BushidoHacks.com

Dreams in Digital

2008-06-15T21:02:00.009-05:00

June is the one year anniversary of the thrid greatest project I have ever completed. (The first greatest was obtaining my Eagle Scout. The second greatest was graduating college.)

I still have plans for this machine. I am personally holding off any Linux upgrade until Fedora 10 comes around. (It would be so much easier if instead of every 6 months, the people at Red Hat released a new distro every year instead. On the other hand, I should really consider installing software from source code rather than waiting for binaries.)

One plan that sounds affordable for right now is a fan too cool down the hard drive. If the nuclear energy supporters want to make environmentalists happy, they would us a really fast graphics card to generate steam for electricity. Then again, what would they need to use to generate the electricity for the really hot graphics card? Reguardless, the part of the computer that I forsee will be the cause of its downfall is the graphics card. Remember, if your GPU is spiking around 65 degrees Celcius, your main fan is probably broken, or your graphics card is too hot! The print on the wires generally states that their is a heat limit of about 70 degrees C. The normal for the GPU should be around 60 degrees C or less, otherwise everything is going to get hot, slow, or worse break down. I believe that is what happened to the main fan a few months ago. The GPU literally cooked the wires. While their was no puddle of plastic goop in my machine, the insulation that kept the wires from burning up could not protect the wire from the relatively intense heat.

Until I can afford a really nice graphics card, I will try my best to keep the rest of the computer as cool as possible. The fan and raidator on the CPU keep the CPU coool. The main fan aswell as a couple other case fans keep the MoBo and the memory in good order. And I have a new fan that will keep the hard drive cool which was remarkably affordable.

Also on my honey-do list for the computer: replacing the DVD-R/W. This like the GPU is currently a short-term long-term goal. As I have previously stated, I am hoping that a Linux standard for Blu-Ray R/W comes out in the near future and that prices for Blu-Ray drop within the next year. I went to Office Max the other day and saw that a single Blu-Ray disc for Blu-Ray R/W was $20.00. You want to know how much that disc is really worth? About a nickel. That's SONY for you.

Another short-term long-term goal would be to add an infrared controller to the computer. I don't care much for Bluetooth. And secondly, why does SONY use Bluetooth for their controllers and remotes in the first place? Bluetooth has many security concerns, and since it is pretty logical to use the wireless peripheral that interfaces with the computer in the same room, Infrared makes more sense.

Now if you really want to use Bluetooth for something, how about this next project that is definletely long-term long-term. Because Bluetooth can be used in say the next room over, why not create a Bluetooth device for your apartment that aquires free-to-air satilite television to be piped in to your house.

Now I hear some of you say "But Bushido, we can get this from DirecTV or Dish Network." True, but what they are as well as the cable companies are are middlemen between the satilite from space to your house. And if you noticed in your house if you have cable, the signal from your TV that is directly hooked up to your TV rather than a cable box does not have a delay. Likewise, this is the problems with the satilite TV companies. Because they get their feeds from various satilites then bounce the signals back up into space and into your backyard, this delay is much longer. The critism with such a project is that the dish used would be about 3 feet to 6 feet large, or maybe larger. The fact is we have come a long way from the 1980s when my grandpa had this piece of what was then considered high tech equipment in his house. We now have DVB which allows for us to watch TV on cellphones. The truth is, we could probably watch that for free if the big telecom companies didn't charge to do what the satilite TV companies do. And if you think about it, why do you think the Cable company is like "don't swith to satilite" and the satilite TV companies are like "switch to us from cable". It is because both the cable and satilite companies use the same signal equipment to fetch TV signal using thier 30 year old 12 footh satilite dishes. Cable does not go out in a rain storm because they use the satilite dishes that are tuned to the frequencies that can penetrate the toughest rain cloud. This technology is portable to Linux under ITU DVB-S standards.

But why stop at just TV? Shortwave and Amatuer radio could also be combined. This is a little more compilcated as many people know about the size of the amatuer radio and CB radio antennas. What I don't understand is why satilite radio has a small antenna. There is some information about amatuer radio at this link. And don't forget the Internet!

Next question is how do we power this device? In this age with gas price through the roof and people starting to wise up to solar and wind power I was thinking about something that would power the device, but at the same time be grounded from lightening strikes. The grounding mechanism would also be required for the dish as well as the amatuer radio, assuming that there is no way to talke that out of the equation. A Big-Ugly-Dish (BUD) with solar pannels built into it would be perfect, but physics doesn't work that way. I saw on 60 minutes one time BUDs are still used in Iran as a way to override their government's TV broadcasting.

The idea is really good and very smart. It may be the satilite/cable/ISP-company-in-a-box, but first I would condiser the cost and make certain that the telcoms and the satillite/cable compaies don't foil my idea. I do like the idea. It is the most straightforward plan. But their would be some programming involved like telling where to point the dish and the solar-pannels (if any). Generally they point south, but for the first time use, or the poor soul who nevery used a compass in the Boy Scouts (or Girls Scouts). The prototype will necessarily be boatanchor size even though technology can get smaller and maller...but then again you don't want it to get lost or have some ignorant jerk steal it.

