finally! some archiver problems fixed!

for quite a while now, 7-zip has been my major archiver program. it works quite well, isn't large and clunky, and even though its icons suck, is pretty good. i usually use it together with another archiving program - either ZipGenius or IZArc, though ZipGenius has nicer icons. that's because of the ACE archive format - for some reason, there's no support for this in 7-zip. IZArc seems to handle the largest number of formats of the three, though since i don't have it installed, i can't make any definite statement on that. in case you're wondering why i don't just use ZipGenius and ignore 7-zip, it's because 7-zip has the handy feature of extracting all useful information in an archive. that means if an archive is corrupt - say about 4.5kb from the end, when you extract from that archive using 7-zip, all the useful information from that archive up to the corrupt point is kept after it hits the error. other archiving programs delete the file after encountering an error, which may be shooting you in the foot, as even the partial extract can be useful.

anyway, i had some problems with all three. when you tried to extract a series of archives using their shell extensions, all three launched different processes for each archive handled, meaning that if you were extracting two archives using the ZipGenius shell extension, ZipGenius would run twice; for five archives, it would run five times, and so on. the versions of ZipGenius and 7-zip affected were 6.02 and 4.42 respectively (as far as i can tell, the latest version of IZArc still does this. WinRAR has had it right for about as long as i can remember). this may not have been a problem, but let's say all the archives had a file with the same name in them, and you were extracting them into the same location. you'd have to answer the overwrite dialog for each additional archive - which, in case you didn't already figure it out - is annoying (this is more common than you may think at first blush - lots of people put a file named 'readme.txt' into archives).

in addition to that, ZipGenius didn't work well on Vista - which i found out to my chagrin after installing it for a friend. the shell extension kept crashing Windows Explorer - so i uninstalled it and installed IZArc for him. after getting home, i went over to both the 7-zip and ZipGenius sites and got both the latest beta (4.55) and the latest update (6.03) for each of them, and installed it. now, 7-zip uses just one process, no matter how many archives you're extracting, and the shell extension is disabled on Vista for ZipGenius (haven't tried doing the multiple-archive extract with this update though). apart from that, 7-zip quits with an error message if it can't open a file as an archive instead of just opening the folder containing the offending file. also, the ZipGenius update has its shell extension on steroids - not only .zip archives, but .rar and even .tar.gz archives report how many files are contained - but this number can be misleading, especially if the archive is corrupt (like when i was downloading an archive and the download broke...)

what's poppin'

i grew an interest in Avatar - The Last Airbender because i learnt about it on one of an anime site. i started getting low-quality videos of it (up to season 2), and it's really quite nice. It's still ongoing, so those of you who get Nickelodeon should check out the schedule. It should still run another 6+ weeks, but i gather season 3 is what's up these days, so maybe you might want to search YouTube, though when i just searched now, i didn't find any season 1 episodes...but then i'm too busy to look for them properly...

contrary to what i learned about D.Gray-man, the anime is still ongoing. i thought it would end at 51 episodes, but it's still got a long way to go...

Kaze no Stigma, Claymore, Heroic Age and Darker than Black are all ended (at least for now, anyway). someone told me about History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi episode 51, but i can't find it anywhere - i'm starting to think the guy was (at least this once) selling snake oil. also, the last 3 episodes of Karas are out - and the fourth episode has already been fansubbed by Anime-Kraze. i was on the Dattebayo website a few days back, and they'd announced that they'd stop subbing Bleach, so i was surprised that i got Bleach episode 144 - subbed by Dattebayo, no less! on checking the site once again, i found out it was probably a joke on their part, as 'drop Bleach' was replaced by 'not drop Bleach', and the actual announcement was replaced with a Google search for 'dattebayo drop bleach'...

Moms rule!

just came across xkcd. moms rule! (umm, don't bother unless you know at least some SQL)

Psycle 1.8.5 released

having nothing in particular to rant about this early in the morning, i'd like to inform whoever might be reading this blog, has an interest in digital music production, doesn't like piracy, and is willing to work hard (that pretty much eliminates everyone reading this, but if by some miracle you scaled through...) that Psycle 1.8.5 has been released, and you can also get a bunch of VST plugins to go with it...sorry, Windows only. SourceForge hosts, so all you who use download managers beware (no, i will not tell you which mirrors work best. find out yourself).

while we're on the subject, about 4 months back, Psycle's original author passed away in an auto crash. he will be well-missed, as he contributed (wholly or in part) to several audio-related projects, including FLStudio plugins, among others. in other words, even though he didn't live that long, he left a mark - do something with your life (look who's talking...).

i happened to look up his site, and pretty much everything he worked on when he was alive there is free. you can't get too much help, so download away.

arrgh! i hate friends!

okay, updates. school was closed down on wednesday. i only heard about it around 10pm, and i thought it was a sick joke at the time. since i don't have a camera, i didn't record the mass exit. that really sucks, dude. anyhow, i'm in lagos for a few days - have to return to school, you know.

Woody didn't show up for his part of the gig, so i had to fill his shoes. i hate friends! there i was, looking like an idiot, trying to demonstrate the use of wings 3d and blender. i just hope that someone got some idea of what was what. and Dade just had to put the pictures on Photobucket! is he high or something? i've promised his sister that his just reward will be death and dismemberment, unless of course he can pay me off - and i don't come cheap.

Woody didn't tell me he was hopping off to Ghana. and he has to gall to call me from there...(fuming - do i look convincing?) anyhow, i guess he and the girls and guys are doing great over there. they missed being kicked out of school, as school was closed down the night they left.

History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi is over, and we at the church of kenichi in school do bring you greetings from history's strongest pervert - sorry, disciple. or we'd like to think so. my evil twin was over for a few days - had fun with him. well, i guess i'd better go back to looking for free food - why else would i come home today?

waaah!

having nothing in particular i feel like blogging about today, i think i'll just scream.

Long time, no see

it's been quite a while since i last blogged. and that's not good. unfortunately for me, my blog seems be getting quite a bit of popularity, at least as far as i can see. i attended a session of 60 Minutes with the Geeks, and people were pointed to my blog. why, i don't know, since my blog is less techie and more personal. ah well. guess that's the downside to being 'famous' - you lose your personal life. somewhat, anyway.

so what's been happening in my life? lots. but since quite a bit of it also involves other people, i can't say much here. but:

• The anime History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi is over. i think the end was okay, but some people think it's crappy. opinions differ
• Nigeria celebrated her independence. duh.
• i got like, really, really, broke

..among other things, anyway. well, gotta go now. later!

Blender 2.45 out!

the link's not officially on the main Blender website

Autodesk student program

strange, the things i sometimes pick up on the internet. can't remember just how i got this information, but it seems Autodesk - the company behind industry greats like 3ds max, AutoCAD and Maya - has a student program in which you can get free (but restricted) versions of some of their software, including Revit, Inventor and AliasStudio. you can access the student program via this link. better yet, it seems you don't need a school-issued email address to register for the program, but you will need someone from your school faculty to sign you up. all you need do is invite the person to the program, and that person can authorize yours and other email addresses for registration. well, guess at least someone will take advantage of this info...

oh, crap!

it's been quite a while since i last blogged. not exactly my fault. my normal internet connection is down, and i also have to deal with some issues that i'm not exactly happy to write about. i mean, too many people i know and see at least every week or so actually read my blog. not exactly a great motivation to write about myself as freely as i would have otherwise. anyways, i'm not too bad. hope my internet connection gets restored very soon. it's annoying being unable to download anything via browser.

had one of those "why did i ever get out of bed this morning?" days yesterday. it started pretty good, so i thought it was going to be another ordinary day. boy, i was young and foolish and had no idea what was coming my way...i first updated my antivirus program, AVG Free for the first time in about 12 days (i did mention my regular internet connection was down, didn't i?), and then it began detecting OpenSong, a program i'd been using on my machine for well over four months with AVG Free, as a trojan. and then i show up at church and not one person in my team makes it early. worse still, our equipment made it in almost a full hour after service had started - not exactly very comforting setting up while service is going on. the day rapidly went downhill from there on, including the fact that i need to use OpenSong for my work in church. it was not funny ignoring all those virus warnings while working...ah well. the day ended, and i'm still alive, or so i think...though i may be wrong, even if i would like to be proved right...

