I'm out of excuses...

... but not of geek jokes :)

Imagine, if you will, the events occurred during World War II from the perspective of online gamers (or G4m3rsp34k):

> *Hitler[AoE] has joined the game.*
> *Eisenhower has joined the game.*
> *paTTon has joined the game.*
> *Churchill has joined the game.*
> *benny-tow has joined the game.*
> *T0J0 has joined the game.*
> *Roosevelt has joined the game.*
> *Stalin has joined the game.*
> *deGaulle has joined the game.*
> Roosevelt: hey sup
> T0J0: y0
> Stalin: hi
> Churchill: hi
> Hitler[AoE]: cool, i start with panzer tanks!
> paTTon: lol more like panzy tanks
> T0JO: lol
> Roosevelt: o this fockin sucks i got a depression!
> benny-tow: haha america sux
> Stalin: hey hitler you dont fight me
> Stalin: i dont fight u, cool?
> Hitler[AoE]: sure whatever
> Stalin: cool
> deGaulle: #### Hitler rushed some1 help
> Hitler[AoE]: lol byebye frenchy
> Roosevelt: i dont got crap to help, sry
> Churchill: wtf the luftwaffle is attacking me
> Roosevelt: get antiair guns
> Churchill: i cant afford them
> benny-tow: u n00bs know what team talk is?
> paTTon: stfu
> Roosevelt: o yah hit the navajo button guys
> deGaulle: eisenhower ur worthless come help me quick
> Eisenhower: i cant do sh1t til rosevelt
> Eisenhower: gives me an army
> paTTon: yah hurry the fock up
> Churchill: d00d im gettin pounded
> deGaulle: this is fockin weak u guys suck
> *deGaulle has left the game.*
> Roosevelt: im gonna attack the axis k?
> benny-tow: with what? ur wheelchair?
> benny-tow: lol did u mess up ur legs AND ur head?
> Hitler[AoE]: ROFLMAO
> T0J0: lol o no america im comin 4 u
> Roosevelt: wtf! thats bullsh1t u fags
> Roosevelt: im gunna kick ur asses
> T0JO: not without ur harbors u wont! lol
> Roosevelt: u little biotch ill get u
> Hitler[AoE]: wtf
> Hitler[AoE]: america hax, u had depression and now
> Hitler[AoE]: u got a huge fockin army
> Hitler[AoE]: thats bullsh1t u hacker
> Churchill: lol no more france for u hitler
> Hitler[AoE]: tojo help me!
> T0J0: wtf u want me to do, im on the other side
> T0J0: of the world retard
> Hitler[AoE]: fine ill clear you a path
> Stalin: u arsshoel! WE HAD A FoCKIN TRUCE
> Hitler[AoE]: i changed my mind lol
> benny-tow: haha
> benny-tow: hey ur losing ur guys in africa
> benny-tow: im gonna need help in italy soon
> benny-tow: sum1
> T0J0: o sh1t i cant help u i got my hands full
> Hitler[AoE]: im 2 busy 2 help
> Roosevelt: yah thats right biznitch im comin for ya
> Stalin: church help me
> Churchill: like u helped me before?
> Churchill: sure ill just sit here
> Stalin: dont be an arss
> Churchill: dont be a commie. oops too late
> Eisenhower: LOL
> benny-tow: hahahh oh sh1t help
> Hitler: o man ur focked
> paTTon: oh what now biotch
> Roosevelt: whos the cripple now lol
> *benny-tow has been eliminated.*
> benny-tow: lame
> Roosevelt: gj patton
> paTTon: thnx
> Hitler[AoE]: eisenhower hax hes killing all my sh1t
> Hitler[AoE]: quit u hacker so u dont ruin my record
> Eisenhower: Nuts!
> benny~tow: wtf that mean?
> Eisenhower: meant to say nutsack lol finger slipped
> paTTon: coming to get u hitler u paper hanging hun
> paTTon: c0cksocker
> Stalin: rofl
> T0J0: HAHAHHAA
> Hitler[AoE]: u guys are fockin gay
> Hitler[AoE]: ur never getting in my city
> *Hitler[AoE] has been eliminated.*
> benny~tow: OMG u noob you killed yourself
> Eisenhower: ROFLOLOLOL
> Stalin: OMG LMAO!
> Hitler[AoE]: i didnt click there omg this game blows
> *Hitler[AoE] has left the game*
> paTTon: hahahhah
> T0J0: my teammates are n00bs
> benny~tow: shut up noob
> Roosevelt: haha wut a moron
> paTTon: wtf am i gunna do now?
> Eisenhower: yah me too
> T0J0: why dont u attack me o thats right
> T0J0: u dont got no ships lololol
> Eisenhower: fock u
> paTTon: lemme go thru ur base commie
> Stalin: go to hell lol
> paTTon: fock this sh1t im goin afk
> Eisenhower: yah this is gay
> *Roosevelt has left the game.*
> Hitler[AoE]: wtf?
> Eisenhower: sh1t now we need some1 to join
> *tru_m4n has joined the game.*
> tru_m4n: hi all
> T0J0: hey
> Stalin: sup
> Churchill: hi
> tru_m4n: OMG OMG OMG i got all his stuff!
> tru_m4n: NUKES! HOLY SH!T I GOT NUKES
> Stalin: d00d gimmie some plz
> tru_m4n: no way i only got like a couple
> Stalin: omg dont be gay gimmie nuculer secrets
> T0J0: wtf is nukes?
> T0J0: holy sh!t holysh!t hoylshti!!!111
> *T0J0 has been eliminated.*
> *The Allied team has won the game!*
> Eisenhower: awesome!
> Churchill: gg noobs no re
> T0J0: thats bullsh!t u fockin suck
> *T0J0 has left the game.*
> *Eisenhower has left the game.*
> Stalin: next game im not going to be on ur team
> Stalin: u guys didnt help me
> Stalin: for sh!t
> Churchill: wutever, we didnt need ur help
> Churchill: neway dumbarss
> tru_m4n: l8r all
> benny~tow: bye
> Churchill: l8r
> Stalin: fock u all
> tru_m4n: shut up commie lol
> *tru_m4n has left the game.*
> benny~tow: lololol u commie
> Churchill: ROFL
> Churchill: bye commie
> *Churchill has left the game.*
> *benny~tow has left the game.*
> Stalin: i hate u all fags
> *Stalin has left the game.*
> paTTon: lol no1 is left
> paTTon: weeeee i got a jeep
> paTTon: o sh!t!
> *paTTon has been eliminated.*
> *paTTon has left the game.*

