Times are changing

I want to keep this as daily as possable, but time once agian is running short. Shool once agin has started, and i cat keep up with writting a post every day. I new this was going to happen, so i thought i would just digg up an artical as a post. But then again i thought i would be putting down the few readers i have since, they come here to read about my thoughts and opions (at least i think so).

So what can you exspect? I think it will become a mixture of personal post, revies and maybe a few rants. The same thing you have been seeing so far. What will be new, is i'm thinking about posting my school work. Since i already have to type papers and some of my notes, why not share it. With that said im, lowering my goal tp 3 post per week, and at least one rant a month. Who knows how long this will last. Let me know if you have anyh susgestions, opions or feedback on this, or any thing else. I'm open to idears. thiis

KDE 4

KDE 4.0 in Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon

I had not had the pleasure to take the new KDE for a test spin yet, but it is on my to-do list. I'm debating if I should add it on top of one of my Ubuntu 7.1 desktop, or update it to Kabuntu 8 Hardy Heron. Either way it will be my first time running KDE installed on a computer. Not to say i never used KDE interface, that's not true. I use KDE all the time in live version of Linux, either in Slax or other bootable restoration tools. I this is because KDE is a little lighter, and more customizable then gnome.

So with said, I hope to test several next Gen graphic interface, either it be gnome, xfce, or kde.

if you cant wait for my review this is a good link:

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/kde-40-review.ars

New Job, New Program

I got a new project that I started last night. It was inspired by myself, just to see if i still had it in me. I'm talking about programing, a new program.  I realy want to write about some of my source code, but this is not the project for this. Reason being i dont know where this program will lead me. Like i said it is for my self, but i may liceans, sell, or even give it away.  Therfore i dont want to leak out too much source code, if this becomes profitable. 

This program came to me in a dream. I know creepy. I was dreaming of writing code. The next day i started planing out the classes and program structure. I probably did not write more then 20 lines of code already, and I'm very prod how it looks already. The organization and structure seems very solid, and i can tell that already o have a great foundation to expand upon.

So what can i give away? Well right know the source code is in java. It most likely will stay that way too, since I'm going to have a graphic layer on top of my core program.  This limits me down to java since it is the only language i have work graphics with. Traditionally, graphics come last in the programing stages. In the mean time i build a command line tester class. But for this program i have already planed beyond the basic graphic steps. I have planned to even test my skills with jogl. Jogl, is java api wrapper class for openGl. This would allow me to do 3d graphics.

Cerulean Studios Trillian Astra Review and Walk Though : Day One

I have been wonting to do a review on Astra for a while now, but never had a real chance, until today! For those who never heard of Trillian or Astra, Your missing out. Trillian is a multi-protocol program that allows you to chat, IM, voice, and video conference with your friends, buddies and co-workers. Multi-Protocol, meaning that this one program can handle many of the standard Instant messaging services out there already. So instead of having three programs running, three contact list,  and three or more windows running and cluttering your desktop; Like you would have if you installed AOL IM, Yahoo, IM, and MSN IM. This one program handles them all. This originally was useful to me when I was a admin to a large gaming network and community. Being signed on to all the protocols allowed any one to contact me regardless of instant messaging program they used.

Trillian is not the only program that does this, there are several other multi-Protocol programs out there, for example Gaim. Gaim is another widely popular open source multi-platform program that allows you to use several protocols at once. Gaim is no match to the power of Astra in my opinion.

Astra is the name of the next generation Trillian. Astra Currently is in its alpha stages and is invite only. Luckily I been invited. It was a long and funny story how I got my invite.  I have been fallowing Astra from its early stages, around build 7 or so. I have signed up on the invite list, like four times, each with a different e-mail, hoping that it would increase my chances of getting an invite. Around build 30 I could not wait any more, The Screen shots of what they were showing was amazing, Totally mind blowing. I had to get my hands on a copy. Down the road Cerulean Studios, open the invite list to those who bought the pro version of Trillian 3. Therefore to better increase my chance to test Astra I went and bought Trillian 3. Few days after, I got my invite. But to my surprise I got my invite on a different e-mail then I used when I bought Trillian. Therefor I bought Trillian for nothing. The moral of the story is to be patient.

