Someuropean.

Posted on November 9, 2008 by Arthur

I read an interview with Mitt Romney, who says that now that Obama has won the presidency, he should:

…forget entirely about reelection and focus solely on helping the nation at a critical time. He should dismiss the people who helped him win the election and bring in people who are above politics and above party. He should surround himself with statesmen and economists, businesspeople and leaders.

I’m not sure why Romney still matters in some circles: I thought his ‘I cancel my campaign because otherwise he Democrats will win and if the Democrats win the Terrorists win!’-speech was one of the lows in the US primaries, particularly when he started his rant about Europe. If I had to pick one Republican candidate who wasn’t ready for the presidency, Romney would be high on my list.

Germany marked the 70th anniversary of ‘Kristalnacht’, in which Merkel urged fellow Germans to do something about anti-semitism. Or something like that.

I also noticed that the Dutch government has decided to scrap a controversial blasphemy law. Generally, the law raised concerns about who was protected and who wasn’t, as pointed out by a member of the (Dutch) Socialist party (Aren’t these guys supposed to be evil?)

“The law was already a dead letter, but it is was principally wrong that believers should have more protection than non-believers. Thank goodness this has now come to an end. And anyway, who decides if God feels offended or not?”

The Radio Netherlands article also brings up the ‘Reve affair’, which tested this blasphemy law: In 1968 the (in)famous Dutch author Reve found himself in court after he wrote an essay (or was that a novel?) about God coming back to Earth as a donkey and describing in detail the main character having sex with this donkey (or God, if you say so). OK, you’ve got that? Anyway, Christian parties urged the Justice department to prosecute Reve: it did so, but found the author not quilty of blasphemy, mainly (if I remember correctly) because it couldn’t convict the author for his fictional characters and their actions. The decision to not convict the author was hailed as a landmark decision and has rendered the specific blasphemy law useless since then.

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Silly Season

Posted on November 6, 2008 by Arthur

So: Political Silly Season is finally over and word has it that Obama and Bush are going to have an arm wrestle match next week. Besides McCain officials throwing each other in ‘front of the bus’, I also read that (with the Democratic win), historians are finally willing to rate the current sitting president. I mean, how history will see him. One word: ‘Incompetent’.

I had this link for the longest time in my ‘bookmarks’: a couple of amazing close-ups of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. With the change of politics in the US, maybe there’s hope for science in America.

And then, there was a (female) jogger who was attacked by a rabid fox and ran a mile with it on her arm. She managed to throw the thing in her trunk and was able to reach the closest hospital. I think the best part of the story is that the fox apparently bit a control officer afterwards. This could be a perfect script for Monty Python.

Update 1:What Obama’s win means for Science (in the US)

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Panchromatically

Posted on November 1, 2008 by Arthur

Earlier I upgraded to Kubuntu 8.10, which took (with my connection) approximately 2 hours to download and another couple for actually installing the whole thing. Since I have both KDE and Gnome installed side by side, I ended up with a couple of weird errors, which (like magic) were corrected by apt-get. I was only surprised to see that most of my settings were gone. On the flip-side, KDE seems improved: particularly graphically. I see that window transparency was adopted, plus, that the fonts seem to have been smoothened out (smaller?). The default ‘task’bar looks a lot like KDE 3 (again) and I’m almost positive that this was done to help people migrate to KDE 4.

Earlier, we drove into town: the last couple of days the sun managed to break through after we had that downpour of rain at the beginning of the week. Good for Halloween. Talking about Halloween: we were better prepared this year, however, we didn’t get the amount of kids we expected, which means that for the next couple of weeks I’ll be spending my days eating candies and that. Anyway: the nights will be getting shorter and this weekend we’ll be moving the hands of time an hour back. I think this is either a week or a couple of weeks later than they did in Europe.

The word ‘panchromatic’ is in my head and I can’t seem to shake it off: The dog is, for example, panchromatically panting her lungs out. The little kitten (‘Puff’) is slowly coming out of her panchromatic surgery. And the ‘Hissy Fit’, is one big panchromatic pain in the rear end. At panchromatic times, of course. If only the word meant something else.

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FarCry 2

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Arthur

The only reason why I got FarCry 2 is that I find the concept of ‘”Sandbox” First Person Shooter’ games extremely compelling. I think the idea started with ‘Oblivion’ (discussed earlier, thanks Alfons), where players could wander about and around for hours and take on any quest or job that was offered on the road. STALKER (the other ‘Sandbox’ game) was another game I tried (and never discussed, for the reason that I don’t own the game anymore): While STALKER is buggy and graphically not-up-to-par, it provides plenty of space to explore. Brilliant and ugly at times.