But I would like to see something like that be fore the end of the next decade. Maybe the end of this decade if feasable. Two and a half years is a long way to go and a lot of time to learn things.

It is time for citizens to commandeer oil prices!

2008-06-10T21:39:00.008-05:00

Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) worked valiantly today to send a message to the oil industry that we have had it with the oil companies high prices with no merit. But when the bill that she proposed that would charge the oil companies a windfall sales tax failed, then another bill that gave tax breaks to alternative energy died, both at the hands of the Establishment, it has become clear that no amount of legislative action, or judicial action, and certainly not any executive action, would stop the oil companies from overcharging Americans.

The oil industry makes enough money, that they are above the law. They could commit murder (which they have) and simply write a check for bail if they were in a trial. The oil industry has no respect for the laws of man or the natural rights of humans. Their crimes have hindered the wellbeing of citizens, as police and fire departments must cut back on their crime and safety training for gasoline. The oil industry has obstructed the school year of children that school years must be truncated, shortening the educations of some students, and rerouting buses to standing room only for mass-transit systems.

Today, the estabishment stated that they are in full support of the oil industries crippling America, its infrastructure, and its government.

We are now at war with The Estabishment. The Estabishment that declared war but sent its troops into battle without armour. The Establishment that promised "Gas Tax Holidays" to bribe people into gaining their consent and compliance to continue to raise the price of fuel and lower environmental standards. The Establishment that has damaged the environment to the point that their are no bees to polinate crops, which in turn endangers our food supply. The Establishment that bailed out mortgage lenders and savings and loan groups just as they did nearly 20 years ago. The Establishment that put energy companies in charge of environmental and energy standards which made the air we breathe unhealthy and the people who could not afford heating or air conditioning freeze or swelter. The Establishment that mistreated hospitalized war veterans, exported jobs overseas, and held back students who proved that they could succeed.

The Establishment is afraid of change. It is afraid to lose the power it has been inebriated itself with the freedom of its citizens. It has taken this country and the world for a ride and it was incahoots with alot of bad people who also fear change. Many of these changes were maid possible online, reguardless of the attempts of disinformation which tried to drown out or lie about what is going on. Television and radio only tell us what the Establishment wants us to see and hear. The Internet has changed the playing field. Not like in 2000 or 2004, but for real this time in 2008.

We frighten the Establishment, and that is a good thing. We aren't sending them terriorist threats or manufactured lies to keep people in control. We are spreading the honest truth that life stinks right now, but at they same time we are telling people that we are not going to take it lying down.

We are ready to take on the changes that the Establishment will fight us tooth an nail over. We are not going to let them continue to keep the status quo because we know what has happened--that IS HAPPENING--because we gave up freedom for quiet conscent.

It is time we commandeer the gas stations and put the price of oil back under $2 per gallon. The oil industry makes more than enough money that they deserve to be victums of their own crimes.

But by no means does not paying for gas mean that we can drive around in the big gas-guzzling vehicles.

The automobile industry is still an accessory to the crimes of the oil industry. They broke the laws too, raking in profits while their workers took a pay cut so that the guys upstairs got a pay raise.

It is time that the citizens of the United States of America took control of this situation, as the Establishment, the oil industry, and the automobile industry won't.

America is desperate but not stupid, Mr. Akin

2008-06-09T08:13:00.002-05:00

Senator Todd Akin (R-MO) proposed this morning the $150 Barrel Energy Extortion Act of 2008, a bill that will continue to keep the status quo as far as energy standards go.

Pretty much it calls for what every Republican-based energy bill proposes.

Open Antarctic National Wilderness Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas exploration. (Something we should not be doing.)
Open the Continental shelf to Oil and Gas exploration. (If you are a beach-goer, this potentially means oil dericks in view of the beach.)
Expand the refinery capacity of the U.S.- no refinery has been built in 30 years. (There is a new refinery being built in Omaha, Nebraska. Living down stream, especially after a tugboat accident spilled 30,000 of oil into the Missouri river just a few miles from where I a writing this post, I'm not very keen about the idea.)
Promote the creation of fuel from shale reserves. (Strip mining)
Promote the safe construction of new nuclear power plants. (Again, a step backwards.)

If this bill sounds familar, like it has been done before, it has.

Akin's bill continues to ignore alternative energy and only continues to support the oil industry.

Does he really think that we are going to buy into this? It's about as foolish as that "gas tax holiday idea". Do we really believe that the oil indsutry is going to lower the price for oil if we cut out the tax for oil? HELL NO! They're going to jack up the price and make money off of what the federal, state, and local governemnts charge for oil.

And that is what this bill is. It says "When oil hits $150 per barrel, GIVE THEM MORE MONEY!"

Akin says he saw this coming since 2001. If that is so, why didn't he stop the oil barons when oil hit $50 per barrel? Or $75? Or $90? Or $100? Or $125?!

We are already being extorted and forced into coercive complaciency! It's like tossing a lobster into tepid water then slowly turning up the heat. Eventually the lobster boils to death.

This bill's only purpose is to stear people away from alternative energy--which is gaining momentum--and put keep the oil, coal, and nuclear industries in control. Just because they are losing customers (like a very small fraction) they make a big stink about it with the government but tell everyone that it means nothing. Well if it means nothing, why the hell are they so afraid that that small fraction is breaking away? "Oh no! We lost 0.001% of our customers! Quick call the government! We might not make $40.8 billion dollars this year! We'll only make slightly less than that! Save us, Senator Akin!"

