IRC Freak

The Race Card

2008-08-01T12:45:00.001-07:00

This is my first presidential election in which I can vote, and because of this I've been paying tons of attention to the news, trying to gauge both the candidates and try to make up my mind on who I am voting for. Sadly I am registered as a Democrat, but will not be supporting Obama in November. This has to be one of the worse electoral seasons on record and truly makes me not want to vote, as voting isn't voting for a good candidate, its voting for the lesser of two evils. The one thing really bugging me about this election is the whole issue of race, and what you can and can't do.

On McCain and the race card, Obama had this to say in Missouri:

So nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky. That’s essentially the argument they’re making.

I'd challenge Obama to provide ONE instance of McCain saying any thing like this! Seriously one instance, that's all I ask for.

This statement came in response to this ad run by the McCain campaign:

Some how that commercial has been labeled as racist! How the hell is that a racist commercial? It raises a valid point, Obama ran around Europe gives speeches to huge crowds, yet the US economy is in terrible shape, foreclosures, weak dollar, and so much more, and yet Obama runs over to Europe. Europeans can't vote for him, so why does he need to give a massive speech in Berlin? McCain's ad is attacking the valid point that Obama is failing to care about people here at home. In no way is putting spears or Hilton in the ad racist, they are simply people see as celebrities. Should McCain have put black celebrities in the commercial instead? McCain can hardly say anything without some organization labeling it or morphing it into a racist statement. Obama knows hes not white, and he uses it to his advantage. Today alone Obama said McCain has spent the last month talking about him and not his ideas. First I think McCain has talked about the issues, and discussing your opponents stances is a major part of the election cycle. You are suppose to debate issues, but apparently Obama feels McCain shouldn't talk about him. Same goes for Obama's wife. You can't touch her, but Cindy McCain's taxes is fair issue. I'm sick of Obama's hypocrisy. I'm sick of the race card, I want to see the election move past it, but Obama has shown he doesn't want to

Absurdly low cap

2008-07-31T05:27:00.000-07:00

DSLReports has an article up today that states one of the dsl providers in the Rochester, NY area, has added a 5 gb per Month cap. Compare to what my college, University of Tulsa found exceptable, 3GB per day (roughly a 100gb cap a month).

Frontier details just what you can do with your 5gbs in each month:

* 500,000 e-mails
* 1,750—2,500 High Resolution (6 megapixel) Photos
* 35,000—40,000 Web Pages
* 335 Hours of Online Game Time
* 1,250 Downloaded songs

Notice they fail to include video, one of the staples of web2.0. I also feel bad for anyone on the network who uses linux, as downloading a 700mb is gonna kill your wiggle room.

China blocking sites

2008-07-30T20:06:00.001-07:00

I've always been against China being allowed to host the Olympic games. The chinese government is far too oppressive and its track on human rights violations is far too long for any blog to list. On top of that there is the rampant censoring of the media and what citizens can see, whether its on the TV, radio, or internet. Take this clip from the AP ahead of the olympics:

Face it, the IOC made a terrible mistake in giving the games to China. Who knows what will go on behind the screens, in the testing fatalities, or in Olympic village kitchens, but the thing I can be sure of? Chinese athletes will preform better than ever.

Update: Seems the IOC is openly condoning The chinese censorship practices, as Rueters is reporting that the IOC and Chinese struck a deal to allow for continued censorship.

My Stuff

2008-07-28T17:05:00.000-07:00

***Note: I wrote this as a comment for this lifehacker article, but figured I'd post it here as well.

The Basics
Firefox 3 for most web browsing, through opera,safari, and IE are installed for testing
Notepad++ for coding, notepad2 to replace the default, and MS Office (10 dollars through the school) for papers and boring stuff
mIRC for IRC chat, Pidgin for IMs
uTorrent
thunderbird with more extensions than I can name
Miro for video torrents
Filezilla for all my uploads
GIMP for the small photo editing I do
Imgburn to burn anything to cds
Launchy when in windows and gnome-do in ubuntu

Primary OS

Time is pretty much split amongst Vista 32-bit and XP Pro. Lesser time on the dual boot of ubuntu 8.04.

