The random musings and thoughts of a crazy college student.

September 24th, 2000

This page quickly reaches near a year old. And what a piece of crap it is! Still, there seem to be three or four people visiting each day. Might as well give you people something pretty to look at. I recently installed and learned Flash, the vector graphics animation program by Macromedia. Lookie:

Yeah. I'm no artist. Big deal.

July 10th, 2000

How stupid of me! I asked you specifically to fill out my poll up top, and I didn't update it to the question I wanted! Anyway that's been fixed now.

I'm still asking people to sign my guestbook too. I've seen one interesting entry there, from "Parker Cash". And I know it was from back in January. Hey, that's when this site was really actually worth anything. It goes something like this if you're too lazy to look yourself:

Well, it seems like it's some sort of secret message to me. I tried to look it up, but I get this...

Can't comes read out? Makes no sense to me! Can anyone shed some light on this? Of course the second one (Rolling Stones) has only three words on the fifth line... Maybe that's a key to show this was made up to bother me. Did Parker Cash know this would bother me??

BTW, I used Google to find all these lyrics. I always used AltaVista but am finding Google to be much more accurate! Try it!

July 9th, 2000

I just got back from my vacation. Spent a week at Cancun, Mexico. Could have been worse, I could have been working!

Anyway, I've been stumbling about, wondering what to do with this webpage, and I'm really not sure. If you were to, say, e-mail me and tell me what you'd like to see, maybe I could get it! Here's for today's bit though...

Spam. Why? What is the deal with spam? Have these people not yet figured out how useless it is? How If one gets any spam, one gets TONS of spam, and reads absolutely none? I have multiple webmail accounts I use just to send stuff to if I think the address will end up on some list somewhere that I don't want it to be. Combined these things average 10-20 spams every day and that is unacceptable. Look at this... An email entitled: "No prob...tonite is good."

Why, who could this be? I've never seen that email address before even! Well I'm lonely and I would just love it if there is in fact some person wanting to spend the night with me! Hurrah! I read the message and see:

        Accept Credit Cards!

        We can help your business grow.

        YOUR APPROVAL IS GUARANTEED!!!

        Give us a call for more info:

        Call Now! 1-888-660-1910

        

        

        

        

        Accept Credit Cards!

Aww! They fooled me! I guess I'm a lonely loser because I'm so gullible and stupid! (I now note the sarcasm, for those of my readers that may in fact be gullible and stupid.) These spammer types are getting on my nerves!

And hey, please fill out the poll right above if you didn't, I'm really curious!

June 19th, 2000

Linux. Unix. These two operating systems share very much. All of these things they share give them the same great advantages. I personally use (only of recent, sadly) a version of Unix called FreeBSD. If you have the very slightest desire to try a Unix or Linux system, get FreeBSD. It is wonderful, in my opinion.

Anyway, I'm using this computer as a file and web server. And let me tell you, it is FAST. It's running on a mere Pentium 200MHz, and it is very speedy. It is running: Apache, PHP, mySQL, and Samba. And that's not the best part! Unbelievably, the OS and all of those software packages are completely 100% totally free. And, arguably, the best possible programs existing in their class. Apache is commonly known to be the #1 web server, bar none. It is open source, just like all of the others I've listed. PHP is a competitor to Cold Fusion and suffers only slightly more complicated scripting, but on the newest version, boasts similar or faster execution! It's an amazingly comprehensive programming language that can do just about anything you would want your website to do.

The database mySQL is my choice to hold the dynamic data that PHP feeds into my web pages. The benchmarks available on their website shows that it kicks Oracle's ass when it comes to speed. It also explains how this system has been in use since 1996, holding tables with millions of rows representing over 100 gigabytes of data, without the slightest flaw. Finally, Samba is an amazing program that allows you to set up a Un*x box to share files through Micro$oft's standard "Network Neighborhood." Not only this, the throughput, depending on platform, can easily be double that of a Windows NT server.

I've thrown a lot of amazing claims at you. I have had, honestly, a ton of fun setting up a new computeR for myself that was completely free (the software I mean), and also better in nearly every aspect than some of the most expensive alternatives! How could this possibly be? Open source! Now I get to the real point to this post. Open source is good, open source is great. I love everything that the open source movement represents. What powers the open source movement? It is filled with completely free products, and there is no money to be made! Largely, geeks fuel the open source movement. The database program mySQL is actually produced by a company, and another (freeware, not open source but still about the best solution there is) program called VNC is completely free, and produced by a real company.

As I said, the open source movement is largely fueled by geeks. I love these geeks. These people are the special type that actually are able to program solutions to today's computer problems, and do it for just a few simple reasons. Largely, these people want a better solution. Most of them also feel that people deserve a better solution. Just like these rare companies, they seem to realize that monetary gains are not all that are important in this world.

I wish more companies would realize this. If each large corporation in the world produced just one of the software solutions that it needed, plus made the source code freely available and modifiable, then using a computer today would be much much better. Plus, I theorize, these companys would actually run better rather than losing money due to extra costs of hiring programmers. How you ask? Well, as I said before, each large corporation would need to produce a product (something important to it, and not already easily available) and then quickly the common software purchase would instantly disappear, become free. Imagine how much money this would save companies! Take $100 for Winblows, $150 (a conservative estimate) for Office, and various other programs that each and every employee needs. Instantly, imagine $300 savings, times every employee, every four years or so! That's a lot of moola! On top of that, each and every program you use is now designed almost specifically for what you need it to do. Productivity obviously recieves a good boost!

Which leaves me with only one thing to say... Make it free!!!

June 18th, 2000

Well, I am impressed! I don't know how or why, but over the last eleven days, I've averaged ten viewers per day. And I haven't really advertised my site anywhere for months! Well, to begin with, look right above here for links to my guestbook and my e-mail. I would love to hear from any of you as to what you think of the site, what you'd like to see here, anything!

I don't really have much to write about, but I'll suggest that any RPG fan that hasn't heard of EverQuest goes and checks it out! The only bad thing about that game is how much of your time it can eat up, but if you're a lonely college student on summer vacation like me, you would love something to do with your time! Plus there has been an expansion pack, The Ruins of Kunark, released not too long ago, and the game is even bigger! It's a ton of fun!

I'm getting a new video card, just for this game! I'm not a big video game guy, but I play this a lot. I have an ATI All-In-Wonder 128 right now, and I use the TV tuning and output abilities all the time. I've heard that the Voodoo 3500 TV is twice as fast ad only $140! When I get the card, I'll tell you guys what it's like!