gogogadgetearl . earl's thoughts

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2006.01.23

  • i'm really sorry that the posts on my site have been sparse lately.  in the past month: we went home for christmas, went to a funeral for my cousin's 7 week old baby, went to my brother's graduation from marine corps basic training, and celebrated my birthday.  so i've been fairly busy -- to say the least.

    and for any of you who care, pray for my cousin christi and her husband matt.  they need strength to carry on after the loss of their child.

    thanx guys!!        [0 comments]

2005.11.28

  • ok, in the realm of cyber-grammer, when one places a smiley at the end of a parenthetical statement, is it ok to use the closing parentheses as the mouth of the smiley, or should they be separate?

    example:
    1. (statement :-)
              or
    2. (statement :-))

    any ideas?        [9 comments]

2005.11.17

  • ok, i've written my share of diatribes on sony's business ethics [especially concerning it's latest DRM/rootkit tragedy].  i should be fair: i don't mean sony as a whole.  i don't hold nobuyuki idei personally responsible.  as a matter of fact, i still have a fairly high opinion of sony's media-oriented hardware [tvs, receivers, speakers, ps2/3, etc].  however, i do believe that the heads of sony/bmg [andrew lack, rolf schmidt-holtz, and a few others] have some apologizing to do.  i think that there's a long road ahead for sony/bmg to regain the public's trust, and an even longer road to regain my trust.  however, sony/bmg shouldn't worry about me distributing their precious 'intellectual property' anytime soon....i won't be buying any of their cds for a good, long while.        [1 comment]
  • here are some snapshots of my linux desktop [in case any of you guys are interested].        [0 comments]

2005.10.19

  • man, i'm incredibly impressed with linux right now.  i have every type of program installed on kubuntu that i have installed on windows [office suite, web development environment, cd ripper, media player, cd/dvd burner,...etc].  my windows drive takes up 15GB, while my linux drive takes up just less than 2GB.  that's a 13GB difference, there folks!!  now, to be fair, linux doesn't need to have an antivirus suite - so let's be generous and take off 300MB for that.  also, visual studio .net 2005 beta takes up a very sizeable portion of my HD, so we'll be generous again and take off 1.5GB for that.  i have 3 games installed in windows [starcraft, quake III, and savage], so i'll give the 3 of them together 1.2GB off.  now, that's a total of 3GB worth of exceptions [being very generous].  that still leaves 10GB of extraneous windows bloating.  disgusting, isn't it?        [1 comment]

2005.10.15

  • well, i've been using linux as my everyday desktop at home for the past month.  i love it.  i've been getting very bored and very frustrated with windows here lately, and i've been craving a change.  linux was what i was looking for.  as a matter of fact, i'm typing this up on linux right now.

    yes, there are some things that linux is lacking in and there are some things that i wish were better about it.  continuity is one.  with linux, there are so many variations on one thing that it makes choosing hard.  it's like walking into a store to buy a t-shirt and finding out that they have over 200 colors, short & long sleeve, thousands of different slogans & logos as well as plain tees.  now, pick one.  as dumb as it sounds, it's almost nice having only 2-3 choices of microsoft windows.  being in the military, i can relate: sure i have to wear a uniform everyday to work, but i never have to worry about what i'm going to wear.

    beyond that, linux is excellent.  but i'm being too general in saying that.  my experiences with suse ['soo-suh'] and ubuntu have been excellent.  so far, tho, i haven't really decided on what distro i like/want/need the most.  i like how the suse developers have tailored kde to accommodate yast [basically an uber system configurator] and have even built in the ability to restart straight into windows [bypassing the boot loader].  however, i also like ubuntu's debian roots.  i think the apt system [an extremely thorough system that configures, compiles, and installs programs] is *excellent*.  rpm packages frustrate me.  they don't resolve their dependencies well enough and they're not as clean as apt.

    i'm also fairly undecided on my gui.  there is an eternal debate going on about kde vs gnome.  from what i can tell - and i may be wrong - it comes down to what you want: feature-rich pretty stuff [kde], or simplicity [gnome].  now, when it comes to computers, i love feature-rich pretty stuff -- but kde seems to have a higher learning curve than gnome.  i jumped right into gnome and saw almost everything it needed to do within an hour of toying with it.  that kind of familiarity is nice.  however, i think that once i figure out kde, that will be my gui of choice.  i guess we'll see.

    so that's my little spiel about linux.  i dunno if you got anything out of it or not, but, if nothing else, i wasted 5 minutes of your life.  your welcome.  ;-)        [3 comments]

2005.10.12

  • ok.  this has been a long time coming, and i've decided not to be lazy about it anymore.  serenity.  i loved it.  i want to say that first and foremost.  however, after seeing the entire series i've become a little biased -- not necessarily to the excellence of the series+movie, but to the characters.  that's what joss wheadon turned us on to in the series.  it's all about the characters, their relationships and their reactions.  no matter the situation, we know what they've been thru and we can empathize with them.  that's the ultimate attraction of the show.  it's like, for an hour at a time, these characters are your best friends.

