Yet Another Tech Blog

Moving to nickassis.net/blog

2006-03-08T15:20:00.000-05:00

I'm moving this blog. Check it out at nickassis.net/blog looks much better now. Plus wordpress is incredibly good. Nic

Microsoft is getting annoying

2006-02-19T21:07:00.000-05:00

What the hell is wrong with Microsoft these days ? I usually don't bash (pun intended) at them to much but they are getting annoying. They keep trying to get into every market possible. They keep trying to make windows do things which it never was designed to do and at which it sucks. I just saw an ad for Windows embedded. Wait Windows embedded ? What the hell, this is crap. Do you really want your robotic arms to start throwing cars around ? Jokes aside, the only thing Microsoft seems to not be trying out these days is innovation. When is the last time they managed to come out with a new and interesting product ? Apple, google, Yahoo!,... All seem to find new interesting things to do. All this time Microsoft tries to reinvent the wheel with there MSN search, .net, Windows vista, Windows server .... Seriously, why not come up with something new, revolutionary or that simply works ? Oh well, I lost faith in that campany when I was 12 so nothing will make me change my mind about them. No wonder computer science genius wants to work for them anymore. They have no interesting and innovative projects going on. Nic

Valentines Day

2006-02-14T08:10:00.000-05:00

Well for those geeks who would have forgotten the date, I just wanted to post a reminder. Nic P.S. darling = Amanda; love++ darling;

Intel and Skype

2006-02-13T22:44:00.000-05:00

What the hell are they doing together ? [cnet] What does Skype think it's doing. Except pissing off ther users. That stuff is just weird. Please explain to me what the hell this means ? Why would they go do something like that ? Nic

Back Home

2005-12-28T20:45:00.000-05:00

Well I am now dicussing Entertainement News (help) with Amanda back home in crawfordville (FL) . I kinda feel happy in sad. I love this place and the people here but I miss my friends ans familly back in canada. Oh well I guess I will get used to it after a little while. Hey except for flickr (Expensive) What good online picture album do you folks recomend ? I feel like I'm going to have to write my own to be satified. Nic

Wired made a Major mistake.

2005-12-25T01:55:00.000-05:00

THEY FORGOT DATA !!!!! Wired has a nice compilation of the 50 best robots of all times but they forgot Data for Star Trek: The next generation. Seriously Data was a great robot (more of an android but whatever) . How many robot have there own Evil twin ?? And how many robots pilot there own space ship. And not just any space ship... He pilots the best one of the fleet. Seriously this is a huge mistake. I will have to right an angry letter to Wired's editor. Just before I go, read the article about Stanley the robot car that won the Darpa grand challenge. It's truly incredible. I'm sure I will have a personal driver pretty soon ;-) Nic

Brain accumulation

2005-12-23T21:29:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone, As you might have read this week Guido Von Rossum has joined google. Now google probably employs 70% of the smartest people in the Computer Science field. This is cool but somewhat scary. Now that they own the thinkers they also own some of the future of computer technologies. Google is getting to be the next Microsoft faster than most would think. Remember IBM used to have a lot of the brains and Xerox PARC before them. This is history that is repeting itself. For those who are older than me and enjoyed the 60s, you probably saw how majorly computers changed our world. The huge room wide beast of the 50s 60s and 70s are equivalent in computing power to the chips in our cars (if not less powerful). What used to be only available to big Universities and large business is everywhere around us. But why am I talking about those early days of Computing ? Well because a similar event (Brain accumulation in one compagny) Occured around that time. Many of the best research in computing were found at MIT Labs or Stanford's SAIL and SRI labs and also the now Famous Bell Labortories. But around the mid 70s to early 80s a lot of those brains left those places and went to work at Xerox PARC. Those minds managed to produce the pinnacle of technological advances of the 80s, The PC. (This is not entirly true please read books like What the dormouse said - John Markoff for a more elaborate description) Now a lot of the work had been done at other labs but the fact that they were all reunited and where able to work together gave us some of the stuff in CS at the time (Considering Jobs and Wozniak were around the same crowd, It's not suprising that they managed to come up with the Apple Computer) So what is this all amounting too ? Why am I talking about this ? Well I am just curious to see if Google will manage to come up with a Breaktrought as big as what the guys of Xerox PARC managed to do. Or will Google with all this new brain power become evil and try to Monopolise the market by keeping there major technologie completly closed ? Nic

Examsssss!!!

2005-12-11T15:52:00.000-05:00

Geez I have been hit by the exam stress bus. I'm going nuts. I just had to of them which went pretty well (I hope). But darn, I'm loosing it. I'm so freakin scared of the other 2. I JUST CAN'T FAIL. Arggghh!!!! I think I will go to the theater tonight and calm down cause I'm starting to have random hand shaking attacks. My head is full of weird stuff. Nic 2,3,5,7,11,13,19......

Google Video

2005-12-06T20:53:00.000-05:00

Google Video rocks. Look a this video a friend of me found online : Mario Unleased These guys are great. It brings back some really good memories of playing Mario. Anyways google video is pretty cool the interface is great and once again the Google guys managed to create a web app that beets most competitor. Geez one day I might be that good. Nic

Rediscovering HTML

2005-11-29T01:04:00.000-05:00

I just started brushing up on HTML again. It was about time. The last HTML website I had made from scratch was when HTML 3.2 was the standard. I haven't touch html directly since then. There are a lot of cool things that are totally new to me such as CSS. It's a really cool feature and I know most of you must think I'm crazy but I had never used it before. Anyways I'm rediscovering old website that I had forgoten such as htmlgoodies.com. Anyways you can check my progress on my main website at www.nickassis.net Nic

I'm moving again because I need too.