This bill does not stop the oil industry from extorting customers. IT PROMOTES EXTORTION!

Follow up: Honeybees sighted in St. Louis!

2008-06-05T09:54:00.003-05:00

It is with cautious elation that I report that honeybees have been sighted in my neighborhood for the second day in a row in North St. Louis County, Missouri. Though their numbers are not as numerious at they should be, it is a postive sign that Colony Collapse Disorder has not stopped the honeybee from doing her work!

I would like to find out where her (surprizingly, all the worker bees are female) hive is so that I can check--from a safe distance obviously--that her hive is healthy and in good spirits.

Maybe her sudden appearance is the result of something that the local beekeeping group did. But their group picnic isn't until this weekend.

Maybe this is a small group of wildbees. About two weeks ago, a swarm of wild honeybees invaded an elementary school. No one was hurt, and the school turned turned their unexpected strife into an educational learning experience. If only my highschool did that every year in biology class when part of our school was infested with ladybugs!

The honeybees that I saw were docile enough (though it is probably never a good idea to pick them up, especially when they are working) that I could examine them for Varroa. Though the mites are very small, their brown bodies would stand out from the bees black and gold. The few bees that I observed had no varroa on them. Despite the varroa's devistating effects on bee colonies, locally they could have an alibi, at least from my limited observations.

Follow up: Norwegian Hospital Vandal Shutdown

2008-05-30T21:37:00.005-05:00

Thanks to the IT team at the hospital in Oslo, Norway for their quick response to the wave of vandalism that has plagued this website and many other websites on the Internet.

Their response has inspired me to send out letters to other sites who may be abusing the Internet to spread unsolicited and in some cases illegal content.

While CAPTCHAs may not guarantee a decreased risk of vandalism, it will certainly be considered as a countermeasure. Because of the recent cracks of the CAPTCHA, the Honeypot-style plan is effective.

Hopefully, I will not be sending any more messages to hospitals in Norway.

Once again, Thanks!

A new plan to deal with vandals

2008-05-29T20:04:00.003-05:00

My new plan creates a page of every banned IP address. Rather than a long list of IPs that can be difficult to sort, and a pain to list if over 300 vandal IPs are attacking your site at once. (ouch!)

I'm also sending letters out to companies whose employees or students are quietly vandalizing websites.

I don't know why a hospital in Norway is posting links to pornographic websites, but I'm sure that their Information Technology department will give me a reason.

The new plan uses resources from the various NICs (Network Information Centres). While this is alot of work, it will be something to keep me busy until I can find work. (Career Builder sucks!)

Neko Wiki assaulted, reinforced

2008-05-28T09:30:00.002-05:00

Running a website is not all roses and wildflowers. Sometimes it is hardwork.

As previous posts would indicate, one of the most challenging parts of running your own website is security. While I tend not to constantly think about security, sometimes you have to let your guard down in order to build security up.

Such was the case this month at this website, specifically the Neko wiki.

Apparently, sometime between May 11th and May 27th (yesterday), over 300 vandal IP addresses assaulted the wiki. When I started taking countermeasures, the attacks suddenly stopped. It was like turning the light on in a room full of cockroaches.

The history of one of the pages that was created, which will now be used as a "honeypot" for gathering more rouge vandals shows that vandalism was not just added to the wiki, but it was also removed and edited by the same IP address. This may indicate that not all the vandals are web robots, but live people.

An investigation will be taking place that will thoughly identfy the more active offenders.

CCD killing the bees, but cellphones are not the cause, oil is!

2008-05-17T15:32:00.002-05:00

Cellphones seem to be the lupus of diagnosis, and as Dr. Gregory House would tell you "It's never lupus."

Unless you are a beekeeper who is beekeeping directly next to a cellphone tower, it is not cellphones. But if it concerns you that much, feel free to contact your local congressman or senator and persuade him or her to pass some sort of legislation that will change the frequencies of telephone communication towers or file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission or the National Telecommunications & Information Adminstration.

On the other hand, consider the other factors that are going on. The Environmental factors. Between Global Warming, the increase of poisonous Carbon Dioxide emissions due to vehicles with poor gas mileage (the CO2 argument should be a no brainer given that smoke is used commonly in beekeeping), unstable weather patterns (i.e. droughts and floods), the short-sighted "genius" experts at the major chemical companies (who obviously aren't geniuses), the environmental policies in nations such as the United States, China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, the invasion of forgein species, diseases, and viruses, and the MSM (mainstream media) and their advertizers selling us this "Going Green" campaign by telling us to buy things that are not very environmentally friendly or that you won't find at the local hardware store or that are not in your budget (clearly you are not going to find an affordable solar panel to prop up on your roof without it being avaiable in only a few locations (like two states over), costing you an arm and a leg, while living in an apartment or rental property that has a no "home improvement" policy), we are living a a "perfect storm" of problems right now.

