En-El

Posted on September 5, 2006 by Arthur

Somewhat earlier this day, I checked out the Dutch news. I learned that there was a train crash in the center of the country (10 injured, reminder Dutch language alert in previous link). I also read about the official report on the Schiphol prison fire, which accuses national and local authorities of negligence (link: more Dutch language!). And our Canadian (or say, North American readers) will be surprised to hear that Dutch people have issues with first responders, particularly, ambulance personnel and medics (link, more Dutch, sorry). In recent months, several news items reported about people attacking ambulance personnel (for whichever reason): the Dutch government is now considering penalties like a year of jail (maximum penalty) in the most severe cases. Right.

Interestingly, two other items ‘frontpaged’ the Dutch news recently: Madonna’s ‘Cross affair’ was one of them. You may have heard the controversy around Madonna’s latest World Tour uh, theatrical act. The other one was about the marriage and divorce of Mariska “Two Month Mariage” Hulscher, which for some kind of reason was big news. I have no idea who this lady is nor do I really care what she does or, if she is in fact, a ‘Famous Dutch person’. To be honest, I have this faint suspicion that she played in several ‘soft ice movies’1 or rather, Dutch B-Movies. So what about it?

Interestingly, the public broadcaster scored a ‘world-first’ by having her on a show to explain what exactly happened. This is where I learnt that I can (in fact) still watch Dutch Tele from here in rural Nova Scotia. Thanks guys. You are the best!

1 There’s no need to attract the bugs to xsamplex

Posted in We-reflect-news | 1 Comment

X3: week one

Posted on September 3, 2006 by Arthur

I managedRendez-vous to survive fairly well after the first week of playing X3: At this stage, I own 3 Mercury freighters, 1 Iguanu and my lonely Argon Buster. Here the tips:

Tip 1: Making money is a slow process. Your Buster doesn’t cut it and trying to go after pirates doesn’t cut it either, particularly if you want to upgrade your own ship. The tip here is to sell every pirate ship you capture. It’s not worth it to repair them. They’re not useful in the early stages anyways.

Tip 2: Do not forget to buy the hyperdrive (they’re around 50,000) before you decide to venture out. After all, you can only buy them in Argon space (Goner temple and Terracorp stations). Buy them for your freighters too.

Tip 3: I have not had use for missiles yet. If you have a Argon Buster, consider buying 4 particle guns (Alpha and Beta types) plus 2 Ray Emitter ones. A frontal (or side) hit with all of them fairly disables Harriers and Falcons.

Tip 4: Buy only fast freighters: I recommend the Mercury (Argon Prime) and the Split Iguanu (there’s one free one in Split space). If you reached your first 1,000,000, buy 4 of them so you can start to haul ore, silicon and other large stuff.

Tip 5: If you need to make money fast (and are willing to take some risks) at the start of the game, consider doing some Space Fuel runs in Heron’s Nebula. It’s ‘illegal’ to carry that stuff, but I have never been caught yet doing so.

Tip 6: Explore the Boron, Split and Teladi space (North/East). You may get hired to fight off a Xenon attack. This is quite the lucrative proposition: the fights are long, but well worth it. Xenons are slow and are (in fact) defeatable.

Tip 7: Do not get involved in a fight with the Kha’ak (‘the Thargoids of X3’).

Tip 8: Profitable Ore, Silicon and Energy cells runs: Emperor’s Mines – Argon Prime, The Wall – Argon Prime, Ore Belt – Argon Primer and ‘Antigone Memorial’ – Argon Prime.

Tip 9: Do not combat Novas in a Buster. Also, don’t take the lucrative assasination missions without a hyperdrive. When doing these missions, remove the escorts first before starting to peel away on the ‘transport’.

Tip 10: Buy an Ore mining base (from the Boron for example) and dump it in Three Worlds. It’s not a money maker there, but at least it’s fairly safe (and away) from conflicts between Xenon/Kha’ak and others. Also, buy up satellites and drop them in each sector around Argon Prime.

Posted in Video Games | Tagged | Comments Off on X3: week one

Please Recycle!

Posted on September 3, 2006 by Arthur

Hey, that's not fair!!

For future reference: related.

Posted in We-reflect-news | Comments Off on Please Recycle!

SYWBAP

Posted on September 3, 2006 by Arthur

I Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4briefly followed the spat between people and other people about the ratio of female / male at ‘Web 2.0’ conferences. One of the most linked images is this one and it’s quite telling, yes.

Having been professionally programming for quite some years now, back in the Old Country I’ve seen plenty of female programmers: most of them well-educated and quite a few returning to previous positions as technical leads to fix up Y2K issues (COBOL). I also remember a female VMS admin who typed faster than me and did some amazing things at the commandline. At that time, she was one of those professionals who just like me loved computers1.

