been so long!

wow! it's really been quite a while since i was here. anybody miss me? guess not, judging from how silent my phone was before now. anyhow, i'm currently back in school. to clear up any issues with my results. and find out if i made the final cut. for service, that is. however, i got in kinda late and so all processing is going to have to wait till today. on my way here, i saw a sign advertising a church's programmes and containing the word 'enlargement'. users of Google mail may tell you that one recurring theme in their spam relates to penile enlargement. considering it's been so long since i've seen the word 'enlargement' in any other context, you can imagine what reading it on that sign initially did to me. maybe i really do have a dirty mind. later!

Microsoft is weird!

seriously. everyone who has programmed in a real programming language knows that numerically-idexed arrays begin at index 0 (sorry, Basic fanboys). however if you're using the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 driver for PHP and you use sqlsrv_fetch_array() with SQLSRV_FETCH_NUMERIC, the array is indexed starting from 1! it's quite easy to miss this - i know i did. all the same, it's great to see Microsoft being so 'benevolent'. Don't tell me: it's just a ploy to migrate Windows developers to SQL Server!

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jus' chillin'

yo. long time, no see. man, the last one week has been - wow. Rental Magica is over - and i really do hope they begin a season 2. i really love that anime. and to think the twins almost made me not watch it! Bleach is on hiatus till April 9 - guess the anime has pretty much caught up with the manga now, and they don't want to introduce fillers at this point. yes, Dami was wrong - the producers chose to stop the anime rather than introduce fillers, or so it seems right now. what else? oh, yeah - i knew Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow was one of the coolest games ever! i saw Konami released it for mobile phones. yes, i love that game. even though i've completed it a number of times, it has awesome replay value...should i start playing it again soon? and it's cool that if you play the game cheat-free, it's very unlikely you'll get a complete soul set. for instance, the Zombie soul is one of the most annoying souls to get - and it can come in very useful in fighting a number of bosses (Manticore and Headhunter, anyone?).

as usual, i didn't prepare for the KMA test today...hope my score turns out good. it's hard to believe - even though the Bible shows precedent for it - but even in a school of ministry, there are people who'll do anything to pass. the test was over and the principal collected the sheets - but since he was tied up in preparing and presenting the video seminar, he didn't take the sheets in. there were people - remember, this is Bible school - that took back their scripts and kept writing even after everyone else had submitted. being smart? i don't like to think so. i think it's a basic lack of integrity coupled with fear of failure that makes people do things like that.

so what's my point? my point is: even if i haven't done that specifically, i have done things like that, showing my integrity can be questioned. for instance, if i flirt with a lady i have no intention of going out with, i'm not walking in integrity, because my thoughts, words and deeds don't add up. anyway, i have to go - power's off and i'm powering this EVDO card with my laptop battery...

Software gripes

i sometimes play with 3D, though the time to do so is getting smaller and smaller recently...and anyway, i have a number of software packages installed, including Wings3D, Blender, Softimage|XSI Mod Tool, and an old version of Amapi. i've also had some experience with Autodesk 3ds max and Maya (very little this one).

the thing is: when i got a video tutorial showing how to model in Softimage|XSI and was using it with the Mod Tool, a recurring thought was: this would have been soooo much easier in Wings or Blender. i can model a mug in Wings in less than 5 minutes flat, including subdivisions. trying to reproduce the same thing in XSI would probably take me over 10 minutes. one reason may be because i'm new to XSI and have the Wings/Blender UI mostly down; another might just be because it really is easier in Wings or Blender. for instance, in the default Wings or Blender interaction mode, rotating your viewport is a matter of clicking (or dragging) your middle mouse button. the same in XSI is press O on the keyboard, then left-click for free rotation; middle or right for axis-constrained rotation (hint to Wings and Blender developers: mouse-controlled axis-constrained rotation isn't a bad idea). selecting polygons in XSI is annoying unless you're using raycasting - you need to lasso (with the risk of selecting something you don't want); in Blender, right-click, in Wings, left-click. so far, i'm trying to convince myself that XSI users aren't idiots (they really aren't).

by a similar token, while i'm now more used to the GIMP, i'd still rather use Paint.NET or Photoshop - simply because i find them easier to use. i'm loving Inkscape though, and Expression 3.3 is nice - but i haven't got the hang of it yet. my point: anyone fanatic about software simply because it's free or it cost them money needs a head check. at the end of the day, it's productivity - which is a relative of ease of use - that matters. 'nuff said.

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i saw you

i saw you last night, you know. i saw - and heard - you. you were at the bus stop. carrying a baby on your back. and you asked me for help. i wanted to, you know. i really did. but it was to 8 at night. and it was just Dad and i at home. i had to do the dinner. i had to return Pastor's flash disk. and i had to rush for a bus. plus i was dead tired. so i ignored your plea. not that i wanted to. because my heart ached for you. i don't know why. but i was sad. so i did what i usually do. i put on my mask. like Ichigo, i changed myself with the mask. unlike Ichigo, i didn't get any stronger. but i kept the sadness to myself. and i got through the night. i remember you now. and though i never helped you last night, i pray you find help. i pray the One who watches over the orphan helps you. and i pray if i ever see anyone like you, i will not be too caught up with life to stop and help them.

this is really hilarious

just look here.

