Five or Six Days Earlier..

At last, I had finished watching mr & mrs smith 5 or 6 hours earlier. Well, it was a good movie although some scenes in it didn’t looked realistic.

Five or six days earlier:

I had tried commuting by riding jeeps and buses. Unfortunately, I was subjected to the rain as I felt the water entering my shoes. I haven’t even taken my lunch at that time and dinner was late already because that was about 7:30 to 8 in the evening.

I had also tried installing Fedora Core 4 on a PC on our lab in ILIS and was surprised to see my 4 cd installers passed the media check compared to my experiences with my fedora core 3 installers. In my installation, I had included the required packages for my lecture presentation but I hadn’t tested the system yet.. not even the Apache server or PHP config. Why? I haven’t even completed the setup of the LAMP system on my machine yet – i’m still stucked at the MySQL part. After shifting from source packages to RPM packages (after upgrading from Red Hat 9 to Fedora Core 3 last December 2004), there were some changes regarding the configurations that I need to review and test first. Working with source packages enables you to customize everything, but the problem I had with that method is configuring it for multiple PCs, the time in compiling the system, and to make the services (such as httpd) to be system wide. RPM-based installation only gave me problems regarding the linking of configs, clients, as opposed to the earlier method that I had tried and tested (both on Mandrake 9 and Red Hat 9). So far, in my machine I had successfully made PHP to work with my server but had not tried synchronizing it with MySQL or PostgreSQL due to lack of time. PostgreSQL was somehow easy as compared to MySQL, but it will still take time for me to learn the real advantages and disadvantages of such languages. Eventually, I would have finished this LAMP thing before the end of July and will install it in the PCs of my lab while my classmates present their reports.

For the meantime, I still have pending projects that needs building and rebuilding; I’m still in the process of figuring out how easy or difficult those FOSS related projects were. I wish that I can easily locate my set of stable packages for my LAMP config and others as well because I’m still having a hard time locating the right set of stable codes and even the dates will not help at all. It’s just that I had only learned or do in practice creating versions in the form of betas, v0.9X, etc., after doing some Machine Problems in my CS12. I had even folders in my MPs named unstable and some were even appended with “nightly builds”.

Well, the stuff that I have been working on is reducing my long list of bookmarks, but I had noticed something:

It’s Too Late XP Baby

(Sung to the tune of “It’s Too Late, Baby”)

Stayed at the desk all morning just to pass the time
There’s something wrong here
There can be no denying
One of us is not changing
and I have just stopped wondering when you will
And it’s too late my XP baby, now it’s too late
Though I really did try to keep you safe
Something inside has died and I can’t hide
And I just can’t fake it
It used to be so easy computing here with you
You were light and breezy

And I knew just what to do
Now you look so bloated
And I feel like a noob
And it’s too late my XP computer, now it’s too late
Though I really did try to make it
Something inside has died
and I can’t hide it
And I just can’t fake it
There’ll be good times now for me and Linux
But I just can’t stay with you
Don’t you compute it too
Still I’m glad for what I had
And how I once installed you
And it’s too late my XP baby, now it’s too late
Though I really did try to keep you uninfected
Something inside has died and
I can’t hide it I just can’t fake it
Don’t you know that I…
I just can’t fake it
Oh it’s too late XP baby
Too late my XP baby
You know
It’s too late my XP baby.

Crazy Little Girl?

12 hours ago, I was very fascinated in seeing a strange young girl about 2-4 years of age that had walked towards us minutes before the mass and sort of chatted or played with my 2 nieces in a very friendly manner.. It’s just that.. well.. it might be the first time I had seen such a situation?Anyway, after some trials and STFW, i managed to get xmame to work on my Fedora Core 3 by getting only xmame and xmame-roms on the Yum DAG repository, after seeing some ROMS that had worked on Stuffinator’s machine. I had proven to myself that switching to debian based distros was not yet crucial. I could still handle it.

Some screenshots from my so-called ‘experiment’:

Chaos and Peace: Reunited?

