OK, so you're here. Yes, I'm using WebGUI. No, you can't play around with my copy. I am using 7.3.15 stable. As the text goes, you really shouldn't be here... But if you are interested in WebGUI, you should also check out my WebGUI FAQ
But, while you're here, wanna take a look at pics of Trent?
For WebGUI:
I have updated the ShortChat Wobject to be compliant to 6.2.x
I made this PlainBlack WebGUI6 Resizable theme...
Some bug fix offerings.
Help from a newbie :).
The User1 Macro... Which can be used to show my Yahoo IM online status:
Yu-Gi-Oh
OK, so what am *I* doing talking about an anime? Somehow, I am fascinated by the duality of friendship and fantasy built into this show. It is the first I've heard of the name Critias. It's no big deal, but I was ignorant to the name when I concocted Crythias as one of my aliases almost 10 years ago. Then I see Seto Kaiba being called to pull the sword from the dragon named Critias, and I nearly fell out of my chair.
I guess it's hard to put a finger on what's more difficult for the average reader to understand- that I've been an avid viewer of Yu-Gi-Oh, or that I even consider Critias to be even close to Crythias, or, for those who don't know me, that I didn't merely knock off the name for my own purposes.
In any case, I found a Google search for Critias led multiple hits to Plato's Critias. I would have still been in awe if I hadn't had closed caption on my TV at the time. It seems that I would have been more impressed and confused if I hadn't had the correct spelling.
As I read more, I'm not so sure I'd like to be compared to the man himself. He sounds really brutal, and I'm ... not.
ION Window Manager
I can't get over it. OK, so I've been playing with a Dell Laptop
that supports 800x600 and running FreeBSD in dual boot mode (other is
Win2k Pro). To this point, I've been running XFCE and been pretty
pleased about it. XFCE is nice and non-obtrusive, and rather speedy. I
didn't necessarily like chasing Windows around and started browsing the
ports for alternatives. Now, understand that I have about 2GB in use
and about 400MB free on the laptop after the partition... I know I
should kill my Win2K partition (I really haven't looked back), but I,
like others, are in the predicament they are in, and whining about it
won't change it.
Back to the point. I was browsing via pbrowser
and saw this ION window manager. Minimalistic, fast, no icons, no ...
well, nearly no nothing. Still, I was intrigued with the promise of
complete keyboard manipulation. If you can believe that mousing on a
touchpad isn't so much fun after a while, and not the easiest thing to
have a mouse on a couch, you can get the idea that I had ... woah :) No
messing with windows!.
Yes, I'm still running XWindows, and
having fun with not having to deal with any movement and arrangement. I
can tile if I want, or I can just use one app full screen at a time. At
first, that just killed me. Now, I'm about as comfortable with command
line as with WIMP (Windows, Icon, Mouse, Pointer), but I was strangely
unnerved to have the idea in the back of my head that stuff was running
full screen. The funny thing is, I don't have icons on the desktop that
forces me to minimize everything to get to.
It *is* productive to
be able to hit F3, type in the command of the program I want, and have
it just load. You try finding what you want among all the pictures of
stuff and scrolling through tons of installed apps. The smarter of you
will have arranged your Programs in categories, but still, it's easier
to simply start, run, vim and let it work.
What about ION? Well,
I've only used it now for about 2 hours. I like it. Applications that I
use... run in it. If I want to have firefox open less than full screen,
with gaim at the side, I can. Or not. It's all about tiled browsing, no
overlaps.
As a command line junkie, I have used and appreciate
"screen" for its ability to allow multiple terminal sessions in the
same terminal, and "window" for split-screen in the same terminal.
Though I hadn't availed myself of their functionality in quite some
time, Ion put me back in that retro mood, without bashing my head about
it. Sometimes, simplicity is best. In the age of KDE and GNOME, I think
I'll keep Ion Window Manager for a while. BTW: It makes a nice kiosk
mode for applications, as well. By removing the bindings, it's
reasonable to have specific applications running ... of course, the
same can be said by not using a window manager at all. Hmm.. gxmame as
a window manager... I have to give that some thought.
I'll report
back on my findings. Right now, I'm using nearly stock ion2 install
from FreeBSD ports. I changed Mod1 to Mod4 in the config.
More on the Ion Window Manager
I have decided. I'm keeping Ion window manager. But I've had to
tweak it a bit. While I kept the primary mod key from MOD1 (Alt) to
MOD4 (Windows Flag), I've put the Secondary MOD to MOD1 (Alt). The
reason for this is several-fold. I like Firefox. I like to alt-Left to
go back. I also like Midnight Commander (mc). Since the default
mappings of Ion conflict with the use of MC, I have no problem with the
"overhead" of adding ALT to the normal bindings of Ion (ALT-F2 for
xterm, Alt-F3 for "run").
