I am dOgBOi

Full Circle

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:18:22 GMT

For the past twenty years or so I've been on a spiritual quest. I've been trying to find a place in the world of religion/spirituality. Along that route, I've explored various forms of Buddhism, Christianity, Gnosticism, and Wicca, amongst other things. It is all coming to a head now, as I try to find a spiritual place that accepts me as a gay man. It appears I've come full circle. I started Buddhist practice when I was twelve. I left it behind me in a futile attempt to fit into a Christian lifestyle. Now, the more I reflect on it, the more I realize Zen is where I belong. I'm just not comfortable with Christianity. Too many Christian leaders are opposed to homosexuality and gay marriage for my tastes. I've also missed the peace that Zen brings when it is practiced. So back to Zen I go. Trying to find a local Sangha to join so I can get back into the groove.

Note that I'm not saying Christianity is bad or wrong. It brings comfort to a lot of people. It's just not for me.

Apple's New Shuffle

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:58:02 GMT

Apple has a new iPod shuffle out. I was in the market for a new one, since the first gen I'm using is starting to lose its ability to hold a charge. But I'll never buy this new one. Sure, the ability of the new shuffle to talk is kind of cool, but you have to use the Apple earbuds to control it. I hate earbuds to begin with, and Apple's aren't all that great. The shuffle itself has no controls. That means I can't use my own earphones with it.

Someone said to me: "Well, their will be 3rd party earphones for it soon enough." Yeah, but I want to use the earphones I already have. Way to go Apple. You saved an ounce and lost a sale.

The Big Blue Junk (A "Watchmen" appendum) | The Molly

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:19:27 GMT

Molly Wood has a good analysis of the appearance of Dr. Manhattan's penis in Watchmen and America's reaction to it.

http://themolly.com/blog/?p=146

Cocoa Programming

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:39:56 GMT

I'm trying to learn Cocoa Programming, but I hate Objective-C.

I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

Why couldn't Apple use a C++ interface? *sigh*.

Quick Watchmen Review

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 03:56:49 GMT

Saw Watchmen last night, and figured I'd do a very quick review. I'm a fan of the Graphic Novel, but I'm not a hopeless fanboy, so I think I can be objective. I stayed away from spoilers to the best of my ability, and I don't cover any material that isn't already covered in other reviews.

I'll start with the good stuff. The movie is visually striking. It was like watching the graphic novel. It was very immersive, and I really got into it. The pacing was also excellent, and I didn't once feel bored during the movie (which is 2 hours and 43 minutes long). The actor who plays Rorschach was pretty much perfect in the role. I can't really complain about the actors who played Night Owl, the Silk Specter, Dr. Manhattan, and the Comedian either. They did an adequate job. None of them gave Oscar worthy performances, but I wasn't expecting them to.

Now on to the bad. The actor who plays Ozymandias is all wrong. He looks way too young to be a man who's traveled the world. He gave a very flat performance to boot. The music choices were so-so. Hallellulah was absolutely the wrong music choice when it appeared. In fact, the scene in which it appears is just horribly executed. The New York Times called it the "hands-down winner of the bad movie sex award, superhero division," and I have to agree. The same scene is the graphic novel was meant to be tender, and it just came off as silly on-screen. Camp is not something I'd expect in a movie made from the greatest graphic novel ever written, but there it is.

There's a lot of talk about Dr. Manhattan and his blue penis flopping around. I honestly didn't notice it, and didn't find it distracting. The only reason I noticed it all was because it caused fits of giggling in the audience (too many teenagers *sigh*.) I did find the excessive violence distracting. Yes, the graphic novel was violent, but it was violence as a means to an end, not an end unto itself.

Considering how good most of the casting was, I couldn't get over how horrible Nixon looked. He was like a bad caricature of Nixon, rather than the man himself. A minor gripe, to be sure, but a legitimate one.

I was eagerly looking forward to see this movie. I wasn't horribly disappointed. I'm not even the least bit upset about the plot changes, both minor and major. They were understandable changes that were necessary in order to translate the graphic novel into a movie. However, if I knew then what I know now, I probably wouldn't have gone on opening night. I would have waited for a matinee. I might even have waited until it came out on DVD.

