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And a new month begins, and it's the start of hurricane season for us.
In what was a very unfortunate cracking incident, both Apache.org and Sourceforge were cracked. Apache has a brief overview of what happened, but basically it stems from a user using a compromised ISP to login to Sourceforge, and then someone logging into Apache from Sourceforge; and the cracker just sniffed the passwords. Luckily, as the Apache note pointed out, due to the open source nature of the web-server, it's possible to fairly easily check the integrity of the sources to make sure that the cracker didn't put any trojan horses into the code.
I found an awesome new web cartoon yesterday. It's called The Joy of Tech and it's sorta like User Friendly in that it deals with the geek and tech cultures. One of my favorite is this one on trolling.
Succedaneum was the winning word in the 2001 spelling bee held yesterday. I was watching the last few rounds on ESPN, so I got to see the guy win too. I myself could never win one of those competitions because I'm such a horrible speller.
My 18th birthday is tomorrow! One last day of being a minor..
In other good news, the US government is actually considering a bill (you have to put in your zipcode to view the article) that might actually be useful! They want to spend $50 million to get more girls interested in computers and technology, which of course means MORE GIRL GEEKS! Of course as someone pointed out, the US government spends billions of dollars each year fighting drug use, and look how successful that was. But at least this is a start, as girls are vastly underrepresented in the computing and other technological and math fields.
My local linux user group, SLUG (Suncoast Linux User Group), participated in the Computer and Technology Show (CTS) this past week in Clearwater. One of the people there wrote an article about the experience there, and some pictures are here. I unfortunatly could not go myself, but reading through the emails on the mailing list it sounded like fun, and they were one of the most popular booths there. Apparently a lot of the show-goers were amazed that the software they had out was free, not only in cost but in intellectual freedom; the freedom to do whatever they wanted with that software, be it copy it, sell it, modify it, or burn it. Gotta love free software.
Today is my 18th birthday! I am no longer a minor, and in the whole second between when I was 17 and now 18, I matured enough to suddenly be able to do everything that minor's can't do. What a second huh? This also means that suddenly I have to be a lot more responsible too. I think I miss being a kid already.
Here's something I found, that could be a hoax, but was in several magazines (including Readers Digest) and on CBS. Anyways, this kid supposedly built a nuclear reactor in the toolshed behind his house; at the age of 15 for an Eagle Scout project. It sorta reminds me of the movie The Manhatten Project. A shorter version of that story can be read here. I have to admire the kid though for knowing so much about chemistry and science at such a young age, but then of course he wastes it by not going on to college.
Ok, this has got to be one of the scariest things ever. A 12 year old girl named Britney Cleary is being courted by major record labels based off a single she released about chatting and flirting via AOL Instant Messanger. It might just be the first song ever about IMing, and it isn't even that good, not to mention is just a little weird since it's by a 12 year old girl. You can download the mp3 of it (Don't blame me if you become nauseous after hearing it) and also view the disgustingly cute lyrics. What is it with child pop stars? Before you know it we'll be getting auditions from babies still in the womb.
Wow, what a birthday. I played in a golf scramble, which while we didnt do so well, was a lot of fun. My mom also invited like 10 of my friends over for a surprise birthday party, so that was quite an ordeal when everyone started to show up. I also got to show off my 1337 dancin skillz on Dance Dance Revolution :) I also got some more CDR's and stuff from my parents, and so with 18 years of wisdom I tell you this: Buy Memorex CDR's, and do not buy Imation CDR's because Imation is suck. I got some Memorex CDR's for my birthday, and they work just fine in my (crappy) CD player, where as Imation CDR's refuse to play. So there ya go.
I saw Shrek today,
and I definitly recommend that you see it. From first glance it looked really
stupid and I wasn't interested in seeing it at all, but all the reviews I read
said it was great, so I figured I'd give it a shot. And am I ever glad I did!
It's definitly one of the funniest movies I've seen in a very long time, and the
animation is absolutly incredible. There are also a ton of inside and
not-so-obvious jokes in the story making it that much more funnier. It was much
better than that Pearl Harbor movie that was released last week.
Alright, two major updates today.
First, I leave for Texas early tomorrow morning to go visit relatives and
friends. I grew up in Texas, so it'll be nice to go back. But of course what
does this mean for you the reader? It means you will somehow have to find a way
to survive without daily updates from binaryfusion.net. Yes, I know it will be
hard, but never fear, I will be back on June 18th. So until then, you might want
to try going outside and seeing the bright yellow thing in the sky for once. Or
just check out the links page for other
interesting websites. So see ya in about two weeks!