Hardware

Dell Latitude D620 laptop (2.0 ghz, 2gb of RAM): used for little stuff, class notes, travel, runs a mirc bot most of the time
HP slimline desktop (2.6 ghz, 2gb of RAM): primary desktop with vista and ubuntu dual boot.

Peripherals

500 gb external HD, numerous usb drives, 22 inch monitor, unused printer, and an iPod Touch.

Webapps

Google Reader: synced across PCs, quick, tons of extra via greasemonkey
Plurk: Twitter's issues forced me to find another "micro-blogging" site, for now I use plurk full time.
Flickr: bought a pro account and love it
Ping.fm posts to all the social networks I'm on easy syncing, and a godsend to bloggers to get the word out.
Friendfeed: Great conversions
Blogger: never been into the whole hosted site. I wanted a blog and blogger offered what I need

Self Assessment

Outside of my flickr outside my motto is, "if it ain't free, I ain't using" You can almost always find what you need for the task in free software.

Extreme Commute

2008-07-26T18:23:00.000-07:00

Not sure I would ever do this but its one way to save gas

...and this is not

Sick of the Media and Obama

2008-07-24T06:56:00.000-07:00

Seriously I'm sick of the media and all of Obama's supporters praising him as what we need, because he is "change we can believe in". Bullshit. Obama is nothing better than McCain. For one, all during the primaries he was against the FISA bill (or warrantless wiretapping), what does he do the minute it comes up for a vote? He votes FOR it (Clinton voted against it, McCain didn't vote). Then he has his lies.

We all know Americans didn't liberate Auschwitz. Yet he basically said he spoke wrong and walks away.

Again Obama claims to be on a committee, one he is NOT on. I doubt you can claim you mistook what committees you are one.

John McCain is pissed at how much press Obama has received, and I don't blame him. The media is continuing to glamorize Obama, glossing over the stuff we actually should know about.

Wordpress iPhone app

2008-07-23T19:41:00.000-07:00

Meant for this to go in the weekend recap post. Anyway the wordpress app for the iPhone gets my same review as the others ones like it got: dumb. the iphone (or any phone really) isn't condusive to blogging. If you want to post something quick use a micro-blogging site. The iPhone can't even cut and paste...so out goes adding links, or hyperlinking, or anything of substance. Only think it could be good for is approving comments, but most people have got to sites like intense debate / disqus.

Weekend Recap

2008-07-23T18:34:00.001-07:00

For those who didn't know, I was on vacation in Old Orchard Beach Maine since the 19th. Sadly I had no internet access during this time, so when I got home I had a lot to catch up on. This is a recap of the vacation and the stuff I missed while I was away

Vacation
First the photos I took while there:

Most of the vacation was great, though a lot of the French Canadians who were down in Maine were rather rude, I lost count of the dirty looks I got, or the times they cut use off walking around. Plus almost all of them smoke constantly and don't care where the smoke goes. For a person with ashtma, this was terrible, and then to see a women bury her cigarette in the sand and cover it, was the worst. (Found this article today, made me laugh.)
The food in the area was great, if I had to pick which place was the best, I would have to give it to Fat Bellies Deli, located a block from our hotel (The Ocean House). I was also lucky to be able to go to my first Tim Horton's, and have to say I enjoyed it more than Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts.
Most of the activities around the area was small amusement parks, or outlet mall shopping. Seeing as how this was done for my sister's birthday, we spent a lot of time wandering around outlets, in Freeport and Kittery (along with the Maine Mall in Portland).