It was a good movie, but it was not a great movie. It proved to me that Watchmen is not, as Alan Moore claims, unfilmable. I do wonder, though, if it's possible to do the graphic novel justice in only 3 hours. I think fans would have been better served by a mini series or a trilogy of movies. There's just too much density and movement in the graphic novel to easily translate it to the screen. My biggest complaint was that the movie felt short, even at almost 3 hours. There's a rich movie there struggling to get out, but the execution fell flat. There was too much emphasis of style over substance. In the end, I came away feeling awed by the visuals, disappointed with much of the performance, and frustrated by the lack of depth, depth that was present in the graphic novel.

And, and just a quick note to parents: Do not bring your children to see this movie. The theater was filled with children, many of them under ten. I'm no prude, nor do I believe all children are the same, but the level of violence in this movie is phenomenal. It's not a movie for kids. There's a rape, multiple murders, bone-crushing, murder, etc, all in very graphic detail. Leave the kids at home for this one.

Tick Tock

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 08:04:28 GMT

It's 3 am and I can't sleep. I hate Insomnia. Not sure what's keeping me up, but I'm dog tired. I'm sure I'll fall asleep eventually. Oh well, I'll just watch the Watchmen trailer again. I'm *so* going to see this on opening day.

Great song

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 04:00:46 GMT

The name of the song is "Extraordinary Ways' by Conjure One featuring vocals by Poe. This song reminds me of my partner, Ed.

Made it through another Year

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:59:50 GMT

Yesterday was the seven year anniversary of the death of my best friend. Made it through surprisingly unscathed. I think it's because I've moved and all the visual cues are now gone. Perhaps the distance of time is playing a role as well. I had a bummer day, but it wasn't anywhere near as dreadful as in years past.

Now I just have to make it through his birthday, on Dec 12th. That wasn't usually as bad as December 1st though.

Blah

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 08:30:35 GMT

After months of horrible insomnia, I finally started getting to sleep early (around 11 pm), and getting 6 or 7 hours of continuous sleep. The insomnia was due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Now, though, I have bronchitis and can't sleep. It's 3:30 am, and I'm trying to wear myself out. Blah, I say, blah. I sent an email to my partner telling him not to let me sleep too late, because I don't want to get in that habit of staying up late and sleeping late. I want to be part of the world, not a creature of the night, lol.

*sigh* Bronchitis sucks.

I've Fallen in Love With This Song

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:55:55 GMT

I've fallen in love with "Let it Ring" by Amy Ray

This is a fan video from youtube.

Apple Thoughts

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:01:38 GMT

I'm writing for a new online destination site called "Apple Thoughts." It's part of a group of sites, like Zune Thoughts and Pocket PC thoughts. We cover Apple news and Apple products. If you're have an iPhone/iPod Touch and/or a Mac, go take a look:

http://www.applethoughts.com

Installing Ubuntu on a MacBook

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:56:19 GMT

I decided that it might be cool to have my MacBook be a dual boot Machine: OSX and Linux. After doing a little research, I found out how it was done (and it was surprisingly easy.)

1st thing I did was use Boot Camp to partition the drive. I set up 27 gigs for Linux, figuring I'd use it a reasonable amount of time, but that I'd use OSX more (because of Photoshop and Lightroom, primarily.) I then installed rEfit (http://refit.sourceforge.net/). This program allows me to choose which partition to load from at boot time. Once the drive was partitioned, I ignored Boot Camp's request to install windows. Instead, I put my Ubuntu CD in the drive, rebooted the machine, held down the "c" key to boot from the cd and went into the Ubuntu installer.

I erased the partition created by boot camp (sda3) and created a new partition. Because MacBooks have an issue with extra partitions, I did not create a swap partition. Instead, after I installed Ubuntu, I create a swap file. More on that later.

So once I installed using the Ubuntu installer, I rebooted my machine. (I didn't do anything with Grub. I just used the default settings and left them alone) rEfit came up, and I chose the OSX partition and booted it up to make sure it was all still working. It was, so I rebooted the machine again and used rEfit to boot into Linux.

Linux loaded, and the first thing I did was set up a root password

sudo passwd

Then I loaded up a terminal to

set up my swap file. I did a:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile1 bs=1024 count=1048576

I waited for that to finish up, and when it was done, I:

sudo mkswap /swapfile1
sudo swapon /swapfile1

So now the swap file was created. I just needed to add it to fstab

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

in gedit I added the following line:
/swapfile1 swap swap defaults 0 0

Most everything worked out of the box. I had to enable the Broadcom STA Wireless Driver for the MacBook's WiFi to work in Linux, which was not hard at all (System, Administration, Hardware Drivers).