It's not fair, really. You can't "go green" and save the bees if you use cellphones as a straw man while at the same time you don't have the supplies, income, or availabity (especially if you live in a "fly-over state") to make the changes you want to make but can't make because of a few people who live on the coast and think that they can solve environmental problems with their bachlors degree in liberal arts or marketing.

A serious problem demands serious solutions not just for the short term but for the long term as well.

Cellphones are off the hook as far as we know, and most beekeeping organizations and websites will agree. If radio devices were at fault, we would ban the use of Shortwave, HAM radio, or CB radios for police and fire departments. But not just radio with those frequencies. AM, FM, Weather Radio, satilite, and low-power stations would also be banned. Why not blame television--not just for the bogus content to get you to buy stuff you don't need--but for the use of electronic components that use radio for broadcast? Lets not forget WIFI, Bluetooth, Infrared TV remotes, UV black lightbulbs, even THE SUN which emits all sorts of rays at various frequencies.

We need to consider that if electromagnetic fields (though vital to speicies such as bees, birds, and other migratory life forms) are at fault, they would have all died when Guglielmo Marconi created the radio sometime around 1900, the EM fields are not at fault. In fact, the magnetic poles are moving, but we have no control over that as this is a natural process that occurs about every few thousand years. Man and bees both survived the last magnetic pole reversal the last time and their is a good chance we will survive it the next time it happens.

I still wake up in the morning to the sound of songbirds, and the birds aren't dying. In fact many species are on the rise again.

Bees on the other hand are in trouble, and the problem for that is simply in the air we breathe. Pollution, chemicals, diseases, viruses, greenhouse gasses like Carbon Dioxide.

I have a friend who was telling me about this problem the other day about how the atmosphere's oxygen supply is depleating due to the reduction of plants and trees and the increase of poorly efficent vehicles. It is like that scene from the movie Apollo 13 when the astronauts need to build an air scrubber to create more oxygen or they will die from the CO2 in the ship. Plants are the air scrubbers. They create oxygen and they also act as windbreakers. Too much wind can strip away top soil that smaller plants need to grow and that bees need to pollenate.

If you live in an urban area, you know doubt have seen the "stellar" tree trimming that power companies like Ameren (in Missouri and Illionois) for example have done to preserve the power grid. IT SUCKS! The trees look lopsided, the trees get sick because the man in the cherry picker is not Edward Scissorhands, and eventually the tree dies and has to be cut down. This is what should be known as Urban Deforestation. As much as the rainforest is a big deal with environmentalists, for the rest of us who are more concerned about the trees in our own backyard, this is a disaster equivalent to those loggers in Brazil who are chopping away at the Amazon.

But when your carbon dioxide output is greater than your oxygen production, you end out with more severe thunderstorms than knock out the power grid. I don't see the electric company putting down another tree somewhere to replace the one that was cut down, and we still get brownouts and blackouts due to weather and poor energy conservation. And the temperatures are still rising in the summer so more fans need to be used to keep people cool or worse from dying.

The root of this problem has one traceable source. Oil Consumption.

With the MSM telling people to go buy Hummers and Jeeps to go on that offroading excursion that they will never do at $4 per gallon and 16 MPG City, it should be pretty obvious what causes the most problems. Now I'm not saying that factories and chemical companies are off the hook, not by a long shot. But not everyone owns a large factory or a greenhouse full of genentically engineered mutants. But everyone who needs to go to work and get food and supplies uses a car and a car needs gas to go places and gas is made of light sweet crude oil.

At $120+ per barrel, and since no one in Saudi Arabi owns a Toyota Prius since gas is under a dollar there, the #1 cause must be is certainly and with no contest of argument has to be OIL!

But big companies such as Exxon-Mobile are not doing anything, even though they have NO environmental policy and after nearly 20 years have not cleaned up so much as a drop of oil from the 1989 Exxon-Vadez Oil Spill. The government has leaveyed bill fines against the oil conglomorate to this day, but Exxon, despite making $400 BILLION in profits last year has not paid it off as they have continued to weasil their way out of paying for this disaster. They've paid only about $5 million in damages, when they own more than $250 million plus interest not just to the State of Alaska, but to all the fishermen, environmental organizations, and other people who where effected by this disaster.

If you had a friend that broke something that was of great value who never paid back the damages ever, would you still want to be friends with them? Then why buy gas from Exxon-Mobile or any other major company that makes promises about environmental stewardship but does not keep it?

The automobile industry can also take some blame for this. America could have had cars as efficent as Toyota or Honda ten years ago, but the upper management at Ford, GM, Chrystler still look at making effecent cars as exciting as getting teeth pulled. SUVs are popular because the trucking industry has big trucks that can crush little car. This intimidated people. The auto execs, who have stock in the oil industry, and their shareholders (mostly people from the oil industry in a quid pro quo relationship) took advantage of our fears, and sold us these big-ass SUVs and encouraged others to do so with marketing towards celebrities and advertisements. And we bought it hook, line, and sinker. And now it is the little things, in this case bees, that are suffering.

Now we are talking about switching to ethanol, of which is TOXIC to bees and can drive up the cost of food for human consumption.