So, Ubisoft, the maker of FarCry 2 promises 50 square kilometers of land to explorer, take on missions and what not and after playing the first 7 hours (already?), I think the software maker delivered, I admit, hesitantly. You definitely need the map (and the GPS device) to find your ways around. The most surprising thing about FarCry, is that the graphics engine is highly scalable: I’ve been able to play the game without issues on 1024 x 768 (medium graphics) on this system (A T5600/Nvidia 7600 GO). If you have a laptop system that is newer than the one I have, I wouldn’t be surprised that you’d be able to play the game on higher graphical settings than the one I currently play at.

The game content disappoints, though: I question Ubisoft’s ‘respawn checkpoints’ algorithm. If you clear a checkpoint of enemies, they will be back in full force at the same spot the moment you return: this makes the game extremely repetitive because you end up doing the same over and over. The other nitpick is that the Malaria-feature-thing is obviously a ‘game breaker’: I think that without it, the game would feel more ‘open-ended’. Instead, every, what, 2 missions, you’ll end up going back to help the ‘Underground’ just to get your ‘malaria’ fix. The biggest disappointment was the lack of (left/right) leaning and other stealth tactics you needed to employ in the very first FarCry: I hear that the PC version was literally a port from the XBOX 360 version and that support for this would handicap the console-game players. I’m not sure if this is true, particularly looking at Call Of Duty 4, which is available for the popular consoles and has support for this.

However, besides these, the game is ‘immersive’: at times, you have time to look around and can make snap decisions about taking a detour instead of going with the mission (nothing will stop you from doing so). You can hide (and run away) from your enemies if you don’t feel like taking them on: you can even finish missions without having it end like a ‘Texan machine gun massacre’ (this requires heavily scouting of areas of interest, which the manual recommends). The shooting mechanics are sufficient but at times obnoxious: during the early stages, it seems like it takes a whole ‘clip’ to kill your foes. Eventually, you’ll figure out that you have to buy up specific weapon upgrades to improve your targeting skill and weapon reliability.

So, yes, FarCry 2 is enjoyable if you can live with the particular nitpicks I mentioned above: It’s not a typical run-and-gun game and yes, it’s highly replayable, that is, if you didn’t burn through the ‘5 installs only’ DRM. It’s extremely stable (there are some storyline bugs) and highly scalable: even on the lowest details, the game is playable and a feast for the eye. However, I’d be the first to admit it’s not perfect at all and (obviously) it looks like Ubisoft didn’t make up on all its promises in early previews and tech demos. Hesitantly recommended: however, don’t bother spending 50 what dollars on it if you were planning to spend it on something else (like Fallout 3).

01/31/09: Looking back at Farcry 2, an interview with one of the designers of the game.

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Upcoming

Posted on October 23, 2008 by Arthur

If you weren’t aware of it, K/Ubuntu 8.10 is about to be released in a couple of days, actually, to be exact, on October 30th. I’ve seen the casual screenshots around of sand-brownish looking desktops and windows-dressing. Those reviews all concentrate on Gnome, of course: As I mentioned earlier, in August, I moved to KDE 4. To say it politically correct, GTK+ is just not my cup of tea.

I read that Kubuntu (The KDE-based Ubuntu) 8.10 will (finally) introduce KDE 4 to the masses (KDE 4.1.2 previously on xsamplex) and, as I then mentioned, visually not too much seem to have changed. There are still silly bugs and (generally) if you were happy with KDE 3, you should probably stick with Ubuntu (which by default will still come with KDE 3.2).

There was a (long) discussion on the Postgres list about how to properly reply to questions to a mailing-list: the issue is (as many of the contributers already suggest) in the ‘stupid MUAs’ that people are using. If I remember correctly (in the days when I actively took part in the development of an e-mailer), when your MUA encounters the X-Mailing-list headers, a ‘Reply To All’ should use the mailing group’s e-mail address and not the individual listed addressees. I think this was even mentioned in an RFC (I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t RFC 822).

Update 1: Oh noes! Debian Vim maintainer switches to Emacs.

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Young Ones

Posted on October 19, 2008 by Arthur

I was going to put a long winding post about Cliff Richard (and his excellent backing band, The Shadows), but I decided to keep it to the point: My mother used to be a big fan of the 60’s singer and as a teenager, she had been able to collect all the records and singles, which eventually, ended up being listened to by teenage-me and that one. This is also the 4th anniversary of her death, or rather, funeral, so this is slightly appropriate. Personally, I find that there’s some vindication in the way how things panned out altogether: it’s not that I’m really into this music or that I love this music. That’d be too silly. However, if you think about it, it’s generally better music (or less pretentious) than the noise my other siblings listened to, back in the 70s. I mean, can you say ‘Grease Lightning’? Huh? HUH?

Now, I decided to pick out The Young Ones (If you prefer video: YouTube) because it shows how gifted Cliff Richard’s backing band was. The Shadows, fronted by guitarists, Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch, wrote, produced and co-wrote many of Cliff’s songs. The band eventually went on creating hit-songs of their own (with ‘Apache’ and ‘The Deer Hunter’).