It took a little finagling to get my external monitor to work as a second monitor (rather than clone of the laptop's screen), but it wasn't hard either.

I enabled double finger scroll and double finger right-clicks using the instructions here (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MacBook/SantaRosa) which are fairly irrelevant, because I use an external mouse anyhow (always. I hate touchpads).

I installed Pommed to get the Mac's Function keys working (volume control, brightness control, etc.)

I haven't gotten the iSight camera to work, but that's not a major issue. I hardly ever use it anyhow.

Compiz works if I disconnect the external monitor. Otherwise, the external monitor has tons of graphic artifacts. It appears to be the graphics card, not the monitor, causing this issue. Nothing I can do about that, but I don't need Compiz anyhow.

As far as software goes, I have Quicksilver installed on the Mac and can't live without. Fortunately, GnomeDo is almost exactly the same in look and function. It'll do. I haven't found a Dock that works in Linux the way I like, but I don't need the dock, as much as I'd like to have it.

Note that all of this was specific to my version of the MacBook (The so called "Santa Rosa" Macbooks.) If you want to try this, make sure to check the Ubuntu forums and the Ubuntu Wiki for instructions. I don't see any reason why other varieties of Linux wouldn't work, but some will be harder to configure than others.

UGH

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 04:40:46 GMT

I was just saying to Ed the other day that I've never had a major hard drive crash. I've always had plenty of warning before a hard drive fail and I've never lost Data.

Well, my external starting acting funny on the MacBook, so I got all the data off immediately. Then, all of the sudden, iTunes couldn't find my music directory on the network. I checked the media server, and it was locked up. I rebooted, and the first drive (with the OS) is fine. The second drive with the music (about 40 gigs worth) is toast. I'm not sure of the extent of the damage yet. Most of that music is backed up on DVD's, so it shouldn't be too hard to put it back together, but I got a nice taste of humility today.

I hate humility lessons. LOL.

Thank God for Pandora. It's been a life saver.

Trolls Walk Among Us

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 20:58:15 GMT

Djinn

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 08:00:12 GMT

I'm not often overly proud of images I do in Photoshop. I'm good, but not great. But this picture really made me feel okay after I finished it. It's a Djinn being summoned in Philadelphia (It's from a scene in the novel I'll be working on for National Novel Writers Month). The only piece that isn't really mine is the backdrop, which came from a royalty-free photo. I cartoonized it, though, to make sure the Djinn didn't look too awful against the backdrop. Note: Fire is hard. Magic, not so much.

Note that it's the Fallen Angel kind of Djinn, not the genie in a lamp type.

NaNoWriMo

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 07:01:42 GMT

Gearing up for National Novel Writer's Month

Decided to do a cover for the book I'm working on this year. (Picture links to the full size image).

Anyone that might want to try out NaNoWriMo this November should go to http://nanowrimo.org

My new Home

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 07:11:29 GMT

I've lived here in Honesdale, PA for about 6 months now. It's freaking me out a little. When you step in a crosswalk, the cars all stop. People stop and say hi and talk to you, even if they don't know you. For the most part, the children are respectful (there are always exceptions to that, but not many here.) The store owners are knowledgeable and friendly. There's an air of hope and dignity.

I feel like I've stepped into The Stepford Wives.

It's not like I moved that far. An hour, that's it. I lived in Liberty, NY before this, where if you stepped out in the street you'd likely get run down unless you were damn sure you had enough time and space. People would rather flip you the bird than say hi. The store owners are generally greedy, shifty, and unpleasant.

What a difference an hour makes. I can't believe how weird this place seems to me. Things move a few heartbeats slower, and I'll NEVER get used to that. Hippies and Republicans dance in the public square together (Okay, that's not true. Pure Hyperbole, but I could see it happening here.) You get the idea. It's a strange place.

Some of it is the nature of the residents. There are a lot of artists, writers, etc. There's a Yoga center, and they own a Cafe right on Main Street. There are also scads of rednecks and scads of Republicans (I'm not making a judgment, just a statement of demographics). Yet somehow, everyone gets along. It's a tad weird, but I think part of has to do with the growth the town seems to be making, even in the midst of economic crisis and the presence of a business destroying Walmart. The population easily triples (or more) in the summer. There's lots of steady busy and a reliable income stream.