News I missed
Seems there was a few major things in the tech blogosphere over the weekend:
1. Twhirl adds identi.ca support: While its great to see twhirl makes steps away from twitter, I'm unsure whether to be supportive of the move or disappointed. identi.ca is new and has a small user base. I would much more care for support of jaiku or pownce, or better yet support for plurk. Plurk is surging with the average user of the internet and unfornately is being ignored by most main-stream techies.

Twhirl has also position itself to be to these micropost what Trillian and Adium are to IM

Until it adds full support for jaiku, pownce, plurk, brightkite, kwippy, tumblr, etc. twhirl is hardly comparable to trillian or adium. I hope to see more plurk support for things as it does have an API.
2.MobileMe sneaks onto Windows Machines: Apple tried this with safari, would have figured they learned their lesson. Instead they installed something I supposedly need without asking. Last I checked if anyone else did that it would be labelled as wrong (and god help Microsoft if they tried this). I submitted MobileMe to my spyware software/malware/anti-virus software, as a rogue program installed without my permission.
3. Read Full Magazines at Mygazines: Free and it works. Not into the whole social aspect.
4. Apple to bring macbook under $1000: its 100 dollars give me a break.
5. 50 Firefox 3 Add-ons That Will Change the Way You Surf the Web: Great list if you need to find some new addons. I recommend almost all of them.
6. Should I still jailbreak my iPhone: Yes, apple is more closed source than MS, jailbreak it because more apps will come along.

Twitter is fail (Final Straw)

2008-07-23T16:05:00.000-07:00

Back from vacation (look for a recap post soon), so I signed into all my services to check on things and was stuck my my followers/following numbers on twitter. Before I left on vacation I had over 200 friends and followers. When I got back and signed in I had 88/85, it has since risen to about 97/85. That is still a drop of over 100 people, and unless twitter has backed up all of my connections they are left for me to figure out who is missing. I'm lucky as some people had drops of over 500 people. Twitter is currently down to correct this problem, hopefully for the people still sticking with it, this is simply a problem with twitter not seeing followers right, and not an issue involving actual de-friending. Either way, this is the last straw for me and twitter. Every time I log in, I have issues, I'm sick of this "progress" as they call it. Find me on plurk.

P.S. Yes Plurk, take it seriously. And no I won't move to identi.ca

Update

2008-07-18T21:00:00.000-07:00

I'm sure everyone has kind of seen it, but I decided to continue joining IRC. While all of the post is true, I felt I couldn't punish people who did nothing, by quitting. I'm hoping to continue chatting, but hopefully moderate myself when it comes to it (ie class and when homework needing doing)

On a site note, the domain I bought isn't panning out like I was hoping it would. I've been messing with wordpress but it seems like I just want to stick with simple blogger. I never sent out with the intention of having a site, just a simple blog.

IRC Ruined me

2008-07-17T21:06:00.000-07:00

As the name of this blog implies, I am huge into IRC, well was. I found it fun to sign in and join chats and have a fun time with people from around the world. I met a ton of great people on IRC over the past year, but sadly all good things must come to an end.

As the saying goes "The sh*t hit the fan". I won't go into a lot of depth about what has been happening on the IRC networks I visit, but rest assured, I have no home anymore. For one I have been all but blacklisted for voicing support for people when they had problems with the network, I followed them to their new server, and worked my way up in the standing there, even getting an o:line. Everything seemed great, but now they have moved on, the network is in question, and I am questioning even more.

When I showed up for college last fall, I didn't know many people, I made friends, but a lot more of my time was spent on IRC than it should have. My grades slipped, but I was happy because I had finally found a place where people seemed to care and seemed to have some respect for me. I would get out of class and run back to my dorm to check highlights before running to dinner or another class, I snapped at a person I truly care about because my scripts for mirc got over written, I gave up true friendships for more "power".

IRC is great, its great for conferencing, for general chatter, but never should have been my life. To all those people on IRC (you know who you are) understand I will be on, but it will be harder to find me, I don't know where my home is, if I even have one.

Fox News Doesn't have anything on CNN

2008-07-14T12:27:00.001-07:00

Fox may be "fair and balanced" but CNN has aliens!