The "Breakup"

long time, no post. that's what happens when you keep your mind off the important stuff, and get saddled with something as inconsequential as surviving. anyhow, been up to no good since my last post. have returned to school with the best of intentions but have performed the worst of actions.

so i got to the park and was leaving when i saw her again. one thing led to another, and we've got into an argument, all lovey-dovey, and a "breakup". this time, i mean it to be for real. she's just outside now, it's about 3am, and i wish she were here...

to put things in perspective, i promised Woody that i'd not contact her until i returned to school. i broke that. i kept carrying on with her, even though i knew there was no future in it. i guess the worst thing is that i like her. i really do. and i will never again feel superior to my friend who swore he'd kiss a pair of lips before he graduated (he did, they hooked up, and drove each other up the wall - though not necessarily in that order). anyway, i decided that i'd been ambivalent enough, and that i'd "break up" for real this time. i did - about an hour ago. the only good thing is i still feel somewhat numb and pretty sick. spoken like a true jerk. i was warned that there'd be no nice-guy way out of this, and i let it progress too far. guess i really have earned my "Certified Jerk" status.

Rocks and pillows

made it through the night without one phone call. yay. didn't get much sleep though. guess i'll have to swear off anime for a while - it's eating up valuable time and resources (most noticeably harddisk space).

weird. i'm thinking a little different since last night. maybe i was tired last night. women can be noisy, nosy and plain exasperating. plus, they have this ability to make absolutely no sense at all. it really is a talent, and i'm surprised we don't have more female comedy sketches. and Hollywood has it wrong - who says the women are smarter, and usually have it all together? anyway, before i get crucified remotely, women have their redeeming qualities. you've heard how form follows function, right? well, hugging a woman (sometimes irrespective of her actual form) can be like hugging a pillow. guys, no offence, but hugging any of y'all is like, well, hugging a rock. ewwww. who'd get warmth from that?

the truth is, a woman would. remember i said "form follows function"? well, look at it this way: otoko wa senshi. they are created to protect, to provide, and deal with nasties. they're meant to have strength. so they need hardness and rough edges. they're rocks. women on the other hand, are nurturers, feeders (this isn't to say they're supporters relegated to a back role, though they do kind of play a supporting role). they're meant to care and be soft and comfy (i hear the angry mobs coming), a place where a man can shed his strength (at least temporarily) and renew it (now you now why little boys instinctively flex their non-existent muscles around a pretty girl. big boys still do it too, even if they do have muscles. and you can replace muscles with looks, charm, pumped up ride, big bucks, or whatever. it's basically a way of saying, "i'm strong, a rock you can depend and anchor on"). so guys are basically the hero-warrior who rescue to damsel in distress, and the ladies are the damsel for whom the hero-warrior is strong for, the ones who get rescued. or at least that's how it was supposed to be. something happened a long time ago, and got men and women broken inside. now, we just have males and females who don't know what they're supposed to be or do. mendokusai o ne!

Life without limbs

about Nick Vujicic: you can find out more about this remarkable man at his website, Life Without Limbs. Lord knows some of us (looking in mirror) have just about no idea what they take for granted and waste

I really need a tune-up

yo! mina-san, hisashibiri! been almost two weeks since i updated this blog. it feels like an eternity since my last post...

so, let's start with the updates. exams are over and i'm at home! yay! i get to talk with my dad and sister without using a phone - every day! or at least while i'm still home, which is for about a week. and talk about atrophy! i've been trying to design a website for some folks, and since the last one i designed was about 2 years back, and dude - i really suck now! here's a sample of what i did. i'll post the work in progress as i improve on it...good thing it's not due for another couple of weeks...

after i got back to school, i got myself involved with this chick that i've known for about a year or so...we ended up spending quite a bit of time together. this is going to sound arrogant and chauvinistic, but i think she likes me. and i like her too, but...

it's been the story of my life. i've never had a romantic relationship with anyone. and not for lack of trying on my part. Biyi tells me that women tend to like me, and it seems that way to me too, but my experience gives the lie to that. at least one girl has left my life twice without me working up the courage to ask her out. and i was kind of getting to it too... i've had one outright rejection (i've also only asked outright once), i've lost interest a couple times (more often than not, i just run out of steam), i've had to "give up" a girl for a friend (yes, my sickening brand of "honour" does the most amazing things to me) at least once, just about every woman who says she loves me is married, engaged or in a steady relationship...and now, this - but it won't work out. not like this. maybe later, under different circumstances. but it doesn't stop me from aching to call her, talk with her, be with her. call me desperate or a basket case - but i would really like to have someone hold on to my arm like i was her knight in shining armor. and i'm sick of waiting for a stone wall to suddenly cave in.

seems to me i really need to work out my issues - but that doesn't stop me from wondering why i seem to be saddled with unavailable women. ah well. it's just as well i'm not in a relationship right now anyway. i still have a long way to go, and i'm no good as i am right now. i need to get stronger, until i can protect my important people (i really have watched too much anime!)

Cleanliness is next to godliness...

no, that little sweetheart is not in the bible. for a really long time, i thought it was, especially since i thought i saw something like it in a bible. and no, you haven't exceeded your clean limit yet - just for all the closet slobs out there - and don't worry, i happen to be one, even though my membership is rather shaky. no, i'm not explaining myself either.

exams are almost over, so i'd best get back into the troposphere and hang on an antenna, since i'm not done just yet. and why do my friends know my blog? i can't say all the stuff i want to say on this one (and i'm too lazy to create another), ah well. you can't have everything your way, i suppose.

i actually check my mail sometimes, as opposed to merely looking it over and deleting things in it. that's how i found out about Nick Vujicic, an inspiring young man who reaches out to very many people every day. Nick was born in Australia, of Christian parents, and is a about year older than i am. rather ordinary, except he was born without limbs. and he's going for his dreams and making lots of impact. he's truly learned to "count it all joy". reading it this morning was rather sobering for me, as i was depressed and was about giving up on making any significant impact in life. my life has been a long story of uncompleted projects and abandoned dreams. it got to me yesterday, and i really wanted to give up on everything. i might have been voted "Most Likely to Succeed" at my elementary and secondary education levels, but i've not achieved anything of value so far - and i'm talking about almost 10 years ago at the most recent. i wish i could share the mail, but that would mean sharing my dad's email address (GMail does a great job of filtering out spam, but why tempt spammers?). still, i might just reconstruct the mail so you can share in this young man's amazing tale. get - and stay - inspired. life is meant to be lived with passion.

and finally, using Safari as an everyday browser might not have been such a good idea after all, as it crashes faithfully and consistently. Apple still has a long way to go in making this beast tame. till then, i wish them luck.

now, i've really started exams

first major paper tomorrow. i'm not all that grounded, but i'm confident that i actually know what i know - or am i just being arrogant and presumptuous? that has gotten me into trouble countless times. i just doing just as i feel like won't help anything. ah well.

i wish i had another blog

yo! long time, no blogging. maybe because exams are upon me. exams should be classified as a disease. you should say "i have exams" in about the same way you'd say "i have a bad cold". effects are the same too. loss of sense of humour for one.

recently, Woody asked me how many people know my blog. i wish nobody knew it. then i could write pretty much whatever i please in it, and not be concerned about reactions. but it is kinda hard to write wholeheartedly about someone when they most likely will end up reading it, especially if it puts you in a less-than-excellent light and they're important to you. daga, i still own this blog. creating another one will be a hassle.

a completely unrelated development is i may be in danger of becoming a pervert soon, since i have taken to watching fansubbed episodes of History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi, or as we call it in my room, our friendly neighbourhood perverted cartoon. dude, that series is very funny. it's rapidly outshining Bleach and Naruto as our most loved anime series. anyway, haven't had much sleep, so i doff my hat and down my pen (or keyboard) right here. sayonara!

Choosing an editor

i'm working on a project that requires a CMS, and i'm still unsure if i should code my own engine, or use a preexisting one. and if i code a custom CMS, i'll be needing a rich, JavaScript-based editor so that it's easier to generate standards-compliant pages (why should anyone know XHTML, simply because they want to add a news item?) when new content is added.

so far, i've taken a look at two: TinyMCE and FCKEditor. i also know about Kupu, but haven't looked at it. of the two i've tried, i'm seriously tempted to use FCKEditor. it's really like using Microsoft Word (pre-2007), and you can control the complexity of the editor (how many features are usable). the advantage i think it has over TinyMCE is that you can use it to upload images directly to the server, unlike TinyMCE requiring you to know the full path to the image you want to include. in its favour, TinyMCE seems smaller and less likely to overwhelm users - even with a full feature set. for both, however, i think the documentation is definitely lacking. in my experience, while most people have no problem with wiki-based documentation, i'm more offline than not - meaning that wikified documentation is at best, difficult for me to use. ah well.

going back to school

yeah, ASUU has called off their strike. meaning i get to go back to school real soon. ah well. nothing lasts forever. later

Who's going to teach us?

Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time is a really good series of books. i was fortunate to have begun from the first book, which is rather unusual around here. anyhow, i started reading them again recently, and in the first book, The Eye of the World, at the end of Chapter 27, Egwene tells Perrin that Ila was giving her advice on being a woman. Perrin replies, "Advice! Nobody tells us how to be men. We just are.". Egwene counters this with: "That is probably why you make such a bad job of it."

i never thought i'd find such a gem in that kind of book. but that precisely is the problem. today's men, by and large, have no idea what they're supposed to do - and more importantly, be - as men. and this is made more serious by the fact that modern men are generally out of touch with other people. men generally find it more difficult to actually relate with people than women (that's why she has more real friends than you do - and i'm not talking about buddies. i'm talking about real friends, who know your heart). dude, maybe someone should start a school or something for men. and don't look at me - i got my own row to plough!

a cursory look at Safari

&;p> after using Safari a bit, here are some things i've noticed:

• it supports SVG (haven't tested it myself), but while it supports web page and image drag-n-drop, it doesn't seem to do so for SVG files. a minus, as far as i'm concerned. Firefox doesn't much care what file type you drop on its window - if it can't open it, it'll offer to download it. considering i was only trying to test SVG support, and i hate double-clicking on any file (call me paranoid) to open it, this is a big minus. i mean, the other browers i used as a reference actually displayed the text of a Wavefront OBJ file. Safari just displayed the "no way, Jose" cursor.
  to be said for it though, its SVG support isn't that bad - though i think it could do with some work. Firefox and Opera beat it hands down in rendering some SVG effects. still, it's a ways better than IE's rendering the actual code of the SVG.
• no, i was not just sounding off, i actually cannot change the proxy settings in the preferences. that's great for when i'm at home and have no proxy. it's however going to be a problem when i get back to school - if i choose to use Safari
• i finally found the Safari equivalent of Firefox's "Clear private data". it's the Edit -> Reset Safari... menuitem.
• it seems Safari supports text DnD. i like it, because if i use a sensible editor like SciTE, i can author my blog posts offline and DnD them into the post editor, instead of copy-and-paste.
• i haven't got Safari to crash yet. i must be doing normal stuff - that means i'm doing something wrong.
• i'm sure it's not just me. i hover over the username field on the Blogger home page, and the cursor is a hand. seriously. it seems okay over other text fields, however.
• i don't know that the use of the OSX LnF inside a Windows application is a really good idea.
• what keyboard shortcut do you use to cycle tabs?
• some text i was entering in here magically didn't get submitted with the form...
• the way Safari pops up messages is wicked cool. the scrolling is awesome!
• what? no fancy highlighting or tooltips for elements with a title attribute? i can't see my acronym meanings!

well, so far, if i find anything nice or nasty, maybe i'll remember to update this...

Apple Safari for Windows users, and Yang takes the Yahoo! reins

you might already know that Apple has released Safari Beta 3 for both Mac and PC users. i downloaded it last night, and so far, i'm not impressed. first all, it looks like i'm using iTunes to browse - which isn't all bad. more importantly, the font rendering sucks in my opinion. From this article, and this article, i agree with Jeff Atwood - Safari's rendering sucks majorly, even with ClearType on. i've not had much chance to use Safari just yet - but i think Steve Jobs' dream of Safari having a quarter market share is a pipe dream unless they work out the kinks in their font rendering system. i wasn't able to change the browser settings as far as using proxies is concerned - and i'm not quite sure that using the OSX look and feel for just Safari is such a good idea. still, if you're adventuresome, you can get Safari and take it for a spin. personally, Firefox is still my major browser, and i just use any others to test web designs, even though i haven't designed anything since Adam was a lad now...anyway, Safari already has been shown to have some bugs and vunerabilities, so make sure when you install it, you also install Apple Update to be safe.

i first read it on Hack in the Box, then saw it on CNN last night, that Jerry Yang - cofounder of Yahoo!, has taken the reins of Yahoo! as CEO. the question is: is he the right person Yahoo! needs? my opinion: maybe. since he created Yahoo!, he'd ben in the best position to say what Yahoo! really ought to be doing. according to the report on CNN last night, Yahoo! can't compete with Google head-on, despite many pally-ups (Yahoo! has roughly $3.5bn US, Google almost $12bn US - meaning Google can outbuy Yahoo!). but Yang hasn't really handled this kind of resposibility before, and this might just be what could send Yahoo! into a tailspin under his leadership. still, for Yang to have been brought on board, it does mean that he's got the backing (if not the trust) of the board (or at least a part of it). i just hope he can do for Yahoo! what Jobs' done in Apple (whether or not i like to admit it - Macs are sexy!)

The state of the nation

It seems the saying, "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown" is true these days in Nigeria. The new president must be wondering who he sinned against to cause himself so much trouble. first off, the outgone president (Chief Olusegun Obasanjo) gave Nigerians a "parting gift" - increments in both VAT and the pump price of petroleum products. for some reason i don't know, the tanker drivers went on a strike, suspended it, resumed it, and have apparently ended it. the aptly named PHCN (the aptness is for the interpretation, Please Hold Candle Nearby) is pretty much the standby source of electricity these days, and alternative sources require fuel. apart from that, long queues have appeared at filling stations all over the country, with people spending as much as three days to get scarce fuel. now, the NLC is going to begin a strike by 12.00am Wednesday (less than 2 hours from now) if there's no change in the price of fuel. it also seems that a number of new governors have inherited empty state treasuries. i sure am glad i'm not the president now. that said, i don't think there's a better time to be in this country. thank God i'm Nigerian!

Accident at home

i really shouldn't have done it. i should have never laughed. but it was so funny. really. i'm the (not always) proud uncle of an energetic, hyperactive 2-year old. and he's really a creation (literally translated from the Yoruba). right now he's asking me, "what is this?", and if i answer him, i'm going to get questioned to near tears. and no, i can't allow him watch TV anymore tonight. oh, yes - where was i?

as i was saying, i have a 2-year old nephew who is rather strong-willed (aren't they all) and he left his mom and went to pick up the iron she was using. of course, he got burnt. the funny thing was he never dropped the iron - just kept holding onto it with his right hand and screaming. that's one funny thing - and i thank God for it - what if he had dropped it and burnt himself even more? it was also funny because he didn't listen to his mom all day - and got himself into trouble for it. funny thing is, it was his mom he went to for comfort. of course, i pitched in, even though Bolu and i have an understanding: we're friends for just as long as he needs me (playmate, et cetera - i'm the only person who plays ball with him, for example). ah well. he's been bullying me for a while now, and i hope it stops soon...

Yay! Got my Internet connection back!

so i can blog again, and not a second too late. it's kinda cool blogging on Father's Day - even though i've not celebrated it yet. and it is kinda late to celebrate it - it's about 11.00pm. anyway, i've been challenged to get off my butt and get working and become excellent at what i do. thank God for everything. well, gotta go. see y'all!

Jawing @ home

man, it's been a long time! how have i coped with no internet for this long? anyhow, i've uploaded a new deviation at DeviantArt, so pls visit. it's really been great at home - i can now read multiple lines of text. isn't that great? and my friend is getting engaged this weekend. last weekend, i was at Music and Miracles, and it was the bomb! ok, that's about all i have time for on this post (actually, on the internet!). later!

looking to hit something

okay...i've been playing around with an idea in my head for a few days now...i was going to model a barrel in Blender (which i did), create a crate in Google Sketchup (changed it to a signpost), create some scenery in a Blender/Sketchup/Wings combo and setup and render scene in Blender. so i'm done with Sketchup for the moment, having exported to Google Earth...and try to import the file into Blender...but can't find the importer (Blender 2.44)! who stole the importer? why? do i get to hit them (or at least their monitor)? die, die, die! rethinking it - don't. i can't fix it yet, and you won't be able to if you're dead...ah well

last week i got to attend some sessions of the "Open Door" meeting at Canaanland. The guest ministers were Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, and Creflo Dollar. They kinda sounded the same (but at least i got to stay in the same room with them - it was a rather large room with lotsa other people in there, though ;) as when i get their messages and watch them on TV. no matter. it was a great and rather grueling experience (or at least going to and from Canaanland was, anyway) all in all.

i guess you'd have heard about C.S Lewis by now, and if you haven't, he authored the children's fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia. what you might not know is that he wrote other books, such as The Great Divorce, The Problem of Pain and The Screwtape Letters.

now, i am in no way a C.S Lewis expert, but i'd never heard of the last title i mentioned above until yesterday. The Screwtape Letters is - if you will - a fictional account of the correspondence between a demon, Wormwood, and his uncle, Screwtape, as well as Wormwood's field notes. it basically outlines strategies for snatching human souls from "the Enemy" (God), and is very thought-provoking. while i celebrated Lewis' work in the past, i don't think you'll remain quite the same if you can get a copy of this work and read it. read it, and above all, think about what it says. 'nuff said.

Blender 2.44

a scant day after i read of the possibility of Blender 2.44 being released after @ndy won the splash screen contest, it's out! and since i finally got a fix for my ATI video card's problem with Blender, i'm going to be trying it out. maybe my gallery will finally get a new entry.

