Best. Event. Ever.

0 | October 21st, 2008 | Posted in World of Warcraft

Halloween Event

Well, I could’ve told you this

0 | October 16th, 2008 | Posted in politics
Obama
You preferred Obama’s statements 100% of the time

Voting purely on the issues you should vote Obama

Who would you vote for if you voted on the issues?

Find out now!

On Racism and Illegal Immigration

0 | August 21st, 2008 | Posted in Uncategorized

This is why I hate the internet. Scroll down to the comments section and read the first one. Obviously it’s ok to beat foreigners to death if they’re here illegally. You know, if they didn’t come here and “sponge” off the system by working a steady job and raising a family, they might not have been killed.

Let’s apply that logic elsewhere. If you’re jaywalking, you’re obviously breaking the law. If I ran you down in the street, it wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t breaking the law because you’re not supposed to be there. Unless you’re an illegal immigrant, then you should die, twice.

It’s one thing to say, “Hey, these people should go through legal channels to immigrate. I don’t like the fact that employers can hire them on the cheap.” It’s another to use an anti-illegal immigration stance as a mask for blatant racism - which amounts to about 90% of the criticism of it these days.

Shame on CNN for closing the comments on this story without removing this sickening racist banter.

They can take whatever they want now

1 | August 1st, 2008 | Posted in Uncategorized

Just came across this little gem of an article about how internal DHS procedures state that agents at borders can seize whatever they want for as long as they want without reasonable cause.

Even if you don’t subscribe to the whole “Bush is evil, the country is now Soviet Russia, etc etc” this is a big deal. We have officially stepped over the boundary between ludicrousness and into full on insanity.

“The policies . . . are truly alarming,” said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who is probing the government’s border search practices. He said he intends to introduce legislation soon that would require reasonable suspicion for border searches, as well as prohibit profiling on race, religion or national origin.

There’s already legistration on the books about this. It’s the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution that prohibits unreasonable search and seizure.

There’s been actions during the last eight years of our current administration that have stretched the meaning of various parts of the constitution, but this is a new low. We have something that is so blatantly unconstitutional going on behind our backs (the policy was secret until recently), and now is exposed with not much more than a whisper on the Washington Post.

I plan on emailing my local representatives in Congress (first time actually), I’d recommend everyone do the same.

Tagged in: ,

A super simple example of nunit

0 | July 31st, 2008 | Posted in Programming

Test.cs:

using System;
using NUnit.Framework;

namespace Test_Project
{
    [TestFixture]
    public class Test
    {
        int x;
        int y;
        CalculatorClass calc;

        [SetUp]
        public void Init()
        {
           // Any global variable setup, etc, goes here.
            calc = new CalculatorClass();
        }
        [Test]
        public void TestAddition()
        {
            x = 2;
            y = 2;
            Assert.AreEqual(4, calc.Add(x, y));
        }
        [Test]
        public void TestSubtraction()
        {
            x = 5;
            y = 2;
            Assert.AreEqual(3, calc.Subtract(x, y));
        }

    }
}

CalculatorClass.cs:

using System;

namespace Test_Project
{
    class CalculatorClass
    {
        public int Add(int x, int y)
        {
            return x + y;
        }

        public int Subtract(int x, int y)
        {
            return x - y;
        }
    }
}

The Black Keys

0 | July 25th, 2008 | Posted in Music

I have to admit, I’ve never paid that much attention to blues music before. During my life, I’ve gone through several phases of musical tastes. One of my earliest was of early 90’s rap and hip hop. I eventually graduated into the alternative scene, then into metal for a while. Lately I’ve been really digging indie rock, but for the most part if the music is good, I’ll listen to it regardless of the genre.

Black Snake Moan was an awesome movie, and really sparked my interest in blues. I quickly downloaded the soundtrack shortly after seeing the movie, and put it on almost infinite repeat on iTunes. One of the bands featured on the soundtrack was The Black Keys. Wikipedia calls them a “blues rock duo”, but I think they definitely fall more into the former category than the latter.

What can I say? I love this band. Any music that has as much heart and raw power usually wins me over. I started off listening to their latest album, Attack & Release, loved it and moved on to listen to their first album, The Big Come Up, which was released in 2001. I loved this album even more! It has a very unpolished, raw sound which gives it that much more blues cred. The fact that a drummer and a single guitarist can make the sounds on this album absolutely blew my mind.

What’s even more interesting is their recording techniques. Their second album, Thickfreakness, was recorded in the vocalist’s basement on an old 8 track. Another album, Rubber Factory was recorded entirely in an abandoned factory near their hometown of Akron, Ohio.