Yep Brian Todd is an alien. The user also updated a second video of "evidence" from the same segment:

You decide...

Touch 2.0

2008-07-12T23:06:00.000-07:00

Ok I said I wouldn't be upgrading to 2.0 on my iPod Touch because of the price, well I decided to give in an upgraded. And I gotta say I'd upgrade solely for the remote app. I'm sitting across the room from my PC atm and I'm changing songs and lowering the volume. The remote is a godsend. Highly doubt I will be jailbreaking it either.

Apps I love:
1. Remote
2. Pandora-my radio on my time and place
3. Facebook-in college, facebook is king, need mobile access
4. Weatherbug-much more detailed than the default weather app. includes cams and radar
5. Evernote-great for syncing organization

Apps I want:
1. Friendfeed
2. Google Reader
3. Plurk

Yeah I can use web based versions of all of the ones I want, but it just seems so much more slick to have them as as app as opposed to in the browser.

Why I won't be updating to 2.0

2008-07-10T13:03:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of talk and posts as of late about the new firmware for the iPhone/ iPod Touch, version 2.0. This firmware updates the devices to use the new appstore, allowing users to buy and download approved third-party apps for their iphone or touch. The iphone firmware was leaked today, and is supposedly coming out officially tomorrow, July 11th, the day the new iPhone 3g is released. I for one will not be updating my iPod touch to the new version.

Why? Because I don't agree with Apple's policy of charging Touch users for major updates (last time we had to pay 20 dollars for the iPhone apps back in January). I was one of the first people to buy the Touch, placing my order, the day it was announced (5 September 2007). Correct me if I am wrong, but when I bought the touch there was no announcement that when it came time for major updates I would need to fork over 20 dollars. Sure iPhone users pay monthly, and we only pay once for the touch, but I still think it should have been made public that use touch users would need to pay, while iPhone users get it for free. If Apple had told me I more than likely would not have bought the touch, opting instead for the 160gb iPod. I am currently on 1.1.2 and it runs fine, and that is what I'm sticking with

Marylin Manson Is Bald

2008-07-10T08:22:00.000-07:00

Apparently he is

Bought a New Domain

2008-07-07T12:31:00.000-07:00

Bought a test domain for the site, it currently has nothing on it. I plan to use it for testing wordpress or other CMS systems out there. Currently it has nothing on it, as the web host did a bad install of wordpress, working to install a working one.

Real IRC

2008-07-05T13:23:00.000-07:00

As a discussed yesterday ustream provides and IRC server to host chats associated with shows, but they also allow users to switch to other approved servers. One of these servers is Wyldryde, and apparently according to one user Wyldryde is "real IRC".

Here is his quote first off:

(Sat || 03:59:02 PM) <@cooldude13233> welcome to Real IRC

His reasoning? Wyldryde provides many services not found on a lot of the older IRC networks, ie botserv. This user felt IRC is only good when one can bring in a services bot and set it to kick for caps, flooding, and so on. He also raves about the greet messages, and this and that.

I wonder if he considered these facts:

EFNet one of the first IRC servers out there, and currently running about 50,000+ people daily still doesn't have registration services or any of the fancy things find on the newer servers. Even Dalnet, which broke from EFNet due to its lack of services, doesn't provide a botserv.

Calling a server real based on the amount of stuff offered is naive and rather dumb. Instead of taking what you are given and making it work, you take the easy way out. It is rather easy to script a bot to idle in a channel and kick users for various offenses, it is also easy to set a bot to notice users on join.

Real IRC is not just a server full of bots that can be programmed in two minutes. real IRC is connecting to a server and chatting. That is IRC. If you don't have a bot, don't complain make one. Next time cooldude realize there are more IRC servers out there besides wyldryde and its easy to use fantasy commands

Should I switch off Ustream's IRC server?

