Fortunately I like to keep at least one spare piece of hardware in case the one I have breaks. You might have heard me mention a 2003 Dell computer used for emergencies.

I don’t know who owned this 4:3 monitor. Probably came free with a Dell computer my parents or sister must’ve bought at some point. It’s LCD but it isn’t widescreen. Two choices: 800×600 or 1024×768.

Very annoying. Windows are crammed and have to be resized. I’d have to reconfigure game settings and would rather wait for a widescreen to watch DVDs I just bought myself for Christmas.

Though I do see that xcopfly.com works with 4:3, as well as the “work-in-progress” version (not yet in a completely working state, but you can see my progress if you are clever enough to find how to turn it on And I guess that’s good.

A new monitor is on the way, probably tomorrow, weather permitting It’s LED backlit, and 16:9 rather than 16:10, gives me both DVI and an analog VGA port for the 2003 machine.

and time goes by
but i’ll have to sleep soon

listen to the steel string guitar
might not be real
but this one is pretty convincing

video, audio
back to old

rip [it] off the thing [on my desk]
i missed a tv show
i missed a bunch of tv shows
maybe tomorrow…or today

i remembered my friend, a real “natural-only” type of person, had done feng
shui on her house. i didnt know much about it other than it was about putting
like stuff together.

so i looked up quite a bit. the “official” ways involving astrology, charms,
and other creepy stuff, which involved the earth’s magnetic poles and was
more about construction of the house rather than decorating and arranging
furniture, making claims that stuff like cancer clusters are caused by “bad
feng shui” rather than pollutants.

what i was referring to were two “western” ways.

the most popular one was called “BTB” and was developed by a new age cult
leader (Black Sect Tantric Buddhism) in the 80s. it laid the room out like a
grid, with stuff based on the front.

There was another one, similar to “BTB”, called “eight aspirations”, but rather
than a grid, it lays out a room like the tai chi symbol and the areas are
based on the earth’s magnetic poles. i thought that was a lot cooler, and with
two exceptions it isn’t a problem for me. it also involves a color scheme, so
that things don’t look out of place.

i kept in mind relics from school and what my mind might interpret souvenirs,
and stuff like that which hangs around, and was able to for the most part
organize my room according to the tai chi symbol. (my window faces almost
exactly west, and certain times of the day i can’t use the computer because
the sun is in my eyes). i cleaned up lots of crap, put lots of stuff away
and have two boxes of stuff to throw away whenever.

this took me two days or so, and i still got a bit to do, but for the most part
keeping things separate and themed seems to be making me less depressed. (that
and a messy room too)

–

i’ve also been busy this month with other things. i got the “easy” stuff done
and have the rest of the month for the “hard”.

–

and with all this, until writing this blog entry i have completely forgot about
fly papers volume ii. don’t worry, i just need to put in may and june (from the
output of the mediocre wordpress plugin i use) and clean things up for the
final book. but then volume iii starts, of course.

–

my dvd drive finally went. i have another one on the way from newegg. it has
lightscribe and wasn’t too much money. i have two dvd drives but the one
that broke was the first computer part to break from my current 3-year-old
dell machine. the machine consists mostly of parts i added myself, and
i’ll probably go back to building computers again. i know a bit more and
will probably get the heating stuff right this time.

–

off to dalnet and/or freenode. l8rz

i saw the eye doctor today and put on order anti-glare-coated polycarbonate lenses, along with new frames to replace my falling apart ones. all together (the appointment, the stuff i bought, and a warranty) everything was just over $300. tons more than i usually spend on the eye doctor, and i’ve never had the polycarbonate before, but it’s worth buying the best just in case i can’t afford an appointment/glasses for the next few years. you never know these days…

also went to a friend’s house. it was for her daughter’s engagement party which ended when we thought it began, but they invited us over being the nice people they are.

hanging out in dalnet right now and will probably go to bed soon, been a long day. later

Help me here. What is it about “virtual goods”–imaginary own-ables in online community or commercial fake-world games–that leads Americans to shell out a projected $1.6 billion this year in our jobless economy?

