Blrg - Software

AppInventor being handed off to MIT

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:45:39 -0500

So this is hardly news at this point, but I figured I'd comment on it now that things have progressed a little and I've exported my projects.

For those of you who don't know AppInventor: It is a web application created by Google to facilitate the creation of Android apps. The premise was that you wouldn't need to know how to code: It was a drag-and-drop creation environment, and sadly it didn't get terribly far.

It's not that it was terrible, mind you, it's just that.. well, there weren't many employees behind the creation of this tool and it wasn't open source, so development and bug fixing was slow, and there were two glaring flaws: Apps that were created were large (one of mine, which was essentially a predefined phone book, was 1.3MB), and these apps could not be uploaded to the Market: they weren't actual apps yet (they do not "compile" to bytecode) and required a helper to run.

I'm sure this can be fixed and AI can become a great tool, but I believe the main issue is one that has been a thorn in Google side for a while now: They're spread too thin and are trying to do too many things at once. Google may have the money for it, but they don't have the manpower. Thankfully, they seemed to have realized this and have not only open-sourced the code instead (or will) and have funded a new MIT Centre for Mobile Learning; This, to me, is a great idea as it gives Google a certain amount of control while not requiring them to directly manage it.

(Oh, and it being open source means others can contribute, but I don't see too much of that happening soon. Call me sceptic but those who can develop will probably not notice the tool at all and be directly trying to create their own apps. Then again, beginners could still be stuck in that middle zone, and perhaps advanced developers will still see it as a useful RAD tool ... if and once you can create actual source with it, I'd imagine!)

LUbuntu and the case of the disappearing menubars

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:03:00 -0400

tl;dr: Remove "Indicator applets" from your panel.

I've been using Ubuntu on my netbook for a while. With things getting crazy with recent versions of Ubuntu and GNOME, however, I find myself not wanting to stay with Canonical's Unity and rather keep a classic desktop-like interface to my netbook.

The easiest way to do this, I figured, was to simply use another version of Ubuntu. KUbuntu was already out; I'd tried a live CD of it on another system and it didn't seem ready to me, nor did I like the direction they were going. It's not that it's bad, it's just not my style. Okay, so that leaves a few other editions to try out, like XUbuntu and LUbuntu.

Since I was already familiar with XFCE (XUbuntu), I decided to try out LXDE (LUbuntu) first to see if I'd like it. It's pretty nice, but at some point I noticed something was off - I don't know if it was always like this and I hadn't noticed, or it happened after an update - and that is that my menubars were gone!

In some cases I could call them up with Gnome's hotkey for that - default F10 - but it didn't work with certain apps (naturally, didn't work with KDE apps, for example). This didn't cause the bars to show up, just for the menus themselves to, so it was at best a workaround and not a good one at that.

I noticed at some point that whenever the panel crashed and reloaded, I briefly had menubars showing up. I couldn't pin it on a particular item at the time, so I figured that was just a side-effect; That some other service in relation to the panel was causing the issue. I searched high and low, and repeatedly blamed Ubuntu and GNOME for it... but it turns out it's one of the Unity additions that was doing it. In relation to the panel, indeed!

Removing the "Indicator applets" did the trick, but at least on the first try, not immediately. It was only after I opened a new application that all the menu bars reappeared in a kerfuffle of activity, with each application bringing itself to the front as though to proudly proclaim, "I've got a menu bar now!"...

Now I just need to pick a theme with smaller menu bars.