2008-07-04T13:00:00.000-07:00

Questions like this have been coming into me more and more as of late. People are saying that they are seeing people leave ustream's IRC server (c.ustream.tv) in favor of other IRC networks (at the moment ones that can be used are iPocalypse, Wyldryde, AceIRC, and SummitIRC). People who advocate the switch say you have more control and options, but they also fail to consider somethings of importance.

1. Name confusion. When you side into ustream, you side into chat also. When you choose to switch servers, your users will not be sided into the new server when they sign into ustream. They will need to register with that server and then sign through nickserv. If a lot of your users use ustream's flash chat, this can cause some problems as the flash chat is not known for expecting other servers commands very well. Switching servers can also cause problems if the ustream nick a user uses is taken on the new server, for instance if Bob from ustream joined a wyldryde connected chat he would be switched to unidentified**** after a minute as that nick is registered on wyldryde.

2.Commands needed double. If you run on ustream's server there are a limited number of commands. People generally say this is why they switch, but for people who don't really have the time to invest into setting up a chat room on another server, the commands provided by ustream are more than enough. So if you plan on switching plan on learning a lot of new commands to run your chat.

3. Help is not provided by Ustream. When something goes wrong on ustream you know who to go to, ustream. If something goes wrong on another server do you know who to go to? If you have a problem with ustream you have to go to ustream, problem with chat you have to go to the chat server for help. Neither provides support for the other, causing problems.

There are other reasons to not move, but those are the biggest three to consider when making the decision. Personally my advice is if you are big into streaming and do it daily, and have the time to invest, then yes it is a benefit. But if you stream once or twice a week, and generally your chat isn't active outside of show times, you won't see much of a benefit.

Worst Song?

2008-07-03T21:45:00.000-07:00

Taking suggestions for worst song ever created. My nominee after the jump

lets see mullet? Check. Annoying Lyrics? Check. Constant Repeating? Check.

leave your suggestion in the comments.

Videos of the week

2008-07-01T16:39:00.000-07:00

I kind of want to start a videos of the week, a recap of the videos I find around the net, during the week. The video of the week post should be up every Friday night, but for the time being here are two of the funnier videos I've seen on the net in a while. Topic for the two is oddly old people. Enjoy

Motorized Scooter Chase (I tend to think this one isn't what it appears but its still funny)

Its a Dildo Grandma

New Ustream layout, Improvement or Cheap Knockoff?

2008-07-01T11:47:00.000-07:00

I wandered over to ustream.tv today and much to my surprise I noticed a new look, and this new look caused me to do a double take, because it looks eerily similiar to another popular streaming sites' layout.

First lets take a look at how ustream use to look, before todays update:

Clean, simple, easy to see the main stream, and other live streams. Good sized announcements, and underneath an organized list of popular recorded content. Now I will admit the colors aren't all that attractive, but the basic layout, excellent.

Now for how it looks today:

One word, cluttered. Things are everywhere. Announcements, featured announcements, everything just looks thrown on the page. Oddly, this is what caused me to do a double take, because one reason I never became involved in the other live streaming service, justin.tv, was because it was ugly, and unappealing to look at:

Now, doesn't these two look incredibly similiar? For one the main live channels window is basically the same, with featured, and most viewers. Then you have the side column full of announcements.

Instead of ustream making it easy to browse all the current live feeds, it instead feels it important to feature only a select few people on the front of its site, everyone else is listed on the "live" page, but instead of providing a preview window, you are instead forced to go to the live page of the user and then come back to the live page if you don't like the feed. There also seems to be bugs in which some ustreamer's profile pages give you a 404 when you attempt to access the live page, take TJENN for example, here is his profile, now click on the go to show page. 404.

Ustream has failed to provide a useful update to their site, instead they favor top users, copied Justin.tv's look and feel, and more than likely annoyed a good chunk of their streaming community.