2005-11-22T00:40:00.000-05:00

So last week has been one of reflexion for me. I had so much crap going on I just had to stop and think about where my life was heading. One realisation was that I needed to go back to Florida and switch worlds. Go back to the last place I felt calm and relaxed. (That actually my girlfriends arms and those are in Tallahassee.) Second thing I realized was that I am screwing up my studies right now. I need to focus more and I think moving away from everyone I have been seeing everyday will help. CTF is a great place to hang out but I have wasted so many hours there I have forgotten why I am attending college. I have to mention on thing about CTF to be fair, I have learn more from working in CTF than I have in all off my Courses here at McGill combined. Seriously I have made incredible friends. Some of them I hope will remain my friends for the rest of my life. These bright people will probably do some incredible things in the world and I will be glad to brag about knowing them. Thank you CTF... 3rd realisation is that I have never actually try any of my "Smart" ideas I usually come up with once in a while. I had a while ago the vision of a Linux distribution geared towards elemetary school childrens and I wanted to try to implement it inside my countys elementary classes. Well I wasn't the only who though this was a great idea. Just take a look at the edubuntu distribution. Also take a look at skolelinux an european initiative. I wil then only have a little work left to do. I will have to sell this to the school board of Wakulla. Lets see if they accept to listen to me ( I will have to use some of my contacts down there I guess). If I manage to sell them on the Idea of using Free Software then part of the battle of preventing the next generation of childrens to believe closed source software is the only solution will be a won. We really need to reach childrens this young since they are introduced to technology at a much younger age now. To conclude this lengthy post I would like to say I have some cheap butt broadband connection now and I will thus be able to post more on my blog. Hopefully thats a good thing. See you all later dudes and dudettes, Sincerly, Nic

Who needs sleep ?

2005-11-16T12:11:00.000-05:00

So on my first day of real work at my new job I had to pull a all nighter. At least I wasn't alone. My friend Micheal who is the previous system administrator was there with me. It was suppose to be done in a couple hours but ended up being a 15 hr job which led nowhere. So you are probably intriged at what the job was. It's very simple we had to switch a Fedora Core 4 server to a Debian stable server. So why was it so long ?? Well there were a couple of major problems.Number one, the install. It turns out that this server needs the megaraid module but debian dosn't loaded automatically (come on debian, Fedora does it automatically) so figuring out that we needed this specific driver was a bitch. Number two, Openldap on FC4 is very different than on Debian. The files are in different directories and they both use a different database backend. Fedora uses ldbm and debian has bdb by default. So this was all solved by configuring the debian one from scratch and import all the users (ldap is used for authentication and to keep the users information) manually using a dump of the original database. Again solved but a major waste of time. Then came the problem of transfering the mysql database from mysql 5 to mysql 4. So basically debian stable uses the version 4.0 of mysql by default which is majorly incompatible with the higher version. We were pretty stupid on that one since we didn't check to see if the 4.1 version work. It turns out that it did and debian has them in there repository (instead of mysql-server the package is nameb mysql-server-41). So this one bug us for a while and it was solved at around 8 in the morning and not on debian... After that came the major major major problem of SENDMAIL! HEY STOP RUNNING! Yes sendmail is a piece of crap but all the mailboxes are in mbox format (an old piece of shit format) and all the newer MTA use maildir (much safer). So why didn't we convert everything to maildir ??? Well it turns out pine doesn't like the maildir and some of the users swear by pine. Seriously pine is older than me. There are some much better mail clients out there. So we kept trying with sendmail but it was way too complicated and it was already 03h00 in the morning. We had to have this operational by a most 09h00. Me and Mike were pretty tired and grumpy. We decided that this was a waste of time and we went back to Fedora. After a couple of hours and some swearing at how crappy rpm are we had the server operational again. We ended at 9h and seriously I really wanted to have debian installed properly but it's never a easy task to switch from Linux distribution so different. We now have 75% of the job done. If only sendmail wasn't such a complex piece of software we would have had a server running debian by 5 in the morning. Oh well I guess we will get it going later. Nic Needs some rest now. P.S. Thanks babe for calling me once in a while last night. You're moral support was really helpful. I love you so much.

Stupid vegetarian lasagna

2005-11-15T12:11:00.000-05:00

Who the hell invented vegi lasagna ?????? Lasagna need meat!!!!!!!! Nic

Tired, Neck Pain, Questions.

2005-11-15T10:53:00.000-05:00

Hey all of you readers, After a loaded week in slashdot news (Yeah right) I have nothing to talk about. Nada. All I know is I don't know what the hell is going on with me. I have a new job, My grades are ok and the world seems to like me. Also I just got a visit from my fiance (an extremely short visit). I should feel happy but I keep feeling down. Finals are getting so god damn close. I have to start the study sprint but I feel submerged by my current classes. Not that any of it is hard it's just a mood problem. To make everything worse I have a bad pain in my neck (I must have slept on it wrong) and I have trouble reading books and using my laptop. Oh world what is wrong with me. Everything is going so well. Why can't I be happy a little ? Nic P.S. Amanda, PLEASE COME BACK!

UBZ Day 3

2005-11-02T14:28:00.000-05:00

So this was a pretty cool day. I pretty much went to the same BOF (Bird Of Feather) as yesterday. I also got to meet many more people and I'm starting to make good friends. I find that some of the discussion are we over my head but I do get to say something useful sometimes. So you might like to know what I find the coolest as of now. The coolest work done is the release upgrade tool which I believe is the most important feature that dapper ( the name the next ubuntu release will have). Some Gnome developers are showing some pretty cool things that will make Gnome easier and more in touch with how user think. Also Launpad the developer tool Ubuntu is trying to popularize is actually quite impressive it is trying to tie in all sort of Open source projects into one tool. This is cool because bug reports, for example, can be moved around from a projects such as Ubuntu to a project such a gcc (if it was a problem with gcc) and be solved in the "upstream" project. Also they have implemented their on bug report system called Malone which is capable of talking to other bug report systems like bugzilla. A version control system is also integrated into lauchpad. It's basically a project trying to make a better sourceforge. Everything is not perfect since some things are still very buggy and unfinished. (Also it's not yet open source) Of course I have only touch the tip of the launchpad capabilities. I would like to mention some of the cool work being done in the different BOF such as Local Device support in thin clients and Sound also. Soon this will be supported in LTSP which will make my life easier at McGill. I will have systems that are good enough to replace the windows box and much easier to maintain. Ask me any questions that you want me to ask people around here and I will do my best (I won't ask Mark how space was OK!!) See y'all later. Nic P.S. Hey Soon to be My wife person. I LOVE YOU. I can't wait anymore for you to come.