Facebook hosts and profits from the virtual barnyard antics of FarmVille (75 million monthly active users) and a raft of other digital cosmos in which players pay real dollars for non-existent items that can get them ahead in play.

Which brings me back to reality: Aren’t we in a big recession? The 9.6% unemployment rate should theoretically mean less cash to spend on tangible necessities, much less made-up stuff like fertilizer for friends’ FarmVille crops.

Virtual goods certainly make sense from game-makers’ and sponsoring corporations’ point of views–they get real money in trade for game advancement which costs them nothing. This spring, 7-Eleven stores offered Farmville, YoVille and Mafia Wars points with certain fast-food purchases like Slurpees and iced coffee, points that would have cost players about $3 as virtual goods. In June, Green Giant gave away FarmVille Farm Cash with purchases of its fresh produce. Business-wise, it’s a win-win.

I’m not a current Facebook user, but have used it in the past, as well as other games which offer such real-money advancements. My reaction is simply this: I didn’t think anyone actually bought anything.

I also concur with Ms. Medved:

Maybe I just don’t get it; if not, enlighten me. Otherwise, I’d rather pursue a virtuous life than a virtual one.

see more EpicFail

1. Started going to Bingo at my local church two weeks ago. Last week I won 3 games.

2. Went to a Tea Party march yesterday. I was surprised how many people honked and cheered for us on the street – it was in Monroe County, PA, traditionally Democratic. We had a cab driver stop by to disagree with us, maybe 1 other person, but everyone else in this Democratic county was on our side! Weird (in a good way)…

3. Been having a lot of problems sleeping lately. I found out what was causing it – I had started playing some games on Yahoo, and you can be up all night with those. So I cut back wasting my time, and hopefully tonight will start sleeping right again.

4. Also started using BOINC again. Now the software not only lets me limit CPU use, but suspend when something else uses the CPU. Currently running Enigma@home and OGR. I will no longer use SETI as it strangely and quickly dismissed a potential alien communication.

Damn there are like 3 gnats that hang out right around my computer right now. They’re not going anywhere but flying in my eyes. Late at night, when the lights are off and I might log on to the computer, the three gnats fly right on the monitor

Believe it or not the phrase “X-Cop Fly” has a similar origin. When I was in 2nd grade, there would be these brown gnats (much more than 3) that would fly around the family computer. The name probably derives from “XCOPY”, as it was a 286 MS-DOS machine, or perhaps an incident in school regarding one of those “kids club” things 2nd graders do. In this case, my friend had a club called CPC (“Central Police Club” I think), and after loser kids like me weren’t invited, I started my own NPC (“New Personal Club”). Didn’t work of course, but it might have inspired the name of the gnats, and almost 20 years later, a booming dot com

Your Money Personality is Reasonable

You are likely very financially savvy. You probably track your purchases down to the penny. Even if you have money problems, you try to avoid letting them stress you out. You try to stay on top of your finances. You are a careful and reasonable person. You think clearly before you make a decision. You are the type of person who likes to clean up often and get rid of dead weight. You live a streamlined life.

Blogthings: What Does Your Wallet Say About You?

However, often times people take advantage of the rarity of some CDs to sell unsuspecting (or, sometimes, desperate) people bootlegs. Often they are marketed as “(insert country here) Import” to increase the perceived rarity.

There is this one seller who operates under various names, usually Retrospect Records, but also Vegas CDs, Rock-it Records, or Adrian (sometimes Sam) McCaslin. He gets consistently high ratings on eBay, yet a Google search will prove his “metal/AOR reissue label” status illegitimate. Negative feedback exposing McCaslin results in negative feedback for you, with a rude tone, and a block from his future auctions. Check this thread at another label’s forum to see VegasCDs, a supposed lawyer with supposed knowledge of Russian export laws, in action – it’s really funny until he admits his faults.