Well, Fedora Core 4 (Stentz) was finally released yesterday sometime between 12mn to 1am Philippine Time. As I had seen it, I tried every FTP mirror to see which is fastest to me – that ended me in choosing a Japan mirror. I was downloading the DVD iso by using proz on a terminal and the speed was like 2GB in 2 hours! Unfortunately, the files were messed up and i had known that after getting its md5sum hours after finishing the download: it doesn’t match the string on the ftp site. But that’s okay since I don’t have plans yet of doing a rush upgrade except maybe in the coming semestral break (to avoid jumbling my disorganized stuffs). I can’t afford the time to upgrade since I had also a lot of projects to do and I don’t wanna lose the LAMP system I was still trying to test. My files were like in chaos but they’re living peacefully without the existence or threats of Wind0ze-related problems.Another chaotic thing was traffic. Where? Everywhere! It was sometime about 730-800 in the morning and the road was so overcrowded. The roads leading northward such as Tandang Sora and even the shortcuts to Katipunan. From my experiences in taking a trip to Manila, there was no development in the time spent for travel. So where are the MMDAs when they’re needed? Regarding the laws about the prohibition of “sabit” in jeepneys, i was so irritated about an MMDA officer arguing that people who do it in jeepneys should not treat tardiness as an excuse to attach themselves at the tail of vehicles. For me, the thing was practical.. if i knew, those officers who had those views were the ones used in being late or doing the so-called Filipino time, and i kinda hated it. It just doesn’t make sense to me at all. It’s like.. throwing the same question to them if they’re the ones rushing for their jobs. There was traffic most of the time.. why? Late response from MMDAs, a very lame excuse indeed. Well, I would rather forget this issue for there are more important things to consider such as “WETENG” and “WAYRTAP”. WA WENTA na talaga.

But the thing that I’m happy of is finishing a hard task not because it was really hard but because it was hard to go to that task.

Case closed.

The Inside…

The Inside… (of what?) is a new TV series! It features a female agent recruited for some crime unit to act as a profiler. Well, somehow, I missed the old TV series of “The Profiler”… and I got so addicted to it that I had used it as my username in some web accounts.Oh well.. definitely a new TV series to watch this time of the semester (after finishing the season finales of Smallville, etc..). In fairness, Rachel Nichols is cute.

Harhar.

No RSS Feed?

Quoted from No RSS Feed? It’s a genetic marker for a “lame site”.OK, a few people have already written in and said that that Xbox site is lame not because it doesn’t have an RSS feed but because it doesn’t have any content.

Bing, bing, bing! You win $10 million. You’re right!

“So, Scoble, if we’re right, why are you being such a shmuck about RSS?”

Because not having an RSS feed is a genetic marker for a lame site.

Hear me out.

Look at the Xbox site again. It has no content, right? Well, add an orange XML icon to the site. What changes? A few things:

1) Now the site promises FUTURE content. Bing! Bing! Bing! New stuff gonna come. This site won’t stay static. Static sites are lame. Don’t believe me? Well, do some Google or MSN or Yahoo searches. Which sites invariably are at the top of the list? Sites that change often. Why is that? Why do sites like Engadget and Gizmodo have more traffic than most corporate home pages? Content changes often is the #1 thing.

2) If you don’t have an RSS feed, your site is lame because you’ve told the connectors (er, superusers, er influentials) that they don’t matter. When I see a site that doesn’t have an RSS feed I see a site that says “Mr. Scoble you aren’t welcome here and we don’t ever want you to come back again.”

3) Sites, like the Xbox one, that try to get customers to sign up and give an email address to get new content are telling customers “hey, we wanna spam you and we want our spam to be mixed in with all those Viagra spams you get. In fact, if you really are an advanced user we want our content to be shoved into your “junk” folder. Yes, our content is junk.” Do you really want to be saying that? An RSS subscription, on the other hand, goes where +I+ want it to go. Hint: that’s not into the junk folder.

So, marketers, if you are being compensated for building lame sites, keep on building sites without RSS feeds. My readers might see them as lame for other reasons, but not having an RSS feed is a genetic marker for “lame site.”

