be nice to simply say, "Computer, Bach's 3rd symphony, 3rd movement" and your computer would begin to play the tune at a comfortable sound level?
Alas, I digress. Star Trek technology is still far from being reality.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
iTunes vs. Amarok
VS
After a few weeks of having an iMac I have decided I really dislike iTunes. When I was a Windows user I had always used WinAmp. It is not available on the Linux platform. In Linux I have grown to love an application called Amarok. It has most of the features of iTunes without all the clutter.
First of all Amarok doesn't want me to visit their store and buy more stuff. iTunes nearly insists that I visit the iTunes music store every time I turn it on. Some may call this a feature, I all it an annoyance. I would never purchase music laden with DRM (digital rights management). DRM removes the ability to play the music you just purchased on any other computer that is not "authorized". Sure there are ways around this but whats the point? If I'm going to purchase music it will be on a regular CD. Then I will put it on my computer myself. This not only gives me a hard copy in case I have hard drive issues, it also allows me to play it on any music player or any computer. So for me the iTunes music store is a waste of space.
Amarok does have ways for you to download music. Amarok connects to Magnatune who signs independent artists. Listen to the whole song and album before you buy it. You get to set the price for the music you purchase. What is it worth to you? Anywhere between $5-$18. Magnatune also gives their artists 50% off all profits. Compare that to traditional music distributors who give their artists $1 per album sold. In Amarok 2.0 they will introduce the ability to download music from Jamendo.
Music organization on Amarok is much more clear than in iTunes. You can organize your music in any way you want. By artist/album/genre/track/year/... Basically any MP3 tag. You can also browse through your music as it sits on your hard drive. This is very nice for those of us who like to keep our music organized and not in a big jumbled mess. Amarok also allows you to do a search through your music collection. And to top it all off, online radio stations are at your disposal.
iTunes does not allow you to browse through your music so easily. You can either search or use their simple Genre/Artist/Album sorting. When it comes to music organization and your ability to organize how you like it iTunes is weak. I also made the mistake to allow iTunes to organize my music for me. Oops. Now sorting back through all of it has been a major pain. When your talking about 35+ GB of music thats a lot of mess that iTunes made. My music folder turned into a jumbled mess. Yuck!
So there you have it, my feelings on iTunes. I don't like it at all. KDE 4.1 (Konqueror Desktop Environment) is currently under development. KDE 4.0 was released in January based on the QT4 graphical libraries. The promise of 4.1 is that it will be easily installable into any operating system. Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. As soon as it is released I will say goodbye to iTunes and install KDE 4.1 to reap the benefits of Amarok, not to mention Konqueror and Dolphin.
Monday, February 25, 2008
iWeb. A phenominal looking dissapointment.
As you may have read I recently purchased a new Mac. It has been pretty nice. There are a few things here and there that remind me why I keep Linux around.
My wife and I decided we were going to put together a family webpage with all of our family pictures, a family blog, an about us page, and perhaps some videos. I fire up my iMac and open up iWeb. At first I was extremely impressed and exited for the iWeb css themes and styles. It is easy to put pages together and they look great. So I published my webpage to a folder and then uploaded it to my cableone page. There was a few major issues
- The menu bar did not function. There were no buttons at all leading to any content on the webpage.
- All pages were added to the menu bar. I don't want or need all pages in the menu bar.
- The pictures page, which uses javascript, does not work properly.
- I could not organize my pictures how I wanted them. I want to organize them by year and then by album. Not all albums on the same page. This would also apply to videos.
- The Blog feature only allowed for one picture to be easily embedded in a blog post.
- RSS feeds only work with an Apple .Mac account.
After looking around at the most "top rated" hosting services I have found that Bluehost or Hostmonster are considered the most user friendly and best priced. They both happen to be owned by the same company. These web hosts offer 1,500GB of storage, a free domain name, hosting unlimited domains, POP3 and IMAP email, FTP accounts, web based email, secure shell access (SSH - I love ssh), log files, site stats, wordpress, PHP5, poll and survey software...the list goes on and only for the price of roughly $160 for two years.
As you can see, compared to .Mac the features are like a gang of thugs beating the crap out of some artsy fartsy. The only drawback this has compared to .Mac is the amount of bandwidth transfer data per month. HostMonster only gives 15,000GB of data transfer every month (which is still a phenomenal amount). Apple's .Mac doesn't specify the amount of data transfer allowed monthly so I assume it is unlimited.
So because iWeb depends so heavily on being tied into a .Mac account it makes itself useless to me. This is why iWeb is such a great looking disappointment. I even decided to dig into the iWeb html and css files to modify it. I was in for a huge surprise. iWeb's generated css and html are terrible. Good luck on figuring out what code displays what image or text. So I leave iWeb with a terrible distaste for a part of the iLife suite.
So long iWeb, and adieu.
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