My plane it to break down this post into 3 day review and walk though of the latest Build of Trillian Astra. Day one will be on installation, setup and configuration. Day two I finish up, configuration and show you around Trillian and some of its neat features. Day Three I will show widgets and Trillian online.

 

This is a fresh install of the latest build of Trillian Astra. Cerulean Studios releases a new build almost ever week. But this does not mean you have to go though the installation once a week. Trillian has an automatic update feature that allows updates to be pushed out, to patch it's clients seamlessly.

Your basic licence agreement. Who reads these things anyway, I Do!

 

After the installation, it brings you to the login screen.  This acts very much like how windows handles multiple users. This allows several people to use the same compute and Windows account, but each user can set a master password, to login into all of his or he IM accounts, protocols and settings.

 

Username and password to connect to the Astra network. Notice I ticked remember account password and automatically sign in. This is because I'm the only one using my laptop.

 

This is screens shows the status of you login. It loads up preferences, contact lists, logs, plugins, and logs you into the Astra Network. The white square above, normally will show your buddy icon. But because this is my first time login in, it has not retrieved my buddy icon and data from Astra network.

The Wonderful World of Early Computing

The history of computing spans thousands of years - from the primitive notched bones found in Africa, to the invention of abacus in 2400 BC, to Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine in 1883, to the rise of the popularity of Personal Computers (PCs) in the 1970s.

read more | digg story

Rant :: Calliforinai Water Pump System

This is a small rant i have. It came about watching Modern Marvels on the history channel. They were talking about the Big Lift, a pump and pipe system in California to deliver water over the mountain rang, and down to the dry southern areas of California. What bothered me is how the guy answer the reason why this need to be done.  He  said that the northern parts of California gets to much water, while the southern part needs the water for the millions of people  living down there. What bothers me, that this would not be needed if was not so over populated in that area.

It is a very simple principle, if there is no water or food in the area don't live there.  Having a water supply where it is not attended, alters the environment and most likely hinders growth and normality. I would not be surprised in years to come with more water issues in the area.

RIP N00b Server

It is sad to say, i think my web server is and down and out. Don't worry it most likely wont effect you, because only a select few people new and had access to my web server. The n00b server project started a few years ago, when i was getting into website design and i needed a web host to practices with. If you know me, you know i can be cheep, therefore i made my own server.

The server was made up of several striped down computer components from old computers. When i say old, there not even breaking the gigahertz mark. To be exact it was running at half of that, at a break neck speed of 500MHz. I was able to squeeze an extra 59 Hz by overclocking it. I was hoping to get more out of it but because i had all miss match memory sticks. Also this was a old mother board and bios with out overvolting or fixing memory speeds. This was all before jumper free clock settings.

The computer was packed tight with hard drives. Four drives ranging in size from 2GB to 10 GB. Each drive had it own purpose. One was used for OS and programs. Another drive was used for was open to the Internet. There was also a drive with a ntfs partition that was mapped out on my local network to act as a small filer server. The last drive was used as the swap partition (page files).

The computer became a server over night, with few installation and configurations. For Os i had a ubuntu 6.06 lts. I opted to use graphic interface, because my Linux skill were not great. Keep in mind this was my first time using Linux on a computer. I was shocked on how smooth every thing went.  The computer ran so well that, at one time it became my main computer! With Apache 2 running in the background i was able to surf the net, down load, install and program.

In later months the server began getting more jobs. Soon it was running SQL for bugzilla, SVN, and TomCat.It was great, and very quick considering what parts i made it from.  The problem came about when i, decided to upgrade to 7.1. The computer locked up in the upgrade. I have a feeling the hard drive died, or just got very corrupt.

The question is what to do with the server. My needs to have my own server has disminition, since i have access to a real web host. I my decommission it, or turn it into a gateway for my network, to ad another security layer. Also it would like be to have a encrypted tunnel to my home network. Other wise, it may become my back end to handle user profiles when i switch completely to Linux with remote profiles. who knows, but I'm up set seeing the server be offline.