This also reminds me of a theory of one of my sociology teachers in high school in the mid 80s: He opined that fans of Cliff Richard’s music ended up listening to the music of Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley fans ended up listening to Prince. I can tell you for a fact that this is not true.

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Canvas

Posted on October 13, 2008 by Arthur

During my programming career, I’ve ran into several cases where I absolutely had to use owner-draw to accomplish customized drawing. Originally, as a Delphi programmer, this required knowledge of the specific graphic wrappers around the Windows GDI (and GDI+) functions which Borland (appropriately) called TCanvas. The C#/.Net equivalent is called ‘Graphics’, which (admittingly) does not sound as fancy as Canvas.

That said: in my never-ending quest to fill a niche craving, I decided to look into the basics of photo-editing; that is, on a much smaller scale. The first step was to create a component that (given a specific image), drops a frame on it, which you can use to crop a photo (by either moving it and/or resizing it). Additionally, I always liked how some photo-editors integrate the Rule Of Thirds during cropping of photos, so, that had to be part of the custom-draw routine too.

There are couple of common tasks that need to be taken care of when doing own-draw stuff, all in C# (however, should be similar in Delphi):

  • The first thing is to decide which control you’re going to ‘descend’ from, or rather, which control is going to be your base-class
  • If your control requires user-interaction (i.e. mouse/key input), you should probably override the control’s MouseUp/Down and MouseMove events. Most likely you’ll need a couple of (private) flags that track down if a mouse button is still ‘pressed’. Add to that a couple of variables that track down the last positions clicked on the screen.
  • Separate the drawing routines and call these routines from an overridden OnPaint event.
  • Debugging (owner-draw) graphical routines is extremely painful, so think through your drawing routines.

Boring sample code is about to follow.

Continue reading →

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The economy. Stupid.

Posted on October 12, 2008 by Arthur

This week, the global economy crisis dominated the headlines. The most shocking headline was the ‘Iceland meltdown’: you’ve probably seen the images of the downward spiral of the currency of Iceland, the Krona. There was, of course, also the spat between the UK and Iceland, and it had all to do with British savers and a collapsing Iceland bank. The situation in Iceland is grim, as illustrated in the following quote:

Inflation is around 14%; on Friday the central bank announced that one of Oddsson’s two fellow governors, Ingimundur Fridriksson, was taking a “short medical leave of absence” on the advice of his doctors. Earlier last week Iceland’s president, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, was treated in hospital for heart problems

There’s an interesting anecdote in that article about how (right-wing) Icelandic politicians determined the fate of the Krona by implementing free-market policies and steering away from the Eurozone integration. The answer to solving all your country’s economical problems? Re-nationalize!

I also read that the uh, the president is going to take care of the economical issues, after addressing the G-7, G-8, G-10 or G-20 (Pick your lucky Bingo number!). Anyway: from the sidelines, it looks like the US officials were not really well-received or lets say it this way, un-enthusiastically received. I’m not sure why that is, but I wouldn’t be surprised that many European countries still bear a grudge against the US administration’s lack-lustre monetary policies (read: “the policy to intentionally keep the dollar low”), which (of course) worked against the European economies. On the Dutch news site nu.nl, I read that the Dutch economic minister wasn’t all too impressed with the US officials Bernanke and Paulson: Apparently they were both already gone when the most important discussions took place (rough translation from Dutch):

The Americans see the financial markets problems as a ‘company accident’ and don’t treat it as an important economical problem which needs to solved right now.

I could end up with a diatribe about the Bush administration, but the only words I can come up with right now is ‘failure of global proportions’. For the last eight-years the Americans had no long-term economical plans nor did they actually lead on a global level. Well, OK, I’m slightly wrong here. There was a plan: So once in a while Bernanke just had to push that ‘Lower the Rates’ button. To his credit, this is not what he did all the time, but, I think many people agree that he was ‘too sunny’ about the US economy since he took over Greenspan’s job in 2006.

Anyway: this is a long weekend in Canada. Have a great Thanksgiving.

Update 1: The Economics published a survey asking US economists their views of the presidential candidates economical plans. The full report (in PDF format) is here.

Update 2: Related: Paul Krugman wins the Nobel prize for economics.

Update 3 @ (10/20/08): “Iceland could quickly become an EU member”.

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Net. Net.

Posted on October 7, 2008 by Arthur

I read that the Mono developers officially released Mono 2.0, which promises compatibility with Microsoft .Net 2.0. The official announcement can be found at the Mono-project (releasenotes, if you’re impatient). The Slashdot discussion is right here.