Last night I was working on a copy of the xsamplex template PHP code: While browsing through some of the pre-baked templates (and styles) I discovered that many of these younger programmers don’t even consider breaking lines at column 80. So, imagine the frustration loading these files into vi in a terminal session. The other annoyance is that everybody and their uncle doesn’t seem to be aware of the different way Unix machines handle linefeeds, which makes me think that every PHP programmer solely programs under Windows. This kind of contradicts the target platform they’re after, which is generally the Unix platform.

1 This is also were I learned to appreciate VMS Unix machines (way years ago, HP opened up the sources for VMS)

Posted in Ordinateurs | Comments Off on SYWBAP

Pluto Redux

Posted on September 2, 2006 by Arthur

Dear First they take Pluto. Then they take Manhattanneighbourhood astrologer:

Recently, the International Astronomer Union (website) decided to downgrade Pluto’s planetary status to ‘dwarf planet’ after a lengthy voting process (results). You may have heard about this via the regular channels, since it has caused quite the stir around the world. Personally, I felt quite distressed about the future of the accuracy of my personal horoscopes. After all, since Pluto was outed, I have had many misfortunes hurled my way because of less exact horoscopes. However, I read that only western astrology was affected by all of this. Indian astrologers namely claim the following (and I quote from the article)

“Western astrology uses Pluto as a planet while Pluto was always out of Indian astrology and we do not use it in our calculations. This is the practice from the days of Aryabhatta and Varahamihira”

I request that you fix what is broken and that you use the Indian system from now on. This will hopefully correct the mispleasures I have suffered from reading your horoscopes.

Thanks for considering and may the planets (minus Pluto) bear the weight of your numerical zodiacal calculations.

Arthur

Posted in xsamplex | Comments Off on Pluto Redux

Rocks and Apples

Posted on September 1, 2006 by Arthur

Donuts

  • 2 hands of milk, approximately the size of adult hands
  • 1 gravel sized yeast. The size of your pink finger’s nail will do.
  • 1 rock size amount of Flour. Find a good size (medium) rock in your yard.
  • 1/2 rock size of sugar.
  • 1/3 CD case of oil (full-sized jewel case only!)
  • 2 beaten eggs
  • 1/4 gravel sized salt.

Mix thoroughly. Set in warm place to rise. Kneed. Take dough onto a floured board and roll out in a plaque as thick as your ring finger (do not use your thumb, for the obvious reason that you can seriously hurt it!). Cut rounds (the size of a cup will do). Allow to rise again, for 1/1000 th of moon cycle (approximately less than an hour GMT + 1). Bake donuts in ‘ouch-really-hot-hot’ oil. The oil should be hot enough that it burns your finger but not yet as much that you have to call 911. It might be a good idea to have your phone handy: figuring out the temperature of oil takes lot of practice and pain. Donuts are freezable for up to 12 Moon cycles.

Note: recipe is perfectly scalable. To make twice the amount of donuts, consider using 4 hands of milk (which equates to 12 child size hands!). ENJOY!

Update: I’ve been told that jewel cases, because of their nature and how they are produced, leak and are in fact not heat resistant. Listen: DO NOT HEAT OIL IN A PLASTIC JEWEL CASE. JUST USE IT AS FRIGGING MEASURING UNIT! Thanks for understanding.

Update 2: “Yes, but it’s still leaking !!?” – Hey, buddy: you should always use the Jewel cases that are made in the US. The ones made in China, they leak!

Update 3: “How can I tell the difference between US and China made CD jewel cases?” – By God. Then just use something else as a measuring thing, as long as the amount that fits in there is approximately the size of a CD fricking Jewel fricking case. We’re not talking about metric units here

Posted in xsamplex | Comments Off on Rocks and Apples

Senseomatic!

Posted on August 31, 2006 by Arthur

I read Senseo padsa Dutch article that reveals that the company that invented the Senseo pads had their (European) patent annulled (Dutch link: I have not found any English items yet. The European Patent Office site is rather mum about this too). I’ll be interested to see why exactly the patent was annulled, but apparently, a company in The Netherlands was able to succesfully persuade the EPO.

I was (ed: and am still) surprised to see how popular these devices are, particularly knowing that it’s the pads that makes this Senseo ‘device’ (which itself has a reasonable price) an expensive proposition.

That said: inventive people on the internet managed to create their own Senseo pads and the following page reads as a comical episode of ‘Who’s the Boss’.

