Long Time Coming

OK, so I've been lazy. This is my first post in 5 months. I was going to school, but I don't really have an excuse for the last 2 months of summer vacation.

Anyway, here's some funny stuff I found in the last 5 months:

Funny Adwords - Some actual Adwords that people have seen. Pretty funny.

Demetri Martin - Findings



And here are some more Demetri Martin videos. He's funny.


Mandelbrot Set video



Ha. Clever.

I don't know if I actually have an audience, but if so - look for more posts soon!

My Top 5 Firefox Add-ons

One of the great things about Firefox is all the cool add-ons available. If there's anything you don't like about Firefox, there is an add-on to change it. And I have the same add-ons for my Linux machine as I do for my Windows machine, so it's pretty good that way too. It's always a pain to have to switch between different tools that do the same things.

So, without further ado, here are my favorite Firefox add-ons:

1. PDF Download
   This one allows more flexibility about what FF does with PDFs. Instead of just opening it in-browser, it allow you to download it, open it in a new window, or view it as HTML.
2. IE View Lite
   Firefox is great, but not all sites were programmed with the idea that anyone will access them without IE. On Windows systems, this allows you to quickly view the current page in IE.
3. Resizeable Textarea
   This gives you the Safari-like functionality of being able to resize large text fields.
4. Server Spy
   Lets you know in a little section at the bottom of the FF window what kind of server a site is using. It's interesting information. Always fun to see the broken sites running IIS and say, "Oh, well there's your problem!"
5. Web Developer
   By far my favorite FF add-on. This gives you a little toolbar with more web development tools than you would ever need. It gives css and javascript tools, shows you divs, classes and ids, style information for a given element, and lots more.

So enjoy these, and make the move to FF if you haven't already!

Ethical Roads

Ethics don't exist without opposition. Luckily, the world is full of opposition. People can either hold to their ethics or give in.

If they hold to their ethics, they should be prepared to fight, be unpopular, and feel like a loser. Bosses don't like to be told, "No." Friends don't enjoy being corrected. Of course, this won't always happen to the ethical, but they should be prepared for it, as it's likely.

If people give in and take the easy road when an ethical roadblock appears, their ethics will change. Ethics that aren't held are not ethics at all. Stated differently, when people give in to something against their personal code of ethics, that code of ethics is decreased.

Choose the hard or easy road, and be prepared for the consequences.

Go Forth

Forth is an interesting little programming language. First of all, it's stack based, so to do 4 + 5, you would actually need to type 4 5 +. Next, it's a compile-as-you-go language. Defining new "words" for your program is literally extending the compiler. And finally, its grammar is nothing more than a string of defined words.

Forth is used for embedded systems (in fact, according to forth.com, it's used today), and has been used in the past for arcade games.

PHP CGI Weirdity

I don't know why anyone would ever want to programmatically call the CGI version of PHP, but there's a slight weirdness you'll have to deal with. If you call it with just the normal CGI environment variables, PHP will complain that it was compiled with "--enable-force-cgi-redirect," and that it needs some extra stuff.

Here's that stuff:
1. REDIRECT_STATUS. I just set this to 200, and it seemed to work. Pretty sure that refers to the HTTP status, but I really haven't researched it at all.
2. PATH_TRANSLATED. This is just the location on disk of the php script to run.

Setting these two seemed to work, but (just for kicks) I also set REDIRECT_URL = SCRIPT_URL = REDIRECT_SCRIPT_URL = the URL (minus the server name, ie "/dir/script.php".)

Fun With PERL

I'm pretty proud of myself right now, because I just used PERL to do something cool. In my 360 class (CS 360 - Internet Programming) we're building a web server, and I keep finding new mistakes of mine to fix. It's going well, but there seems to be some kind of limit in Linux to the number of semaphores I'm allowed to create. So when my program dies a few times (without removing the semaphores it created), it won't create semaphores on restart. Up till now, I've been restarting the computer when this happened.

Did some investigating, and I found out that there's a nice little utility, ipcs, that prints out all the IPC (interprocess communication) stuff - message queues, shared memory, and (of course) semaphores. There's another nice little utility, ipcrm, that removes IPC stuff.

I could go through and remove all my semaphores every time, OR I could use my newfound PERL knowledge to make the computer do it for me. Being a geek, I found the second option way cooler.

Anyway, here's my code. Enjoy! (Note that I don't guarantee it on anything. Also, note that it deletes ALL semaphores under your user. So don't run this if anything else you're running is using semaphores. Finally, use this at your own risk!)

#!/usr/bin/perl

open(IPCS, "ipcs|") || die("Couldn't run ipcs.\n");

$startedSems = 0;
while (<IPCS>){
if ($startedSems){
 if ($_ =~ /------ Message Queues --------/){
  $startedSems = 0;
 }
 else{
  ($currkey, $currid, $usr) = split /\s+/;
  if ($currid != "" && $usr eq "yourUserNameHere"){
   $cmd = "ipcrm -s " . $currid . "|";
   open (IPCRM, $cmd);
   while (<IPCRM>){
    print;
   }
   close(IPCRM);
   print "Removed sem id=$currid\n";
  }
 }
}
else{
 if ($_ =~ /------ Semaphore Arrays --------/){
  $startedSems = 1;
 }
}
}
close(IPCS);

Oh yeah, two more things. Change yourUserNameHere to your user name. And last of all, either chmod a+x the file to make it executable, or perl it.

Quit Stealing

Is stealing from thieves different from stealing from honest people? In the words of Futurama's Lrrr, "Yes; but not by enough."

The companies in the recording industry are unabashed crooks. That they steal artists' rights in legal ways is completely irrelevant.

But their status as weasels doesn't excuse those who steal music. Unless it's an act of civil disobedience, stealing music is wrong.

Record company executives: change, or go to Hell. You are thieves.

Musicians: license with Creative Commons. Record companies are obsolete.