search engine annoyances

man, i'm beginning to hate finding my blog posts in search engine results. when i had my old blog, i mentioned looking for some information about a particular subject and getting my blog post about such things as ranked first by Google. something similar happened recently. what i really want to find out is what someone other than me has to say about it. i know what i already said about it - or i can find out!

Never give up...and various other things

here i am on this rather ordinary morning, hungry and having spent too much time (as usual) on the internet. like most of the people i know, i've dabbled into quite a number of things related to computers - web "design", 3D, programming, design and so on. it so happens that i learned about the wonderful program FontExpert from Proxima Software. i like it a lot - but you can only use it for 15 days for free. since i had the "format bug" for quite a while, i never did have problems using it, as i would use it to install/manage fonts and then format my system not too long after. but recently, i realized that i hadn't formatted my computer in a while. i hadn't designed much in a while, either - so when i needed font management, i installed FontExpert as usual. here's the catch though - i haven't formatted my computer in quite a while, over 6 months in fact. not does it seem i'm going to do so before the year runs out. unfortunately, my shareware use of FontExpert has expired, meaning that times like last night when i wanted to design a quickie for someone - i once again lamented the expiration, and merely used to the fonts installed on my machine

now don't misunderstand me - i have great fonts on my machine. but i limit the number living in my Windows fonts folder to 500 these days (47x isn't so bad) so i can maximize my computer. what i particularly love about FontExpert is its ability to temporarily activate a font - so you can use it until you restart your machine. and no, i can't easily pay for FontExpert because it's like pulling eye teeth to pay online here (the fact that a certain well-known company doesn't allow Nigerians to create accounts with it may help you understand). so i am stuck without a font manager. i'm not interested in certain font managers that create shortcuts fonts you install using them - i'm a weird one, and for any number of reasons i'd rather have a font actually living in the Windows font folder than have a shortcut to it (what if i installed it off a removable disk?).

anyway, i was looking for high-quality free fonts this morning, and once again saw that Linotype has a free font manager for Windows and Mac OS X, Font Explorer X. unfortunately, i missed the beta period for the PC version, and the program isn't available for download anymore - until it's released. seriously in need of a font manager, and without recourse to some avenues to solving my problem, i began searching for a mirrored download for Font Explorer X, especially since there were so many rave reviews. searching on Google didn't yield anything, so i looked using something else, and found a download on the second try (if i was going to tell you what i used, i would have already, so can it). now i have Font Explorer X running in memory on my machine. okay, i'll back down a bit - the download was from the Linotype site - but i didn't visit the site before i found the link.

maybe it's because i'm using the US version of Firefox, but isn't there a word like 'learnt' in English? or why is Firefox telling me i have a spelling error there? i started Breath of Fire IV, and George and Victor got interested, and started playing it too. i've since finished it once (again), but they're still playing it - even though George has more time on the clock than i do (i finished in about 52 hours), and that doesn't include all the times he got his party killed and had to restart (i think the worst that happened to me was i lost my Knight dragon trying to beat the Rider without using Celerity and had to escape that fight...oh, i also got a Game Over trying to Steal the Dragon Tear from Fou-Lu). plus, my characters are all at higher levels than his and i have more Game Points and Fishing Points than he does - even though he's using a walkthrough. what really is the moral of this (supposedly interesting but completely unnecessary) story? experience. what makes one person able to do some things better than others might just be experience. and personal experience is built from doing the thing yourself. there are few things in this life you can master without doing the dull, rote everyday, mundane thing. but experience can beat talent. which is the point of the final episodes of History's Strongest Disciple, Kenichi. and the point of this post. later then!

Exams have started

...so i have very little time to do this. i really need to get out of here. i'll post an update later.

Why should Facebook shut down the group "Fuck Jesus Christ"?

i'm on Facebook, and ordinarily, would like to talk about how cool it is - i mean, i met someone i hadn't seen for over 10 years there...but now's not the time. i merely am asking why Facebook should shut down the above-named group, distasteful as the idea may seem. and no, i haven't lost my faith - i merely want to remove my emotions and tendency to bias the situation, and look at it objectively

my Nigerian friends may have no prior experience of such God-hating, but it's fairly common - which is probably why the group protesting the above-named group has less than 500000 members. statistics aside, i believe that action like forming a counter-group makes no sense. simply because that's what i think the devil wants you to do. join the group, then when they see how many you are they'll believe in Jesus or shut down the group? i wish you luck. you're just wasting your time. you're better off actually evangelizing, than protesting people's decision to express their feelings and thoughts. and the worst thing is that such hate groups thrive when they face pressure. it's the fuel for them. ignore - or bring them to real issues - and they lose steam, for the most part. besides, i don't think Jesus started a 'love Jesus' group when people wanted to kill Him. i think He just ignored the hate and kept loving them. He never met them on the devil's ground. and neither should we, because it's what love did - and continues to do.

