Category: tech

Daily Life

A few more thoughts.

So, the coffee on CSU campus has always sucked. I generally steer clear of any coffeeshop that serves Allegro coffee, but for some reason, CSU Allegro is really… nutty.
When I was going to MHS, Gold Bar was really the perfect spot: good local coffee right between me and class. Now there’s nothing acceptable between me and school, so I’ve been going without (and avoiding the highly productive study sessions that coffeeshops yield for me).

But Rockwell Hall (the business college) just opened up its own coffee cart, which I’ve been saying they needed to do all semester.
And they don’t use the same old crap. It’s some local coffee brand. And it’s really good (or at least the first cup was).
This is the building where most of my classes will be.
This is the building where I work.
This is a very good thing.

[warning: meaningless nerdiness ahead. feel free to skip.]
I’ve been running Windows Vista again… the OS itself is stable, but right now the third-party drivers really suck. As in, I get the Blue Screen of Death on a wired ethernet connection, and if I want to use the wireless at CSU, I have to track down some beta software that works about 70% of the time. I got really frustrated with it again today, and booted back into Ubuntu Linux…
I swear. Ubuntu is like a breath of fresh air. It takes up a THIRD of the RAM that Vista does, boots twice as fast, and is way more stable. It helps that it’s fairly barebones, and you just add the components that you need. I guess computers are like cars: XP is the sedan that everyone drives- it works well for everyday tasks, breaks down once in a while, and is a good day-to-day vehicle. It’s not good for big demands, and forget cramming a lot of people in it.
Ubuntu is a Jeep. It’s light, versatile, and you can add or subtract parts to your fitting.
Vista is a blinged-out Escalade with chrome spinners. And horrible resource usage. And yes, it’s ridin’ dirty.

Sorry.

But seriously…. this thing has CRAZY resource usage. In Ubuntu today, I was able to convert a gigabyte of FLAC files to MP3. That’s a decode operation followed by an encode one. It only took 12 minutes.
And this is with really good SMP support built into the kernel, so it was chugging along, devoting the whole task to one core at 90% usage, while the other one happily processed my other tasks at the same time: playing MP3s, running about 4 tabs in Firefox, chatting in Gaim, and some more stuff, too. No noticeable speed impact whatsoever.
Oh, and did I mention that this whole time, I had over 60% of my RAM free? This thing is a beast when I get it away from Windows.
[/nerd rant]

I’m girl-crazy again. It sucks. I think I’d rather be single. Relationships get so lame when they get so crazy. Damn hormones.

I’ve listened to nothing but The Beatles for the last two days. It rocks. I have the complete collection now – every Beatles song officially released. In MP3 form, it weighs in at just under a gigabyte, so the money-wasting side of me is tempted to buy an iPod shuffle just for Beatles tunes.
(I won’t do that. I’m not that crazy.)
I’m realizing that in order of frequency, when it comes to Beatles songs, my favorites are most often written by George. Then Paul. I’m kind of wearing out on John- he gets annoying when he’s whiny (although there are many, many, many exceptions).

I really wish I could take a couple of weeks off and do nothing but drum on a good acoustic kit, as if it were practice for a profession. I desperately need people to jam with. Canned music is getting very, very old.

Music

PS360

I’m having an enjoyable break. I still have work, but it’s work where I’m not bothered every 2 minutes, so I can actually get some stuff done.

Dabbling in drumming on my acoustic drums, which I had only played once since moving in to CSU. It’s totally different than electric drums, which have been feeling rather limiting recently. But I think that the electronics are forcing me to focus on my technique and rhythm, since they aren’t so boomy and loud to play. Less fun to play = more focus on improving my playing.
But banging the crap out of my Ludwigs today felt really good. I played some solo grooves for a while, then Rush, then The Who, then Steve Kimock. I’m in a classic rock phase where super-technical fast fills and ghost notes are less fun than just straight-up old rock beats with fat tom fills.

Having fun with Ubuntu Linux, as well. If OS X doesn’t come out for x86 systems in January (I have a completely unrefuted suspicion about  this) I might opt to ditch Windows instead of upgrading to Vista. I’ve basically decided to experiment through the end of the semester, and then migrate to the system I’m happiest with over the winter. The contenders include XP Professional, Vista, Ubuntu 6.10, openSuSE 10.2, Fedora Core 6, and (maybe) OS X Leopard.