Personally I like their older albums more than the latest one. Their latest one feels more like a major label release, with a polished sound a lots of producing. Danger Mouse of Gnarls Barkley fame worked on it, so it’s not surprising that it has a more produced sound than previous albums. This is a good and a bad thing. It’s good because produced sound is more easily consumed by the mass market, but bad since a lot of the power and musicality is lost.

As much as I hate linking MySpace, check out their page here. There’s some samples of their songs from their latest up. You can get some snippets from all of their albums over at Amazon MP3 to give you an idea about their old stuff.

Tagged in: , ,

LiveJournal Import to Wordpress Complete

0 | July 23rd, 2008 | Posted in Announcements, Personal

Wow, I’m amazed at the work that the Wordpress guys have put into data importing. A few years ago I attempted to import my LiveJournal archive into a Wordpress installation and gave up on it. Now it works great and also imports comments.

Apparently for entries with no subject, it puts the post number as the subject, but not a huge deal. It’s great to have my comments here.

Ten Things I’ve Learned in Life

0 | July 22nd, 2008 | Posted in Personal

Here’s some general snippets of stuff I’ve learned. I think it gives a good solid view of my outlook on life.

1. First, admit you know nothing. This gives you a great start.

2. Best way to win an argument is to apologize. This pushes your opponent off-guard.

3. It’s cliche, but you gotta do what you love. Find what you love to do and money will follow. (it just might take some time)

4. Work to live. Don’t live to work.

5. Don’t be too proud to apologize. If you make a mistake, admit it and move on. There are very few mistakes that cannot be corrected in life.

6. The people who love you will always be there for you no matter what.

7. Don’t accept mediocrity. Go all out on everything you do.

8. Don’t procrastinate because of #7.

9. Give yourself permission to suck. Your first try at something probably isn’t going to be great.

10. Most of the time your gut reaction is the correct one. Listen to your intuition.

Yesterday’s Tweets

0 | July 22nd, 2008 | Posted in Uncategorized
  • 10:34 If you’re having Apple problems I feel bad for you son. I got 99 problems but an iPhone ain’t one. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Breaking up is hard to do

3 | July 21st, 2008 | Posted in Uncategorized

I’m switching blogging platforms. I think I feel good about this.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with self-hosting my own blog. There’s been a couple of reasons why I’ve always been wishy-washy on the subject, but the biggest one that comes to mind is the community I’ve myself a part of on LiveJournal. You tend to gravitate towards the services which the majority of your friends, or potential audience uses. This holds true in the blogging world as well as the social networking world and down to the instant messaging world. In effect, I’ve been chained to a platform which I no longer care for by virtue of all my friends being there.

I’ve been doing this online journal thing for nearly 10 years. The vast majority of that has been in updates to LiveJournal. Ten years! A lot of things has changed in ten years, but not LiveJournal. As a platform, it’s grown stale and tepid - a monument to 1999 views on web services. One would expect that with the huge amount of attention and focus these days on web platforms and social networking, LiveJournal would take full advantage of this and step up its offerings, implementing AJAX and maybe even an API to allow you to extend the interface. But no, in ten years LiveJournal has not changed at all. Sure, a few new features such as Scrapbooking have been added, but the experience today is nearly identical to the experience of ten years ago. This lends the service very well to the nostalgic crowd, but individuals that have a need for growth beyond the garden walls find very little of value.

There’s also the generally accepted stereotype of LiveJournal users: whiny, self-absorbed emo kids/furries that feel compelled to “circle the wagon” in LiveJournal communities with other like-minded fellows. Like it or not, that’s the general perception of the typical LiveJournal user. Personally I’d rather not be associated with such.

There’s very little that I do on LiveJournal that can’t be done elsewhere. I can keep track of friends using RSS, and reply if needed. If I really feel the need to update LiveJournal friends on blog updates, a simple link as a LiveJournal entry will suffice, and even this can be automated. A large majority of my friends don’t even post reguarly to LiveJournal any longer, so much of it would be moot anyway.

Personally I think that people should start viewing sites like LiveJournal more as platforms than services. With the interoperability of the web these days, it’s really the only realistic view. As a service, LiveJournal does alright, it gets the job done. As a platform, it completely fails. Add in a history of business trouble, recent transfers of ownership and controversial changes in levels of service, you have signs of an immient demise. Unless you’re Russian.

So, where do I go from here? For one, I’m going to make use of my webspace that I pay for every month and jump aboard the WordPress bandwagon. WordPress is growing very well as a platform, and truly supports everything I want to do right now. It also moves my content back into my full control.

LiveJournal, it’s not you, it’s me. Sorry, that’s a lie: It’s totally you. But if you need me for anything you can contact me at any of the urls below. Peace.

http://jwwest.com
http://twitter.com/zerozephyr
http://friendfeed.com/penguinwired

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