Ubuntu below zero Day 1&2

2005-10-30T22:44:00.000-05:00

Hey y'all I'm alive. And I went to ubuntu love day. Ubuntu ROCKS!!!!!!!. It was so cool I got to meet alot of core developers which are very nice people. Since this is my first developer conference I will probably suck at covering it. So I will start by a little summary. Day 1 --------- This was mostly for the community of users( Read everyone ) and was very informative. It was also a day to get introduced to everyone. This was a lot of fun. You get to realise how many people are involved in free software in canada. The full transcript of the talks is available on the ubuntu wiki at : wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBelowZero Check out the blogs of the ubuntu members at planet.ubuntu.com their are a lot of pictures and some of Me (looks for the red florida state hat and blue shirts.) Day 2 --------- So I missed half the day because of my Math midterm but I got to join in on some discussion about the future distribution upgrade that will be available in for Draper. (Basically you won't have to swear at the computer when some packages get screw up and also everything will be automatically done in a nice graphical interface which is only a front end to a script.) I then got to hang out with some guys involved with large deployments of machine. Basically we we talking about network authentication which Ubuntu will try to create a cool replacement for Active Directory (Including a nice and easy graphical interface like AD has) It's currently will be based on Kerberos 5 and Open LDAP. Also we then talked about LTSP.org which is the Linux Terminal Server Project. A project which has been around for a while and is pretty much the standard to make thin clients (Computers with no hard drive or any thing Simply a screen a small computer and keyboard/mouse) So they have been discussing improvments to be made to the current way it is implemented in Ubuntu. Which sucks compared to a vanilla LTSP installation. The talk I was involved in mostly discussed the fact that it takes 1 and half minute to boot up. In the hour we were there we shaved 40 seconds of the boot time but it's still far form the 30 seconds goal. Other than that I will talk about it tomorrow. I will also try to see what is going on with the other people. Nic P.S. thanks to Amanda I didn't forget my midterm this morning. I love you babe.

My big toe nail.

2005-10-26T13:11:00.000-04:00

I had a request from Robert Kaplow(www.kaplow.ca) to actually write about my big toe nail as I said in my personal description. So here it goes: Oh big toe nail I find you so well Trimmed and clean You don't smell like Cheese and you are not Stale Oh big toe Nail You are such a great friend Whenever I sail You are God Send this is the end Nic P.S. Love you Ma Fiance/

School Newspaper

2005-10-19T22:18:00.000-04:00

Hey y'all, I just wrote my first aticle for the science undergrad society. Of course it's about computer and yes I'm promoting OSS with it. But I have decided to start easily on those poor Bio and Chem students (Math and CS student are usally well versed on OSS and Unix). So gave them my top 3 favorite opensource apps (Not really but I had to make it sound catchy) So I described Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org . I'm proud of myself. I managed to write something easy to understand. Something my mom already know. (Well she knows a lot about computers so I guess she doesn't count.) Anyways I'll publish a copy of it here soon. Nic

Losing weight

2005-10-16T00:08:00.000-04:00

So I read this morning in the Montreal Gazette that Microsoft now pays for their employees to go to the gym and follow a 10 000$ weight loss program. This really makes me wan't to go work for them. I would actually have to eat healthy. Wait I said eat healthy didn't I ? That means what no pizza or poutine(google it if you don't know what it is. It's the best but fattest meal in the world). Anyways I don't really wan't to get off my butt so I'll work for Google and eat some Fillet Mignon for lunch ;-) Nic

Amanda said yes!

2005-10-10T15:18:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to say to all of you that she said yes. She will marry me. (In a while since we are both in college). Yayayayayayayayayayayayaya. Nic

Free Me!!!