Gentoo, PCRE, and PHP

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 17:42:28 -0400

I recently ran into an obscure issue with PHP's preg functions:
Exception: preg_match(): Compilation failed: unknown option bit(s) set at offset 0
This error message would show up whenever a PCRE function was used with the u (unicode/UTF-8) flag set. This is apparently triggered by using a new version of PHP (>5.3?) and an old version of libpcre (<8.1?). The only solutions I could find on the 'net were:

old version of PCRE is lying around, get rid of it (no, both Portage and php -i | grep -i pcre reassured me this was not the case)
PCRE and/or PHP needs to be recompiled for UTF-8 support (I see no such options in the packages and have to assume they're on by default in Gentoo)
PHP needs to be recompiled because PCRE was upgraded after it (this made sense, but genlop -lu ,| grep -E '(pcre|php)' assured me the proper order had been followed)

But guess what? One emerge -1 libpcre php and one /etc/init.d/apache2 restart later (though it occurred to me maybe I hadn't done that previously! Try it yourself, maybe that's why you're getting this!), and I was good to go.
Sometimes, you just have to double-check.

Updating Rogers HTC Dream

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:03:58 -0500

Yeah, so I have an HTC Dream from Rogers because my boss wants me to be able to get e-mails and calls when things go wrong - expensive for an on-call phone, eh? - and I was having difficulty updating it. See, Rogers has been for the past month demanding that users update their phone due to a bug concerning dialling 911 (apparently, if you have GPS enabled and try to call 911, the call fails or somesuch; but I never have GPS enabled anyway, since Google tracks you if you have it on and I have no use for it - besides, the cell location works better), and they disable your data plan until you update. After trying to update it on two Windows systems and trying to manually put the firmware on it as well as calling Rogers tech support, I finally found these instructions:

Windows 7 Instructions for Rogers HTC

It's actually pretty simple, but here's the real problem I was encountering:

I had mistakenly assumed that since it was a new device, the SD card was formatted FAT32, as they need to be for the update. However, it was not (Good job, Rogers). After getting everything off the card and formatting it to FAT32 then replacing the firmware onto the card, I was able to update the phone without a hitch.

I'm still disappointed that it took Rogers so long to update the HTC Dream... ...and didn't even provide a real update. Geez, guys, get with the program already.

Firefox 3.6 themes and autocomplete

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:14:18 -0500

Okay, so it turns out you CAN use themes with 3.6 — the theme just has to be correctly updated for it. Simply version bumping does not work for this version, it seems.

Phew!

Oh, and since 3.5, the auto-complete behaviour changed, so for those of you who liked browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped, you may want to read about changing automcomplete behaviour in Firefox 3.5/3.6.

That is all for now.

Stop the widescreen craze!

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 16:13:54 -0500

I don't understand this obsession with widescreens. I don't.

No, I don't like widescreen at all. It has it's uses, but for me, I'd rather it stick to TVs. Leave my monitors and especially my laptops alone! Arg!

The only laptop I could find that was still being sold that isn't a widescreen is Eurocom's D700T Enigma. A fine laptop, but I'm having an incredible amount of difficulty with them and getting a working laptop. (When I bought it, I had to bring it back the "next" day to get it fixed. Only about three weeks later did they finally stop trying to fix it and basically gave me a new system; Even so, the video card appears to have issues and I may have to bring it in again!)

I'm still looking for a portable media player that can be truly customized. First one to suggest an iPod will be shot. It may seem silly, I want to load the 10+ different file types that I use and not have any problems playing them (companies looking for small codecs may be interested in looking at the source code of foobar2000). Bonus points if it comes with (or there is, somewhere on the internet) software that can re-encode certain formats to lower bitrates (since you aren't going to get full sound quality from a P.A.P. anyway) automatically and still manage to handle changes on both sides transparently (e.g. if, on another computer, I change the tags or add/delete files, those changes will affect the library on my main system).

What? I can dream, can't I?

On a related aside, I've been looking at the GP2X (official) (which has found it's way into my wishlist) and VirtualCogs - specifically, the Portable Computing COG which I may yet use to build and sell a mix between P.A.P. I'm looking for and the GP2X. Hmm, I could sell that. I wonder if Virtual Cogs Embedded Systems Inc. has anything against that sort of thing.

Palm m500, Spybotics, and Linux

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 15:46:21 -0400

So I've gotten a new Palm.