I
tweaked the bindings to give me ALT-TAB to rotate to the next
application. I added some os.execute in ion.lua to start an
xterm, firefox, and thunderbird automagically. To do this, you should
make certain that you put & after the application to run in the
background. I edited the editor to use VIM in graphic mode. If you want
to know about these things, gimme a holler.
More Ion3, xmms, Firefox, etc.
Not that I expect anyone but me to ever visit this place, but I thought I'd just present a scenario...
I'm
on FreeBSD on my laptop, enjoying some changes here and there in Ion3,
even to the point of adjusting the status bar to include my battery
life and status, and futzing with xmms at the same time.
Now, as
usual with things you can't find on Google, if it's too easy to be
done, nobody tells you how to do it :). Let's start with Live365.com.
*I* like music. However, one of my favorite sites, energyradio.fm
decides it wants only WMP to play. Sad news. So I searched to find
another Linux/FreeBSD streaming audio service, and Live365.com just
worked with my installed RealPlayer. OK, fine. But you know, I also
have xmms installed for some reason, and I see that some smart person
has already made a statusbar plugin that queries xmms for what it's
playing. Sounds vaguely intriguing, 'cause I certainly don't have
enough information shouting at me on my status bar right now :).
Thing
is, I'm running FreeBSD, and the code is using pyxmms-remote. Not a
port. Not a package. Fun stuff for me - compile install. missing not
found. Seems that the docs require texi2html before make can happen.
ok. portinstall texi2html. ./configure and make within the
pyxmms-remote and make install. boo-YAH! now the status bar works.
But
I have plans... PLANS I tell ya. Right. RealPlayer was handling the
Live365.com requests from Firefox. hmm. Edit Preferences. MP3 handled
by default app. change that. mp3 handled by /usr/X11R6/bin/xmms.
Voila!
Yes, something lame, though. playlists from
Live365.com basically tell you who's streaming, but not what. *yawn*.
Ok let's play CDs, instead. hm. portinstall xmms-cdreader. Find a CD.
Plug in and Turn On x.2. Sounds good to me. Boo-YAH! hee. don't I sound
SO grown up using slang I learned from TV? xmms status shows the name
of the track. Which I never programmed. Kewl. CDDB - you rock!
BTW,
I'm on an "inherited" Inspiron 2500. Souped it up to 512MB, still
considering upgrading to larger HD. Added a refurb DVD player. I'm
fixed at 800x600, so that's pretty much why I'm satisfied using ion3.
Can I just say that this boots rather jiffily? Yeah, I may not have 3D
GL functions, but for web design stuff I don't think it's so necessary.
Talk at ya soon!
Solving Su Doku
You never know what you'll find on this page...
I'm a math
person by nature, but logic is part of that package. By chance I came
upon this unruly thing called Su Doku. Now, my first encounter was
really frustrating. I almost forgot about it for a few months. So I
went to my local B. Dalton at the mall looking for a puzzle book while
my wife was browsing the Dollar Store. Maybe something like
CrossSums. Short stacked in there... maybe I'll find a
puzzle book. Ick. Crosswords... Crosswords... Crosswords. No math. Then
this little yellow "Su Doku for Dummies" caught my eye. Yes! This is
that number puzzle with the 9x9 grid! (It's $9.99 -- ISBN
0-470-01892-5, a great value for the number of puzzles)
Inside were VERY brief instructions and lots of puzzles. I've
taken some time here and there to play some and took mental notes on
how to play.
To a newcomer, 81 boxes of seemingly random placement of numbers is a daunting obstacle. Don't be "skerred".
I'm not an "expert", but I average < 20 minutes for an "easy" puzzle. My best time so far is 10 minutes.
First,
if you look really closely, it's likely that you'll actually see that
the layout is symmetrical. Crosswords are like that, too.
The
rules: 3x3 grids (marked by darker gridlines) must have one each of
numbers 1-9. Each row and each column must have one each of numbers 1-9.
I haven't figured out whether the symmetrics makes much of a difference, but the next tricks work for me:
1)
Find numbers that repeat a lot. They're good to start solving the
puzzle. While you won't find this works for every spot, you will
quickly see that a few times you'll "trap" a number into a 3x3 grid
location. If you see two fixed numbers in a 3x3 grid, and you need a
number that appears in two rows or columns around the fixed numbers,
you know where your number fits.
2)
remember that places can be excluded for a number because there is a
number in other areas. Take a look at a full row. You're looking at the
remaining numbers to fill that row. One might be a 4. Taking a look at
other columns, you can see that you will limit your placings of the 4
because there is a 4 in this column or that column.