The other major news is that a partition on my hard drive has pretty
much crashed. Last night there was a power surge, which caused the computer to
spontanously reboot while in Windows. When it powered on again, the BIOS said
that my primary slave hard drive no longer existed, and that my CD burner no
longer existed. Yea.... Then when I got to the LILO prompt (where you decide
whether to boot windows or Linux), all i got was a bunch of repeating 0's and
1's. So I used a Windows boot disk to load what was basically a DOS prompt, ran
scan disk, fixed the errors it said, then tried to start Windows but all it gave
me was a blue screen with an error on it. Yikes! So I shut down the computer and
went to bed, becuase I didn't want to mess with it. So then today when I booted
it up, the BIOS magically resaw my hard drive and CD burner, and it loaded up
LILo, and then Windows, just fine. However when I went to go play an mp3,
nothing would play. So investigating further, I found out that some files I had
were only "half" there; like I'd only get half a picture with the rest being
black, or half a text file, with the rest of the text in "mystery-land". Then I
discovered that about 50% of my mp3's are no longer showing up in Windows
Explorer, so I presume that they are lost forever. That's the part that hurts
the most, since a lot of that stuff was fairly rare and hard to get. Of course
not all hope is lost, maybe my dad can salvage some of it while I'm gone, but
it's not looking good for my D: drive in Windows. The other drives seem to be in
good shape, I guess I just had to be unlucky and the partition that I would
least like this to happen to (because it's my storage partition), is the one
that it happens to. But at least Linux is unaffected and the other partitions
are OK. But all those lost mp3's... :(
I'm Baaaaack
Texas was fun, got to see a lot of old friends and relatives. It's still pretty much the same as I rememeber it though. More on the trip tomorrow or perhaps later today (it's 12:30 am right now)
Well, more updates on the computer fiasco. My dad managed to save the small amount of files that still showed up after the crash, but I still lost about 1,300 mp3's, as well as a fair number of Dance Dance Revolution videos. Ouch. Luckly I have about 900 of those mp3's on the other computer, so it's a matter of hooking up the hard drive to my computer and transfering them over. So let this be a lesson is ALWAYS backing up everythign, even if it does take 10+ CD's. You'll be glad you did when your hard drive crashes.
Retief Goosen won the US Open today in a playoff. Unfortunatly it happened during my plane flight, so I missed most of it. I did watch almost all of the regular coverage though. That 18th hole is a killer.
Speaking of golf, I did get in 2 rounds while in Texas, since it's 1/3 the price as it is in Tampa. I did average for me, which is pretty bad (105 and 102) but it was fun.
Update #2:
Well first more stuff on the computer crash. I didn't lose anything vitally important to the rest of my life, but I did lose a lot of things that I really wish I still had. Some of the things I'm now missing...
Music Videos - All Gone
Pump It Up Videos - All Gone
Para Para Paradise Videos - All Gone (and those are hard to find!)
TournOrochi DDR Videos - All Gone
Sony Metreon DDR Tourny Videos - All Gone
Quicktime DDR Videos - Some Gone? Seem to remember more being there, but not sure
AVI DDR Videos - All Gone
Other DDR Videos - Some Gone
ASF DDR Vidoes - Some Gone
Both Sets of Arcade Infinity DDR Tourny Videos - All Gone
And gosh knows what other stuff that I had but I just can't remember having at the moment.
In total I lost approximately 5 GB worth of stuff. Yea....
I have 299 mp3's left, most of which are from CD's that I own already, but just ripped them for convinence's sake. Luckly I checked the other hard drive on our other computer, and I had more mp3's there than I thought, almost 1,200. The video's however are gone for good, unless I can find the sites that I downloaded them from, and I know at least one of them no longer exists.
Another result of trying to fix all that hard drive damage is that I have about 100 really wierdly named (ex: DIR00342) folders and files on my D: drive, and what little mp3's I have left are scattered all throughout those folders. Anywho, I hope to have everything back to relative normal (minus about 200 mp3's and all those lost videos) by tomorrow, so then I'll stop griping about it on here :)
Argh!!! Some of the mp3's that were "saved" are corrupted. They repeat themselves and stuff, so that you only get like 1/4 of the song, and then it repeats. /me bangs my head into a wall.
I stayed up all night last night for no particular reason. It was fun though.
RedHat is now profitable! They finally got in the black with a $600,000 profit.
Speaking of getting profitable, my favorite website, Nintendorks.com is in danger of going under. It costs about $400 per month to keep it going with server costs, and the guys who run it just don't have that kind of money to toss around on a fansite. It's too bad that banner ad supported sites are slowly but surely slipping away. Of course this site is supported totally by me, but my server costs are only like $20 a month, so I chalk it up as costs of a "hobby". That's why you don't see any banners or those incredibly annoying pop-up ads on here. I do accept all major credit cards, checks, and cash though :)
Today has the longest daylight hours of anyday, and here I am updating this at night
Mrs Ellen
Spertus was crowned last night in the greatest pagent ever created. Yes, oh
yes, the Sexiest Geek Alive pagent. She's a
MIT^3 (Bachleors, Masters, and PhD all at MIT) and is a Linux lover, not to
mention she teaches computer science. Awwww yea! You can also view the other nine finalists as well. Now this is the kind of competitions
that should become more common.
In other geek news, a survey says what I've always believed, that teenagers are
starting to prefer instant messaging over phones. I know I sure as heck love IMing over
calling, and it's the main way I communicate with my friends. That and IRC. It
makes those long pauses when no one can think of anything interesting to say a
lot more bearable since you can just surf the web and stuff in the meantime. Not
to mention I'm always online anyways, so it's so much more convinent.