So su mi

Back to the haikus:

Ain't she lovely in blue?


As blue as the sky
was her dress: just like a dream
that goes forever.

To boldly merchandise...

Quick post while I think about a good excuse for not blogging anything during the last months or so:

Hex numbers at CafePress.com

Never underestimate the power of m4d s1lkscr33n1ng sk1LLz!!!

Having problems with Opera Mini?

Thanks to a message found by my dear friend Bytelord, I finally made Opera Mini work on my Palm TX. Here's how:

* http://forum.brighthand.com/showthread.php?t=237551

Why it does not work as it should on the first run though, I do not know.

Yet another one

Dear reader,

I hope I am not bothering you with this creative surge...
but I cannot help it! Blame (or thank) the devil if you wish ;)

New Haiku, new girl:

Hair of fire, gentle eyes.
Between Passion and Candor
which one would you choose?

Another Haiku

Dedicated to this girl from the Flickr group "Geek girls are sexy":

Time stops and eyes close
visions of purple and joy:
The shine of your smile.

More clips from elsewhere on the net

* Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules. Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives.

* If I had only one day left to live, I would live it in my statistics class: it would seem so much longer.

If Klingons were programmers

An oldie but goodie:

12) "Specifications are for the weak and timid!"

11) "This machine is a piece of GAGH! I need dual Core processors if I am to do battle with this code!"

10) "You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the original Klingon."

9) "Indentation?! - I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!"

8) "What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'. Our software 'escapes' leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake."

7) "Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments' -- and they ALWAYS WIN THEM."

6) "Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak."

5) "I have challenged the entire quality assurance team to a Bat-Leth contest. They will not concern us again."

4) "A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!"

3) "By filing this SPR you have challenged the honor of my family. Prepare to die!"

2) "You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!"

1) "Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!"

Till death do us apart

So I was wondering if this year will be like others and I'll be wearing black on St. Valentine's day as a way to protest for the outrageous consumerism that pervades our time (and my everlasting status as a singleton too), when I ran across this picture:



This couple was buried about 5 to 6 thousand years ago in Mantova, Italy during the neolithic period.

Suddenly, death is no longer the ultimate boundary.

Credit goes to Elena Menotti (Mantova, Italy) and Enrico Pajello (Reuters).

A haiku for an unknown girl

Regarding this picture:

Among snow and ice
together raise gaze and smile:
warmth for soul and heart.

Quasi-lucid dreaming: A field test

I one of those people who prefer to stay up until the wee hours of the morning and wake up only when my internal clock tells me to do so (which hopefully, won't take less than 8 hours after my last glimpse of consciousness).