RSS Bandit Alpha release test

2008-06-30T16:09:00.000-07:00

In the last week I had heard news that a desktop RSS client, RSS Bandit, was going to enable you to sync your desktop client with your online Google Reader. I had always held back from using a desktop client because when I am away on vacation or on my laptop I use Google Reader, its online, fast, full of features, and gets the job done. So when this alpha release was announced I decided to download it and test it out, needless to say its definitely an alpha release.

The program itself installed fine and works when I add an OPML file like I normally did when I used a desktop client (Feeddemon was my choice). The problems started to happen when I synchronized my Google Reader feeds with RSS Bandit. Bandit found all the categories and feeds fine, the problems started when I attempted to update the feeds. Clicking update all feeds, only brought a slew of errors, and timeouts

Now I shouldn't be all that surprised, Ghacks first profiled RSS Bandit, then panned it and compiled the results of others testing. The result? Fail

To be fair, outside its problems syncing, Bandit is a generally good desktop client, its look is comparable to Outlook and other Windows programs so it fits in nicely with the desktop. It is also not lacking in options some of which include (untested): Remote storage, Web browser, search, attachment/podcasts downloads, newsgroups, and all the standard features found in a desktop client. The latest stable release, 1.6.0.2, is generally seen as a decent desktop client, hopefully the development team with work on the problems in the alpha and have everything sorted out for the final release.

New Ubuntu Theme

2008-06-30T13:39:00.000-07:00

The first alpha of the next ubuntu release, version 8.10, code named Intrepid Ibex, was released (full coverage on Ars). The one thing missing from the current release of ubuntu, Hardy Heron, was a new theme. Many people find the current theme to be a tad too bland and not all that appealing.

So with the release of 8.10 will come a new theme, a new brown theme.

Not sure how changing the color of the current theme constitutes a new theme. Hopefully as the road map pans out, the theme will be tweaked more, but at the moment, the current theme comes off as a step back rather than a step forward

Posers are Sanctioned Spam

2008-06-29T14:03:00.000-07:00

So, my advice to you internet pundits, either crap or get off the pot.

So is the advice given today to high powered users who sign up for services and then abandon it.

This quote came from an article that scored quite a few friendfeed comments and shares today. This post goes along with another one I did centered more around ping.fm, but the general principle is still the same. "High Power" users sign up for services for whatever reason, and either give the allusion of being in the community or simply do nothing. The more troubling of these two options is the allusion that you are involved in the service. I ragged on Chris Pirillo for signing up for plurk and never actually visiting simply posting by ping.fm. Scribkin, had a problem with Steve adding 2 services, yet never being active.

They are essentially telling us, yeah well I don’t like FriendFeed, but I’m still going to use it for PR until my primary publicity vehicle stops working (in this case Twitter)

Thats my general view on people signing up for services and pretending to be active. If they didn't care for publicity they simply wouldn't post or add services, that simple. In my opinion signing up for services simply to blindly post to it, is no better than a spammer sending Viagra ads or adult links.

A prime example is this message Chris Pirillo sent out to all his services:

l0ckergn0me I signed up for Pownce since ping.fm calls it. hi5, Xanga, Tumblr, Plurk, too.

Chris, you simply signed up for services because another calls it? And then you claim you don't like plurk? How can anyone defend this kind of practice? Why do you continue to comment on them? You know they are listening, yet you continue to support spam!

I've blocked all people who feel the need to do this kind of practice, I don't need you ads in my stream, if you care to actually use the service and understand you sign up for services you like not to simply spam!

(note: I don't blame services, friendfeed has an equation that works, its the people who continue to prop up these spammers, and the spammers themselves who are to blame)

My Messy house

2008-06-28T13:03:00.001-07:00

I said my house was rather messy and someone said prove it.

Heres the proof. Rooms in this part:
1. My room
2. Bathroom
3. Sister's Room

Rooms in this part:
1. Living Room
2. Dining Room/kitchen
3. Family Room

Sorry for the bad lighting in the videos, I did it at 11:30 at night with a still cam that had no lighting on it