I’m also looking at the new video game consoles, as well. For the last ten years, I’ve been a straight-up Sony PlayStation gamer. I don’t play video games too much, but all of the really fun games have come out for PSX or PS2. Stuff like Gran Turismo (I’ve owned 1-4), Ape Escape, Crash Bandicoot, and the Final Fantasy series keep me coming back (every game I mentioned has also been Sony-exclusive). The Xbox gained a lot of network play with the likes of Halo, and many “simply fun” games have dominated the N64 and GameCube. I’ve never had much of a thing for first-person shooters or the bright colors of Mario Party 36.

But now there are next-gen consoles for each system. The Xbox 360, after some rough (and fiery) starts, has emerged as a great console overall. It’s really easy to program, and great games are coming out for it. Gears of War has to be the most beautiful game I’ve ever seen. And it’s a cheaper system, too- it’s been out for a year, Microsoft has already started to turn profits on these boxes, so prices are likely to go down sometime soon.

Enter the PlayStation 3. It has come a year after the 360, and pushes hardware limits so far that manufacturers are unable to make too many at a time. We’re talking about an 8-core PowerPC-based processor, plus a crazy 533-MHz graphics system. Compared to the 3-core 3.2GHz Xbox 360, this unit blows the competition away (and three cores is nothing to cry about!)
But that’s just hardware. Programming multithreaded games- forget 8 cores – is very difficult. Basically, once developers actually learn how to program the darned thing, it will definitely blow the 360 out of the water. But it’s gonna take a lot of time.
Not to mention that the PS3 costs $600. Forget it. My strategy for now will be to wait at least a year and see if the PS3 flops or flourishes. In the meantime, it’s really annoying because I have no PS2 of my own (it was the family box and I moved away) so all I have to game on is my old PSX emulator on the laptop. Which is totally fun- I mean come on, I have Final Fantasy VII! But I want to play XII now, and have nothing to play it on. I don’t want to wait a year or more to find out about the PS3 to be able to play these games. I would almost rather buy a 360 and a PS2 now (total: $429) than a PS3 later ($600).

I have the opportunity to score a $100 Xbox this week. No, I won’t tell you how. But if it doesn’t go through (limited supply) then I will wait the extra year to see if the PS3 is worth it.

Unless I cave and buy a PS2 just to play Final Fantasy XII and Gran Turismo 4.

*chirp chirp*
Yes, I know that nobody is reading any more.

tech

nEw br0wz4rz!!!11one [updated]

[UPDATE: It turns out that this wasn’t the official 2.0 build of Firefox. They’re working on it, it comes out tomorrow… And this one isn’t official. Though I have a hunch that it still will have those bugs come tomorrow, so my rant is still (probably) valid. ]

So the big new versions of Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox are out… I’ve been jumping between Firefox 1.5.0.7 and Opera 9 for a while now, with heavy bias on the Firefox side.

I had to thoroughly test the beta and release of IE7 for work (Micro$oft owns my department’s soul, so no OSS for us) and I got to know it pretty well. I was mainly just excited because this means that a bunch of public terminals will finally support tabbed browsing. I spent a good part of the last two weeks at work trying to get IE to fail, and it didn’t happen. As a matter of fact, for (heavy) day-to-day browsing it has no functional difference from Firefox for me. Sure, there are some nitpicky differences, but nothing that important. So a long story short, I really like it, at least in comparison to the four-year-old IE6. It still has a couple of problems – namely, major CSS shortcomings, and resource-hoggage. I have the same three tabs open in IE7 and FF2, and IE is taking 64MB. FF is taking 32. Oh, and IE’s rendering engine hasn’t changed since IE4. That came out with, um…. Windows 98?

Firefox 2 will be great in a couple of revisions. I think it was rushed out of the door to compete with IE7’s release last week. I have the “final version” – not a release candidate – and it’s crashing as much as the beta and RC2 did. Except that it’s supposedly a final release, which shouldn’t still have those bugs. That kind of instability in a final release is unacceptable. It’s crashed twice in the last 10 minutes on me… with simple browsing.

So for now, I’ll be using Internet Explorer 7, until I can browse happy again. I feel so… dirty. But it’s amazing that IE7 is good enough to not drive me completely insane, and still feel as good as FF 1.5.0.7 did.

tech

iPod for sale

iPod and cases

I am selling all that you see here:

  • 4th Generation 40GB Apple iPod
  • Leather flipcase with belt clip
  • iSkin Wild Side: Verve
  • iSkin: Clear
  • Contour Showcase (Yes, it’s ugly, but so is a bulletproof vest.)