My reasoning for this purchase was that I could use it to write while on the go, or even just if I felt like writing somewhere other than at home. Naturally, I got a keyboard for it as well as I wasn't going to be able to write all that much using the stylus (it has character recognition (at least technically), but I don't enjoy handwriting). Sadly, I neglected to notice that it didn't include a sync cable/cradle in the bundle, and had to get that separately. While waiting for it to arrive, though, I've been fairly impatient about getting programs on there.

Especially the driver for the keyboard!

Thus, I decided to try the only two other methods available to get data onto the Palm: infrared and SD card. I don't have a card reader/writer, so I thought that option was out (turns out it isn't quite - more on that later), so I proceeded with trying to communicate using the infrared port. You see, I eventually remembered that the Lego Spybotics kits that I have came with infrared transceivers; I figured they'd be good enough to transmit data to the Palm.

I first thought of trying it with my Windows system, but the transceivers connect on the serial port and I didn't bother putting a panel for one (the onboard ports of this motherboard don't actually include a serial port), and didn't feel like going through the hassle of adding it (not that it's that much effort, mind you). Instead, I used my laptop, which currently has Zenwalk Linux installed on it. Getting the infrared support was fairly simple (new kernel config plus the tool package), and one reboot later I was in business.

Sort of, anyway.

Linux seems to receive the data from the Palm just fine, and it seems to respond in kind; However, the Palm makes no sign of receiving anything, and eventually gives up on the connection attempt. It seems the problem stems from the most unlikely-seeming source: The Spybotics infrared transceiver. It's not meant for this sort of thing, really; When you use it to transmit data to a spybot, it's actually plugged in directly. I think you can use it to "broadcast" infrared signals to it too, but I don't really remember how that works and if it actually transmits any information. Therefore, I believe it's only meant for really short distances, and the problem with that is that the transmitter and receiver on the Palm aren't spaced the same as the ones on the Spybotics transceiver, and thus one doesn't see the other in one way or another.

I might try putting a much larger distance between the two and see if that works better... infrared is supposed to be able to do more than an inch or two, after all, but unless I had a very specific distance between the transceiver and the Palm, nothing showed up on either side... it's weird.

A few interesting news articles...

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 11:50:02 -0500

A few things I thought were interesting:

Slght [sic] of hand: How to fold a t-shirt in 1 easy step

A short video depicting a simple way to quickly fold a t-shirt. I wouldn't call it one step, exactly, but it is very short: Even the movie itself is ~20 seconds (or one minute if you see the English version). It's pretty neat - I might start using it myself. Sleight of hand, indeed.

Best Buy Confirms It Has Secret Website

Now, every company has it's intranet, but this is just sad. That they'd stoop so low to commit fraud - yes, I consider this fraud - and deny customers of specials by having their intranet display different sites than their Internet site... makes me... I don't know, really. I just hope they and their brother (Futureshop) go out of business.

What? One can hope...

Vista brute force hack update: it might work, if you let it run for a year

Much controversy behind this one, but it all boils down to:

Yes, it works.
You may need to run it for a long, long time before it comes up with anything, or it may take less than two minutes to come up with something.
Anything it generates is potentially valid, not guaranteed to be valid.
Really: Buy Windows, or go Linux. (Or stick with XP... WFM. So does Foresight, so far :>)

Le gaspe, working Linux wireless?!

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 22:31:41 -0500

Thanks to the help of my good friend Mereo, I've gotten my wireless card working spotlessly in Ubuntu Linux. Now to see if I can get it working in another distribution - I really don't like Ubuntu all that much, even if Foresight also uses Gnome :P
(Thing is, the whole time, I think all I really needed was a more recent copy of Gnome's network manager. I'm going to have to poke at rPath (Foresight's package management) and figure out if they've got outdated packages, especially concerning the ndiswrapper driver.)
Kudos goes to Kolmeck for helping out as well. Oh, and for the curious:
I have a Linksys WPC54G version 4 (yes, that detail is that important). I could get all the way through the set-up of the card, until the point where I had to get it to add encryption keys. No matter what I tried, no go: The card quite simply refused to accept any keys whatsoever. Then Mereo suggested I switch from WEP 128-bit encryption to WPA, then pointed me to this article: Enable WPA Wireless access point in Ubuntu Linux.
Worked flawlessly.