Inordinate laziness.

i heard that Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, created it because he was inordinately lazy. i also recently read that the person who developed the first programming language did so because of a similar reason. unfortunately, i can't remember his name - all i remember is that he's dead and got the Turing award.

anyhow, i'm developing this application and it's taken forever so far, and i'm not done. just when i had an end in sight, i had to go and break the code, and so i'm starting over. anyhow, i'm using wxWidgets as the application framework as well as the STL, and IBPP. i was not paying attention in church on sunday, choosing instead to work on my code, when Biola and i had a discussion about it. he wanted me to use Ultimate++ (U++), and proved his point by creating an application in less than 5 minutes using U++'s TheIDE. he also recommended using Qt over wxWidgets - because he's lazy and wants everything done quickly. i have the Qt 4 opensource edition, and some documentation for it - but i haven't just got round to using it just yet. i really would have loved to use U++, but the fact that i don't have offline documentation for it is kind of a pain. maybe i'm not just lazy enough.

Things need to change

so here i am in a cybercafe, since the internet connection i use at home sucks, and i'm trying to get a large volume of materials (about 50MB, give or take). i get told that the police is coming over, and in less than 5 minutes the cafe is nearly empty and the doors are locked. i guess i got warned specifically because i'm using my laptop and they go for guys with laptops. that's hard. i can't even move around freely anymore because some people are trying to get rich quick by ripping off other people online. really hard. anyway, my time will soon be up, and i'll leave the cafe. things really do need to change, and more importantly, i need to change.

What do they teach kids these days?

i seen it, but it's really hard to believe it. as you might already know, my school was closed down just before exams started. after loafing and goofing off at home, i decided today to take a look see at some materials in preparation for my exams. so here i am, looking through the complete course list of MIT's OpenCourseWare, and i see a course titled Magic, Witchcraft and the Spirit World under Anthropology. dude, like, what is that? what, they ran out of regular stuff to teach kids these days? time was, when you went to MIT, you went to learn something about technology, and you became an actual witch to learn about witchcraft - or you joined a seminary and heard about it. now, you can grab the details of witchcraft online - for free too, since the entire OpenCourseWare is licensed under the Creative Commons 2.5 license. that's just weird, for lack of a better word.

Opensource 3D on Slashdot

since Woody introduced me to Slashdot, i've always seen it mostly as a comedy site. for crying out loud, you'd expect nerds to have more sense. i rarely take anything other than a announcement seriously if it's from Slashdot. it seems like Slashdot lives up to its reputation: i got this article from BlenderNation (the original Slashdot article is linked therein). God help opensource developers!

now ladies and gentlemen, we present...sand!

from Wired, via GMail...

Guys only: what does running water do to you?

i subscribed to the theory that when some other guy is taking a leak, you'll be motivated to take one too. however, i never did believe that running water makes you want to take a leak - until rather recently when i noticed it. i thought it was just coincidence until i took a leak, stepped into the shower right after, and wanted to take another leak while in the shower. that said, nobody bother threatening me with tales about water!

nothing to blog about

but i do need to keep this blog alive. ciao!

Updating AVG Free antivirus

i've been using AVG Free antivirus for quite a while now, and i quite like it. i have a habit of updating it online instead of downloading the updates and applying them manually, so when anyone asked me if i had updates i always answered that i didn't.
recently, however, i needed to do something in my registry, and saw something related to AVG updates there. i didn't pay it too much attention until i wanted to update a fresh install of AVG Free on two computers (my brother's, which rarely goes online, and mine).
i was going to update mine online then manually download the updates, when i realized: the updates had to go somewhere before they were applied, so i started searching. i found the update files at C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Grisoft\Avg7Data\upd7bin. Best of all, the update files weren't deleted when they were applied (note: some people will see this as an annoyance), so i could use them for my brother's computer!
Guess we learn something new everyday.

IBPP...again!

i found that i didn't list all the changes i made to the IBPP source file _ibpp.cpp in my last post. plus, i'd only been using it for release build of my projects in Visual C++ 2005 Express edition - until today when i started a project in debug mode - and found i got some compile errors. so, here's the comprehensive list of changes i made to the original source file to compile with a Unicode character set, without further ado. i really should upload the file, but since i have no place to put it...

• Line 44: from #define REG_KEY_ROOT_INSTANCES "SOFTWARE\\Firebird Project\\Firebird Server\\Instances" to #define REG_KEY_ROOT_INSTANCES TEXT("SOFTWARE\\Firebird Project\\Firebird Server\\Instances")
• Line 45: from #define FB_DEFAULT_INSTANCE "DefaultInstance" to #define FB_DEFAULT_INSTANCE TEXT("DefaultInstance")
• Line 87: from ::OutputDebugString(("IBPP: " + p->str() + "\n").c_str()); to ::OutputDebugString((const TCHAR *) ("IBPP: " + p->str() + "\n").c_str());

all other changes remain the same as in my previous post - did you really think i'd want to duplicate effort? Note: as in my previous post, you may want to use a safer way of getting things done than a cast on line 87.

a word of note here: i finally looked through the sources for Flamerobin 0.7.6 sources and there were no changes to the IBPP source. i have no idea how they managed to get it to build under Windows/Unicode. i haven't tried building it myself, nor am i likely to (according to Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, programmers are inordinately lazy. and i intend becoming an excellent programmer).

Journeys

there's a classic saying: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step". it's old, but good wisdom, especially for young people today. we usually think of it as meaning that you need to at least begin something to have a final accomplishment, but we (or at least i) don't usually think of it in the negative, as in: if you don't want to swim with the sharks, don't even go near the beach. so if you start a journey on the road to Rome ("all roads lead to Rome"), you'll eventually get there, so don't start if you don't want the natural result.

far too often, we toy with decisions and actions, ignoring their natural outcomes, maybe subconsciously thinking we can get away with it. think again - you can't sidestep the natural outcomes of your actions forever. sooner or later, the results will come home to roost. and postponing decisions belongs here too - you cannot sit on the fence forever - eventually, the fence itself will probably give up under the influence of your weight. in our ultra-relativistic generation, maybe facing the fact that absolutes do exist may just be our salvation.

stuff n nonsense

broke my wxWidgets install yesterday when i reconfigured the build. it seems wxWidgets becomes a radically different and undocumented animal when you build it with some settings (such as STL and using std::string) turned on. anyhow, i tried rebuilding it to no avail - it was still broke. so right now i'm uncompressing the wxWidgets 2.8 distribution to rebuild it. kinda sucky, isn't it?

in other news, i found i am unable to build Boost from source with Visualc C++ 2005 Express. the build script (build.bat) is not designed to work with any toolset other than VC++ 7, and it's really annoying that i have to go online and download a prebuilt Jam binary. of course, code that depends on Boost and its build process (like the ASL) also doesn't build. sheesh!

finally, to use IBPP under both ANSI/Unicode in Windows, you're going to have to patch the file _ibpp.cpp. i tried a number of hacks that failed, but i finally got someting working, so here it is for version 2.5:

• Line 111: change char fbdll[MAX_PATH]; to TCHAR fbdll[MAX_PATH];
• Line 142: change mHandle = LoadLibrary(path.c_str()); to mHandle = LoadLibrary((const TCHAR *) path.c_str());.
  Note: There has got to be a cleaner way of doing this than just casting. Check MSDN or the Platform SDK for documentation on MultiByteToWideChar() under User Interface, International Text Display, Unicode and Character Sets.
• Line 167: change char* p = fbdll + len; to TCHAR* p = fbdll + len;
• Line 170: change lstrcat(fbdll, "\\fbembed.dll"); to lstrcat(fbdll, TEXT("\\fbembed.dll"));
• Line 175: change lstrcat(fbdll, "\\fbembed.dll"); to lstrcat(fbdll, TEXT("\\fbembed.dll"));
• Line 194: change lstrcat(fbdll, "bin\\fbembed.dll"); to lstrcat(fbdll, TEXT("bin\\fbembed.dll"));
• Line 204: change mHandle = LoadLibrary("fbclient.dll"); to mHandle = LoadLibrary(TEXT("fbclient.dll"));
• Line 209: change mHandle = LoadLibrary("gds32.dll"); to mHandle = LoadLibrary(TEXT("gds32.dll"));

i guess that pretty much covers it. you should go from 12 errors to 0 compiling _ibpp.cpp in Unicode mode with this in Windows. personally, though i don't think this is how the Flamerobin team built the Unicode Windows binary, but i - lacking patience at the time to wade through the code for the Unicode version - just decided to fix my problems myself.

i was finally able to make some headway with learning how to use Crypto++. i'm just a simple guy who wants to hash a password, and i don't want to learn all about cryptography to do that! many thanks to the developers of Hashish for their source code, and to Denis Bider for his Crypto++ User's Guide.