2005-09-28T09:55:00.000-04:00

I want to be free. Free from crappy software and hardware. I want to be free from compagnies who don't understand their customers. I can't stand it anymore. It's so fucking annoying. Why do I still have to manually install drivers ??? Can't Microsoft create an online repository of drivers which would automatically be used when new hardware is found? Even better why can't they push for a standard hardware layer ? Oh right money. What if we don't give them any money any more ? What if we tell them that if they don't give us what we want we just won't deal with them anymore? Let jus use other OS such as Linux ,*BSD and OSX to an extent. But what is wrong with this ? Hardware support and Code portability is what wrong with this. I don't get why it is such a threat to trade secrets to open drivers. Seriously I don't think that better drivers will make me buy a piece of hardware more. In my mind the easiness with which I can use it is much more important. We are at a point where HAL ("Hardware Abstraction Layer" I believe) has made hardware support under Linux much better than on windows but it's still not perfect. Hardware Maker must realize that open drivers will allow them to be integrated into the Linux kernel and thus make them pretty much plug-and-play. We need this now. But we also need to get people away from Windows as fast as possible. If only Microsoft would have based their operating system on Unix and made it simple (Isn't that simply OSX?). Would that not have made our life so much easier ? Heck I would love to be able to use SSH to connect to my dads computer and fix it in a breeze (Sure I could use SSH on Windows or Remote Desktop but it's not the same at all). Then again I would probably not even have to help them anymore. For example Amanda(My super girlfriend) is now using a Mac under my great advises. The usual call about broken stuff are over. Now I actually have to ask her how her computer is doing and I only get stuff like "It's fine" or "It works". Now I know how this feels now since I have been using Ubuntu. Nothing breaks. It's so stable I haven't had to use a live CD to fix anything or compile a new kernel to get any hardware detected automatically. My applications now have incredible intergration with GNOME. Everything simply fits now. So Why am I still fixing broken Windows systems ?????? WHHHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYY???????????? Free me from this crap. Freeeeeeee MEEEEEEEEEE!!!! Knowledge is dangerous. Knowing more about your computer that any one else in your family will get you an IT contract for life. Now it's fine when people listen to you and use the tools you tell them too. For example my aunt needed an new computer. She's has very limited time since teaching university courses and fixing up people is a very time consuming business, she needed a rock solid system to work with. She trust me and she agreed to buy a iMac to work on. She went with me and tried it in the store and loved it. I now can rest assured that weekend visits to her house won't include figuring out why outlook is screwed up. I easily transferred her old files over to he Mac. I popped in a Knoppix CD into her old machine and transferred everything over using a shell. It work fine. Oh the joy of Unix. To wrap up this thing. I want to say this. If you are still using windows, Get your self a Ubuntu CD from ubuntu.com and install it know. For those who run OSX well hum keep up the good work. And the cool Linux users. Send weekly emails to every god damn stupid hardware maker so they finally open up their drivers. See y'all later, Nic P.S. Hey Amanda this is your section: I LOVE YOU MUCHHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCHC COME TO SEE ME SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON LIKE NOW.

Dark Ages Part 2

2005-09-13T10:57:00.000-04:00

Ksfn;ajsdbnoa'dbnkjasnf dfadsfkjasdbnf;jansdf asdfabnsdfjnasd fa sdfasjdfba;sdf asd fasdfjasdf My brain is going nuts. I NEED BROADBAND AT HOMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Just can't get anyone to do it cheap enough. Me nuts. Me crazy. Me kill someone. Me sleep. Nic

Return to the dark ages

2005-09-05T00:08:00.000-04:00

We now take a lot of things for granted these days but what if those thing suddenly disappeared ? I currently do not have broadband. I use a cheap 56k line at night so that I don't block the phone line. This is a like living in the dark ages. It's been such a long time. I can't remember how I use to do it something like 6 or 7 years ago. I now find myself searching everywhere for a high speed connection and I feel like a bum asking for money when I use other peoples bandwitdh to do my larger downloads. All this has made me wonder, what if the net was to dissapear tommorow ??? Tons of information is currently only living in digital form. We don't have backups which can easily survive a nuclear attack. All these books and music which now only live on some obscure server somewhere in the vast bazaar that the internet is right now. What if all this priceless stuff would dissapear ? Surely some might say it is not such a big deal but think about it for a second. No more access to Wikipedia or search the most obscure thing on Google. All that stuff would just plain dissapear. We need a backup of the entire internet somewhere on a media which can last hundreds of years. Does such a thing exist ? Is it possible to backup the internet ? After seeing the work of the internet archive project I don't doubt that it would be hard but not impossible to do. They already have do a great work of gathering tons of web pages and other types of files. All we need to do is save to something which last a long time and will still be readable in 500 years. Of course we could just kept transferring stuff onto new storage devices in the future but I long lasting devince would reduce the risk off losing stuff during the transfer. Of course I'm starting to adapt to my slow connection and we might learn to do without the internet if it was to ever die but the world would fall in a dark period where information would not be carried out in seconds. People would not know of catastrophic events as it is happening. Everything would return to asynchoneous means of communication. Even email is faster than anything not internet based. Of course we would also have more time to relax and would also be more careful of what we send in our letters. Maybe I would revise my texts a little more. Until next time, Nic P.S. I will try to write more often but with this slow connection it is a real chores to write post. Everything is so slow.

Java Java Java ..... Java Java Java.... Java Java Java

2005-08-17T23:05:00.000-04:00

One week before school is back in session. One more week before I have to remove the dust over my Java knowledge. Why do I even need to use Java ? Why can't I use a language like C++ ? Seriously there must be a reason why we have to use Java since if C++ is to much Python would do fine. This post is dedicated to make Colleges switch to another language. NOTICE: I would like to mention that I have no degree in education and I have trouble explaining how to tie a shoe without explaining relativity. First of all, what situation really requires us to use Java now days ? I mean give me a situation where python or Perl would not be 100 easier to use ? Is it when speed matters ? Nope cause then C++ would be really overkill. The whole point of java is to prevent programmers from managing memory. Seriously Lets face it even java gives to much memory control to the average programmer. If pointers are to complex and new and malloc and free are to complex then why the hell is static type checking not complicated ? When you say this :

igor = "Yes Professor"

That means you want to store a string in a variable. Why do you need to declare it as a string ????

String igor = "Yes professor"

This just make it redundant. The scripting language way is very good. My other point is that teaching python to beginner would be a handicap since you do need to understand memory management. Java also is to much of a compromise. Here is how I would do it:

Teach the basic of C
Show how malloc() and free() work
Teach them OOP with Python
Show OOP with C++
Regex with Perl
Teach PHP and SQL

There you go after that they will have all the tools needed to do any kind of project. The rest is details. I seem to have forgot XHTML. I didn't if someone needs to be taught XHTML then they should not be in CS. XHTML is easly learned from books and there are tons of them out there. Finally Java should only be taught in a specialized course sponsored by Sun. Seriously why should I become a slave to a compagny who will not listen to me unless 5 000 others do the same? Why should I accept that only the Sun JRE actually works ? Why should I not really have true portability ? Lets face it porting a java program from windows to Linux or Mac OSX or vice versa works once in a lifetime on the first shot (Using the Standard Library) Python kill java in portability. Oh well what do I know I am not a professional programmer only a kid going to college and trying to find his favorite programming environment. Here are the tools I use right now :

OS: Linux
Editor : Emacs
Language: Python
DB : MySQL (I want to learn SQLite thougth)

Oh well please tell me what you use to work. And how much I really don't get Java. Nic P.S. My mom is now a reader of my Blog. Hey Mom!! P.S. I love you Amanda XXX

English and Geekiness compatible ?