Oh where, oh where, has the little kitsune gone...?

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 23:26:48 -0500

Space Cowboy!

As mentioned in my previous short post, I've been playing an MMORPG lately (*gasp!*), called Space Cowboy. Oddly enough, I'm finding it to be somewhat interesting and time consuming enough that I can jump in and come back out a few hours later feeling refreshed and without so much time (Which is an odd thing to say, but there it is.).

There's something nice about blasting things out of the sky.

Must be the the gattling thunka-thunka-thunka-thunka-BOOM...

Anyhow, this company apparently has not one, not two, but four free MMORPGs to which you can use the same account for. Interestingly, all of them claim to be free for life, which is kind of an interesting promise - not that I disbelieve it, mind you (Gunz is still alive) - and I wonder how long it'll last. GPotato (the company) does get income from these games, I imagine, given some of the paid options that are available. So far, though, it seems that these paid options are nowhere near necessary to be able to enjoy the game which is, it hopefully goes without saying, a very nice fact indeed.

I get spam!

So recently, my main e-mail address was a target for spam. At first it came slowly - an e-mail or so per week - but then it began to grow, more and more e-mails per day. Originally, I wasn't too concerned, but then I got really annoyed - I'd managed to keep all my e-mail addresses entirely spam-free. Why did this one start getting spam all of a sudden?

Eventually I remembered a bug which was spotted in my ICQ client, Miranda: Recently, for some odd reason, the "Do not publish primary e-mail address" option would always switch off, causing anyone to be able to collect your e-mail address off your profile.

I removed my e-mail address from my profile (I doubt I'll be needing to reset my password any time soon anyway.), and the spam dropped almost magically.

Server updates on forum

To give my forum some use (and I think I had decided some time ago to do this, and didn't stick to it), I'm going to post any updates relevant to the server itself only on my forum rather than cluttering my personal blog with that information.

This will be the last post on my blog in that category.

Gallery changes done

All the changes to the gallery have been done. All galleries are completely available again. I'll remind once again that some galleries and features may require registration.

Looking for an apartment

I said I was moving out last year, and I haven't yet! I'm looking for an apartment, and my future roommate Eth has spotted one near St. Laurent that might be good for the two of us.

He works in Orléans, and myself downtown, so we're looking between those two areas.

Xmas gifts

For the curious, I've updated my wishlist, showing what of it I've gotten as well as including a new thing or two that I'd like. It seems I'll have to buy the Okami soundtrack myself (and probably soon before it goes out of print). I got lots of chocolate again, but at the time of this posting, it's already all gone ;>_>

Joe's Goals - What my own goals are

I'd spoken about Joe's Goals beforehand, but I hadn't really mentioned what my goals on there are. So, without further ado:

Chores (+1)
Exercise (+1) - Last check 7 days ago
Wrote (+1) - Last check 31 days ago
Coded (+1) - Last check 11 days ago
Blogged (+1)
Added todo item (+1) - Strange as this item may seem, this is to encourage myself to remember things, especially things I need to do.
Completed todo item (+1)
Been outside for a while (+1)
Cleaned / Cooked (+1) - Placed separately from "chores" as expansion, not chores with that description
Filtered Mom's e-mails (+1) - This one is likely to get archived as now most of the spam in her inbox gets correctly tagged as "bulk" anyway, which her OE now has a filter (or "rule") for.
Been to Joe's Goals (+0) - Used as a tracker
Socialised (+1)
Changed bed sheets (+1) - Set as valid for only one particular day (Saturday); I'm trying to get myself to do it always on that day, and not on other days, for various reasons. Mostly a question of routine.
Ignored things to do (-1)
Ate Out (Alone) (-1)
Haven't been to Joe's Goals (-1)

So now you know what influences the graph, and why it doesn't go negative all that often (I think).