So what do we do? Everyone who is living in confort who does not have to worry about losing their jobs, the price of gas and food increasing, who can afford the efficent cars but buy the gas guzzlers instead, who pretty much run the goverment, the big corporations, and have a silver spoon in their mouth while offering alot of bad advice or advice that we can't implement because the resources that should be available are not available in our domestic marketing area continues to be indifferent of the environment. They're in their safehaven bubble blind to the life outside of the coastal cities. The only reason they care about Global Warming is that their favorite golf course will be underwater.

But what about the rest of us? The government has about as much knowledge about farming as they do technology. NONE. And since the people at Monsanto, Dow, DuPont, Shell, BP, Citgo, and ExxonMobile are not Jerry Baker and sure as hell are not Mr. Wizard, we're in deep trouble.

Sure you have people like Al Gore telling us that we are in trouble. It's like having your next door neighbor telling you that your house being on fire is a bad thing. No sh*t, Sherlock!

Why don't we spend less time telling people they are in trouble and spend more time FIXING THE DAMN PROBLEM!

The government, the big companies, and especially Al Gore are not going to fix this problem. WE HAVE TO! No more of this "Can't someone else do it?" mindset. We're in serious trouble all those big shots are giving us is a small water gun to put out a six alarm fire.

We need to get back to basics. We need to kick the oil habit completely. The bees are suffercating, soon the humans will too, unless we can find a solution.

The Start of Something Big!

2008-04-16T16:51:00.002-05:00

Finally! A real program I can call really be proud of.

My audio program works!

There was some difficulty at first reguarding something about the device /dev/dsp but it turns out any program that uses KDE squats the device for KNotify or some other program. One more reason to use GNOME as Linux's GUI, I guess.

This first program I'm trying to get the computer to Play a little of Pink Floyd's "I Wish You Were Here". (About 8 notes, if I recall.) It is a simple guitar tab, and guitar is very similar to piano only the strings are spaced by about 6 notes in the G chord. (It's been a while since I've played any major musical instruments, so bear with me on the technical terms.)

Currently, the sound that I get is a little limited. I'm not exactly using a Moog.

This is the start of something big!

'Allo, ALUT!

2008-04-14T13:46:00.003-05:00

I finally got around to creating my first program using sound.

While this may not be something to be excited about, it is a milestone in my opinion.

For years, I've been trying to figure out what I can use to create my own music using the computer. Then I found out a few weeks ago about MarioPaint Composer (MPC), based on the music program from the SNES game Mario Paint. The big let down of course: No version of Linux. Windows and Mac users should definely get into this easy to use program that will probably be appended to the Free Software List.

So what is there for the Linux users? Lots of softwares, mainly stuff that is still in development or requires external hardware. But this is for people with more experience in music. To them K.I.S.S. is a rock band rather than an acronym.

I'm finally on the verge of creating a program that I've been looking forward to making that does what all the other softwares other than MPC have failed to do: Create a very simple software sythesizer for the computer. No Keyboards or Drums to hook up. Nothing fancy or dumbed down. Just a program to turn the computer keyboard into a piano keyboard. If it works (and it should), then I'll think about adding all that fancy stuff.

The software that is going to help me do it will be OpenAL Utility Toolkit (ALUT), based on how the OpenGL Utility Toolkit (GLUT) was designed.

First off, there is a simple Hello, World program that they have. The one below has been modified for C++


/* helloalut.cpp */
#include 
#include 

int main (int argc, char **argv)
{
  ALuint helloBuffer, helloSource;
  alutInit (&argc, argv);
  helloBuffer = alutCreateBufferHelloWorld ();
  alGenSources (1, &helloSource);
  alSourcei (helloSource, AL_BUFFER, helloBuffer);
  alSourcePlay (helloSource);
  alutSleep (1);
  alutExit ();
  return 0;
};

Next the saving part. I think it is time to show off how to create a simple makefile and use it. Note that TABs must be used not spaces when indenting commands. Because of this blogging software's limitations, any line thia is indendt with space should be denoted as a tab character.


# Makefile
helloalut: helloalut.o
        g++ helloalut.o -lopenal -lalut -o helloalut

helloalut.o: helloalut.cpp
        g++ -c helloalut.cpp -o helloalut.o

Thanks to this quick lesson in how to make Makefiles, I now know that it is unnecessary to enclose modules using -Wl--start-group and -Wl--end-group when linking modules. Ofcourse this may be limited to the Linux operating system, but it is a significant change that should be ammended to the GCC tutorial.

So what does this Makefile do? Well for starters, the default name for a Makefile is Makefile. The make program is the prgoram that used to install or remove prgrams directly from source on Linux and UNIX operating systems. Thus it is a good idea to keep the source files when you use make to install a program. Makefile can have a different name but it is probably a better idea just to use the default. Ergo, there can only be one Makefile per directory where there is a program to be installed.

The above Makefile would do this in the console:


g++ -c helloalut.cpp -o helloalut.o
g++ helloalut.o -lopenal -lalut -o helloalut

In the more fancy projects there is generally a couple lines added to removed the software that was installed which is generally make clean, but I'll have more details about that when I update the programming tutorial later. Stay tuned.

In order to use the Makefile, you should be in the directory where the Makefile is. So cd to the directory where the source is.