besides my problems with trying to program (and ultimately succeeding), i've been delving into music a bit (at least i know what a chord is now, and can try to play scales other than C major). maybe i'll actually get into digital music someday. oh, yeah, i've also been trying to study so i can be ready for exams when school opens (only God knows when). later!

digital audio stuff

since i got home, i've dabbled into quite a few things, including making my own music and pixel-based graphics. not having the cash to fork out for a program like FL Studio, even the demo download, i've had to set my sights quite a bit lower. i looked in the archives and came up with Psycle and Milkytracker, among others. Psycle is - among other things - a VST host, so you can load up VST instruments and effects into it - some with more success than others, anyway. at any rate, what i really want to say here is that i got an excellent drum machine that never seemed to work for me (JM-1) the way i wanted it to. using soundfonts was also nice, but it was kind of disconcerting to learn the keymap for producing the correct sound. anyway, i was labouring with JM-1 because it had pretty much the same problem as the drum soundfont i had: each key was assigned to a different instrument, except in my case, it was worse because i could not use the snare. and the quality produced by this machine was excellent, relatively realistic. i was almost pulling out my hair when i found out by sending a command to the machine, i could control which instrument's sound it would produce. trying it yielded some results, but i had to turn off the setting i set immediately after, or else the machine wouldn't emit any sound on the next setting. sorry i have no screenshots, but i guess i just wanted you to know what i was up to. hopefully, i won't strike anyone deaf with my twisted idea of what music is...later!

Who stole my vote???

i realise it's bad to use 3 question marks to end a question, but i think it's important to show my discontent. what happened to my vote? this rubbish about voting at the same point that you registered is the limit. i registered in school, now that school's closed and i'm in another state, does that mean that i registered for nothing? i can't believe i waited almost 4 hours to hear a 'sorry, but you can't vote here because you never registered here - you might have if the electronic voting system was up...' - especially since all those who registered in school asked and were assured we would be able to vote in the governorship and presidential polls. arrgh!

at home and dulling

power's been bad over here, and now the generator's gone, and its replacement hasn't come yet. in the meantime, i'm yet to finish a really simple project. well, my brother and dad's birthdays are around this time, so i'll just slack off tonight and for another 3 or so days (i wish). nothing really special happening, and since i didn't prepare to get online, i can only post this crud. later, anyway. man, sometimes being home sucks. majorly.

at home

made it back home last Friday. i'm using a sucky internet link that varied anywhere between 0.6 and 4.7 kpbs in the last 35 minutes, and since there's no power (i live in lagos, and there are some power problems there), i'm running both the modem and my laptop off the laptop battery, meaning i have to pack this in soon (if the heat doesn't get me first).

i recently installed Apache on my laptop, and everytime it runs, the CPU usage goes up to almost 100%, meaning that my laptop battery doesn't charge when i'm running Apache. it also means that my computer instantly becomes much slower. i'm not sure if it's the antivirus program i use, Comodo antivirus, since i've used it without that antivirus installed, and it doesn't do the same thing...but disabling the antivirus and running the server didn't help...

if you're close to a student of my school, you probably know that after students were vacated (rather) forcibly from school, a part of the Sports Market burnt down. so quick resumption seems to be a dream of the things they pump oil through. ah well

got to pack this in, so later!

The OAU Standoff: Day 4

you might have heard that my school has been closed indefinitely. but since i haven't blogged in a little over a week, you never heard of it (at least from me). anyhow, from what i've pieced together, here's the story.

school traditionally has a week free of lectures and similar academic activities right before exams begin. as far as i can tell, this isn't a part of the school's constitution, merely a concession on the part of the school's senate (highest academic authority in school). however, this "privilege" (i'm assuming my information is correct) has been often abused in the sense that the SUG has turned into a right to be demanded for whenever it seems threatened. unfortunately, while the former VC, Prof. R. Makanjuola was the kind of person to allow such and still leave the week open, the current VC, Prof. M. Faborode, is not.

my story does not actually start here, but i'll pick a certain point in past history as its starting point. last session, the SUG elections held as usual, and allegedly rigged so that a certain candidate, Akinola Saburi was declared President. his legitmacy was initially questioned, but later things were laid to rest. soon after, though, the school authority declared Saburi's election was invalid, because he was on suspension by a previous administration. Saburi was later expelled by the current administration. this obviously led to a strained relationship between the authority and the SUG, to the point that i heard that concerning the current deadlock, no meetings actually held between the school and the SUG because the SUG allegedly held the stand that if Saburi was not recognised by the authorities, the other members were not going to meet with the school.

exams were to start on Monday the 26th, this was brought to an end rapidly by the SUG when they invaded exam halls and stopped exams from taking place. i'm not quite sure when the authorities hired MOPOLs exactly, but i think it was the same day. history lets us know that students and armed law enforcement are a volatile and explosive mix, one that should not be allowed occur. i have no idea what the authorities were thinking, since the MOPOLs are not examiners/invigilators. that said, the SUG had already set up blockades so that vehicles were not allowed to move freely in and out of campus; it was mostly irrelevant since the largest volume of campus traffic is public transportation. it also seems the banks on campus were "visited" by students and even the ATMs weren't working, if i remember correctly. by Tuesday, incidents involving students, stones, MOPOLs and tear gas took place. in an ironic twist, some students reading in academic areas on Tuesday night were assaulted by other students, who maintained that reading was to be restricted to halls of residence.

yesterday started with Saburi going around informing students to stay in their rooms if they were cowards, and that "traitors" would be treated like Judas Iscariot of the Bible. the MOPOLs, unlike the previous days, did not patrol campus, just stayed at the gate. i heard the SUG gave the school the ultimatum that if exams were not delayed by a week, the school should be closed. and it was. students were told to vacate the halls of residence by 6pm yesterday for their own good. what makes this situation particularly aggravating is that new graduates are in school to receive call-up letters for youth service, so this situation affects them too. so now i'm in school and thinking of what to eat, and how to start reading so i can be ready for exams whenever school opens. later, anyway!

Someone help! Google Sketchup driving me up the wall!

Google Sketchup seems to be the new darling of many 3D peeps out there. and as i've found, it is a really cool program. my only problem with it is using it - because, as you may know, i am not online 24/7, and i'd much prefer to be able to download the manual. unfortunately, the manual download link is not resumable, making sure the peeps like me that have psychotic internet connections are basically messed up, since all we can do is try to download the manual. mirroring the HTML using HTTrack didn't work. and having the manual would save me sooo much trouble using Sketchup. someone tell Google to allow resumes for the manual at least. later!

hey up!

so i went home over the weekend to attend a friend's wedding, and to give my dad his birthday present in advance. or so i said. when i got to Lagos, i dropped off a package for a friend at Computer Village, Ikeja, and purchased a few DVDs. i was going to my dad's office when i got picked up (or should i say picked on) by a policeman in plains. to cut the story, i was picked up for carrying around a laptop, and the man was just looking for prey, because even after i provided a receipt for it, he went as far as making me call the number on the receipt and asking them to fax something having to do with where and how they get laptops. for crying out loud, what's that got to do with me? at the last, i called my dad, who called my uncle - who in turn got there with an uncle of mine who is himself a policeman. so i got out without paying a dime to anyone, and i'm really grateful for that, since i barely made it back to school, even with a raise from my brother!

that said, there's a variant of the RavMonE.exe worm that isn't picked up by AVG Free Antivirus/Antispyware. quite odd, i must say, since generally Grisoft's security products are actually quite good. the file is not much under 4MB, same executable name, and is also coded in Python.

something i've begun wishing for

i've recently begun to make some use of Inkscape, and more and more, i wish that i could (more like someone could) write a script/plugin to create a palette of colours used and then allow you to change the palette on the fly, modifying the document. in essence, a bit like CSS for Inkscape. this way, i could create "colour themes" for graphics so that i could quickly see the new colour theme's effect. this would definitely be far more handy than trying to hand-edit that complex gradient. i wanted it for myself, then a client says, "change the colours", and i know i'm in trouble. i don't even want to think about how troublesome that would be...

a rose by any other name...