Then again, this is not acceptable during workdays for I would end up showing up late at the office. Thus, I end up shifting between being half awake and half asleep for about 30 minutes before the voices command me to stop feeling sorry for myself and get up already.

A couple weeks ago, I experienced what could almost be called lucid dreaming.

It was just another morning, I heard the alarm clock ringing so I extended my hand to turn it off. A couple seconds of stretching and finally got up. I looked around and noticed something funny: the TV was on. Aack! Surely I left it on and it's been eating very expensive electricity since last night.

But wait! Something is not right.

Ok, the colours I'm watching have a yellowish tint... that's weird... but now that I think about it, that's not my TV. Furthermore, who on this world had the "idea" to place it sideways???

My kitties looked at me with some curiosity, probably wondering why it took yours truly so long to finally snap.

Then it slowly came to me, almost as a whisper without a voice: You are dreaming, and you are aware of it.

I began laughing, grasping at the thought. Things began to transform around me: The TV turned itself off and morphed into my real TV; the yellowish tint faded away and light around began to darken.

Finally, I heard myself laughing and opened my eyes. It was still dark, but just in time to get up and begin the daily ritual.

Things to remember: When you are dreaming, look for little inconsistences in the scene. Maybe you'll realise it's only a dream and will have the chance to play with it to your heart's whim.

So say we all!!!

As always, dear reader, it's time for your semi-monthly update:

* Family reunion
I spent new year's eve visiting mom and sister. It was very good to see them again :)
Funny, but I cannot remember a time when we were in better terms than we are now.
We went to Santo Domingo (a wonderful Cathedral from the late 1700's) and Monte Albán (an archaeological site as large as Teotihuacán, but built atop an artificially levelled mountain).
Take a look of my pictures at flickr and let me know what you think.

* The Unnas have left for Hispania Terra.
I am very, very happy! Things should start to change for the better for them. Their kids will have a very easy time readjusting to their new environment where, as Bruno has accurately pointed out, "River" means the actual thing instead of a street's name.

Feelings and thoughts accumulate to the point words are not enough to describe them. But at the moment, these few are very clear: Am I going to lose my tolerance for kids in close proximity? Will I stop wondering about having kids of my own now that I won't be interacting with my friends' that often?

For the time being, skype will have to suffice.

* Reestablishing relationships with old friends.
Last saturday I located one of the oldest friends I have. We met each other back on high school, and started making drawings to kill boredom and laugh at the world in general. He's currently a painter/writer and remains as crazy as ever, and almost by a coincidence, he was to celebrate his 36th birthday on sunday.
Thus, the partying ensued.

Oy... my head. Hard liquor first. Beer after that.

New directive in life: Never let friends (both old an new) drift away.

BSG: Springfield

I laughed to exhaustion today because of this:

http://community.livejournal.com/pantsketch/99256.html

What can I say? I'm just a big fan of the series.

A recap of past events

So it is already december. I cannot complain, this has been a very good year overall.

Looking back into my recent past, several pending personal milestones were finally reached. The most important is, without doubt, my engineering certification.

Time waits for no one. I had very little of it to prepare my written work, and quite frankly, I still feel unsatisfied by its quality; but even though it didn't fully address my area of expertise (assuming geekness can be classified as such), it allowed me to make some interesting although somewhat late discoveries:

Despite all the pressures Layers 9 and 10 (that would be the financial and political layers, respectively) exert on the field of software development, this discipline has departed from its modest artesanal algorithmic roots and has flourished into a more manageable and predictable process. There are many different approaches, each one suitable to a specific set of conditions. Some are too rigid while others are extremely permissible, but many recognise real needs to deliver quantisable results on time and manage risk and disaster when it is unpractical to avoid them.

Who knows... maybe I'll focus on those subjects from now on.

In the meantime...

Geek humour!

www.msfirefox.com is a very good fake site criticizing the new IE7. Run and check it out!

Veektory!!!

On October 26th, 2006 I finally achieved a long sought dream.

The first big milestone on my self-reengineering has been reached.
I am now an engineer. Yay me!

In Zen philosophy, the journey is as important as arriving to the destination. 10 years in the making, I involuntarily took the longest possible way.

A richer description of the events before, during and after I defended my dissertation will follow soon. But the first thing I wanted to do is to give thanks to all my friends, who in a way or the other helped me to accomplish what I almost thought to be no longer possible.

Delivered!