The list of the world's richest people was released today. And at no suprise, Bill Gates tops the list at 58.7 billion dollars, most of it made with unethical business practices (such as saying networked computing had no future, at least not until MS had it's own propriatery authetification services like is discussed in this article).
I was at Disney's MGM Stuidios yesterday, for the last time in a long time since I'm off to college next week. I also stopped by XS Orlando which is a new arcade there in Orlando. It's pretty cool because they have a 3rd Mix Dance Dance Revolution machine, which I played a whole bunch of times. It's too bad Gainesville doesn't have a DDR machine, yet.
I'm tired.
I bought some new shoes today. They are mighty spiffy looking if I do say so myself.
Back on June 21st, Mars came the closest to Earth that it has since 1988, at a very near 42 million miles away. Unfortunatly that night was really cloudy over Tampa, so I didn't get a chance to see it. However coming home from a friend's house last night I finally got a good view of the red planet. It's very easily seen even by the naked eye, though I'm sure it's even more spectacular if you have a telescope or binoculars. You can find it in the southren sky is definitly worth looking outside at night to try and spot. Good luck!
Gameboy Advances are really really hard to find.
Salon has a great article on the assimilation of the internet by major corporations. Before we relieze it, almost all of the web will be controlled by either AOL Time Warner or Microsoft. The era of the free and wild web is slowly dying out as corporations buy out or force out their online competitors. And to think I will be able to say I lived during the period when the web was truly free, and not the corporate monstrosity like it's turning into.
Check out the Inflation calculator. That way you can know that $1 in 1950 is equivlent to $7 in today's money. Amazing eh?
THE CELLER IS BACK! Yes, the infamous Nintendork celler is staging a comeback even as the official site is down. One reader wrote a nice editorial on whatever happened to cartridge cases, for as everyone who ever owned a NES and N64 knows, the NES games came with cases, the N64 games do not. I miss those cases.
Looks like North Dakota is too good for the North part, which is why they want to change their name to just Dakota. They think it'll help give North Dakota a better public image if they dont' use North in front of the name. I don't think it'll matter at all, I wouldn't want to go there even if they called it Super Happy Fun Land.
According to a new survey, geeks aren't as weird as once thought. It's nice to know that I'm considered normal now :) However their definition of geekhood is a little screwy, as I don't see how any true geek could not have sent an email in the last month (22% didn't), or not surf the web for fun (almost half don't). Still an interesting survey though.
The best search engine in the world, other wise known as Google has come out with a new type of search. You can now search for images via Google. It's still in beta, but it worked pretty darn good when I tried it out. In related news, it's also considering going public, since it's expected to break even by the end of the year.
I changed my hair style today. I don't have a picture, but it's short on the sides, and then flipped up in front. I was tired of my old boring hair style, so I figured I may as well change it for the second time in my life. The average person changes hair styles only 4 times their entire life, so I'm getting a little ahead of the curve.
Looks like Microsoft might not be broken up into two companies after all. An appeals court overturned a lower court's ruling that MS had to be broken up into two companies. Of course no one really expected that ruling to stand in the first place, so this just makes it official. The good thing at least is that the Findings of Fact that MS is infact a monopoly and violated antitrust laws is still intact. So at least the courts still see MS as a Bad Thing
I hate going to the dentist.
W00T!!!!! I finally got back most of those mp3's that I lost in the hard drive crash way back in early June. My plan of hooking up the other computer's hard drive to my computer wasn't working (my computer refused to recognize the new drive) so I figured I was SOL and would have to redownload all those songs. However today I was setting up AIM accounts for my family so I could talk to them while I'm at college, when I remembered that AIM has a file transfer feature. So I tried it and low and behold it worked! And not only did it work, it went at like 1.5 MB (yes, megabytes) a second. So even with about 5 GB worth of mp3's, it didn't talk that long to download it all. So now I'm out about 200 mp3's, but still, it's better than 1,500. Yahoo!!!!!!
Also tomorrow I leave for my summer engineering camp thingymabob at the University of Florida. As a breif overview, it's basically like going to college with no pressure since there are no grades and the whole program is essentially to get students used to the college life. I figure it's a good way to spend a summer, which is why I signed up. I will be taking this computer up there, so barring now unfortunate incidents (like dropping my monitor in the hallway) I'll be updating the website just like always.
Well I'm now at UF! The program started today, so I'm typing this sitting in my dorm room waiting for my roomate to get back. There are 4 guys in the room, but there are two bedrooms and a living area, so I only share a bedroom with one guy. And it's actually not all that small either, at least for a college dorm. So far I'm having a blast, so I can only hope it continues this way. Also look down for yesterday's update which I couldn't post because my cable connection at home is shot due to a lightening storm. So not only is the internet down, but so is our TV.
The connection speed here is here is also slower than at home. I was downloading Mozilla 9.2 (just released today!) and at home I get like 80 KB/sec, here it's 15 KB/sec. Ouch! It's probably all those bandwidth sucking college students :)
Well .biz and .info domain suffixes are now avaliable. I still think that .sucks would have been the coolest new one, too bad it didn't get accepted.
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