Proposition: An iPod shuffle is overpriced
Fact: I got a $15 2GB mp3 player on Saturday (normally $30 at NCIX; the player is made by Philips)
Fact: A 2 GB iPod Shuffle costs $70
Q.E.D.
Pthreads and C strings February 11, 2009
I love Pthreads and I hate C strings.
Why? I’m fairly used to Java and its strict typing, but C is very loosely typed, of course, for performance. With c strings, I have to call so many odd libraries that I wouldn’t need to with Java or C++ strings. Malloc makes sense, but not at a high level language. The worst thing is when you’re taking part of an array of characters and when you pass it as a char*, you have to add an extra index to insert a null character.
It made my CMPT 300 assignment a horror to debug.
But pthreads are actually really nice, as long as you don’t need too much complexity. They just do exactly what you want them to do, nothing more, nothing less.
C strings are just so simple that they’re overly complex.
Texting While Driving February 4, 2009
You would think that after four people died in an accident (,and common sense), that people would figure out that driving while texting is a bad idea.
Not for the guy who almost hit me while I was crossing the street.
C’mon, he’s driving slowly and slowing down, so it looks like he’s stopping; so I begin to cross. Luckily, I was watching, unlike him.
Un-freakin-believable
Alarm Clocks February 3, 2009
There are a lot of different kinds of alarm clocks out there, many very bizzare. As I’m writing this in my room, it’s obvious that I’m looking at my own alarm clock. It’s the standard kind, it beeps and playes music.
However, the problem is that I find it very hard to wake up to it, now that I’ve had it for many years. It seems that my mind will subconsciously hit the snooze button without me remembering that I even did so; this leaves me waking up at 6:30 (when I hear my family prepare for work) instead of the 6:00 that I actually set my alarm to.
So, soon, I plan to get another 2 alarm clocks soon, each with slightly offseting times and different sounds in an attempt to wake up punctually. I don’t like the idea of an alarm clock specifically made to run under the bed or make you play a mind game to turn it off.
People on the bus January 30, 2009
I’ve been meaning to complain about this for a while, but on yesterday’s ride home this guy really cheezed me off. He held the door open for other people, which in his mind, was good. However, it delayed the bus for so long that it made me miss my transfer on the next bus.
It’s an odd thing when someone wants to do good but ends up being a jerk.
Macm 201 freakout over December 15, 2008
As long as half of the standard deviation above the mean mark is a B or B-, I’m happy.
The iPhone is not for talking October 8, 2008
I saw someone actually talking on an iphone today… it just doesn’t look right. Not really much of a phone.
New blog… witty text goes here (oh my, that was witty indeed…(ah the wittiness(ad infinitum))) September 18, 2008
Umm ya. Why are you here? I dunno. unless you’re me. I’m here cuz i want to keep track of things and so anyone else can see what in the world i’m doing. not like they care. meh, i shall say it again,… meh.
Anyways, my ideas that i’ve been brewing for a while that i’ve always needed to blog about:
- Mod audio players to look more like amarok and less like itunes; candidates: foobar2000, quarkplayer, musikcube2
- likelyhood of doing it: slim, bit more than slim with foobar since i’d just need to make a component
- CD ripping support for amarok: i submitted this to Gsoc in ‘08. No bites. oh well
- just a CD ripper: queues as the main interface element, to rip as much as possible at the same time.
- why? current interfaces suck
- possible, but unlikely atm
- mduel remake
- my cousin’s doing this, he’s started in python, restarted in c and is now restarting again
- i tried this a couple years ago in java, restarted once, would restart again
- would wait to see if joel comes thru, steal his code and port it to java and/or Qt, otherwise, still possible
- powerpoint replacement, named “Projection”
- when i get free time, i’ll do it. depends on my war3 cravings. Qt4 ftw!
- powerpoint sucks, opensong = meh, oo.o impress = good but not optimal esp. for songs, mediashout looks good, but $$$$$, proprietary.
- i already have a qt app that has a button that makes it go fullscreen. Yay! pretty good for first time using qt and c++.
- replacement for campwise. That bloated stupid microsoft-whaddya-call-it-only lets you use ie…
- maybe in a couple years… I’ll have to learn how to use/code the AMP in LAMP/WAMP. And of course, LOTS of free time.
- minimalistic linux setup to be low on power, cli interface, just playes music. And of course an amarok-like interface.
- Lots of hacks on dwm
- vista theme that looks like oxygen
- passing windows’ desktop right click menu/shell extensions to be accessible thru plasma/windows.
- just talking about it gives me an idea: just pop it up thru a submenu that just loads windows’ submenu. It’d look hackish but work!
- some way to quickly switch between ndiswrapper and bcm43xx linux wireless drivers thru networkManager… probably unrealistic tho.
- bake the ultimate cookie: cross between double chocolate and cornflake-m&m cookies.
Also, for c++, Eclipse? MSVC? Kdev? I’ll see in a few weeks when i’ll(hopefully) have free time. and lots of it.
Oh yeah, the name of this blog comes from a comment on a blog. so sue me.