2005-08-10T23:07:00.000-04:00

I've been reading a couple of books lately and one of them is "The best software writing 1" edited by Joel Spolsky. This book is wonderful. ( Who would have thought that some win programmer actually could have some philosophical insight about good software development and computer culture? (although not all the of the contributors are actual windows programmers) First some of the views are really well stated. The broad range of topics which are currently very mainstream such as outsourcing, the way people express themselves and the actual life of professional programmers on the net is very true ( although the last one I wouldn't know about.) . I really loved the essay written by the wife of a EA engineer. It confirmed my hypotesis that game bugs and easter eggs are actually caused by programmers with a lack of slept. Seriously I would never be able to put 90 hours a week in front of a monitor without goofing up. The editor makes a very good point, working your programmer more than 40 hours a week will cost you more in debugging, lost productivity and burn outs. Note to self: make sure programming stays a fun activity. Other essays on topics such as very bad user interfaces and programming techniques gave me warnings about things an inexperience programmer such as my self probably would do with out thinking. Seriously this book will influence my blog post for a while. To come back to the topic of this post, Spolsky make a very good remark on the back cover description. He mentions how programmers suck at writing about software; that there essays end up with " all the " don't do this" examples from an English style guide into one page". Well anyone who read my past posts will also add grammar and spelling to that. Why is this ? We spend hours learning the syntax and spelling of computer languages to make sure we don't are capable of expressing clearly orders to the computer. Well human are the same. I just realize that it's an insult to my readers not to actually spend a little time reviewing and fixing my posts. I don't realize that often what I really want to express get lost in a sea of spelling and grammar mistakes that make reading my text a major feat. The good news is I am trying to fix this. First I'm reading a book entitled : "Errors in English and ways to correct them: the practical approach to improving your grammar" by harry shaw.( My sweet girlfriend found it in the bargain bin at barnes and noble) Well I glad to say this book is very well written and I'm on the path to recovery. (It will take a little while for me to actually show improvements.) Next on the list will be improving my research and opinions about the topics I "blog" about. Seriously sometimes I show how ignorant I can be about certain things and still comment about them. Oh well if any of you feel like showing to me how many mistakes I made please go ahead. Nic P.S. I'm actually really serious about improving my English. I don't want to look dumb for ever.

Web Hosting quagmire.

2005-08-04T23:22:00.000-04:00

Today my parent decided to switch their hosting buisness. They were kinda of tired of paying 30$ buck for some crappy service from earthlink. Of course they started by calling Earthlink to see if they could downsize to a better service but after getting transferred around the globe and talking to people who barely understand or spear English, they understandably decided to go as far away from a big compagny like Earthlink. ( I will rant about outsourcing a little latter in a future post.) They were already pretty annoyed at this point. First they really didn't know how to shop for hosting compagnies ( I don't really either as I'm now used to running my own server) and also they really didn't want all the hassle but after a talk with me about technical stuff we went shopping. We look at a couple of site and then found this website: findmyhosting.com. This site will allow you to find a website that meets your needs we finally found this site bluehost.com which seemed like a cheap and good compagny. Well they finally went ahead and signup but then came the problem of the domain name. First this domain was about to expire next month or so and then Earthlink were the one who had control over it. This was a sticky point since talking to Earthling requires knowing 50 different languages. Finally they figure out with some yelling that we wanted to go somewhere else and needed are domain switched. Right were are waiting for the transfer and bluehost seem to have some very nice features included with it. But for my two cents, this is a lot of trouble for a darn simple website. My parent probably wouldn't have been able to make the switch without some geek kid named Nic and they probably would have sued a couple people to get stuff done right. Why is it so hard darn it. Why can't the net bet less off a mess. Domain name servers should be run by internic exclusively. People should just have to ask them for a domain and then owned what ever is bellow. Also getting a good plan from a hosting compagny should not be so hard. Heck a L.A.M.P (Linux, Apache, MySQL/PostgresSQL, Perl/Python/ PHP/Ruby...) is f**cking simple to run. Why do they charge so much for it. Heck cheap 2 GHZ dell with 256 mb of ram could probably run 100 website without a glitch (some regular small website I mean.) Why then do they make it so complicated and SSH access should not be an option damn it! Anyways I'm might just not understand the hosting business enough or something. Nic

Where did my time go ???

2005-07-30T09:21:00.000-04:00

Seriously I feel like I don't get anything done these day. (Sorry for the lack of updates lately). I do ton of stuff but I didn't accomplish anything. Between work and slept and emails I barely have anytime to do some good for the world. I would like to get invovled is some open source project but I have no time to commit to it. I wonder how the people who write usefull software manage their time. Certainly the majority is not paid to work on OSS(open source software). I really need one of those time travel thing Hermione used in Harry Potter. I could stuff much more stuff in one day. Oh well until I have time to write again, keep the geekiness going. 1w Nic