2007 Audi A4 2.0T Review

The best parts of buying a good car from a good dealer, with a good warranty. is the rental / loaner cars they let you use while your car is in for repairs or maintness. You drop of a 02 Audi they give you a 07 Audi, good deal in my opinion.

 

The third generation A4, have a bigger front grill.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The third gen has cleaner and overall smother lines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The doors are not as flat as the second generations.

 

 

 

 

 

Nice dual exhaust

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Manual seats :(

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little dirt already

 

 

 

 

 

 

Big Trunk, can fit 5 or 6 bodies

 

 

 

 

 

full spare

 

 

 

 

 

Sub in the trunk and rear dash

 

 

 

 

 

 

The control panel display looks the same, but in this model I cant change the display to show other data. Like MPG, runtime.

 

 

 

Love the controls on the steering wheel.

 

 

 

 

 

Six disk cd player

 

 

 

 

 

 

The display is much large then the other Audi. The presets are now on the left and right of the screen opposes to the bottom. The benefits of this, is that it will now display the presets value.

 

 

 

 

Climate controls all the same.

 

 

 

 

 

This is where gets interesting. the other Audi was a 6 speed manual transmission. This is a 6 speed automatic, but with tiptronic.

 

 

 

This is your basic drive. It shifts at around 2 to 2.5 thousand rpm depending how you stomp on the gas

 

 

This is in sports mode. The car becomes much more responsive, and shifts at a higher rpm

 

 

 

 

 

Now it is in the tiptronic mode. Now the power is in your hand. It does not have all the freedom as a true manual, but closet. It will automatically down shift and will up shift at 6000 rpm if you don't shift before it. 

When the car is in gear, the display will show your current gear

 

 

 

 

Very cool, computer controlled breaking system. This is part of the traction system of the quattro. It will on break on wheels that has traction. Also it will only put power on wheels that can handle it. This happens by applying small amount of break to the free spinning wheel. This will cause the shift in torque to the other side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I thought this was odd. The exhaust comes in to the middle. On the right hand side is what I think is the turbo. On the  left side is where the exhaust leaves.

 

 

 

The intake is on the opposite side of the exhaust. This is because the air is routed from the turbo to the inner cooler on the other side then to the intake.

 

 

That is not the radiator but the inner cooler.

Mac-a-tize Me MacWorld

I'm a little behind on my coverage of MacWorld.  Been busy running around and doing errands that I did not have the time to set down, and enjoy the new offerings.

As I write this, I'm sitting down, intently watching Steve Jobs on stage as if he was some kind of super star. There is something about him that gets people exited, something Bill Gates can never do. His presentations have so much excitement. Like they were saying on Twit last week, Steve can make anything sound interesting, unlike Bill Gates. This obvious, watch Bill Gates Keynote at CES then watch Steve Jobs at MacWorld. In MacWorld you will here hoots and hollers as the camera zoom outs and shows the audience, all  on their PDAs and iPhones, blogging away.

 

Leopard: 5million copes of leopard in 90 days. That's great, considering this was not a super major update. Leopard is 10.5, Tiger was 10.4.  It not like the jump from OS 9 to OS 10. I would consider the upgrade from Windows Xp to Vista as a huge upgrade. Apple has a much better business and development model, unlike Microsoft that releases upgrades every 3 to 4 years, at price of $200 or more.  Apple releases an upgrade about every year for $120. It gets better if you have more then one Mac, since Apple offers a family pack for up to 5 computers for $200.

 

Time Machine appliance aka Time Capsule: I think the whole time machine thing is great. It is nothing new but like always Apple made it user friendly with its' clean interface. Backing up used to be hassle, now with the Time Capsule, it is worry free and automatic. Using the program is almost fun, how you can just craw backwards in time to grab a file. The devices is like NAS unit built into the Airport Extreme. It becomes a great bargain since it is a two in one unit. It has all the router features of the Airport Extreme, which by it self goes for $179. Then apple throughs in either a 500Gb or 1Tb (1000GB) server grade hard drive for $299 or $499. If it was PC capable I would almost buy one.