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the spam Google mail accounts attract...and bloody Hellsing

just wondering why the most common spam i get in two Google mail accounts is penile enlargement. must be pretty popular these days. on a far more interesting note, i've seen Hellsing Ultimate episode IV. as bloody and gruesome as the previous three - maybe even more so, with a scene in which Alucard pushes Rip Van Winkle's gun through her (yes, Rip is a girl...for some reason i always pegged her as a very feminine guy...) and start lapping up the blood on the floor of the ship...if you already read the manga, this won't be a spoiler for you...now where did i put that Hellsing manga again...?

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Flock 1.1 out - with webmail support

Flock 1.1 is out, and has webmail (Yahoo! Mail and GMail support!). i'm seriously loving Flock. grab your copy now!

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my boss better not be reading this!

i did it. i wasted today. i spent almost all day playing Rat Pack on Facebook. yes, i feel like a louse. but it was fun! i don't want to do it again, though - too risky to doing anything useful!

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xkcd strikes again - this time with fruity goodness!

f**k grapefruit. by the way, if you read xkcd, check the image properties. sometimes he puts the really funny stuff in the image title.

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On Creativity (but mostly a rant about Lifehacker)

as with email, subscribing to a feed, especially a very frequently updated blog like Lifehacker is a mixed blessing. you can get lots of 'spam' when you subscribe to such a feed ('spam' meaning things you're not interested in). or you can get some really cool stuff, like this article on creativity. personally, i think Lifehacker is really cool - but there's so much there, i have to train myself to ignore things or i'll never get anything done. that said, Gina and the Lifehacker crew do a great job. but when do they actually get round to doing anything else? :D

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As a man thinketh

Got this in my mail recently. Thanks to cable-t-y. PLS GET TO THE END of it! There are two nuns. One of them is known as Sister Mathematical (SM) and the other one is known as Sister Logical (SL). It is getting dark and they are still far away from the convent. SM: Have you noticed that a man has been following us for the past thirty-eight and a half minutes? I wonder what he wants. SL: It's logical. He wants to rape us. SM: Oh, no! At this rate he will reach us in 15 minutes at the most. What can we do? SL: The only logical thing to do of course is to walk faster. SM: It's not working SL: Of course it's not working. The man did the only logical thing. He started to walk faster too. SM: So, what shall we do? At this rate he will reach us in one minute. SL: The only logical thing we can do is split. You go that way and I'll go this way. He cannot follow us both. So the man decided to follow Sister Logical. Sister Mathematical arrives at the convent and is worried what has happened to Sister Logical. Then Sister Logical arrives. SM: Sister Logical! Thank God you are here! Tell me what happened! SL: The only logical thing happened. The man couldn't follow us both, so he followed me. SM: Yes, yes! But what happened then? SL: The only logical thing happened. I started to run as fast as I could and he started to run as fast as he could. SM: And? SL: The only logical thing happened. He reached me. SM: What did you do? SL: The only logical thing to do. I lifted my dress up. SM: Oh, Sister! What did the man do? SL: The only logical thing to do. He pulled down his pants. SM: Oh, no! What happened then? SL: Isn't it logical, Sister? A nun with her dress up can run faster than a man with his pants down............ And those of you who thought the ending would be dirty pray for forgiveness!

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Learning every day!

i consider myself a pretty good Windows user. i'm very conversant with quite a number of features of Windows, and have acquired a number of tricks. in fact, i had a pretty high score in the Brainbench Windows XP Fundamentals test. so i considered myself a bit of a sysadmin.

well, yesterday saw me back in school, and today saw me back in the cafe where i worked as a student (doesn't that sound good? heh). something that had always puzzled me was some computers just suddenly stopped showing the LAN properties, even to administrators. no user could access the network properties and configure them using the GUI. it had happened a couple of times and each time it happened, i would repair/format the computer. today, the same problem occurred - and the Windows XP CD was broken. so i had to try to find a way to configure the network card without formatting if possible, as there was not XP disc on hand. something made me feel strongly like there should be a commandline tool to configure a network interface on Windows. i got to Google, entered a query, and found out about netsh. using netsh, i was able to configure the network interface without a GUI. i guess i did learn something new today.

so much for being a sysadmin

bug in IDLE?

i play around with Python. i 've never done anything serious in it, but it's a very handy tool. it's saved my butt a couple of times at work, or at least saved me some nightmarish coding in C, C++, C# or Java. on most major platforms on which it runs, Python comes with IDLE, which comes with an interactive shell for quickly trying out Python scripts, as well as a 'real' editor for creating scripts.