An amusing error message

My job requires me to keep, among other things, lists of documents up to date; Documents of all kinds that have something or other to do with situations and people in other countries. At some point I came upon some links which were no longer valid, and gave this error message:

There is an end-user problem. If you have reached this site from a web link,
- Through your internet options, adjust your privacy settings to allow cookies or
- Check your security settings and make sure this site has not been blocked or
- You are probably using a very slow link that may not work well with this application.
Otherwise you have reached this site through unauthorized means.

Seriously, considering you get this very same error message accessing their index page, can any of those really be true, including it being unauthorized, of all things?

"Hiding" files in other files, and why it works

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 23:08:34 -0500

I was pointed to a video today, about how to "hide" files in JPEGs. It's a fairly simple step-by-step example on how to hide files within another file (though it does a few assumptions of know-how).
It may seem a little strange that this process works, and it is the same way that the IRC.Bmp worm works. However, the reason is pretty simple. For a binary (i.e., not text) file to be "valid" in a lot of cases, it does not need to start in a particular way - as an HTML and XML file might - but it only needs to have a certain particular "header" within it somewhere. This header is used to indicate what kind of file it is, the length of the data involved and what it contains, or such information. These types of files follow a fairly specific structure, and thus it is possible to add data before or after the known structure - because a program looking for that particular information will only look at that particular structure, since that's all it needs.
In other words, when you open that JPEG/RAR file shown in the video with WinRAR, all WinRAR looks for is where the information about this supposed archive is, and when it does, reads only the information it needs, ignoring the rest that's in the file.
Similarly, when you view the JPEG/RAR as an image, the image viewer only looks for the JPEG header and image data, and displays that, ignoring the rest of the file.
Using this method, you can easily hide files of different types (Putting two files of the same type won't work quite the same way!*) in each-other. There isn't much point to doing it (you might as well archive/compress them or encrypt them), but you can.

* Although I haven't tried, I assume this would lead to the first or second file being completely irretrievable using conventional methods, which may also be your goal; You could then re-extract the file using, for example, a Hex editor.

Eating out, Thanksgiving, and Wikis

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 12:57:42 -0400

I don't seem to blog often anymore. It kind of bothers me, because it usually causes me to forget things, or put stuff in "blocks" (or updates), like this. Then again, I've also been ignoring my todo list... I suppose it's because I'm still getting used to my job. Yes, I know that I don't have to get up that early (I have flexible hours, apparently, but I don't put too much faith in those words.), but while the sleepiness is a little difficult to deal with, there are some perks to getting up early. Not to mention that half the time, the cat wakes me up anyway...

After the second day of work - that is, on the 3rd - I went to The Fox And Feather Pub along with my brother and some of his friends (and his boyfriend). The menu was a little bland, but I went for the shrimp linguine - finding out then what the name of "that sauce I kinda don't like" was - which wasn't too bad. Were it not for the sauce, I probably would have enjoyed it much more - the shrimp and pasta were good, so perhaps I'll go for something else next time or ask if I can get another sauce instead. The night went well and I enjoyed myself, but I think it would have been better if my brother hadn't decided to schedule this on a Tuesday on the second day of work; I really don't understand why he decided to make it that day. Perhaps to celebrate me getting a job, but I really want to avoid being late at my job... I did it too much at my last one and I don't want a repeat performance. I know I can do better than that. The reason I mention all this is because after finishing our meals there, most of them decided they'd go to another pub (or was it a bar?), and I decided I'd go back home (given the time left, I didn't have much of a choice if I wanted to get up early).