(USB cable for file transfer and charging also included)

Features: Pretty much everyone knows what an iPod does. It plays MP3’s. It plays stuff off of the iTunes music store. It is 40 gigabytes (according to apple, that’s 10,000 songs) of musical goodness. The cases all keep it safe and pretty (…except the Showcase, that just keeps it safe).

Condition: I have been super-paranoid about the iPod… I don’t shake it around, the thing’s a hard drive, after all 😛
There are minor scratches on the iPod, so the back doesn’t look like a mirror any more… Still looks great in and out of a case. Battery life is great, and will definitely last for a while. When it does die (all rechargeable batteries need to be replaced after a few years) it will be very cheap to replace- ~$30 for a new battery.

Age: This iPod is just about a year old (I got it after exchanging a defective one).

Warranty: None from Apple (like I said, this was from an exchange from a 2-year-old iPod). HOWEVER, I don’t want you to be afraid to buy this because of no warranty, so I’ll make a 2-week return policy. Try it out. Don’t want it for any reason? Give it back, no questions asked. (Oh, and I’ll refund your money if you want that, too. But I’ll just take the iPod back if you don’t want the refund 😉 )

Why am I selling it? The only reason is that I filled it. Which is hard to do- unless you’re insane like me and need to have 41 live Grateful Dead shows on there. I now own an 80GB iPod, which should take longer to fill. I figure I’ll spread the love.

Who will I sell it to? If I know you, and you aren’t going to load it up with 8 Britney Spears albums, it’s yours.

Price:

You Decide.

Leave me a comment with an offer. Sale ends when I decide so. Highest offer doesn’t necessarily win, and doesn’t have to be restricted to money- that might make it more fun.

School

“Major” indecision

(…sorry for the pun.)

Right now I’m not sure what I want to do with my major(s) at CSU. I came here knowing my three big interests: Music, Computers, and Spanish. I’m pursuing all three in some way or another, and possibly will be getting degrees in two of them (I don’t want to be a music major).

Right now I’m a Business Administration major with a concentration in Computer Information Systems. I will graduate with a diploma that has no mention of computers. The program consists of 34 credits of general business courses, including many that I don’t care one bit about: Business Law, Managerial Accounting, and Supply Chain Management, to name a few. The business college is a completely different world when compared to the rest of campus: everyone acts as if they’re in a simulation, preparing for the “real world”. It’s not uncommon to see people wearing suits or at least dressing in business casual to go to class. I kind of like it- I’ve been making up my own home businesses since about second grade or so- but at the same time, it just seems so fake. I don’t want to be some guy in a suit who masks communication with his customers in formal reports and letters.
The CIS concentration is 27 credits. That means 34 credits of classes that I essentially don’t care about, and 27 of classes that I’m strongly interested in. I don’t like having more classes that I don’t like.

I wrestled with myself a while back over whether or not I should just be a straight-up Computer Science major. It’s 60 credits of programming. It’s also lots of theory and math and things that I’m generally not good at. But it’s also probably better preparation for what I’m interested in; most of the interesting jobs and internships I’ve looked at want CS majors. Unfortunately, CS prepares you for a job that can easily be done in India, and it’s really showing these days. Essentially, CS teaches you how to sit in a box all day and program. That’s the appeal of the business major- I learn the programming, and I learn skills that make me hard to replace- skills that can’t be outsourced.

Enter the Applied Computing Technology major.  It’s about 35 credits of Computer Science, plus 12 credits of business and 12 credits of classes in any computing department on campus (CS, CIS, Electrical Computer Engineering, more…) It looks appealing. But one of my bosses at work is a CS major, and he says that employers don’t like the ACT major. Meh. I like it.

If I do switch my major to ACT, it won’t be until next year. Part of that is because the business college is really hard to get into, so I should stay until I’m sure that I want to bail. Another part is that I haven’t gotten into any of the programming in the CIS major yet (BD210 is still quizzing me on easy hardware stuff… I have one tomorrow on CDs and DVDs. Ugh.) so I don’t know if 27 is not enough, or if it’s too oriented on business applications.
But probably the biggest reason is that business majors get free copies of Windows and Office, and I don’t want to give that up until after Windows Vista comes out 😀