William Shakespeare, genius that he was, penned the immortal lines. quite unfortunately, the converse also holds: a nettle by any other name is still going to sting just as well. this is the weird beginning to todays post on the many wonders of developing on Windows, specifically DLL hell - or at least a problem much like it.

for the uninformed, DLL hell comes about from the process of installing and uninstalling programs, usually resulting in an important shared library (DLL) being replaced with a version that causes other programs to fail. see this Wikipedia article for more information.

my problem isn't quite DLL hell, but it is related somehow. now, for unmanaged C++ (that is, C++ native code, or code not managed by the .NET Framework, hence the name), you'll most likely require some sort of runtime, as defined by your compiler vendor/settings. with Visual C++ 6.0, you needed msvcrt60.dll and msvcp60.dll for the runtime of non-debug C and C++ runtimes respectively, and for Visual C++ 8.0 (including VC++ 2005 Express, which i use), you have msvcrt80.dll and msvcp80.dll - or something like that. where DLL hell comes in is that if you have the required DLLs for a program to run installed, some program may replace/remove such when you install/uninstall it, breaking other programs needing it. in my case, i've been writing code that had a dependency on msvcp80.dll, and didn't have a problem until i uninstalled something. suddenly previously perfectly working programs i wrote stopped doing so. now Microsoft has these redistributable packages that allow you run programs with that particular runtime dependency. so i got a copy of the Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable package (download page here) and installed it. twice (two different copies, that is). no dice. i finally had to rebuild the application framework library (wxWidgets) so i could statically link in the C/C++ runtime for each application. ah well. i did at least know enough to get round my problem without reinstalling my compiler and its service pack. sayonara!

Why i switched back to Firefox from SeaMonkey

as you probably already know, the Mozilla Corporation is the new home for Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird, and the original Mozilla suite is more-or-less gone, and is the base for the community project called SeaMonkey. SeaMonkey is really the successor to the Mozilla suite, containing the works - browser, HTML composer, email client, IRC client - with some other things to make the power user pretty happy.

anyhow, i started using SeaMonkey because of some things i'd heard about it: it consumes less resources than Firefox and Thunderbird separately, since with it, it's all the same one application; it has a quickstarter on Windows to allow it start up faster; the Firefox artwork is not open-source, as is the rest of Firefox, which is problematic for users wanting to bundle Firefox with opensourced (notably GPL-licensed software/operating systems. there's been some hullabaloo about it all.

so i installed SeaMonkey, started it up…was almost immediately disappointed. i had the following problems with it:

• the simple keyboard shortcut for the search bar from Firefox was missing. combining the address and search bars is cool, but i'm just not used to it, and searching when trying to open an address is annoying.
• the easy choice of search engines in Firefox (two clicks or keyboard buttons once you're in the search bar) is really cool. Google isn't the only useful search engine out there!
• i can't and/or don't use some of the other features that come with SeaMonkey, such as email/IRC chat. the additional 7MB for the download isn't worth it.
• address completion shortcuts are soooo missing in SeaMonkey.
• as at when i use SeaMonkey, only the default themes seemed to be available for use. i love eye candy less than the next guy (i use the Windows classic theme, FYI), but i do appreciate it once in a while. in my opinion, the only SeaMonkey theme worth using is the Modern theme, and even that gets boring after some time.

basically, i've more easily got used to Firefox than SeaMonkey, and making the switch was (to my thinking) unnecessarily hard, since they both use the same codebase. SeaMonkey doesn't need to be a Firefox clone, but there are some really cool things in Firefox that can be adopted in SeaMonkey.

randomness

some Microsoft bashers have far too much time and money: look here.

and what's with the new (seeming) jollity between Google and Yahoo!? i've noticed that if you run a Google search while logged in to Yahoo!, you see some additional options at the top of your pages...later!

wxWidgets and the Windows SDK

i recently formatted my harddisk and reinstalled Windows, so i started installing applications i normally use. that included VC++ Express, and since i develop applications using it for the Win32 platform, i would normally have installed the Platform SDK. however, i'd recently obtained the Windows SDK, so i used that in lieu of the PSDK. i mean, the WinSDK seems to be the successor to the PSDK, so why use older headers and libs…or so i thought. everything went smooth, and i even integrated the WinSDK with VC++ with a single click (configuring VC++ itself for native Win32 apps was a little more roundabout; see this article for help). so far, so good.

since i was using wxWidgets for an application i was writing before the format, i downloaded it again and started the commandline build, according to the time-honoured instructions in the source archive. i started the build and almost immediately got shock #1: wxWidgets (or specifically, the TIFF library bundled with it) wouldn't build because windows.h was missing. as i'd integrated with VC++, i was surprised, to say the least. i checked the VC++ directory options and found nothing wrong, and windows.h was supposed to be available. checking the INCLUDE environment variable let me know that the WinSDK hadn't set environment variables when installing. after fixing it, i sat back to enjoy my build procedure until i got shock #2: some platform-specific code wasn't building. since i'd already built that version of wxWidgets before without problems, i had to surmise that it was the WinSDK acting up. installing the PSDK and removing the environment variable settings i created for the WinSDK allowed wxWidgets to build without fuss.

i'm not sure if it's the wxWidgets team or Microsoft i should blame, but since Microsoft is the company everyone loves to hate (actually, because the PSDK worked all ways), i'll say Microsoft wasn't on the up-n-up, or why would they change the API so it would break existing code? whatever, anyway. the main point is that wxWidgets 2.8 (and most likely, lower versions) doesn't work unpatched with the WinSDK, as maybe a few people would have found out by now. so version number addict, chill out. today's Win32 apps should still work on Windows Vista, so it's not that big a problem anyway. later.

wxWidgets 2.8 not working with Windows SDK

i recently formatted my harddisk and reinstalled Windows, so i started installing applications i normally use. that included VC++ Express, and since i develop applications using it for the Win32 platform, i would normally have installed the Platform SDK. however, i'd recently obtained the Windows SDK, so i used that in lieu of the PSDK. i mean, the WinSDK seems to be the successor to the PSDK, so why use older headers and libs? or so i thought. everything went smooth, and i even integrated the WinSDK with VC++ with a single click (configuring VC++ itself for native Win32 apps was a little more roundabout; see this [link]article[/link] for help). so far, so good.

since i was using wxWidgets for an application i was writing before the format, i downloaded it again and started the commandline build, according to the time-honoured instructions in the source archive. i started the build and almost immediately got shock #1: wxWidgets (or specfically, the TIFF library bundled with it) wouldn't build because windows.h was missing. as i'd integrated with VC++, i was surprised, to say the least. i checked the VC++ directory options and found nothing wrong, and windows.h was supposed to be available. checking the INLCUDE environment variable let me know that the WinSDK hadn't set environment variables when installing. after fixing it, i sat back to enjoy my build procdure until i got shock #2: some platform-specific code wasn't building. since i'd already built that version of wxWidgets before without problems, i had to surmise that it was the WinSDK acting up. installing the PSDK and removing the environment variable settings i created for the WinSDK allowed wxWidgets to build without fuss.

i'm not sure if it's the wxWidgets team or Microsoft i should blame, but since Microsoft is the company everyone loves to hate (in this case, more because the PSDK worked previously), i'll say Microsoft wasn't on the up-n-up, or why would they change the API so it would break existing code? whatever, anyway. the main point is that wxWidgets 2.8 (and most likely lower versions) doesn't work unpatched with the WinSDK, as maybe a few people would have found out by now. so version number addict, chill out. today's Win32 apps should still work on Windows Vista, so it's not that big a problem anyway. later.

internet annoyances

here in school, the cafe i use is served by the school. recently the school's servers have been messing up. i've been in the situation of a site's favicon being retrieved, and a DNS error page. obviously, the site's domain name was resolved, or was it via magic the favicon showed up? i hadn't bookmarked it anywhere! even Google and Microsoft aren't left out. i'm not sure which is more ridiculous - the former scenario or the one where i can visit the main Microsoft site but i can't download anything from its subdomains. eek!

when software does what it should

…but that isn't what you want it to do, what do you call that? i downloaded BO2K, but my antivirus program, AVG Free 7.5, which runs automated scans every day at 8am by default (quite useful, actually) always picks it up. now that's what it's supposed to do, but that not what i want it to do. i'd rather it left the BO2K alone. i was going to use it for remote admin, until i remembered UltraVNC. still, BO2K has features such as remote process listing and whatnot, and i really would like that, rather than just have access to the remote machine's desktop and filesystem. ah, well. you can't win them all, can you?

love...why does it seem so hard?

i read an instant message between a guy and a girl, and my heart went out to the girl. here the guy was, trying to milk money out of her, and she just wanted someone to make her feel special. no, i'm not absolving her of blame, but i can understand. because i'm human. because i've felt it too. the ache. times i have passed a couple and i wish i were him. we're created to feel wanted by someone of the opposite sex. it's natural.

the problem occurs when we let the desire for relevance run uncontrolled. there are so many women who would rather not have sex, but to satisfy the man in their life, they submit themselves unwillingly to sex - psychological rape, i call it. many men empty their bank accounts just to make a woman happy. there are so many stories of people who take things from their loved ones that they wouldn't take from anyone else…people losing respect, people selling their values for a fleeting satisfaction. and it makes me sad.