Linux Tutorial project

2005-07-16T09:53:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone! For a while now I have been talking about giving a Linux tutorial at my University. I have procrastinated a lot and now I decided to finally create it and present it during the fall session. The problem with writing a tutorial is to figure out what kind of audience will attend. I know that most geek probably heard about Linux but if they really wanted they could probably learn it themselves. This is how me and my friend Pascal did; I bought a box containing Mandrake 7.1 about 5 years ago and me and him started to play around with it. The thing that made us learn so much was the competion we had about who knew the most. (Mostly irrevelent now cause I won ;-) ( Not really but it's my blog hihihihi!) ) Some geeks might need some guidance and they probably would learn about the most interesting aspect of Linux but what about the regular el-broke student? They probably would benefit from the large amount of free (as in beer) software available for Linux. I've always found more little free application for Linux than for windows and so they probably could do all they need with Linux (even games with cedga now days). So what is the problem you ask... Well how do you introduce average computer users to Linux? A lot people say Linux isn't ready for the desktop(Meaning for user who can't compile a kernel) but I think this is false. Ubuntu Linux has proven that a stable fully functional Linux desktop is possible right now. Often I find it a lot simpler to work on Ubuntu than on Windows XP. Largely because of the interface. But back to the main topic, so Linux is easy enough to use now days that new user could learn it very fast. But this still leaves the question of how do you make the point to a person who never used anything other than windows in his life to make a shift like this ? First they can't install Linux on their computer themselves. And if you install it for them they will not be able to do all their common tasks at the same productivity level for a little while. People don't care if in 6 months the will be more productive than they ever would on windows; They want to be more productive NOW! So the solution would be to have a couple of Linux workstation available in our computer labs for students to use.( I'm currently working on that). My last issue is what to include in this tutorial. Here are a couple of things I was thinking of including :

Gnome desktop
Common apps : Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org...
Cool Unix tools: Emacs/Vi (Not sure about Vi since I would have to learn it), SSH ...
Filesystem Structure
Introduction to Free Software and Open Source Software (Licensing and Philosophy)

I would conclude with information on installation and where they could find help. Such as our school's Linux User Group. (open.mcgill.ca) I would also like to introduce other possible choices such as FreeBSD. I wouldn't go into much details but at least let them see the different alternatives. To conclude this post, I would like to ask my readers for help. Please comment on the way I should do this. What to include. Clarification on certain stuff. I will keep a version of the written tutorial so that you can review it. I will link the other material here too and the online references I use. In short I will make this blog my annotated log book of for this project. Thanks, Nic P.S. I will try to re-edit this post for grammar and spelling shortly but I don't have a lot of time so please excuse me. P.S.1 Amanda help me out with P.S.0 please my love :-))))

How to be a cheapo book reader.

2005-07-14T08:55:00.000-04:00

My girlfriend and I have this little ritual once a week (Sometimes more often) (No it's not sex I wouldn't talk about that hear) where we go to a book store and just sit and read for a couple of hours. She picks up all the weekly celebrity news magazine (Save her 20$ a week at least in magazines.) and I check out the new books in the computer section (yes I'm a super duper computer geek). I love doing this cause every time I take a break from reading I see my girlfriend sweet eyes looking at me. (Priceless even with a mastercard) So where am I going with this ? ... Well I did not really think about what I was going to write about so I'll just keep ranting at things. WHY THE HELL DO THEY CHARGE 40$ FOR A GOD DAMN COMPUTER BOOK??????? If it was a book about visual basic or some other useless crap I wouldn't care but darn all the good books are 40$ and up. And the really really hot stuff runs in the upper 90s. (Ya I watched the weather channel a lot this week. We had a hurricane coming at us for those who didn't hear.) That is just too much. I'm a poor little college student. Could they not give me a 70% off rebate or something ??? Well screw them, I'm going to support the book store by buying an overpriced coffee and read the darn thing in there. Who cares if the darn wooden seats are killing my back. I'm not going to ruin my self for knowledge anymore. (ok that is a total lie; I'm going to keep buying books but I'll try to reduce the amount of them that I buy.) So what if I need the info at home ? Well for one a lot of computer books are available somewhere online (check p2p sites and dig deep into google.) Also I'm lucky to have free access to o'reilly's online bookshelf trough my schools VPN (THANKS O'REILLY FOR THIS GREAT RESOURCE). For those who know how to hack/crack I suggest you find a way to use those university networks cause a lot of them have access to tons of computer books and scholar papers. Also I've now figured out how to get my local library to order the books I want from other Floridian libraries. So to wrap this up, if anyone is interested we should lobby publishers to cheapen their books. I don't care if the darn thing doesn't have picture or glossy paper I want the damn content. Nic P.S.0 ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHH P.S.1 Love you Amanda P.S.3 COMMENT THIS PLEASE

I haven't hurd it yet.

2005-07-10T23:59:00.000-04:00

Oh well my experiment with Hurd has hit a wall. Currently I can't even get it to boot. So it might take a little longer for me to post some usefull stuff here. For those who are interested in what has been happening, fallowed the debian GNU/Hurd installation guide. I downloaded the tarball containing all the files I need and unpacked it on that partion then I tried to use grub to boot my new hurd installation but no luck. Grub tell me that I can't mount the ext2 hurd partion. Well I'm stuck my next Idea is to put all the /boot stuff on my Ubuntu /boot partion and use that as my bootable partion. Oh well I'll kept all of you updated. By the way I have noticed that my fans have now grown to more than 3 people and are now uncountable. (I can only count on one hand at the time so at least 5 people.) Keep telling your friends about my little blog. Thanks to all of you and kept commenting my post (or start doing it if you can.) Nic

Have you Hurd?