Updates since last time:

* Finished writing my dissertation!
On Sept. 01st I was interviewed by the review board and assigned to design a secure intranet in one month. With help from my friend Igor (who was coaching me as well as providing proofreading), I finished writing it at 03:00 AM on monday and handed it over to the board on the same day.
Though I am not very satisfied with it, I also must confess I finally got the taste for systems design methodology. Things have changed for good since my last experiences in application programming... most likely for good.
The dissertation will have to be defended by the end of this month, so methinks I shall start working on the presentation this week and head directly to PresentationZen.com.

I'm tired of boring and dull powerpoint sessions, so the least I can do is to improve upon those terrible (and most importantly, forgettable) experiences to attract the favour of my examiners.

* My friend Bruno is leaving for Spain.
He's finally found what seems to be his dreamjob, but like many talented people, he and his family have to relocate to the other side of the great-blue-pond.
Damn, I'm going to miss him, but surely this won't be the last time we hear from him.
The godspeed is on thursday.

Now... something to cheer you up.
Sci fi art!!!
You will probably recognise some of this paintings. They are used for Sci Fi book covers by most publishing houses. Although they are sometimes totally unrelated to the plot in it, they remain inspirational and intriguing.

Tales of a PDA geek

It's been almost 4 months since I switched from my Zire 72 to a new Palm T|X.

The T|X does not have a camera nor a microphone (although if you feel bold and geeky, you can retrofit one at the risk of kissing your warranty goodbye). But there are new features that more than compensate for them:

- More RAM, Flash based: your data does not die when the battery does.
- Wifi: includes WEP/WPA with increased range.
- 320x480 touchscreen: you can choose between (normal) portrait or landscape modes.

This is really a geek's dream come true! But to make your experience a more enjoyable one, I suggest you download and install the following list of applications. Most are free, others are fully-functional shareware:

* NVBackup from Alex Pruss software.

This free utility will copy the whole contents of your PDA to a SDCard (including the utility itself). Why use it instead of relying on the good old HotSync method, you ask?
Well, four reasons come to mind:
a) HotSync requires access to your host computer.
b) It is most likely you'll have to re-enter the activation codes for most of your paid software. This is not necessary with NVBackup.
c) Unattended and scheduled operation.
d) To restore your backup, you just reinsert the SDcard into the PDA, then run the utility which will be readily available (remember it copied itself to the card).

When you are downloading and trying lots of new software like I do, you are increasing the chance for a soft (or sometimes even a hard) reset. NVBackup provides you with a fresh image of your last known-working configuration.

* FileZ from NoSleep.

FileZ is a free file manipulation program. Move, copy, rename and delete files in your built-in RAM or a SDCard. Strange Palm didn't include something like this in the first place.

* MessageEase from Exideas

Free utility that replaces your standard on-screen keyboard with another specially tailored for fast input in a small area. You'll wish you had something similar for your desktop computer!

Note: This utility is compatible with mySkin. Not only can you access the MessageEase keyboard layouts, you can merge them with other components (the statusbar, for example).


That is all for now. More ideas to come.

The Rotorbike

Although I'm not a connoisseur of high speed motorcycles, I feel obligued to share this picture with you:





A custom motorbike with an 8 cylinder power plant arranged in radial fashion that reminds me a lot of propeller engines for airplanes. Unfortunately, I don't have the specs for this machine.

Beautiful, ain't it?

Leeching WiFi from your neighbor's AP?

While OEMs have begun to address the security issues implied by improper default settings on many wireless products (specially residential routers/wifi APs), one still can locate several left wide open to anyone who happens to look for them.

The often addressed perspective is that of someone's bandwidth being shared (read "stolen") by unknown people. However, most of the wardrivers take care not to consume too much of it, lest the real owner notices severe lag and finally decides to learn about properly securing his AP.

Another implies a certain amount of paranoia: your ip could be used for criminal activities, and if/when the cops come asking questions, it is said owner who might have to answer to them.

However, consider a third scenario: The Honeypot of Doom(tm).

Someone installs an open AP and logs all the traffic that passes through it for several weeks. As you are well aware, most, but not all sensitive communications are encrypted. Mine the resulting data and maybe you'll stomp across something "interesting".

Here's a proof of concept, although with a twisted and very nice touch of humour:

http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-down-ternet.html

This guy divided his local network in two segments. One goes straightforwardly in and out of his AP while the other is diverted to a proxy server. On the latter, images are turned upside-down or blurred on the fly before being relayed to the unsuspecting freeloader.

Another nice touch would be to submit all text to a ROT-13 transform creating gibberish everywhere.

So, next time you happen to find an open AP, think twice before transmitting any sensitive or personal information over it.