i'm not immune. i put up a brave front, saying things like, "women are irritating", or "women are troublesome", or the latest: "when most women run their configuration wizards, they seem to almost always check the 'Be Troublesome' checkbox". but like everyone else, i just want to love someone and be loved by them. sometimes i just want someone to hug me and the feeling can sometimes be so intense, it scares me. and that's one problem with many people: they are scared about the depth of longing for relevance. it won't be satisfied with one or many flings. there's a deep-seated cry in each of us to love and be loved. the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible put it well when he said that God had "…put eternity in the hearts of men."

if God put it there, then nothing in this world will ever satisfy that longing. i know. i got so mixed up that at one time in my life i had a list of almost ten women i had different levels of non-negligible attraction to. d-uh! i can't be with all of them, can i? so i stayed away, using my mind and wit as both a shield and a weapon of offense. but i tired of it. i wounded people i cared for, simply because i couldn't handle it. it hasn't stopped in a sense, but i have changed in one simple way: instead of trying to give myself excuses for not being in a romantic relationship and trying to explain away the attraction i felt for someone, i faced it. i began to believe that i am a desirable and attractive young man (i still need to learn the secret arts of cosmetics usage), and that even though i was attracted to people, i didn't have to excuse it away - or do anything about it. yes, i'm self-conscious around such people, but that's about it.
more importantly, i'm beginning to look more to my relationship with God and to myself for my sense of importance. i'm putting a value on myself. i don't need anyone to make me whole but God. and He's not doing a lousy job of it - that much i can tell you. i'm not saying my insecure days are over…but i can look at myself in the mirror and thank God for the day He created me - someone else is going to, someday very soon do the very same thing! and ladies, hands off - this dude is expensive stuff! it took a human life to buy me - so nothing less will do for the rental value! sayonara!

Consolas font from Microsoft

i've been programming for a little while with Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express, but i never had so much fun reading/writing code as two days ago when i changed the editor font to Consolas. Consolas is one of a number of new fonts developed specifically with Windows Vista in mind, but Microsoft in its not-so-recently-hatched generosity is giving it away for free for developers (obviously, pretty much anyone can get at least Consolas, not to mention that the fonts also came with both the beta and release versions of Office 2007). for a monospaced font, it's really more legible than Courier. i guess if you use a version of Visual Studio the setup file would automatically set Consolas as the editor font, but it seems not to work with the Express Editions. typical, i forgot all about the installed font the next time i ran Visual C++, but something got me looking in the options (something i rarely do normally) and i set the editor font (i generally don't do this either. the closest i've come to doing it is changing the display font for SciTE from monospaced).

by now i guess i probably got you at least a mite interested, so let me stop advertising Microsoft and just give you the link to the download.

coding among thorns...

i've been developing a small app that required an embedded database. i'd used SQLite with a degree of success, but i wanted a change, especially when someone said something about the files getting easily corrupted. my next choice was embedded Firebird. since i was writing a C++ application, i decided to use the default C++ API for Firebird, IBPP.

developing this app has been a great learning experience. for instance, i found out that using std::vector as a container calls the copy constructor for stored objects. there's a class in my code that has a private copy constructor, mainly to prevent me from trying to make copies of existing objects (if each object is to be completely unique, there'd be a need for that, wouldn't there?). i wasn't sure about it, so i stored pointers to objects of that class in the std::vector. later, i duplicated the code relating to the vector and tried using actual objects. my compiler (Visual C++ 2005 Express) gave me a major error in the vector include header, of all places! heh!

my app i going along fine, and i hope to be done with it by Saturday. on the subject, Sleepcat Software was bought by Oracle. interestingly, i just found out this morning while googling for embedded databases, even though the announcement is dated February last year.

saa te, later!

wisdom...on much more than 3d

i've known about SomeArtist's blog on 3d modeling for some time now, but i really didn't look up his posts. he has quite a bit to talk about, but even if you're not a 3D modeler, i suggest you look up his site. his tips are applicable to more than just 3D, because he talks about thinking, not modeling per se.

so go on, have a look see.

woes...gone?

so, here i am, back to coding in the middle of the night (it's past 2am here). i found that compiling IBPP and linking the created object into my application only worked until i made a function call, namely to create an IBPP::Database object. then all hell broke loose. so, i did the recommended thing and added all the IBPP source files to my project, and recompiled after removing all references to my custom "library". recompiling gave me the (expected) error of complaining about wide (Unicode) characters not being compatible with regular ones. since i only got about 9 or so errors, i started editing the source file (_ibpp.cpp), and converting most references to quoted strings that gave errors to Unicode-compliant strings using the TEXT() macro. the final challenge was a call to std::string::c_str(), so after trying to create my own function to convert from ANSI to Unicode, and failing - i solved that with a cast. i'm not so sure i won't trip up in future, but i'm feeling more confident now - considering the "solution" took less than 15 minutes, and i'd been battling with the problem for over an hour. i could do with some sleep, myself. later!

Update in progress

went to classes for the first time this year. heh. nothing much happening. went over to the wxWidgets forums to gripe about my wxWidgets application linker problem. apparently, i didn't remember signing up, but i had, previously. when i logged in, i decided to look for the problem i was having before griping, and lo and behold, it seems i was using a different configuration (probably trying to build a debug application on the release version of wxWidgets i had, though i'm almost certain i always switched it...). at any rate, it seems the problem was a very common one indeed, judging by the number of people who posted separate threads for it. anyhow, i'm quite glad i'm not alone in this thingy. anyway, i always solved the problem by creating a new project, so i'm not too bothered.

this is totally unrelated, but there's going to be a live Transformers movie! and guess what? Steven Spielberg is the exec producer, with Michael Bay as director! i saw the Japan-only trailer on YouTube. arigato gozaimasu, Spielberg-san, Bay-san! later, then.

Growing pains

yo. been quite a while, relatively. been trying to code and not being very successful at it. i don't know what happened to me. anyway, i was having problems with some stuff i was doing. compiled FOX, but since it didn't contain the code for some external libraries such as Zlib, i followed the instructions on the site and defined some macros to include them in the build. the library built fine, but the example programs gave me linker errors no end, complaining about multiply defined symbols. had to get rid of the entire library

something similar happened when i actually started working on a project using wxWidgets and IBPP. for some reason, IBPP doesn't support Unicode, or so it seems to me. i built the application (and wxWidgets) with Unicode support, and IBPP choked. the fix: build IBPP as a separate library. fortunately, even though the IBPP team recommends merely including the source into your own code, i built it (quite easily - just compile all_in_one.cpp), eliminating one problem. the other was fixed by including wxWidgets headers before IBPP's since they both declare a macro with the same identifier (_). the clincher came when i edited some code in my skeletal application, and got a wxWidgets linker error about not finding wxStringData::Free(). nowhere in the wxWidgets docs does this method exist, and not even in the library, it seems. pulling out all calls to IBPP didn't fix it - i had to plug the entire app.

i haven't coded in a long while, so maybe that it. and i don't even want to go into the problem of multiply defined symbols due to different runtime libraries. oh, i'm using Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition Service Pack 1. i really was about to give up. i kept thinking, it's the story of my life anyway. i'm not sure maybe it was due to lack of sleep, but i do feel better now, and i guess i'm ready to give it one more shot.

Happy new year!

yes, 2007 is here! and happy new year to you too! so, what are your plans for the year? don't tell me, just make them - and make sure you execute them. plans are no good unless you do something about them. despite that, however, remember that Robert Burns said something about the best laid plans of mice and men gone agly…or something like that. plans are only so good, and are limited to the planner - no human can see the future. that said, it's better to have a plan for the year than just fall through - the plans act as a measuring stick to determine just how successful you've been. well, guess i'll leave you to your planning and scheming for the year. later!

Documentation

i've always wondered why so many developers leave documentation for their applications, libraries and other things online, as in on web pages that are problematic to get offline. i do realise that developing is a labourious process, and creating documentation makes it more so, but if you really want to release your program/library/toolkit for general use, make sure there's some documentation that users can get. on my former blog, i ranted about the availability of offline documentation for Blender. it seems as though the ASP.NET AJAX team want me stuck online. dude, it's expensive for me to stay online, but if i want the documentation for ASP.NET AJAX, i need to. that just means i can't use it until they let me have an offline copy of the docs. ah, well. i just hope i don't do the same thing.