 

iPhone mark share. If you have not watch the keynote, you will notice that he had a small case of dyslexia, he said 1.3 when it was 3.1. No big deal. The Big news still is what every iPhone user and programmer has been waiting for, it is the API for the iPhone, so we don't have to hack up our iPhone to get cool aps. Then there is those new updates for the iPhone, with Movies now having subtitles, and SMS more then one person at the same time. Most importantly the map upgrade with cell phone tower and WiFi triangulation. All free, Steve said. This scared me, why would a software/firmware update cost any thing. Specially to the one who just shelled out $2000 over a 2 year contract?

Reason why, iPod Touch users have to pay 20 dollars to get the same upgrades. That's messed up. If I ever had to pay for a firmware upgrade for my iPod 5th Gen, I would be flipping down at Apple store. Keep in mind firmware updates, normally removes bugs, and other issues. It is like paying the hardware manufacture of your motherboard to get a new and more stable BIOS to support newer hardware. I'm hoping iPod Touches still get these updates. I have a feeling they're branching the software development between the iPhone and iPod Touch. I also have the feeling that the development API will not be for both iPod Touch and iPhone.  Reason being iPhone is very easy to crack and to add third party programs, therefore they cant charge since there is already an open source program that does the exact same thing. To apple a cracked and unlocked iPhone is a bad thing. Since it increases the chance the user will switch providers. That up sets Apple because they get paid by AT&T for each contract they have with the iPhone.

iTunes: 4 billion song to date, 20 million songs on Christmas day, 125 million TV show, 7 million movies to date. According to to Steve, movies sales was lower then expected, his reason is that no one want to own a movie on there computer since they only watch it a few times and it takes up space. Therefore starting now there will be movie rentals, from every major movie producer. The prices are 2.99 for library title and 3.99 for new releases. A dollar more allows you to upgrade the content to HD. The rule is that you have 30 days to start the movie after purchase, then have 24 hours to finish the movie.

 

Apple Tv: Got an update that allows you to Rent DVDs in HD Dolby Digital 5.1, get the latest podcast, or show photos from flicker or .Mac. Don't forget you can also show Youtube videos, all from your living room seat on that 42 in plasma screen. No longer the need to have a computer to sync content to  the Apple TV. While showing the power of Apple TV with flicker, there was a hick-up in the system with Flicker not "delivering" according to Steve. I'm surprise the update is only software base. The reason why this is a free upgrade, because Apple is making money, because your more willing to order TV shows and rent Movies with this update. For the 40gb modal it will coast you $229, while the 160gb coast $329.The best news so far, is how Fox's DVDs includes a digital copy for iPhones and other digital devices and players.

"Opening the lid, the screen seems brighter. Touching the keys, they seem firmer, but it's the touchpad that captures your attention. Sure, the iPhone does multi-touch, and Microsoft has that table thing, but this is different. Rotating a photograph is no longer (1) selecting the photo, (2) moving the cursor, (3) pressing a button, but simply turning the photo. It's pinching, swiping, zooming your way by hand into the computer, and, in doing so, uncramping 25 years of muscle memory with the mouse. Everything is new again." By  Charles Jade in Macworld.Ars: MacBook Air spec shootout

THE MAC BOOK AIR: Some will say this was the best news during the MacWorld. I disagree, I was not so thrilled about this product. Yes it is the thinnest laptop, but... I was not impress. No cd drive for one. Steve made a good point there is no need for cd drives anyhmore, only to install software. The solution is remote disk. Simply it is like network mapping a local drive or remote desktop with hardware support sharing. There is an external drive you can buy for $99, but it only works with the mac book air. Some of the good news, 5hr battery and mercury free screen. Also the bonds between Apple and Intel seem strong, since they are using a 60% smaller chip designed for this computer.

images by wikipedia and or apple.com