as an addendum, i'd like to quote this 'conversation' i read on an edition of Higher Way magazine: -Want an orange? -No thanks, I don't eat oranges. They're not for me. -Why? -I dunno, just never ate one before. -Then how can you tell they're not for you? Why don't you try one an see for yourself? many of these folks who say they hate Jesus have never even met Him before. and since they pride themselves on logic and reason, the honest ones will admit bias when confronted with love. don't beat them over the head with Jesus. even He only did that to people who should have known better. and if we're the only Jesus some of these people will ever see before they get saved, i'd say things aren't exactly looking up (looking at my life, that is.

Supernatural 2007 over!

just got back about half an hour ago from the last meeting of Supernatural 2007. it was great, and 'm tired. need sleep - will do so when my dad leaves for church. my brother came with me as well. later!

web comics i (sometimes) read

yesterday, someone i know was walking with someone else, saw me and said, "i'd like to introduce you to this crazy guy" (the crazy guy being me). anyhow, i'm assumed crazy, and so, to keep my craziness up, i need to get into the heads of crazy people. two webcomics i like are xkcd and very recently - The Usual Dosage - a webcomic that seems to be developer based. so far, The Usual Dosage has only 6 strips, but i especially love the fifth. something has to be said for the sanity of whoever invented regular expressions. it's like an IQ test question i once read, which went something like this:

able, rot, son, king
Which word below shares a common feature with all the words above?
line, sit, take, hope, night

The answer: the words in the first list and 'take' can be prefixed with 'par' to form English words. like i said when i read that: i'm smart, but not crazy. at least, not that crazy.

one more thing: you really should read The Usual Dosage from the first strip to build it up. it makes more sense that way. and one more thing (no, really): start the '1337' series on xkcd. it's a five-part series and it's hilarious. and crazy. seriously crazy - and yes, i know that sounds kinky, like 'dry ice', 'cold sweat', 'jumbo shrimp' and 'clean porn'.

Why web designers used (and continue to use) tables for layout

Yesterday, after the morning session at the second day of Supernatural 2007, i was 'recruited' to format the programme for the night session in Word (don't miss the dripping sarcasm - it's pretty much a trademark). after trying to lay out the document using tabs, i realised why web designers started using tables for layouts - let's face it, your layout options before tables were pretty much limited to using preformatted text, or long strings of spaces. and after Word nearly had me pulling out Bill Gates' hair, i decided that i'd had enough - simply use an invisible table to lay out the programme in 3 columns, and let Word maintain the spacing and neatness of the entire thing. while i was doing that, it suddenly struck me that the first primordial designer probably had the same thoughts as i did - and started us all down the evil road of table-based layouts. i guess until the day when you can tell the software exactly what you want to do, you'll just get stuck with the idiosyncrasies of whatever software you do use.

First night @ Supernatural 2007

Supernatural 2007 kicked off today, and i quite had a great time. met a number of people i hadn't seen in quite a while - and i got to hear a great message that was timely and to the point. now, the onus is on me to do something with what i heard. later!

Now this is crazy!

growing up, i hated my parents, loved them, was indifferent - pretty normal, you would say. however, i just read a story that horrified me silly - a 16 year-old (now 17) is facing charges for attempted murder - he hired someone to take out his parents - ostensibly because they started disciplining him. you can get more about this here, here or here.

web crawling

was crawlin' round the web, doing nothing of absolutely any value, and found this blog that i seemed to have the password to. so i'm writing in it. hope the owner doesn't find me authoring content in his blog. heh (rubbing hands together gleefully), i wonder what kind of evil i should leave here that's untraceable to me...

the cafe got a new link, and i was there stress-testing it. as far as downloading goes - it will suck, in my opinion. still, nothing like being open for business...

if i crawl the web this much, Google should employ and pay me. of course, they'd pay me what i'm worth - nothing!

after the breakup

so this is me again, a few days later. i'm still alive - somehow. and even somehow coping with the 'loss' of my friend. of course, since i was the origin of this loss, i can't really complain. sometimes i wish i could just talk to her - maybe even call her with my phone number hidden - just to hear her voice. it doesn't help that she was really popular with my roommates, and they keep asking about her...even other people ask about her, or tell me that they saw her somewhere...

well, at least one person should be laughing about all this. friend of mine. ever since he met her with me, i don't think he's quite been the same. he was calling her more often than me, flirting with her, and all that - guess he'll be overjoyed that we aren't together anymore, so he can move in to comfort the distressed damsel...ah well. we got into an argument about this guy a few times - me telling her that he was interested in her - she going: "so what do you want me to do? i can't very well act paranoid - what if he's just being friendly?"...ah well. that's just a memory. just hope i made her happy for the time we were together. really. what the heck am i doing? i'm supposed to forget her! but i really don't want to. anyway, i've been blogging about this because i need to make sure this keeps up. the separation, that is. gon' grab me a lil' shut-eye, and i should be much better after.

