Learning lessons the hard way

December 12th, 2005 Comments off

I was sitting around bored today, and decided to continue adding things to my repository so I don’t loose them, and fix some entries. After a while I realize, I really only loose data when I’m trying to back things up. Over summer, I even destoryed my laptop hard drive in an attempt to backup a few files. I realize this after I find out today that I somehow managed to completely delete my .mozilla and docs directories.
Lesson for me to learn today: Don’t bother backing things up.

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The semester is almost over

December 4th, 2005 Comments off

“Warning, incoming update.”
Alright, I admit, I’ve been watching ReBoot too much lately. But time for updates. There is one week of classes left before finals. My second game project is due Tuesday, and of course I’ve procrastinated too much on it. My biggest problem is that it just isn’t interesting enough for me to care. I didn’t have that problem the last time around.
After finals I need to clean my room. Half the room became this space that houses all the crap that I just drop in here. I haven’t made my bed since September. The A/C is still in the window. Hell, I haven’t even hung up the linux flag yet (those of you that know me know that I don’t officially move in until that flag hangs). Somebody needs to make sure that I do obsolutely nothing the weekend after finals until my room is presentable.
So what else has been going on? This has been a big week in the world of open source. New branches of Apache HTTPd and Firefox have come out (take note that firefox is now at mozilla.com). A new development branch of MySQL has also been released, as well as lots of action in the GNOME and PHP worlds.
I finally finished reading Starship Troopers. It surprising didn’t take me long to read. Short chapters and other breaks are very important. Next up is The Hobbit. I’m also trying to read more tech books so I can forgot what I know and learn it the right way. I’ll post my overall plan about that on my development blog soon.

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Helpful tip

December 1st, 2005 Comments off

This is mostly so I can keep track of this link, but it’s a great tip for anyone. If you don’t know what version control means, please research it. It’s something everybody should at least know about.
Lately, I’ve been real interested in backing up some important data. Some of it I would like to have available for multiple machines too. But I couldn’t figure out how to add some of the files in my home directory to a subversion repository without first importing the data, then checking it out again. However, I did find this link in the subversion FAQ. So I easily created a jax directory to a repository, and now I’m adding dot files and directories that I can easily get back if something happens. This is also great for tracking changes.

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Top 20 geek novels

November 21st, 2005 Comments off

The folks over at Guardian Unlimited has posted posted of a survey they’ve conducted. “Survey Monkey’s rubic” aside, here are the top 20 geek novels (written in English since 1932). I’ve only read two of the listed novels, but I’m glad that three of the books on my list of things to read soon are in there.

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Potpourri of information

November 20th, 2005 Comments off

News: I had my first interview! I had an interview with the manager for what was Damion’s position on Friday. He has seven other phone interviews before Thanksgiving, then he’ll narrow the list down to two people with Paul. I should know something soon.
Reviews: I’ve been semi-interested in news aggregators lately. Ever since summer, I’ve lost interest in being online constantly and regularly checking news, blogs, etc. Sage is incredible, but I never remember to use it. I was real excited when I found out that Google now has Google Reader, but I was less than impressed with the interface. Reading news is actually a little annoying, but bonus points for the scrolling mechanism (get a list of news items and use the mouse wheel on it). Last night though, Sean recommended an aggregator that I’ve been meaning to try for a while. Liferea definitely fits my needs, as long as I can remember to use. Simple to use, easy to navigate, all that good stuff and I’ve only run into one bug. But I’m using a beta version, so I can’t complain.
I have finally seen UFC. Interesting, very worth the the five bucks for comedy value alone. Making fun of Joe Rogan is so easy. The title fight was great too.
Randomness: You should notice the link on the right for The Daily WTF. It’s good for a laugh and to make me realize that I’m not as dumb as I think I am. However, someone sent me this link, which just down right scares me. I can’t believe that there are people out in the world like that.
In other news…I know nobody else cares, but I like to share anyway. Along with offer free downloads of their enterprise development tools (I’ll get links soon if someone wants them), Sun has started a University Challenge, offering a college student (or group up to four members) ,000, and 0,000 for their school. Just have to write something to Solaris. Hell, they even suggest porting software to Solaris, or fixing bugs. Could be fun, different environment, you have until June. For you people that say no immediately because you don’t know Solaris, do a little digging in Summer of Code articles. One of the NetBSD winners started fresh in the BSD world and learned enough in three months to get NDIS wireless drivers working.

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