Oh, and don’t think that very well funded and very advanced sites can’t be lame. Steve Wynn’s is an example. He built a multi-billion-dollar casino in Las Vegas that opened recently. This morning I wanted to find a place to have breakfast. I was lost on his site. It took 60 seconds just to start it up (it’s all in Flash). And, once in, I couldn’t find a restaurant that would serve breakfast. Even if I could, I wouldn’t have been able to link you into the restaurant directly. Lame, lame, lame. Again, what’s the genetic marker? No RSS feed.

Inspiration Chronicles: Part IV

There is always a definite plan for everything in time and space. I just can’t stop thinking that everything that happened today were just some sort of simple coincidences. Just like last year on the month of June, there must be a reason that those stuffs came into effect. I saw the goddess Aphrodite from the moment of my first class in the morning until my class after lunch. Very weird but true. Or maybe, those are just encapsulations on the coming burdens from that set of classes?I got this from: July – describing what each birth month of the person is all about most of the time:

Fun to be with. Secretive. Difficult to fathom and to be understood. Quiet unless excited or tensed. Takes pride in oneself. Has reputation. Easily consoled. Honest. Concerned about people’s feelings. Tactful. Friendly. Approachable. Emotional temperamental and unpredictable. Moody and easily hurt. Witty and sparkly. Not revengeful. Forgiving but never forgets. Dislikes nonsensical and unnecessary things. Guides others physically and mentally. Sensitive and forms impressions carefully. Caring and loving. Treats others equally. Strong sense of sympathy. Wary and sharp. Judges people through observations. Hardworking. No difficulties in studying. Loves to be alone. Always broods about the past and the old friends. Likes to be quiet. Homely person. Waits for friends. Never looks for friends. Not aggressive unless provoked. Prone to having stomach and dieting problems. Loves to be loved. Easily hurt but takes long to recover.

…

Lastly, am I the ‘weak/weakest link’?… I hope NOT.

For once..

Once again, I learned or experienced how it feels to be a Wind0ze user – endless whining on crashing problems.. slow bootups/shutdowns/restarts/updates.. driver handling errors.. stupid configs.. dumb applications.. a useless console.. memory shortage.. all of these stuffs turning your expensive PC into a useless junk. It’s like.. “when will they ever learn?”… Who would even know that a config in a dial-up adapter in wind0ze 98 also affects another config on another adapter for LAN? Oh well.. I might now be that knowledgeable on wind0ze systems, but for sure I knew how to setup the basic stuffs to make the PC to work – and this is only possible if the system itself is stable just like MACs.Yesterday, the thought on Bill Gates having no diploma yet was very successful (quoted from YSpeak) caught my attention.. Why? Obviously, I would tend to disagree.. what happened to that long-waited Longhorn? Other M$ products? Are those stuffs really successful? In what way? I would agree that those things are successful in fooling people to buy their products.. and so on.

And so this article explains why I had been so very drowsy last summer.. but it was not due to making diaries (or blogs)! Somehow, that might have been so very exaggerated..

Exaggeration – you can see a lot of this everyday, everywhere, and everytime.

The Last Man in UPM

Finally, satisfying results were already released beginning Monday. I passed Math even though I really felt effortless in that subject: too lazy to wake up and remain focused to the teacher, almost running out of time for practice, and not even completing homeworks. Well.. i was amazed that I had never taken a Math subject more than once yet… and obviously, saying that I’m only an information specialist that was somehow out of place in that section. Why? Because I’m the only one from my college taking that subject… being handicapped for I had none in my college that can accompany me regarding that subject. Self-study indeed is very effective nowadays.Also, the Last Man had also accomplished his task of negotiating the problem in UPM. It was really hassle going to argue here and there about the topic. At times, I really could not accept that somehow she believes that college freshies could not write well on their chosen topic just because they’re still a freshman. But how would that apply to my current university? I prefer going to classes that are mixed – a larger variety of ideas from different kinds of people: a larger knowledge base as well. The Last Man indeed was full of hope as he walked towards the targeted room and was some sort of happy or contented as he left the vicinity.

Anyway.. I had also tried beautifying my desktop with gDesklets:

and by running a MAC OS X-like theme. I had another wallpaper featuring Star Wars:

and the craziest thing to do – to have 2 Linux distributions (PHLAK on FC3) running simultaneously:

Am I crazy? nerdy? geeky? I’m lucky!