3) sometimes
you get stuck. I like to mark some numbers with a dot when I place
them. These numbers that I mark with a dot mean that they absolutely
have to be in that place, no matter what. How do you know? Trapped
numbers, for one. If fixed numbers block out and reveal placed numbers,
then I mark them with a dot. Sometimes I'll treat these dotted numbers
as fixed numbers. If I do that, I might mark the dotted number with an
A and the result number with a B. This seems really silly, and you
don't have to do this. It just keeps my mind around what is absolutely
true in case I guess badly and have to erase everything and start over.
Well, I shouldn't have to erase the dotted things, and probably not the
A's and B's as well.
If I think about it, I'll try and place other tricks and tips here, too.
More Su Doku tips
A number elsewhere in a 3x3 grid means you can't fill a blank in a row or column with that number within that 3x3 grid.
It's
almost obvious, and I can see anyone who is reading this saying, "Yeah,
but so what?" As I say before, Google isn't going to return answers to
questions that have obvious answers. But, look, when you're bouncing
around Su Doku, trying to find the 4 remaining numbers in a row or
column, it can be easy to overlook the fact that you can't use a number
elsewhere in the 3x3 grid.
While I'm bonking obviousness
regarding Su Doku, 4 is a magic number. If there are 4 blanks, you have
greater likelihood of filling in a blank. 3 is much easier, 2 is almost
always fillable and 1 is ... well, the crown jewel of blanks. Don't
forget that you can fill that 1 blank in a row or column or a 3x3, even
if you're trying to fill multiple blanks in a row, column, or 3x3 that
contains that blank.
When browsing Su Doku, you can find some
places that *only* hold one of 2 numbers, like a 4 or 7. This is
important. Let's say you have a 3x3 grid with three blanks. You need a
3, 4, and 7, and the blanks are in two columns. A 7 in another 3x3 grid
blanks out the ability to put a 7 in the column of two blanks in the
original 3x3 grid. The 7 obviously goes into the "other" space of
the original 3x3 grid. That leaves 3 and 4 in the other two spaces.
There's more, though. That 3 and 4 now are occupying the only spaces
that 3 and 4 can occupy in that column.
Kali.net
Way back when... I used to play with Doom and other games when IPX
only network play was available. Kali.net allowed that communication
over IP networks. In a way, Kali.net *was* the connection for Internet
play for many games. After some struggles, Kali.net was revived and
it's back in action.
What is the point?, you may ask. Nowadays,
games have the ability to connect to the central servers and connect.
The point is two-fold: community and to maintain connectivity of legacy
games. The ability of some IM programs to provide the community and
multi-game connectivity is a great idea, but Kali.net is intended to
pretty much support them all. Kali.net has had a huge following, but
you've probably not heard of Kali.net or thought it had dropped off the
face of the earth. Kali.net is still alive and well. Are you into
multiplayer games? go check out Kali.net.
Win. Win completely.
The rights of the many outweigh the whims of the few.
The
most successful events in history occur not by compromise but by
completely winning. Any time one doesn't completely win, the game isn't
over. Ties don't count. You might as well have not started to play.
Zero to Zero is the same as 16 to 16. Or 100 to 100.
When
one deals in a situation that is a democracy, one must accept that the
rights of the many outweigh the whims of the few. Those few who feel
that they have been offended have no right to prevent the majority from
enjoying their position. When the tide turns to the offended as being
in the majority, that position can then be held. Until that time, the
offended has a right to complain, and a duty to respond within the
confines or existing protocol, but the other side of that coin is that
majority rules.
Win. Win completely.
More later.
Are the Democrats pwnd by Al-Qaeda?
To hear some tell it, and to hear the deafening silence of Islam in
support of people who are trying to work to provide liberty and freedom
for them, I have to seriously wonder.
Let's put things into
perspective: Anti Christianity, Socialism, the porous nature of our
borders, the reliance on the Middle East for our energy, the
willingness to unilaterally cease fire in spite of ongoing turmoil by
an unflagged combatant, the blaming of all bad things upon the
President of the United States. The most interesting thing of note to
me is that, for any of these goals, one could substitute the Democratic
Party or Al Qaeda and it makes sense.
Don't be deceived. A country divided cannot stand. Don't let us be the Untied States.
The
people who are taking away the established values of the US are the
ones that are going to allow non-Christian religious extremists to
overthrow our government, the same way it is happening in France.
Remember the Crusades? This is the same thing. Only it's not the
Christians who are the aggressors.
If you want me to believe
that _____ is a religion of peace, the last thing I want to hear from
you is that you want to kill me because I don't uphold your belief
system. In fact, that just lets me know how un-peaceful your religion
truly is.
Greek Squares
Addicted to SuDoku? Still doing those measly little 9x9 boxes of 3x3? Want something a little more colorful and more exciting? Maybe you just want .... more? Check out Greek Squares. Just saying. You will probably never go back to plain SuDoku.
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