I don't know if I'll ever get used to it though. I keep looking behind my back as I walk the main drag, waiting for the kids with knifes and guns to show up. That's what used to happen. Why can't I just leave it in NY?

The Amazon Kindle

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 04:23:44 GMT

Ed got me an Amazon Kindle. It came in the mail today. All I have to say is OMG, this thing rocks.

I converted a whole bunch of my ebooks to MobiBook format to work with it. I literally have hundreds to convert yet.

I eventually plan on replacing my entire physical library (except for reference books and a few other things) with Kindle versions.

It works flawlessly. I can't believe how amazingly easy it is to read on this thing. I'm in love with reading all over again.

Ed saw me using it for fifteen minutes and bought one for himself. Yeah, it's that good.

Podcamp Philly

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:02:12 GMT

Ed and I leave tomorrow morning for Philadelphia for Podcamp Philly. w00t! Can't wait. 2 day conference on New Media, SEO, and other fun topics. Hurray.

Favorite Programming Quotes/Axioms

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:00:05 GMT

My current list of my favorite programming quotes and axioms. Add your own favorites in the comments if you're a programmer. I've responded to some of the quotes. If so, my response is separated out by square brackets [like this - dogboi]

"Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris." - Larry Wall [Hey, I resemble that remark. Especially the Hubris part - dOgBOi]

"Software and cathedrals are much the same - first we build them, then we pray." - Anonymous

“The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.” - Tom Cargill

“Complexity increases the possibility of failure; a twin-engine airplane has twice as many engine problems as a single-engine airplane.” - Airplane Rule

“If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler” - Conway's Law

“There is always one more bug.” - Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology

"There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third works" - Alan J. Perlis

"Once a new technology starts rolling, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road" - Stewart Brand

"Programmers are in a race with the Universe to create bigger and better idiot-proof programs, while the Universe is trying to create bigger and better idiots. So far the Universe is winning." - Rich Cook

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." -Hanlon's razor

"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random numbers is, of course, in a state of sin" -John von Neumann

"Elegance is not optional" - Richard O'Keefe

"PHP is a minor evil perpetrated and created by incompetent amateurs, whereas Perl is a great and insidious evil, perpetrated by skilled but perverted professionals" - Jon Ribbens [Which is why I program in Python and Ruby - dOgBOi]

"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it blows your whole leg off." - Bjarne Stroustrup [Usually in a manner that makes it impossible to reattach the leg, LOL - dOgBOi]

"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone. " - Bjarne Stroustrup

"Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club someone to death with a loaded Uzi. " - Larry Wall

"Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" - Brook's Law

"Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" - Linus's Law

"Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster." - Wirth's Law [Especially if the software is written by Micro$oft - dOgBOi]

Only Revolutions

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:47:43 GMT

I hate flash only web sites, but really, this works for me. Makes me want to buy the book.

http://www.onlyrevolutions.com/

Podcamp Philly

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 05:08:11 GMT

Only a few more days until Podcamp Philly. I can't wait. w00t! Ed and I leave Friday morning for Philly, and Podcamp starts on Saturday. There's a party at a loft in a bowling alley on Friday. Sweet.

thickslab and rhyno1975

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:05:21 GMT

Happy Birthday to thickslab and rhyno1975 !!!!!

Google Chrome

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:38:28 GMT

Google's new browser, Chrome, was released today, Windows only (weak!) Anyhow, I tested it out in my virtual machine on XP.

Page Rendering: Fast
Javascript: Incredibly Fast (fast enough that web apps work just like desktop apps in most cases)
Design: Spartan and clean

My God, I don't trust Google with my privacy, but I've already set Chrome as my default browser in XP in virtualbox. As soon as the Mac version comes, I'm downloading it.

This is an amazing browser.

Run a javascript benchmark. Higher numbers are better:

Firefox: 151
Chrome: 1420

WHOA. Pics below. Click for full size version in a new window

Firefox

Google Chrome

Bearciti

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 08:26:13 GMT

Bearciti.com seems to be down. Anyone know what's going on? I checked http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com and it's telling me it doesn't even exist! Sounds like DNS weirdness.