There was a long thread (discussion, so you will) on the Postgres mailinglist about Debian, Postgres and backports (ugh!). The issue is complex and it’s a long story about why latest versions of Debian were stuck with older Postgres versions, while most platforms moved to the recent 8.x series of that database. Anyway, the good news is that it looks like that Debian Lenny will come with a more up-to-date version of Postgres. Or, something like that.

Going back to Slashdot, there’s an interesting thread about multi-threading, or rather, about recommendations about good books on this. I’ll be the first to admit that at one time I picked my nose up for .Net threading: I thought Delphi’s way was a lot more elegant, where you’re threading model essentially starts with creating descendants from Delphi’s TThread class. Threading, indeed is a different and difficult beast.

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Only. Assorted.

Posted on October 3, 2008 by Arthur

Assorted links I was thinking about this week:

I read that Cunard’s “Queen Elizabeth 2” is officially retiring: in a couple of months the ship sails for her last destination, Dubai, to become a state of the art ‘floating hotel’. I mention this, because a couple of weeks ago, the ship anchored in Saint John.

I’m only slightly following both US and Canadian elections. I’ve not really listened or watched yesterday’s Palin vs. Biden debate, mainly because, I had other poor excuses not to watch it. The Canadian elections I have been following through notes and postings at The Internationalist and of course, the CBC. I actually expect ms. May to do very well: well, at least that the party gets some MPs in the Commons.

If you’ve played Ultima games, you probably remember the name Richard Garriot: via Information Week, I found out that he’s planning to go to the ISS and conduct some official experiments for NASA (link here, apologies for annoying ad in between). I’m, however, surprised to learn that Garriot’s dad was an astronaut. This probably explains the Garriot brother’s obsession with computers and programming. I have fond memories to one of the Ultima games, where the main story highlighted the dangers of sects.

And then, just today, the KDE desktop team released KDE 4.1.2, which is a highly unremarkable release that is supposed to fix a lot of issues in KHTML and Konqueror.

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Washing Machine

Posted on September 26, 2008 by Arthur

I was watching that story unfold about that 700 billion dollars bail-out, and I was just thinking, hey, maybe all they need is a washing machine.

I saw the political theatre of American presidential elections where a presidential candidate suddenly presented himself as a champion of “Main Street”, and I thought, hey, maybe all he used was a washing machine.

I read that the US president had been talking to the French president about the financial problems, and for a second I thought that maybe, they both really needed a washing machine. Or rather a freedom machine.

And, then I ended up looking at this excellent YouTube video of a live performance of Sonic Youth’s ‘Washing Machine’. For a second, it reminded me of that concert I attended in the early 90s and I thought by myself, what one can do with cloth pins.

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SSH

Posted on September 24, 2008 by Arthur

I read this article at SecurityFocus “Analyzing Malicious SSH Login Attempts”, which apparently was written over 2 years ago. The article goes over some statistics collected over a period of 22 days and points out interesting things I’ve seen before too (in a previous life).

Combined with an army of IRC bots, an attacker only needs 525 Zombies to scan the entire IP4 of today’s public Internet in just one day. If you have a publicly accessible SSH server, you are very likely to be targeted by one of these attacks

I used a combination of python scripts to hold off specific attacks: particularly the attacks that try hundreds of username and password combinations in only a couple of minutes (the brute force ones). The main script focused on keeping a count of attacks from a single IP (a maximum of 3 or 5 retries) and offenders were put on a 24 (or 48) hours waiting list, via the deny/accept host files. If I remember correctly it was based on BlockHosts. This worked extremely well and formed a good deterrent and first line defense, telling these script guys that (at least) someone cared about the server. Besides this, it is probably a good idea to only allow people who know SSH access to the server and consider enforcing a strict password policy.

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Jump. Dammit. Jump.

Posted on September 21, 2008 by Arthur

T here’s nothing cuter than young kittens, except for when they discover they can feast on wires, cables and other typical loose things and stuff hanging out from computers and other hardware. Also, dog food, because, apparently, you can bat at it.

So yeah, we took in a kitten after we came back from Nova Scotia and the worst part of taking the thing in is that the older cat and the young one are still not used to each other. We were also unlucky with the cats’ names: for years we have called our oldest one ‘Kitty’ (we never bothered to use her ‘real’ name), and now of course that name backfires at us, since the youngest one also seem to relate to the name ‘Kitty’. We end up improvising the names of either cats: depending on the circumstances, the oldest one goes by the name of ‘The Older One’, ‘Grey Cat’, ‘Mrs. Cranky’, ‘Hissy Fit’ or even ‘Precious Little Racist’ (because she’s still hissing at the younger, dark kitten, get it?). The youngest one’s name fluctuates between ‘Little One’, ‘Yo’, ‘The One With The Yellow Eyes’, ‘Vandal’, ‘Miss Flea’, ‘Miauw’ and, yeah, ‘Puff’ (which is apparently, her given name).

Wait a second: Wasn’t I supposed to write about politics and economics?

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