2005-07-08T17:02:00.000-04:00

Well since I switched to Ubuntu a couple weeks ago I have a empty partition on my hard-drive and I wanted to try something different (Also my girlfriend is out of town so I bored). Something not called Linux but far from Windows. So I went to the freebsd website and install it. Well FreeBSD is fine. It's a little roughed but it's Unix and it's a very good operating System but It's not different enough. And so now I set my sight on hurd. Well since I just begun installing it I decided keep a log of my experience and to dump it on my blog so stay tune for some more Hurd action. Nic

Ubuntu - Linux for Human Beings

2005-06-23T15:22:00.000-04:00

Ubuntu - Linux for Human Beings Ubuntu is like an epiphany. I had some doubts about it when I tested their previous version(Warty) but the new version(Hoary) is just great. Ubuntu strikes the right balence between ease of use and the ability to do what ever you want. Apt-get has a lot to do with this but the polished feel of ubuntu make it seem as if gnome and all the regular desktop apps were finaly integrated together. They seem to have touched everything in the OS and Ubuntufied it. Other great stuff is that ubuntu is now very well accepted whitin the Linux community. ( The only one piss off are the Debian people who feel like ubuntu is making stuff incompatible with Sarge.) It now has a large number of users who contribute a lot. It seems as if the new users and hardcore hackers love the Ubuntu way. So I recommend Ubuntu as the perfect desktop/laptop distribution. They made a fantastic job at making everything simple and geared towards the lazy people. They still keep that Debian heritage with apt-get and made some nice addition with synaptic. So long fellows, Nic

Only Open Formats please!

2005-06-20T22:51:00.000-04:00

After reading the past two Linux Magazine ( I'm really a Linux Journal fan but one Linux magazine a month is not enough). In the April issue Jason Parlow (shutdown column p.64) talks of the his problems trying to switch his clients from Microsoft Software too Open Source software. His #1 problem was the "insufficient support" of Microsoft formats. Mainly the fact that some problem arise from using office files with open office. This got me thinking, Why do we, the open source community, have to support closed formats which are inferior to the open format? Sure we want everyone to switch to open source software and we want people to be able to easily migrate. The issue is that it takes a lot of resources to reverse engineer those format and all those effort are not put into innovations. Now in a perfect world we could just forget those closed formats and create superior software that would kill the closed source alternative but would people switch ? Obviously not, it would be more expensive and complex to switch since all file would have to somehow be converted. Being different is good but being total different isn't. So in the end we have to support closed formats but we shouldn't make it the #1 priority. Innovation, Stability and Security should be #1. (all of them not just one or two of those). Nic

Are programmers artists?

2005-06-16T23:40:00.000-04:00

My mom is the only artist that I personally know; She can take anything and make it art. Her specialty is sculpting clay into magnificent lifelike kids. I say that she is an artist but what is really an artist ? In my opinion an artist is someone who can use a medium such as clay or a language and bend it in ways no one ever attempted or succeeded in doing. My mom creates life with clay and a author creates imagination out of letters, word, sentences, and paragraphs. They both bend the limitation of their medium by using original techniques. An author uses word in new ways and a sculptor use clay with a unusual tool such as my mom's favorite, dentist tools. And a programmer use a structured languages in ways that go around limitations to create a piece of software that tells a computer to do something that no one ever attempted or succeeded making the computer complete the task. So by my definition, programmers are artist with a medium that require a good intellect to use at it's fullest. Programmers create masterpiece of productivity they make life easier by making computer do what humans struggle to do. Long live the programmer. Nic P.S. Hey Amanda hope this one was clear to understand ;-)

Lonely but still thinking

2005-06-09T18:27:00.000-04:00

Oh well my little princess is gone with one of her long time friends today so I get to stare at my computer screen for the next couple of hours (I work tomorrow so got to sleep early.). This gives me the occasion of emptying my brain on this very special blog. So basically here is what in there: Monkey, Monkey, Me, Girlfriend, How big is my big toe ???.... Ok ok not interesting I get ( Except for the girlfriend part that is quite entertaining actually ;-) ) So here is actual tech related stuff: Today I got a little computer break from my work. I set up a wireless router for the people I work for. They had been trying to get it working for a while but because of a stupid little conflict with their DSL modem it wouldn't allow the router to reach the net (It was just a conflict easily solved by changing the router address from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.{2-..}.1). So after I came in and saved the day or 50$ for one of there tech people (I only cost them 7$ so it's a lot cheaper to use me). This little experience got me thinking... Why wouldn't the little CD that came with the router figure that problem out and change the router IP. Is it because it's an isolated problem ? Nope. My mom had the same problem too. Is it because it's complicated to diagnose ? Nope. My bet is it's just plain bad testing. Problem linksys had no incentive to change their software that had been shipping already. They preferred to just receive tech support calls and have there knowledge base reader machines (Tech support people) answer after an hour of reading FAQs. This is just a plane annoying problem. But who cares right ? Well I do. I have to fix these darn things and it's getting on my nerves. So this is a open call to Linksys. FIX YOUR DAMN LITTLE INSTALL CDs. Enough of that. In other news the world is still turning and Madagascar is a great movie so take your kids, wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend/dog to see it NOW. //end of rant Nic P.S. I bored P.S. I love the world P.S. I don't like roaches.

Being part of a community.

2005-06-01T09:13:00.000-04:00

So when was the last time you reported a bug in a open source application ? Well if it's been more than a month I suggest starting the hunt now. Of course I'm all talk and no doing cause I haven't sent a bug report in ages and I feel guilty about it. This sudden surge in good will is because I just listened to the latest episode of Lugradio(www.lugradio.org) and they mentioned how us geek are sometimes lazy about such things (I might be misquoting them a bit). So in all I think we need to create an International Computer Bug Day (ICBD). It would not just be related to one project but would be a common day for us all to just come together and make open source software better. Until my idea get implemented( To much computer lingo geezz) we can just start by doing our share of the work. Please read the following article (mozilla.com) to know how to properly file a bug. This is important because to many bug report are totally useless because they can't be reproduced. Now it doesn't have to be super technical but at least a good description of the steps taken the result and then what was expected to happen. This reminds me of a video one of my teachers in college showed us( It was an introductory java class) . The video had been made by a Perl trainer who was just plaine tired of common beginner habits . One of the things he said was that programmers often say that it's not doing what it's suppose to do but they never say what it should have done (talking about the computer of course). So go now geeks of the world (and less geeky people too). Find at least a bug this week and the world will be thankful. I would like to thank my two readers. Me and my girlfriend. (Mainly her cause she is such a great person. She know very little about the stuff I write about but she keeps reading. Thanks Darling.) Nic