    so, feeling this way, i went into the movie expecting to see old friends.  and, as happens so often, some of these old friends weren't the people i remembered.  simon wasn't the smart & witty (albeit pansy) doctor that i was familiar with - he just came across as a rebellious freeloader.  jane wasn't the rough but lovable hired gun - he was just an insubordinate mercenary.  -even mal wasn't the anguished yet caring & protective father-figure i liked - he became a dictatorial commander, indifferent of the concerns of his previously beloved crew.

    now, this isn't to say that these aren't natural character progressions - they certainly are - especially given the circumstances - however, they weren't the characters that i remember...and that was ever-so-slightly disappointing.

    regardless, i loved the movie.  it was one of the few recent movies that i left the theatre completely satisfied.        [0 comments]

2005.08.30

  • well, i finally finished writing up a PHP template to use when i convert from ASP.NET.  check out the working page.  you won't be able to tell a difference in the display, but i promise the codebase has changed.

    along the way i discovered another blogging engine that i think suits me and my OCD better than movable type: wordpress.  it's written fully in PHP, and it's open source.  the purist in me likes the fact that if i switch, i can use PHP across all of my site, rather than mixing it with PERL [which MT is written in].  the wallet in my pocket likes the fact that it's open source.  you'll like it because it will [likely] make my pages load slightly faster than with the ASP.NET template.

    so, i'm going back to work on this site to convert it to wordpress.  i'll be merging the conversion to PHP with the conversion to wordpress.  i'll also try to continue to post the goodness, but i'm not offering any promises.        [0 comments]

2005.08.19

  • i've always viewed my site as a few things [in order of precedence]:
    1. a place for me to learn/experiment with different technologies [ASP.NET, XML, XHTML, CSS...etc.]
    2. a place for me to share laughs with my friends, coworkers, and the weirder part of the general public
    3. an occasional nuisance when life is busy and people are asking me "why haven't you posted?"

    well in another effort to pursue #1, i've been reconsidering rewriting my site in PHP instead of ASP.NET -- not for any reason, really, just to teach myself PHP and to be able to say "hey, look what i can do!!"

    any thoughts?        [7 comments]

2005.08.04

  • ok, check it out: firefly.  it was conceived/created by joss wheadon - the same guy who did the buffy the vampire slayer and angel series'.   and even tho firefly is noticeably his best work, fox, in traditional fox style, cancelled it after only 14 episodes. [keep in mind that they also cancelled other excellent shows such as family guy, titus, andy richter controls the universe, and the tick.]  since then, however, firefly has gotten a HUGE fanbase.  imho: firefly is a phenomenal show that just didn't get it's fair share of air time.  it's truly peerless.  there's not much more to say than that.  as far as genres go, it's a suspense/drama with enough action and intelligent comedy thrown in to make a very tasty show.  soon, joss will be releasing a new movie based off the series, called serenity. seriously, check it out.  it's 100% worth your time.        [2 comments]

2005.06.08

  • as most of you can tell from some of the posts on the main page, i've been doing a little bashing on IE [and microsoft]...as well as some research on IE7.  i've had a few people make the assumption that i secretly have it in for microsoft and that i hate IE.  i assure you, i don't.  IE used to be a great browser.  back during the "browser wars", netscape's developers made the irresponsible mistake of assuming certain web standards before they were ever officially released.  they assumed wrong.  this caused all kinds of compatibility issues, in turn causing major headaches for web developers who now had to write their code to look good in both netscape and IE.  since IE stuck with the actual standards [and since it was automatically available on nearly all windows desktops], IE quickly rose to the top.  that said, i'd like to stress that IE used to be a great browser.  but, at present time, IE is still buggy with web standards...and it's gotten extremely stale.

    now, i can understand why MS uses quirks mode and strict mode -- they have a lot of consumers that want to have their undefined code to display how they would "expect" it to.  fine.  however, in strict mode, there is no excuse for IE to not be standards-compliant.  the final CSS2 specifications were released in 1998 - and IE6 SP2 [released 2004] still  only supports some  of them.  and of the ones it does  support, a few of them still  aren't supported correctly!!  heck, since IE6's release in 2001 [with the launch of winxp], it has had no rendering engine updates or standards-compliant patches made whatsoever [4 years!!].  i'm sure they've been busy keeping the browser secure - as they should.  i can understand that IE is the world's most widely-used browser; therefore, it's the most prone to malicious exploits - they need to keep it secure.  but that's still no excuse for making it's intended objective [rendering web content, correctly] take a backseat to security.  i know MS has developers who are capable to bring it's rendering engine up to speed -- in the mean time, dean edwards has made a product called [facetiously] 'IE7'. it's a javascript that renders CSS2/CSS3 selectors/properties correctly in IE.  if someone has had enough time and devotion to build such an elaborate external extension, then there is no reason MS could not take care of it internally -- other than pure neglect.