The fancy programs generally have a shell script called configure that is in the directory that is written to check if all the components for the software that is to be install can run. Before the Makefile is executed, run ./configure. You don't need a configure file to use make, but it is helpful if you are writing something fancy. Right now, the Makefile that is being discussed in this blog entry is sutable for just one computer.

So we've changed directories, made sure that everything is set to run, time to build the program! It is so very, very simple, If your Makefile is called Makefile, just type this command.

make

That's it. Nothing else to do execpt run that program.

But what about make install? You don't need to worry about that. That's if you are root and want to install the program in /usr/local/, and involves writing more advanced scripts such as the make clean command that undoes a make install. (Come to thing of it, I wonder how I can set up a make update when a new version of one of the fancy programs becomes available.)

Wow! I covered alot of ground today. I hope this helps everyone clear the air about how to use make as well as getting started with using ALUT.

Just remember to K.I.S.S.

Linux to Blu-Ray: Get It Together!

2008-04-13T19:36:00.004-05:00

Now that Blu-Ray has won the battle, it's time for the Blu-Ray Disc Association (BDA) to get with the program.

While I admit Blu-Ray is the latest hardware that is on the market in terms of optical disc drives, and that the price is fair for what they are charging for the drives and discs right now, driver support is needed for Linux.

BDA has two options for resolving this issue the hard way or the right way.

While it will still be another years before the average Joe can afford Blu-Ray, there is still time for the BDA to pull its head out of the sand and see that DRM is bad and that there are other operating systems that can demonstrate the full potential of Blu-Ray technology.

BDA is not a corporation but a union between several hardware manufacturer, movie and video game studios, and video retailers. So why act like a monopoly? If they are sharing with other companies, why not with consumers? The only thing that we want is software support. BDA can still make money from hardware, movie sales, and retail revenue. But they can't make money if consumers can't afford to purchase it in the form of Blue-Ray players or video game systems because their members jack up the price for products.

If this is the purpose of the BDA, then the key code has reason to be found and distributed.

Late April Watch

2008-04-11T23:33:00.005-05:00

Sometime in late April, it always seems to happen. Something terrible that the media will spin their "Lets remember what happen last year" just in time for more "An Heroism".

Hopefully that will not not happen this year. Next year on the other hand will be something different being the 10 year anniversary of The Media's Kneejerk Reaction.

But since alot of bad things often occur around this time of year, I predict that this year it won't be some student with a chip on his shoulder.

Fifteen years ago, the flood of 1993 flooded out much of the St. Louis Area, including my grandparents' farm. But the City of St. Charles, Missouri could likely learn a hard lesson in the part of St. Charles County that is built on a floodplan called New Town.

St. Charles clames that they have build levees to prevent flooding like in 1993 or even 1995. But this is a lie. And with river gagues in Grafton, Illinois, Alton, Illinois, and St. Charles, Missouri set to crest next week above flood stage, is St. Charles willing to bet the house on it?

The Meramec River in South St. Louis County has swallowed Interstate 44 atleast once this year. Given the amount of preciptation that may be in store for us, this is a flood year for the St. Louis Area.

I don't know if it was the construction workers or nature, but the Discovery Bridge (the Highway 370 bridge in North St. Louis County) has moved atleast a foot downstream the Missouri River over those many years. (It may have been the construction workers who made a mistake, but reguardless, the Missouri river has a strong current.) If the rivers flow over their banks there will be nothing lefter but the concrete foundation. It is like a slow moving explosion. There once was a house next to the bridge and the '93 flood swept it away.

Let this be a warning to the people of New Town. You are in danger. Even if it does not flood, flood insurance should be a must have.

Turn around! Don't Drown!

Get to know your Elected Officials

2008-03-15T12:22:00.007-05:00

You don't need to go to Washington, DC or your state capital to get to know your elected officials. What you should know is who your elected representatives are.

I recently took a trip to my state capital of Jefferson City, Missouri, to support a group that helps people with head injuries as well as physical and mental disabilities.

The trip rekindled my interest in being involved with state and local politics, as it is at that level individuals have the best opporitunity to have a voice in government. It is also at this level where elected officials understand the issues that are important in your community, not just the issues that are important to a small group of men in a smoke filled room.

Every state seems to have a small little clique of upper brass state officials. It is usually composed of people who are in the greatest position of power or part of a family has had a history of wealth or strong relationships with corporate leaders. At the federal level, it is pretty obvious. At state level not as much. The further down the ladder, at regional district, county, and municipal levels, the greater chance there is for individuals to contact and make friends with their elected officials. The highest level of communication should be at municipal ward or municipal district level. But then you have cities with about 50,000 people where all they do is meet up every other Tuesday and say "I" to whatever proposal the mayor thinks is a good idea making the meetings feel scripted or predetermined.

So the best idea would probably be to get to know who your elected officals are.

Gary Gygax rolls his last 20.

2008-03-04T21:22:00.003-06:00

Today is a sad day for any geek, even if you never played Dungeons and Dragons.

Ernest Gary Gygax, co-creator of DND, has rolled his last 20.

The entire community is crestfallen but has expressed their sorrow and their memories of a persons some called friend while others who have never played the game would have called him a friend just the same.

themocaw on the Penny Arcade Forums wrote this outstanding epitaph that is worth sharing.