i've used Python for about 2 projects since starting work - similar things, really...and i've noticed that when i'm writing output to a file and run the script using IDLE, more often than not, the file never gets written to the end. in the latest examples, i created a Python script to create SQL INSERT statements to quickly populate a database to test another application (i probably should actually populate the database directly from the script, but that will be a 'long thing'. besides, i already saved myself a little trouble entering the data myself ;)). anyway, the script includes a option to ask how many rows of data to create. i was expecting to see 200 lines of INSERT statements, but it stopped on the 182nd line. this isn't the first time. i ran it again and something similar happened. i had to open a console window and run the script to get all 200 lines written. i'm not sure if it's a Windows-only bug, but i'm going to report it as soon as i can

Update: i posted the problem in Freenode's #Python, and i was told that i should flush() the file. when i tried it, it worked!

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Saved by the connection string!

more like, saved by ConnectionStrings.com. i can't remember exactly how i got this site, but it must have been one of those days i was crawling...anyway, i was getting frustrated by trying to connect to SQL Server 2005. for some reason, i could not connect to a remote machine running SQL Server 2005. even worse, i was getting connection errors to my local instance of SQL Server 2005 Express! i got the idea of using ODBC as an interface, but i was still having issues, until i visited ConnectionStrings.com. now i have a completely different set of issues, but that's another story...

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seriously...

one of my friends described a situation: "Your life is over, and your problems just began". sometimes i feel like that on this job. i feel like i have very little free time. anyway, enough about my troubles. life goes on, doesn't it? i'm kinda stuck with over 1GB in Audacity data files, as i had to forcibly close Audacity once and had to manually search in my temp folder for the files, since the files are quite important to me. so i'm stuck as the data is in 1MB chunks, and i don't have time to listen to each part...

yes, you read right. i have to listen to each part. the trick i learned from the Audacity website was to arrange the files by date, load them into Winamp, and uisng the wave-out plugin, re-record them. it worked...but there was a problem. some of the 5-second chunks were repeated, so i have to remove duplicates from over 1.5 hours of audio. that may take up to 3 hours, time i'm not sure i have, as this weekend, even though i'm not working, is booked.

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stuff over the past few weeks

last monday, i heard a kettle whistle for the very first time. i'd heard about it, but never really believed it unitl then. so Enid Blyton wasn't lying after all. ah well.

it seems a new version of MapZone is out. still windows-only, though. i'm not sure just how well it would run using Wine, but you can give it a whirl if you're feeling bold.

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what's going on at Trolltech?

quite a number of developers will know Trolltech, the company behind Qt, the cross-platform framework for creating desktop applications (orignally in C++, and more recently, in Java). Qt has a long history and forms the basis of KDE.

anyway, Qt has long been a favourite of C++ developers on *nix systems. Windows developers weren't so lucky. Trolltech released a non-commercial edition of Qt, which i first learned about when Qt was in version 2.3. anyway, i never really used Qt then (even now, i just want to get started with it) but i did keep up to date with it. some open-source developers (originally behind the port of KDE to Cygwin) began an unofficial opensource native Windows. they succeeded, but they had to shut down binary builds because people (who weren't thinking of the implications of what they were doing) kept posting questions about the open-source Qt to the official Trolltech support team. and with the release of Qt 4, the team started creating (again unofficial) patches to the Qt opensource edition to make it build with compilers other than MinGW, which was the only system supported by Trolltech officially.

recently, the project has been closed. there are no new files because as the team says: "This project was closed because the goal to provide Qt/GPL on windows (inclusive msvc support) was achieved". more information can be found here. i guess that's because in the latest version of opensource Qt - even though Trolltech claims that Visual Studio support and integration is only provided with the commercial versions of Qt - you can build Qt and Qt-based applications using commandline tools with other compilers, including Visual Studio. but be careful, any commercial application you create must be completely licensed uner the GPL. as the Trolls themselves say, your product must be licensed exclusively under the GPL.

what i'm wondering is: why the change of heart? and Trolltech seems to have been bought by Nokia. so what happens to developers after this? your guess is as good as mine.

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my battery used to last longer!

i've noticed recently that my computer's battery isn't lasting as long as it was. i'm not quite sure why, but i think because i've installed quite a number of network applications (web server, at least 2 database servers, etc), my firewall program might just be the reason my processor (AMD Turion 64) is constantly running at top speed, instead of stepping down. so i'll do a format soon and change firewall programs, and find out how far.

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Design problems

i have to maintain a list of phone numbers. i also need to maintain the owners' details. but here's a problem: i already have access to the phone number data, but i'll fill up the owners' data as i go along. so here's the problem: how do i do this? quite a number of people have more than one phone number, so the phone number(s) cannot be the primary key. at the end of the day, each person whose data is recorded will have one or more phone numbers, but i currently have phone numbers but no associated personal data. how do i design my database so that i can fill in personal details when they come in, but i won't repeat any information and have a sufficiently extensible database design that can adapt to changing requirements?

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