screamin'

you know how they say that the things that are good for you - like vegetables - always seem unappetizing, while those that don't do you good - like cream donuts - are so hard to resist? evil rarely needs ads, but good things have to work overtime just to get your attention...

anyway, like i said before, there is this girl i'd been seeing. heck, more than seeing. everything started with one kiss, and promptly slid downhill from there on - without brakes. she's good-looking, smart, funny, fun to be with - but it was all wrong. for one thing, she was seeing someone else. for another, our relationship got very physical in a very short time - we might have been sleeping with each other given enough time - that i wonder if there was any real substance to it.

i'd been talking to my friends, and then sought help - i really liked her, but i decided to do what's right and break it off. so i started warming up to it. school closed on a Wednesday. i saw her up till Saturday when i went home, then cut off communications with her. she called me on my birthday (in fact she was the first person to call), i replied, then i called once more - and that was it. i knew she'd be mad, i missed her terribly, but i had to get used to not having her around.

the next time i saw her (last Wednesday), i acted aloof and cold when all i really wanted to do was take her into my arms and hold her close - and knowing my attitude would hurt her. finally broke it off on Friday - and she seemed to be taking it well. if i thought before hurt, it hurt even more yesterday. and then i got a text message. and another. if i wasn't talking to my homeboy, Woody, i might not have resisted replying. she wanted to see me, she wanted me to help with something important. i went out of my way to try to organize her for her but not be personally involved. meanwhile, i was turning into a zombie. i couldn't concentrate on my work, watching movies and anime lost its taste (we used to do this together), and depression was setting in. Woody advised me to go visiting - which basically fell flat because i really couldn't stomach people, and almost everyone seemed to be out last night. saw my pastor, complained to him, went back to my room. while i was out, she called - and it took everything i had to refuse to help personally. if i didn't fall sleep, i don't think i'd have made it through the night. despite what my pastor says about it getting better with each day, and God being on my side because i'm doing what's right - right now, i'm not looking forward to the rest of the year. it doesn't help that most everyone that might have helped out isn't around while i'm staring tetsubo in the face. well, here's to first seeing the month out. guess i'll just have to take it a day at a time. even now i wish i could just somehow wake up and it's all a dream, and she's back in my life. but it isn't going to happen. God, this hurts. is God Aztec? cause right now, i feel like my heart was ripped out and offered to Him.

Ahem, PHP 5 issues!

PHP 5 is such a wonder. i got a chance to use it when the host i'm using changed their PHP version to PHP 5.2.4 recently. before that, i'd been trying to write code compatible with both versions of PHP, and couldn't use exceptions and the like. coming from a background of C++, you might understand a few of the reasons i like PHP 5. anyway, since the host i was using changed their PHP version, i threw out the backward-compatibility and rewrote all my classes to use PHP 5 syntax - which reminds me of C++. of course, this came to bite me in the rear - twice already, and i may still have a few more bites before i'm done.

specifically, for one thing, i started using access modifiers. unfortunately, there was this little bit of my code that required me to access a data member from one class to another. using the old syntax, that was no problem, but when i changed to PHP 5, i automatically made all data members private - which caused an access error, since one class needed access to another's internals. anyway, that was quickly resolved and relatively minor. from my C++ heritage, the concept of destructors is quite cool - objects that 'know' how to clean themselves up when they die make life easy. when rewriting my code for PHP 5, i automatically started using destructors - i mean, let the database connection close itself when it goes out of scope - or shouldn't it? herein lies the problem: i wrapped sessions also and also provided a destructor - that cleaned up the session when the session object went out of scope! of course, i was high on PHP 5 and didn't quite realize that that would defeat the purpose of the session itself - why use sessions that would simply clean themselves up when the current script terminates? it took me quite some time to figure out why i couldn't log in - because the password was correct and when i looked at the access logs on my machine, i saw that i was redirected from the login page to the dashboard and back to the login page. besides, when i tried the wrong password, i got a different error message. d-uh!

Back in school

got back to school yesterday - moved back into my room today. no, i am not sweeping the room. it seems the last 3 or so times we leave campus, i'm about the first person back into the room, and therefore i'm the person who initiates cleaning. well, that's over. let someone else do it. we all live in the same room, don't we? met Toba's girl yesterday. he seems to be okay now that his exams are over. but law school calls - so he and the rest of the guys in final year law are basically packing up now. ah well. won't miss them.

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.