Thanksgiving was... interesting. First, I thought that we were going to my sister's new apartment for a dual purpose: For Thanksgiving, naturally, and also to help her move. So, I packed fairly minimally - clothes, a few board games, a this or a that here and there - since I figured that I'd spend most of that weekend helping her move. Turns out that her friends had already helped her move, and that everything she had was out of the old apartment. Well. Have lots of spare time then, don't we? It wasn't so bad, though; I had the sense to bring myself a book, and I also brought my portable media player, and when I wasn't the only one with nothing to do there was the games - I had brought Calypso (didn't get played), Tsuro (played several rounds), Escape Velocity: Nova (didn't get played, but then again, there wasn't a point where only me and my brother weren't doing anything), and Skip-Bo (which, being my mother's favorite, got played quite a bit). We enjoyed ourselves, had fun, yaddi yaddi yadda. Oh, and because Rona was having a sale during that weekend (or at least that Rona did), my brother decided to buy his bathroom tiles at that point. Heh.
The way back, however, is another story. On Monday, approximately three hours away from home, the car suddenly decided to switch into what is apparently called safe mode (This is what the taxi driver called it... but I'll get back to that.). Essentially, it was impossible to get a speed higher than ~60 km/h, and being on the highway, this meant going onto the shoulder to be out of the way. We stopped a few minutes to inspect the engine and such to see if we could find any problems, but the only indications of problems we were getting from the dash were the SERVICE and ENGINE OIL PRESSURE lights, which were no help as the engine appeared to have the proper amount of oil. (Neither my mother nor my brother have CAA coverage at this point, by the way.) So we chugged along to the nearest exit (which thankfully wasn't far at all), and stopped at the outskirts of a small city (or town?) in a gas station. There, we phoned around and as we expected, just about no places were open since it was Thanksgiving Monday. A man getting his car filled up at the gas station helped us, telling us about a few places we could try, as well as inspecting the engine and letting us know where the nearest Saturn car dealer was, etc.. We decided to try to drive down to a bus station, I believe, or the car dealership - I don't quite remember. Either way, we decided that since the status of the car wasn't improving that we'd get the car towed to the dealership, and find an alternate way home.
In itself, this proved to be a challenge. Now, I did say it was Thanksgiving monday, right? Forget this detail a moment and imagine yourself in this situation. Three hours from home, it's approximately noon, and your car breaks down and needs servicing. So you send your car to the dealership... then what? Call a car rental place, right? But this is Thanksgiving Monday! We had stopped at a funeral home (closest parking lot, and also a fairly large and completely empty one), and a lady there was also helpful to us. The rental places that were actually open had no cars for us to rent. The local busses weren't running, and the intercity ones didn't seem to be terribly interested in this city or weren't answering. (And Greyhound's number, for some reason, had a fax machine picking up both lines.) Thankfully, I noticed the VIA Rail station on the bus route map, and so we walked down to that under the hot sun (What a day for it to be hot! It's a good thing I decided to wear my shorts that day.), and asked there what our chances of getting home were. There were a pair of trains that could get us home by about 22 o'clock, and the tickets would cost us...
400$ total.
The only option we had was that once we were at the connecting station, we could try to catch an intercity bus instead, and have the second tickets (the more expensive ones) refunded; This we did. We took a taxi from the train station to the bus station, and during the short five minutes it took to get there, the taxi driver, an ex-Saturn-worker, told us that the car had switched it a safe mode (Just enough power to get you home were some of his words, and really, had we not any other problems, we might have actually been able to drive all the way home in five hours, if I calculated right.) because it detected a major problem; He also told us that during the test drives on Saturn station wagons, 3 out of 5 SAAB transmissions blew on the first day, and therefore this was likely the problem that we were experiencing. While this was grim news, it was nice to have some insight on the situation. When my mother mentioned wanting to sell the car after getting it fixed, he suggested a few brands. Hyundai was one, I believe, and when my mother mentioned she wanted to get a Honda Civic, he said You cannot go wrong with a Civic. (Or did he say Honda? I'm not sure.), which was kind of amusing.
Anyhow, we managed to get bus tickets to go home, and had arrived at the station just in time to catch the bus that was about to leave. My brother sat somewhere in the middle, while my mother and I sat in the front and chatted with the bus driver the whole time. He was a pretty nice guy, talkative, frank and easy to get along with. We spoke on several subjects - like GPSs and bus drivers (such as himself) getting lost while trying to go to new locations - but on the subject of the car he said that the transmission was probably on a special warranty (I didn't catch the word he used - mechanical? Manufacturer?), which was the first bit of good news we got that day.
The rest of the day (what was left of it, anyway - it was about 22 o'clock when we got home) went fairly smoothly...