KILL FLASH

2005-05-22T22:38:00.000-04:00

That is it! I tired of all the stupid flash websites all over the net. What is going on with web designers these days. Why can't they use good CSS/html/{php,perl,python...} code with good graphics to create an enjoyable experience without being overwhelmed by stupid stuff that blinks and text that is so small you can't read it. WHAT HAPPENED TO CONTENT????? Yes the reason people go on the internet is "Content" or "Information". Try to go to a site like starwars.com and look for useful information. Now there are surely something of interest on those sites but they are so insanely covered with useless flash eye candy that they are unfindable. Google understood the idea of simplicity when they made their original site years ago. Yahoo and the other were trying to make an all inclusive banner filled site and lost all there visitors to a site with a logo, a white space and 2 buttons. And Yahoo wasn't even remotely as bad as the flash filled website we see today. Other than the mess flash creates, I also am against using an proprietary and non standard web design tool. Take for example the fact that Macromedia hasn't yet released a 64 bit implementation of flash for Linux. Now 64-bit consumer processor have been available for more than 2 years now and nothing yet. If there plugin was open sourced it would have been done years ago like Firefox and Mozilla. Even Sun has released there jdk in 64-bit edition. In conclusion please make your site simple and understandable. Use W3C ( w3.org ) standards for your websites. It's better to have a black font on a white background than to have a unreadable flash mess of a site. Free us from the flash monopoly.

O'reilly Books

2005-05-15T00:50:00.000-04:00

Oh how can I pay tribute to those magnificent O'reilly books? Maybe I should learn something new today like some cool shell scripts or finally learn some Perl scripting. So many things to learn about from those books. And the ora.com website, a great source of up to date info. Ok ok I should stop the free publicity now and talk about tech stuff. So what tech related thing do I have to talk about today ? Well hum.... Oh I know, Those stupid online arcade games which are stealing away my girlfriend. Yes I know it's pathetic but she prefers those game to me now. I have to admit that those games are extremely addictive but they are creating zombies out of people. I have decided to start an anti-online-arcade-cheap-game group. Yes yes I have gone mad but it's no big deal I was crazy before. I'm just craziating my self even more. So other than that what cool thing should you try this week? It's called the outside world and it's scary at first but it's a kinda of acquired taste. Keep going out there and you will see what I mean. So long geeks and please tell me someone is reading this except me. Nic

Looking for the invisible web ?

2005-04-28T15:57:00.000-04:00

Wikipedia defines the invisible web as "The name given to the publicly accessible pages on the World Wide Web that are not indexed by search engines. It consists mainly of dynamically generated pages that are based on responses to database queries. It should not be confused with the term dark web or Dark internet which refers to machines or clusters of machines unreachable by other computers on the internet." My definition is anything interesting but hard to find. The reason why I'm mentioning the invisible web is because I love to go looking around for very cryptic information hardly anyone can find. Often this is the best info available to learn new and interesting things. One tool site I have found that allow user to now easily navigate the hidden internet is the Google specialize search tools available at the following address: www.google.com/options or by simply clicking on the "more" word on top of the search box. The best tool there is the University search tool. If you know what you are looking you can find tons of stuff from there. Scientific papers, course outline, teachers research website... Choose your favorite university and search.You'll get Tons of info that a regular search won't give you until result 4000. Other than that the specialize search engines such as the Linux search and government search will yield tons of info too. Use these tools and send me your findings at weirdo_at_bearchele.com . Also if you feel like loosing time, install the stumbleupon extension for firefox (available on the firefox extension site). This little thing will enable you to surf sites rated by other stumblers at random. Click the "stumble" and have but and be prepared to loose hours of your time. I warned you, don't complain if your boss or mom yells at you. Good luck GEEKs and come back for more. Nic

Book of the day!

2005-04-25T10:42:00.000-04:00

So the book of the Day for today (My Birthday YAYAY) is.... The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Ritchie. Of course this is an old classic most people who deserve the C programmer status have read and own hopefully but it I believe it should be reread every year. Yes it's not the most exciting book in the world but it re-teach you the fundamentals, the good habits. Those things you learn to screw up with time. I remember talking with one of my friends about this book and when I told him I read it from cover to cover he said I was nut. He believe this book is only a reference and should not be read sequentially. It is the best C reference book available but it's also the best way to learn the language.(For those who already no a least one programming language) Some of the examples in the book are good examples of algorithm used every day by professional programmers and is what should be taught in universities. In conclusion go reread that book or buy the darn thing if you don't already own it. Nic

Wooooooooh!! So original.

2005-04-24T21:00:00.000-04:00

Yep! I'm proud to present ANOTHER TECH RELATED BLOG. So why would I do such a stupid thing. The reason is I want a blog and I have no other interests.(Well my girlfriend is really my number one interest but I want to keep this a G-rated blog.) So what topic will I talk about ?

Linux/Unix
More Linux stuff ( I Love Linux you see)
The Net
Star Trek (I just got hooked on enterprise. Go download the entire series on I2Hub)
Programming Languages
And stuff I feel like mentioning.

This Blog might get kinda off technical at times but that is because I am unable to explain things in a simple normal way. As my family says, I make everything complicated. So stay tune for more tech stuff. Nic P.S And it's my b-day tomorrow so I can do whatever I want. ;-)