Suddenly, things didn't hurt so much. The pain was gone, and the darkness as well. The touch of his loved ones' hands faded away, as did the pain.

He was free.

He wasn't sure when it happened, just that it did. There was a burst of light, and a feeling of utter calmness, and then a moment of understanding.

He looked back only once, but already, what had been was fading away. A part of him longed to return, but a voice whispered to him that his time there was over. Something new lay ahead.

But first, there was something he wanted to do.

They were already waiting for him, smiling, just like he remembered. Sheets of paper with arcane symbols and numbers lay in front of them next to glasses of drink and small, polyhedral shapes that glowed in brilliant colors that no human eye could have seen. Faces long since missed. Friends and loved ones that he'd wished he could have seen one more time, and now he could.

There was one empty seat waiting for him at the head of the table.

He took his seat and cleared his throat. Reaching out a hand, he adjusted the shimmering cardboard screen and glanced over his notes.

"All right, guys. Roll for initiative," he said.

RIPE: Pakistan Hijacked YouTube

2008-02-28T23:15:00.006-06:00

The RIPE Network Coordination Centre describes this weeks shutdown of access to YouTube in Pakistan Telecom as "hijacking". RIPE recorded that the ban by Pakistan were felt worldwide on the Internet, affecting traffic globally.

I believe that our own government does the same thing, but not in such a grandiose scale as what Pakistan did, which is irontic since not too many people in Pakistan do have the Internet, and those who do have it don't like the majority of it.

The thing that governments do not get is that the Internet gets its message through no matter what obstructs it. Communication in general can't be obstructed 100%. There is always that fraction of a point that always gets throught, slips through the cracks. Hence why the government montoring EVERY phone call and tracking EVERY email message is FUTILE. (Tell that to President Bush or President Mushariff or President Putin.)

Because they are too busy tracking Dick and Jane, Osama still runs free. So don't buy into this crap where the government says they are montioring calls in our own country because their are "sleeper cells in America".

There is already a terrorist organization in the United States. It's called the Westboro Baptist Church. If that doesn't say "Tim McVeigh" with the protest at military funerals and the website domains that have been squatted to propogate their hate then the people who pull the woll over our eyes here are not paying attention.

Pakistant can't expect to shut out the Internet due to their religious beliefs because the world does not see things as they do. America can't treat people like prisoners while the real culperates (the corporate politicans (i.e. Bush)) keep stealing money from us because they claim theo don't have the ~~money~~ equipment to find some guy who is hiding in Pakistan.

Even hijacked passengers will fight back and subdue the people who are hijacking them.

Nokia Morphs the Future

2008-02-25T20:15:00.004-06:00

The 21st Century. Still no flying cars. Still addicted to oil. Still addicted to greed and consumerism. Someone should really tell the people pulling the strings that the 1980s are over.

Aside from Barack Obama's strong momentum to break the political machine that killed Kennedy that endangers everyone else, the people at Nokia have a plan to make science fiction become reality within 5 to 10 years with the Morph project. Morph will be the iPhone killer. (As if Nokia doesn't already have an iPhone Killer).

Check out this video.

GM Vice Chairman Calls Global Warming "a crock of sh*t".

2008-02-18T00:28:00.005-06:00

Popular Science writes that GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz called Global warming "a crock of sh*t".

ORLY?

Considering GM touts "energy alternatives" but doesn't really live up to the environmental standards that some people have, they should really think about what they are saying. The same goes for Ford and Chrystler.

Taser rendered useless, Bro.

2008-02-08T22:20:00.000-06:00

While currently only being sold for military and police use, expect to see protestors at the next G8 summit with an underground supply of ThorShield.

ThorShield should be on the consumer market. Imagine if you have a mentally disabled relative who is an emotional train wreck whe Officer Fuzz tases him.

Then there is the school officers who are now packing tasers at school and prodding the unarmed student. Some 15 year old who has no intention of being the next Eric Harris and loves school but is being stunned because they principal does not like what he says or the teacher does not agree with his point of view in history class.

Children are not sheep that should be prodded or forced to comply with energy weapons. The taser's abuse is over!

Good Riddance to MyFox!

2008-02-04T17:52:00.000-06:00

After nearly a year, I have decided to terminate my relationship with KTVI.

A conflict of interest has boiled over. What I can't believe is how one person said the phrase "these bloggers who delete comments". "These bloggers?" Pardon my naivety, but wouldn't this person count themself as one of "these bloggers". Gee, I woun't have to exercise that button if people didn't use l33t sp3ak, leave little comments less than 25 words long, and especially prejudice. (We've all been guilty of that last one in one way or another.)

But what really pissed them off is when I showed them this picture.

It is no lie that the people at the Fox Network and their affiliates have been instructed NOT to treat people equally. How would the station or the network's shareholders react if they did not treat everyone equally?

I find it shocking to believe that suddenly a network that has supported the status quo says that they support a candidate who runs under the democractic ticket but she is as republican as a Tipper Sticker.

I've had enough!

Not to metion all the news stories that were ignored so that they could sell American Idol during the newscast and suppress any real news.

As of today any post related to news events will be posted under the news tag.

