So I’m home sick today and I was updating the drivers on my gaming rig. When I went to intall the Nvidia driver, it kept giving me a weird “Not a valid 7-zip archive” error. After looking it up online, it seems like Nvidia’s site has massive issues doling out downloads to non-IE browsers (I was using Chrome to download it). After downloading the driver with IE 8, it worked totally fine. Way to be cutting edge Nvidia…
(11:06:36 AM) steve: you do know about ass eels right?
(11:06:39 AM) me: omg no
(11:06:42 AM)me: but it sounds WRONG
(11:06:45 AM)me: JUST WRONG
(11:06:47 AM)steve: oh. it IS.
Happy new years everyone! Hopefully 2010 will be much better than 2009 and so far, it’s starting to look that way. I also want to share a small google chrome tip that I just discovered.
See those small tabs at the top left? Google Chrome lets you “pin” tabs to the navigation bar. This is great for people who have a small subset of tabs that are constantly open. More screen real estate is always good as well 
So I’ve been using pidgin forever now ever since I stopped using miranda-im. A couple months back, I enabled my MSN account which I haven’t logged into for a while. Since then, I’ve been receiving MSN IM spam everyday. EVERYDAY! Sometimes it gets so bad, it’s almost on the hour. Today I finally beat the spim. I could have beaten it on day one, but I was too lazy to check up on pidgin options.
First, go to “Tools” -> “Privacy”. From here, it’s just a matter of selecting your account and the appropriate privacy settings. For MSN, I just changed mine to “Allow only the users on my buddy list” and Presto! I haven’t received any MSN spim since!
brian christ
“There he goes. One of God’s own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
Five years ago today, Brian died of a heroin overdose. I didn’t know him for that long. I hung out with him a number of times for about a year or two, but he always struck me as a good guy. Not just a regular good guy, but a good nerdy guy. This is why I wrote up www.brianchrist.com as a sort of e-memorial. I was a young novice web programmer at the time and felt like I needed to do something, anything, in order to mentally process his passing. I wasn’t a stranger to death at the time, but when someone your own age dies (especially when they’re young), I think it serves as a wake up call.
So funneling all those feelings and emotions into work energy, I basically rushed out the most simplistic database-driven form posting app without much thought to architecture. Five years later, it is still basically the same exact page with a few minor additions along the way. It’s an interesting situation when you become emotionally involved with one of your side programming projects. Any time I think I should change something on the site, I worry that people will misinterpret my extra efforts into the site as some kind of disrespect to the memory of Brian. Maybe I’m just over analyzing all this stuff. If anyone else out there has anything to say on the subject of e-memorials or just any input at all, I’d definitely appreciate it. For now, I will continue to keep the site up in remembrance of Brian and wish him well wherever he is now.
chrome os
Ok, so you’re a tech blogger. That doesn’t necessarily mean you actually have a technical degree from an accredited university. It just means that you’re some person who likes to write about techie things. So when you write an article about Google’s Chrome OS in which you completely have no idea what you’re talking about, someone like me has to respond and let you know you’re an idiot.
The article I’m talking about is here. Mr. Bradley mentions that he knows that Chrome OS isn’t for mainstream PC’s, but does he actually understand that? His attitude in the article suggests that Chrome OS will fail because “an operating system that is essentially just a web browser on steroids designed to run on low-end netbook hardware will not be able to fill that need.” The need he’s referring to is to open up an application that benefits from running locally (like Photoshop). I don’t quite think he understands what a netbook is used for. Mr. Bradley, I don’t do video/photo editing on my netbook. I use my netbook for its intended purpose — a lightweight system to use internet apps. Chrome OS sounds perfect for that.
So I’ve decided to start up yet another web project to add to my already long list of unfinished items hidden away in my digital repository closet. This time the language is php and I thought we could try out something new. For the project, I’m basically creating a custom CMS to show article-style pages along with a search feature. My experience with Zend Studio was a favorable one so it will be interesting to see how much of it was due to Zend and how much was due to Eclipse (Aptana is also an Eclipse-based IDE). I’ve also heard netBeans is a good alternative php IDE but I haven’t tried it yet. I’ll be posting again soon with my impressions.
Check Aptana out here
words cannot begin to explain how much i enjoyed this clip.
It feels weird being on campus again hurrying to class amidst the sea of students, adjusting to the ebb and flow of bodies. In truth, I love the school life. There’s something about the excitement of learning new subjects and sharing radical ideas based on theory and powered by ferocious intellect. I’m going back for my master’s in comp sci, but this first algorithms class is a killer. There’s no programming. Just pure math and theory. In the first day of class, we went over an entire undergraduate education’s worth of math in under 2 hours. I am not kidding. The basics of Calculus I, Calculus II, Matrix Algebra, Discrete Mathematics, and Statistics were all covered. I’ll be the first to admit that my brayne hurted for quite some time afterward. Hopefully it doesn’t take long to get back in the groove of things.
There is a campaign going on over here to stop people from using the word “gay” in a derogatory fashion. I think this is one of the more noble causes of the day so I am fully supporting them. I already started doing this back in college but it amazes me how few people out there have made the effort. While the artwork and style are a poor attempt at reflecting the urban artistic spirit, at least it will get some people to start thinking about this issue.
In other news, SDRE is coming to town soon for their reunion tour! I’m trying to get tix, but we’ll see if I’m successful or not. Wish me luck!