Without doing appropriate research, I bought an “Italian import” of Lionheart, a 1984 out-of-print Iron Maiden side-project-of-sorts. I thought his username, which is repeatedly changed and at the time was something like “vegascds”, referred to a record store or eBay vendor based in Vegas. Instead, I got this:

(Click the thumbnails to see the full picture. Sorry for the blurriness, as I wasn’t concerned with staying still)

Seems fine…

This seems strange, “2005 Rock-It” without a copyright notice, and a phony UPC code which apparently belongs to “Perfection in Pain” by death metal band Corporation 187.

But the most obvious indicator:

Ummm…. yeah.

The audio on this CD was pretty low in quality, more evidence of a bootleg.

Fortunately we have ImgBurn, a “for advanced users only” software program (freeware) designed for burning ISO files to CD or DVD.

Here is a partial screenshot of the program:

Before we continue, it is important to note that there is a difference between CD-Rs and “real” CDs. Audio CDs and CD-ROMs are pressed in a factory, not in a CD/DVD-RW drive.

Click on the button entitled “Discovery”:

Make sure your CD is in the drive listed in the drop-down list highlighted in this picture, and note what comes after “Current Profile:”. I have circled the proof that this CD is a CD-R bootleg:

Proof this “rare Italian import” is a fake.

Now we will start with a real CD, purchased from a physical store sometime between 10-15 years ago. It’s the Foo Fighters’ self-titled album from 1995:

Now see what shows up in ImgBurn after I take out the Lionheart CD-R bootleg and replace it with the Foo Fighters CD:

I hope this has been informative. I think I’m gonna start doing similar instructional posts under a tag called “tutorial”.

For those of you who don’t know, the Year 2038 Bug will affect computers in early-mid 2038 depending on the operating system. Any program on a non-64-bit operating system involving usage of a timer, a clock, dates, or random number generation will face unpredictable problems. At best we will face Y2K-style wraparounds to 1901 (or 1899) and at worst we will face buffer overflows. Without getting into technical details, “buffer overflows” are responsible for such things as (poorly-developed) programs crashing or acting bizarre until you restart your computer.

The Year 2038 Bug is easily solvable with usage of a 64-bit operating system, as Microsoft has been phasing in since Windows Vista and Windows 7 (Windows XP had a 64-bit version as well). However, this isn’t feasible for “embedded devices” – for example, a dishwasher powered by a software timer may never stop running, do tasks in the wrong order, or refuse to start, depending on how it was designed.

I also got A Sound Relief, a 2005 concert by The Gathering off eBay. I watched the first disc (there is also a bonus disc I have to watch before leaving feedback on the seller) and can only come up with a simple one-word review: “Wow.”

I also ordered A Noise Severe, the heavier “sequel” to the softer material on A Sound Relief, and am awaiting it in the mail.

This is no ordinary counterfeit import issue – I found a nice article describing the shipments – the CPU was a piece of lead, with a sticker of a fan attached to a “heatsink” piece of molded plastic. And, of course, the usual translation issues.

Check out the article at PCMag’s Gearlog for pictures of this early April Fool’s joke.

Since 1977, RSA public-key encryption has protected privacy and verified authenticity when using computers, gadgets and web browsers around the globe, with only the most brutish of brute force efforts (and 1,500 years of processing time) felling its 768-bit variety earlier this year. Now, [three people] at the University of Michigan claim they can break it simply by tweaking a device’s power supply.

By fluctuating the voltage to the CPU such that it generated a single hardware error per clock cycle, they found that they could cause the server to flip single bits of the private key at a time, allowing them to slowly piece together the password. [They] were able to successfully hack 1024-bit encryption in OpenSSL on a SPARC-based system, without damaging the computer, leaving a single trace or ending human life as we know it.

Well, it was bound to happen someday…

After weeks of being up at night listening to my favorite night talk radio host, I finally got it done. It is a great program, with three character classes, each with their own 6 levels of unique weapons and armor, 13 enemy types plus 5 bosses at the end of the game. All in less than 6K of calculator RAM.

Sounds good? Well, it turns out there was a lot more to that “ERR: MEMORY” I was getting on those games.