Christmas is troublesome!

so here i am in school, and it being the 25th of December, too! due to the "festive" season, i haven't left school for home because of the traffic jams between school and Lagos. i heard some people spent over 14 hours on the road. dude, that majorly sucks! i haven't left for home yet, maybe that's why i'm feeling some saaki from home. okay, maybe it isn't killing, but i feel like i will get sacrified once i get home. so i hope to get home today. and am i bored stiff in school!

i can't send a text message to my sister, even though i've been trying over the last two hours. i'm not surprised, though - the empty network has its limits. i mean, with everyone and their dog trying to communicate at this time, even a stellar network (which the empty network is not) would be hard-pressed to deliver hiccup-free services.

this year, Christmas is on a monday (arrgh!). i don't beef the season, only the mindless activity that fills so many lives just about this time. it's really dumb seeing so many people fritter away time and money without thinking. Christmas itself has lost what it should mean - not that it started out meaning that anyway. anyhow, guess, we'll see later. (i can't believe i'm doing this) merry Christmas! and God bless us, everyone!

erm, so what was i going to talk about again?

can't remember. or don't want to talk about it anymore. works the same both ways. anyhow, wish those who celebrate christmas a merry one. not quite sure i'll blog agin before next year, still…anyhow, see y'all!

It's that season of the year again...

dude, lots of new versions of software is showing up just now - just in time for Christmas, heh, heh! among some of the new versions of software showing up are:

• wxWidgets 2.8 has been released. finally, they release the documentation for the current version (how come i wasn't told that version 2.7 wasn't stable?)! grab your copy if you use it.
• VideoLAN VLC player has hit version 0.8.6. An excellent player, you might want this handy for that day you feel like streaming that audio all over your network…as far as i can tell, it still doesn't support Real media files, but i guess maybe the maintainers might add that, what with all the activity going on at the Helix Community, some miracle might occur, though i'm not holding my breath because of licensing issues…
• lately, software giant Microsoft has been really nice to some of us who can afford to shell out precious $$$ for software. Lots of software development tools are available from the Redmond company. Rather recently, the new XNA Game Studio Express is production-ready and waiting for the next great game developer. Got .NET? Want to create games using Visual C# Express Edition? Will travel (actually, travelling isn't necessary, but downloading is)? Will not create XBox 360 titles without a license? then get this one. 'Nuff said.
• still talking about Microsoft, the new home page debuted two days ago. and i can find a link to free accounting software software there. eh??? a contest to win retail space in NY plus $100,000 (USD i guess) to get your business started? i smell a big, fat, rat. sorry, i smell the work of a bunch of guys who want to take over the world.
• And for the company that wanted to give me a heart attack recently - Planetside Software. Yes, the long-awaited release of Terragen 2 Tech Preview is finally here. maybe it's me, but i'm sure i scanned the entire site yesterday and never found the download link. fortunately, i googled this morning and found the link to the download before i could give them a piece or two of my (much-needed) mind. all's well that ends in the well, i suppose. i now have a shiny new Terragen 2 Tech Preview download, and i'm retaining all the pieces of my mind too ;). well, here's the link to the download page. i wish Planetside many sales of this one (hopefully, i'll be able to afford it when it finally is production-quality).

well, gotta go. other things await my perusal. later!

Women are troublesome!

after mulling about it, i guess i'll just leave the header and this note. if you're a guy, i'm sure you'll have your own experiences with woman trouble. and this really has zilch to do with romance or any such thing. relating with them can be such a pain. arrgggh! if someone can tell me just how to live with them, but without their trouble, i'd listen.

hMailServer

ever since i was introduced to hMailServer, i've never looked back. it's really nice for it's weight. part of the requirements for it to run is a database server, either MySQL or Microsoft SQL Server ™. when setting up the server, you're allowed to choose whether or not you want to use an external MySQL database server. not using an external database server makes use of the one that comes bundled with the hMailServer package.

with MySQL versions up to 3.x, i worked well with hMailServer. unfortunately, from version 4 upwards, i've struggled with using hMailServer and MySQL. that's because i generally install MySQL for purposes other than running a mail server. however, the last time i installed hMailServer, i did the usual thing: create a new database for the mail server's use using my existing MySQL server installation. however, for some reason, hMailServer choked on the external database, so i was left with the option of downgrading hMailServer or MySQL. for the first time, i got mad, reinstalled hMailServer and let it use its internal MySQL server. it's nice to know that even though i now have two MySQL server services running on my computer, i can use my existing MySQL server along the one installed with hMailServer.

one thing of note, if you're going to install hMailServer, please note that the username used to authenticate to the mail server must be the full email address, not just the username portion, that is, it needs to be 'username@domain.com', not just 'username'. this is something that i've seen trip up new users of hMailServer.

arrrrgh! it's the end of the year again!

i was taught wrong proportions

Back in primary school(i guess that would be grade school for some people), i was taught that if 1 man completes a piece of work in 10 days, 10 men would complete the same piece of work in 1 day. i have since come to question the validity of that premise, because if we consider the men actually completing the work in 1 day:

• as Prof Olicks mentioned, we're assuming that they all work at the same time, and they don't have to queue up the work - in other words, no person's work is dependent on any other person's
• we're assuming there are no slackers among them, which is most likely not true. come on, any group of 10 people will almost certainly have one or more slackers.
• we're assuming each of the 10 men has exactly the same rate of work as the 1 man - which is of course, not plausible.
• we're assuming the men don't do anything to affect their work rate, either positively (like cheering each other on or smoking weed) or negatively (like...i dunno!).
• we're assuming they even begin to cooperate.
• we're assuming they don't get into each other's way, which will obviously slow down the rate of work.
• we're assuming they don't go off, form a union and call a strike for some reason.
• we're assuming having 10 men on the site isn't a violation of safety laws.
• as Prof Biyi reminded me before i publish this, it also depends on the nature of the work. if it takes 1 man 1 minute to put on a pair of trousers, how long will it take 10 men to put on the same pair of trousers? i think that bears thinking about.
• from Prof Biyi's postulation, we can also assume that we have not asked the employer of labour if he would be willing to pay 10 men as against 1, since the 1 has the (decided) advantage of not being able to form a union (of course, that doesn't stop him from getting a shotgun...).
• since we learnt this before we found out about the law of diminishing returns, we can safely assume that we are assuming without the said law, which IMHO, has a bad habit of not knowing how to be ignored gracefully.
• we're assuming that some other thing i haven't taken into consideration does (not) happen.

in my opinion, the smart answer to the question: "if 1 man takes 10 days to complete a piece of work, how long will it take 10 men to complete the same piece of work?" would be: "it depends".

New virus/worm/whatever!

last night (or in the early hours of this morning), someone asked me to take a look at his WinXP computer. he said it was giving some weird text on right click. sure enough, when i right clicked his C: drive, the first two items were in some gibberish, the kind you only see when you don't have Asian fonts installed. However, the first two menu items (&Open and E&xplore), have their accesskeys underlined, like normal. i first started checking the registry to see if there was any custom autorun handler. there didn't seem to be. the thought was then brought to my mind the autorun.inf trick. so i checked, and there were a number of files named autorun* (that is, files that had the name autorun-something. apparently, the worm spreads via removable drives, and executes itelf using Windows Scripting Host. i'm not sure exactly what the payload (the actual damage caused by it other than being annoying) at any rate, disabling Windows Script Host is very easy if you have the right tools, or if you don't mind running around in the registry. i can't tell you exacty what registry key to modify other than HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows Script Host\Settings\ (set both the Enabled and Remote values to 0). use Task Manager or any other process manager to kill any instances of Windows Script Host (wscript.exe) running, otherwise, cleaning the worm will be really difficult. Next, make sure that the worm doesn't start up with the system by searching for and deleting all intances of "autorun.bat" in the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\IniFileMapping\system.ini key. Finally, at the console, run: attrib -h -s -r autorun* and delete the files that appear if you have the default setting, which is to hide system and hidden files. if this doesn't make sense, post a comment. i'm falling asleep at my computer and i don't want it to drop off my lap. later then! oh, yeah - tools you can easily use to disable Windows Scripting include the excellent Xpy and AVG Antispyware. With Xpy, simply download, unzip and run the application. you'll see it under the 'General' settings. For AVG Antispyware, go to the Tools tab and expand Other services (or something like that; i don't have it installed for a number of reasons).

English is the pits!

i'm taking a couple of tests on Brainbench (free of course! :D), among which is the Personality test. i was looking at the text at the top of the screen and started wondering of "today" referred to "this present day", or "an amount of time around and including the present day". there are too many words with multiple languages in English! since the world generally agrees that i'm not a native English speaker, i'll have to say we chose a really weird language for the most popular one (quoting Ryuk from Death Note episode #1)

Wings 3D 0.98.36 is out!

i once again decided to creep around the Subdivision Modeling forums, ostensibly to revive my almost-dead modeling career. there, i was greeted with the wonderful news that Wings3D 0.98.36 is out! okay, so i haven't tested it, but if my experience with the previous versions is anything to go by, it's going to be l33t! oooooh, i can hardly wait to get my hands on a shiny new copy! erm, forgive my behaviour - everyone is allowed 5 minutes of insanity daily. i was just getting warmed up :D. later then!