    personally, i use firefox.  it's a wholly free and open-source browser available from mozilla.  i've found firefox to be much faster at rendering pages, and much more customizable than IE.  there are all kinds of useful [and spyware/adware free!!] extensions, plugins, and themes that you can download.  it's also much more secure than IE [mostly because IE is generally the target of most exploits - for it's larger user base].

    i still use IE every now and then -- when i visit the MS site [it doesn't always render well in FF], and whenever i need to use a page that uses activex controls [most web developers have written their code to assume that if it's not IE, then it can't handle activex].  once MS releases the real IE7, i'll be one of the first to try it out.  i've always loved how MS integrates their products, and, therefore, i've always been preferential to them.  but, IE is no longer a good product.  given the speed, customizability, and security of FF, IE has a lot of catching-up to do before it can top it.  even if IE7 has tabbed browsing and fully [and correctly] supports CSS2, then it will only be an average product.

    i don't hate IE.  i just like FF better.  i'm frustrated because i would like to produce a standards-compliant site that looks the exact same across all browsers without having to force a bunch of hacks just to get it to look right in IE.  i could write it to look fine in IE, but then it would take many, many more hacks just to get it to look right in the other browsers.  i wouldn't be frustrated at all if IE would just support the standards that MS participated in creating!!  ::sigh::   now, i'm not a firefox fanatic.  if IE7 ends up being even close to as good of a product as FF, then i'll go back in a heartbeat.  but, i'm not holding my breath...

    Firefox 2        [1 comment]

2005.05.25

  • this is kind of random and weird: for those of you who have keyless entry remotes for their cars, and you're just  out of range, hold the remote up to your throat, open your mouth toward your car, then try it - it's worked most everytime i've done it.  i can't really explain it -- more than likely, it has nothing to do with your throat/mouth and everything to do with the height that you're holding the remote...but, either way, it works!!        [4 comments]

2005.05.23

  • my review of star wars episode III: revenge of the sith.  keep in mind that these are my opinions, not the general consensus of all moviegoers / star wars fans.
    [the text blocked out in black is spoiler text.  to read it, highlight it.]

    i thought it was great!!  the story line was 10x better than the previous 2 episodes (which seemed to barely connect the action scenes), and the acting was actually passable.  after the first 2 episodes, i fully expected anakin to become vader - it was not going to be any surprise or emotional struggle for me...but in epIII, i actually had compassion for him -- i didn't want him to become vader!!  that impressed me.  and, of course, it had amazing action sequences with photorealistic special effects.  yoda being a prime example of that.  he proves how freakin' bad-to-the-bone he is in quite a few of the scenes -- much to the satisfaction of the audience.  epIII also has the best lightsaber fight scene of all 6 movies
    (on mustafar between anakin and obi-won)
    -- it was even better than the duel of the fates from epI.  i thoroughly enjoyed it!!

    on the flip side of the coin, there were a few pieces lacking.  i don't know if you've seen any of the animated clone wars shorts on cartoon network (which i highly recommend you watch, as they connect the dots between epII and epIII), but the action scenes in the movie aren't quite as audacious as they are in the animated shorts. 
    mace windu (samuel l. jackson) and general grievous were 2 characters that they expounded upon in the shorts, but they seemed very tame and mildly important in the movie.  and the scene where padme named of luke and leia was ridiculously random.  had lucas given padme a single line (back when she and anakin were talking about the baby) saying something along the lines of, "i already have a name picked out:  luke for a boy, or leia for a girl." - that would have worked out great!!  but it didn't happen.
      there were also a few fairly crucial moments that were left out --
    the creation of the rebellion, for one.  they also left out the scene where yoda becomes qui-gon jinn's apprentice to learn eternal life.
      owell, they never turn out perfect!!  ;-)

    all in all, i think the movie was great.  the goods definitely outweighed the bads.  thanks, for the enjoyment, george!!        [1 comment]

2005.05.05

  • for those of you who don't know about maddox, you're probably better off.  he's the most cynical guy i've ever known of, but he's funny as heck.  i'll warn you, he's not for the faint of mind...he can be pretty vulgar.  nevertheless, he'll surprise you with a good point every now and then.

    well, the other day, i was visiting the best page in the universe, and noticed that he was slamming U2.  i enjoy U2, and i often agree, to some extent, with what bono says in his music [granted, i haven't heard the latest album].  so i read on, taking what maddox had to say with a grain of salt.  then, i came across this:


    8. How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb - U2 - Crumbs From Your Table

    This song is about how America and its wealthiest people don't do enough to help solve world hunger. The title suggests that crumbs from our table could help starving people in Africa. Bono indicts America for being hypocritical with these lines:

    Would you deny for others
    What you demand for yourself?

    Bono could not be reached for comment as he was stepping off his private jet and into his limousine.


    yeouch.        [5 comments]