“It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.” – Edsger W. Dijkstra, 1975

TI calculators include assembly programming and (in my case) TI-BASIC. If you’re familiar with BASIC, you know how completely unlike modern professional programming languages (like C/C++, C#, Java, and even modern MS Visual Basic) it is. Instead of storing data in an object or passing parameters to a function, BASIC is procedural – the code is read in the order of a page, from top to bottom. This result in you hopping all over the place with GOTO commands. Thus it was very difficult to program.

But there’s much more.

TI-BASIC has a major fault in it – unlike other BASIC languages, GOTO commands leave behind pointers with each step – causing memory leaks! It wasn’t about squeezing variables in on my calculator, it’s about a poorly designed programming language leaving allocated memory open – with no means of deallocation as with modern programming languages.

The only solution would be to redesign the whole thing. Having put off writing this program for probably almost a year, this is not likely to be done for a very long time.

All the wasted nights. I could have been screwing around but instead put all my effort into a pointless waste of time. So sad. And the TI Calculator Community is in desperate need of a program like this. We have great, simple hacking-related ones, but not working, complicated medieval ones.

This server will run for at least three months.

NOTE: From now on YouTube videos embedded here will make use of YouTube’s “Privacy Enhanced Mode”, which blocks Google’s cookies when viewing the videos from XCopFly.com (cookies apply when going to YouTube.com). Old posts are not being edited.

one time there was this squirrel. he hated chipmunks. it all went back to this incident when the squirrel was about to make out with his girlfriend in a movie theater when a giant chipmunk appeared on the screen. it traumatized him so much that he freaked out. scared to death of his insanity, the squirrel’s girlfriend left him and never returned. one time, the squirrel was home. he had just ordered a pizza and was playing minesweeper. except the pizza guy was a chipmunk. scared as shit, he accepted the pizza. after he was going inside and the delivery chipmunk went back into the car, the squirrel picked up a piece of plywood and started attacking him. it was a horrible, bloody sight. thank god the neighbors were watching and called the volunteer nuthatch ambulance company. it was there that the squirrel had a near death experience. it was a beautiful blue jay that said he should be nice and not start fights. then he woke up to dr. blue jay who looked exactly the same as near death experience blue jay. it was then that all the chipmunkophobia was scared out of him, since he was so fucking confused. he decided to leave the hospital, and run for office in the wild animal senate. he succeeded in passing the chicken-chipmunk act, which brought peace to the chipmunk middle east. the world was a magical place again. the end

But some songs are even more deadly. I’ve made a top 5 list of "fatally catchy" songs (songs that won’t leave your head, EVER). 5 to 1, least catchy to worst.

(Warning: some songs might be NSFW)

#5: Alice in Chains: "Again" (1996)

Main hook #1: "Again and again and Again and again and Again!"
Main hook #2: "Yeah…doo doo…"

Click for the video – record company doesn’t allow embedding

Not only is this catchy, but it also rocks. That’s a deadly combination – you’ll be coming back forever!

#4: Bangles: "Hazy Shade of Winter" (1988)

Main hook: Guitar riff and loud drums

The worst thing about this song is that not only is it catchy, but it’s less than 3 minutes long!!! So you get left hanging at the end of it.

#3: Miami Sound Machine: "Dr. Beat" (1984)

Main hook: "Won’t you help me Doctor Beat! Doc-Doc-Doc-Doc-Doctor Beat!"

Gloria Estefan’s first English hit song. The music video bears a slight resemblance to the 1987 music video for George Harrison’s "I Got My Mind Set On You".

#2. Goldfrapp: "Yes Sir (I Can Boogie)" (2003)

Main hook #1: Sexy voice
Main hook #2: "Doo doo…doo… doo doo…doo…"

Some German techno band. I don’t know anything about them. But this song will not only be stuck in your head, but it’ll make you want to get up and do the robot!

And the #1 Catchiest Song:

#1. Black Eyed Peas: "My Humps" (2005)

(There are so many hooks thrown in together, all incredibly annoying)

Click for the video – record company doesn’t allow embedding

The Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly warned the public NOT to listen to this horrible song. It’s got a "Severe" classification on the Audio Terrorism Advisory Meter.

"Catch" you later!