The good news on that is that it turns out the problem was not the tranmission, but that the catalytic converter got plugged up (Have you ever heard of that?), and the better news is that it was covered by warranty. My mother is going to sell the car because the previous problem she's had (excluding the flickering light/electrical system which hasn't been fixed yet; it's the secondary one and not the important things, so stuff like the inside lights flicker and the beeping sound is intermittent, but the headlights and dash work just fine), was the rack and pinion - covered more or less by warranty (She complained to GM, I believe, and got them to do the work mostly for free - she had only to pay 100$). Have you ever heard of those two problems? Rack and pinion coming apart and the catalytic converter being pluggd up are not car problems I usually hear about. Thus, she's going to get herself a Honda.

Phew. At work and at home I've been experimenting with wikis - mostly a special type of wiki that is self-contained and only uses one file. Currently, I'm using StickWiki to write my work notes in, and am writing my life notes (life, cooking, observations, information, etc.) in a copy of TiddlyWiki which I am planning on uploading occasionally for others to look at, refer to, etc.. What's nice and special about these Wikis is that while they're uneditable online (which can be considered a feature or a depending on your viewpoint), they use only one file, no database, and do not require you to be online to edit them. Thus, you can use them for a large variety of writing purposes - notes, blogs, journals, etc. - and you don't have to worry about moderating changes to them.
Which reminds me, I need to ask my sister if she wants something simpler to blog in, and if comments are something important to her, as she could just use TiddlyWiki (or some variant like StickWiki) if she prefers.

IRC, and why it doesn't need modernisation

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 15:45:09 -0400

I believe Nightwish nailed it, here:

IRC is a protocol which has been working flawlessly for more than 15 years. It simply doesn't need all that modern crap. It works and that's all most IRC users expect from it. I haven't seen a single serious IRC user who complained about "missing features". IRC has all features which are needed for a stable and relieable chat environment.

End of support for Windows 98 and Windows Me

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 16:34:07 -0500

End of support for Windows 98 and Windows Me

Effective June 30, 2006, Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Me will transition to a non-supported status. After this date, Microsoft will no longer provide any incident support options or security updates. Existing support documents, however, will continue to be available through the Microsoft Support Product Solution Center Web site.

Note: For some reason, the e-mail, quoted above, disagrees with what the site itself says: July 11.

Time to upgrade. Microsoft's finally following through with their promises of discontuing support...
...which leaves all old computers in the dark. Guess those people'll be using Linux variants...

Meow! :3

keilaron@keilaron.ca (Keilaron) — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 17:21:07 -0400

So Roxie, the dog, stayed here another week... just as I suspected. Apparently, the owner couldn't move into his new home yet, so we had to keep the dog for another week. It wasn't so bad, but the cat was obviously not overjoyed by this. I wasn't too happy either, when I found dog piss dripping into the basement -_-
Anyhow... the dog left yesterday night. She was really happy to see her owner... and I was really happy to see her go >_>
The cat seems to be feeling better, too.

College semester's over, and I did well on my exams, I'd say. Onto the next one!

As for server-related things, it seems things are looking up. Knoppix 4 booted without a hitch, and I was able to get everything up and running again with few problems and corrections. The next reboot will use the official Knoppix 4, not that I think it'll make much of a difference.
Also, while the mail server is still down, it seems that I'll be able to get postfix up and running soon. And my To Do list is looking mighty small now =)

And now, to work on the shoutbox more often.