News sites and blogs that I would recommend:

PubDef.net - local political blog hosted by Antonio D. French

WikiLou - The St. Louis Wiki

Slashdot.org - Technology news

KDHX

Independent Media Center

Fark.com

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Defective By Design

The Media Foundation

Free Software Foundation

2600: The Hacker Quarterly

Phrack.org

Popular Science

Linux Journal

I'll work on a links page in the near future.

Yahoo! will NEVER merge with Microsoft, so quit asking them, Microsoft!

2008-02-02T00:21:00.000-06:00

In what has to be the umpteenth time that Microsoft has asked Yahoo! to merge with them, rest easy Yahoo! users as this will NEVER happen.

Since Yahoo! started in 1995, Microsoft has made several bids to buy Yahoo! all of them were denied. Even as Google dwarfed Yahoo! and Microsoft, Yahoo! still denied to merge with Microsoft.

As Microsoft still fightst to keep its foot in the door, it's goal is to "embrace, extend, and extinguish". Something Yahoo! knows about Microsoft quite well, considering most of MSN has been a less-than-user-friendly parody of Yahoo!

As much as I am still p.o.'d at Yahoo! for destroying my first webpages that were on Geocities, I still support there decision to say no to Microsoft, which is currently struggling since Google is the new leader of the pack in the tech sector.

GT5 for PS3 driving in March

2008-01-20T15:36:00.000-06:00

Despite the promises made by the local Gamestop dealer that Grand Turismo 4 Mobile for the PSP will be coming, it is now certain that it is in "development hell". (Noooo!!!)

On the other hand, Gran Turismo 5 Prolog will be coming to the PS3 on March 18. From what I've seen I like what I am seeing.

GT5 will also be available as a High Definition video game. (Translation: Expect Sony to jack up the price for this game.) Fortunately, the GT series has lived up to the hype. Especially since endurance racing (i.e. American LeMans) is way better than boring NASCAR racing. (LeMans drivers can make RIGHT turns! Endurnace racers can drive on hills, not just a straight track.)

Enough with the video game rhetoric. Back on the programming front, C++, PHP, and Python are being practiced. It is planned in the near future for Flash development using the Ming library. Ming allows for Flash development on Linux platforms, but the flash has to be created by hand rather than with the conviences of the GUI. On the other hand, Flash has tried constantly to make it seem like you can't make Flash without their expensive product. This PHP manual page contradicts that assumption.

This site is finally getting its ducks in a row. I predict more changes here soon. That is very good news.

Sony Finally Puts the PSP to good use!

2008-01-11T22:39:00.000-06:00

Sony has seen the light finally and has allowed third-party development of the PSP--well sort of. While talking about hacking or modding the PSP is still strictly taboo (and is bannable on their message boards if discussed, a rule created by a SCEA executive), creating skins for the PSP Internet Radio Player (IRP) is a small step forward in the right direction.

PSP owners who have wifi can download this application by upgrading to PSP v3.8.0 then downloading the IRP application after upgrading.

Currently, the number of internet radio stations is limited, even more so by the buearocracy that has decimated the number of online radio stations since the beginning of this decade. (Until our Patent, Trademark, and Copyright system is unFUBARed, supporting SaveNetRadio.org can help expand the selection to the PSP's IRP).

PSP's IRP currently supports Shoutcast. To expand upon this, networks like Live365, Pandora, LaunchCast, and other free Internet radio broadcasters should be added, though Live365 seems to be only other compatible broadcasting network that could be supported by the PSP's IRP.

I would like to see this service be expanded over the next few weeks, especially following the days of the Consumer Electronics Show.

Archives by Category almost working

2008-01-09T18:44:00.000-06:00

The Archive by category feature is nearily complete. All I have to do now is figure out how to tell the page to go to the category of choice. I also realized that everytime something gets published with blogger EVERY category publishes at the same time instead of the categories that were added to the article.

Meanwhile, if you are still using Internet Explorer (including that tabbed browser imposter that came out), you probably aren't seeing ANY of the awesome stuff that I added. The official browser for this website is Firefox, because Explorer doesn't support SVG or VRML. (Netscape supported VRML back in the late 1990s, which was passed on to Mozilla, and then on to Firefox.)

Why is there no SVG3D?

2008-01-08T14:05:00.000-06:00

It occured to me that the way that VRML/X3D handles 3D models has not changed at all since it was first introduced in 1994.

VRML relies on a set of verticies to draw objects. This list of verticles can be come LOOOOONG! But don't get me wrong. SVG has the same draw backs as VRML and X3D, but SVG can use Bezier curves where as VRML and X3D are still using 3 dimmentional polylines. The math behind the Bezier curve is not that hard to implement and has been part of the OpenGL documentation for many years.

Thus when you use a program such as Blender (which has a terrible GUI, by the way) to transform .3ds into .wrl or .x3d files, you get a list of points that turn round edges into square edges made up of more nodes than the smooth surfaces that were defined using a Bezier surface.

Maybe this is something to check out later and see if their is a way to extend SVG into 3D.

The world is becoming a better place

2008-01-05T23:32:00.000-06:00

Brintey Spears is officially crazy and therefore can nolonger be used as a tool to distract the world of the news that really matters.

Goodbye crazy lady! Now back to the news that really matters!