Tag Archives: Computing

Why I Don’t Use Standard IM Clients

Wired posts this article about the instant-message wars. Let me just say that this is exactly why I use Cerulean Studios Trillian and the open-source IM client Gaim (both Windows and Linux versions) to access all my IM accounts.

Advertising is annoying. AOL Today is annoying. In fact, anything that pops up without your consent in an IM client is annoying. Fine, so Trillian and Gaim don’t have all the bells and whistles, but I don’t care about flashy crap, I care about functionality, ease of use, and accessibility. Ironically, these two clients actually have much better functionality in some cases than their rival IM clients distributed by America Online, ICQ, Microsoft Network, and others. It depends on what you look for. All I want to do is talk to people. Screw the rest of it.

Programming Doom and Chaos

If you’ve never done any programming whatsoever in an imperative language such as Java, C, C++, and the like, this post will likely make very little sense and will not be funny in the least. I assure you, humor is intended.

An online friend of mine, Sean Paul-Rees, came up with this coding gem:

if(doom)
chaos();

He made an interesting point — “doom” is a very subjective thing. Now, the way I see it, since doom is necessarily boolean according to its format in the if statement, you could select doom based on a switch statement on a specific constant value.

However, doom is subjective, so such a structure is relatively impractical. Nested if/else statements would seem to be the key, since we’re looking for particular conditions.

Now, what conditions do we test…? Well, we’d have to assume a specific definition for what “doom” means before we started defining the code. Do we see doom as something akin to Armageddon (in which case testing is extremely complex) or simpler (in which case testing is still extremely complex)? I suppose it depends on your political slant, religious beliefs, and whether you think simple things can be equated with doom. The example Sean gives is that simply doing homework can be attributed as doom, but my reply to that is that it depends on what you’re doing in life — not everyone does homework all the time, every moment in their lives…

An aside: for those wondering, Sean points out that the coding of the chaos() function is easy in a UNIX/Linux environment; just delink /dev/null. My two cents — it’s even easier in a Windows environment (I’ll leave the question of how to your imaginations).

Internet Taxes and Bus Service

Oy, not again. Why is it we just can’t seem to get it right on the issue of Internet taxes? Either pass a law banning them or enact them already.

Anyway, not all that much else to report. Spent the entire day watching more movies (is that really a shock?) and mostly just sat around. Stargate SG-1 rocks, yo. Someday, I’ll pick up Season 6 and do my normal, watch-a-disc-a-day routine. I’ll probably do the same with West Wing Season 2, Law & Order – The Second Year, C.S.I. Season 3, and, potentially, all five seasons of Babylon 5. Someday.

It’s odd, I’m not really the type that likes to get off campus. I don’t know, I suppose I’m more of a homebody. Not sure why I’m so adverse to getting off campus (which I will admit is incredibly ironic given that I’m looking to live off campus next year). I suppose it’s just that I don’t like being bothered to wait to do things. I’d rather be able to do them without taking a half hour or more on the bus on weekends to go the equivalent of about ten miles to get to Capitol Mall. Why Intercity Transit cuts service to the College via Route 48 during the weekends, I will never, ever understand — that’s when most students on campus want to get to Capitol Mall and surrounding area. Instead, to get there, you catch Route 41, either out of the Housing bus loop or the main campus bus loop and ride about 15 minutes to Harrison and Division, which Route 48 runs along during the weekends. See, it’s not that Route 48 stops entirely; no, it merely stops serving the college.

Gripe of the day.

Technology, Google, Aliens, Dictators, and Proliferous Links

To sum it up: OpenOffice works better than PowerPoint, Microsoft finally clued in to the open source initiative, and Hell froze over and pigs flew (see the April 7th entry in this link entitled “Runway clear for takeoff”). Okay, so I’m a little behind in catching this stuff, but it’s still noteworthy. Isn’t technology just cool?

Oh, and Google might finally be filing for an IPO (after how long…?)

Well, err, none of that really impacts my personal life. My girlfriend surprised me with a visit this weekend; swore she was going up to Bellingham but came down here instead. One of my good friends came over, and we ended up watching Alien and Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, filmed in 1940.

Anyone else noticed my propensity to link proliferously in this blog so far..? :)