Possible Procedure Problems include, but are not limited to:
• Cutting yourself with the scissors
• Dropping the iron on your feet
• Detergents your in coffee
• Graphite in your coffee
• Making everyone sick
• Starting a fire by ironing the paper too hot or too long
• All of the above

Aside of the risks of ‘home-made senseo pads’, how does an ordinary English-speaking person pronounce the word ‘senseotional’?

Posted in We-reflect-news | Comments Off on Senseomatic!

X3: The Reunion

Posted on August 29, 2006 by Arthur

I‘ve been hesitating to write a review of X3 Reunionthe (PC) game ‘X3: The Reunion’. Basically this is because the game has left me with both bad and good impressions.

First of all, the graphics (if you have a good graphics card) are plain stunning. I have not seen anything like this before. Of course space does not look as fancy as this, but, in a game that purports to be a space trade combat simulator, the eye candy (and accompanying music) works. Actually, when loading up the game, the first thing I did was ‘fly around’ to see if this was all for real. Obviously, you may need some ‘power’ to get this running smoothly, particularly if you want to run it fullscreen (in my case that’s 1440 x 900).

X3 allows the player plenty of freedom to explore, discover, trade and fight in a universe that is driven by an AL engine (appropriately) called ‘GOD’. Yes, there’s a storyline with over 10 missions that you may complete, but it’s more or less up to the user to follow through or not. These missions (not to be confused with the BBS missions) suck big time. I have not seen such a bunch of lousy missions sown together by a meagre and thin plot. Hey, if I want to play Space Invaders, I might just as well grab out my copy of ‘Jade Empire’. The humour in some of the cut-scenes is so bad, that it had my dog barking. Apparently, these ‘story line’ missions are full of bugs too and the apparent workaround (‘lower your graphics’) made me decide to stay clear from them. I recommend you do the same too.

That said: when the going gets tough, that is if you choose to start the game on ‘Normal level’, you’ll end up with a bare to bones M4 class ship, 5,000 credits and the word that the universe is all up to grabs for yourself. Without going in too many details, what makes X3 unique is that you can create your own empire with your own starbases, your own (fricking) fleets and carriers and pounce away on the other aliens. That is, if you can magically make 50,000,000 out of your 5,000 credits (that said, the universe has a lottery running too, so if you’re lucky…). Even after less than 4 days playing, I’m still nowhere near building up my first bases. However, I did have a fleet of 3 escorting fighters and two transports. I decided to throw them out so I could start to save some money for a carrier or a ‘monster’ transport.

So is X3 good? Yes. If you have the time and patience to build and discover around, it’s worth the 20 box (please do read the system recommendations first!). Yes: if you enjoyed playing Elite, X3 is definitely worth looking out for. That is: even if you forego the storyline missions. You won’t miss anything, really.

Posted in Video Games | Tagged | Comments Off on X3: The Reunion

When it’s Sunday

Posted on August 27, 2006 by Arthur

If you’ve followed local news, you may have heard about the Sunday Shopping battle between the major grocery chains (‘Sobeys’ and ‘SuperStore’)1 and the provincial government.

Currently, only stores that have less than 4,000 square feet of retail space are allowed to open on Sundays, which covers most corner stores, gas stations and even (recently) locally owned supermarkets and fresh produce stores. I’m not sure why exactly the two major chains decided to open up their stores, but it must be because of those particular fresh produce stores which have been popping up around town and province.

Sobeys released the following statement about this (way over a month ago that is)2:

“Our customers and our business have been greatly disadvantaged by closing on Sunday, while other retailers of groceries in the Province continue to operate. We are left with no choice but to, once again, reconfigure these stores to comply with the new Sunday shopping regulations in order to compete and serve our customers on this increasingly un-level playing field.”

So, today, one of Sobeys in town will open up shop. I don’t think a lot of people care about if Sunday Shopping should be allowed or not. I presume most Canadians are used to the Sunday shopping phenomenon, but for some kind of reason, I don’t see myself load up my shopping cart on a Sunday. Running to a store for a Mars bar, because of certain cravings, now, that’s a different thing.

Update: Grocers (once again) take Sunday shopping to the court (08/31/06)

1 Names appropriately enclosed in quotes. For no particular reason. Or, whatever.
2 Sobeys’ announcements can be found here.

Posted in Provincial-Scotia, Truro NS | Comments Off on When it’s Sunday

What about, Plutodwarfs?

Posted on August 26, 2006 by Arthur

And The Planets of The United Planets Of Planetsthen this week, the IAU (International Astronomical Union) decided to classify Pluto as a ‘dwarf planet’.

A summary of the (adopted by vote) resolutions can be found at the IAU site, where the honourable astronomers decided first to determine which types of planets there (resolution 5A):

RESOLUTION 5A
The IAU therefore resolves that “planets” and other bodies in our Solar System be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:
(1) A “planet”1 is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.
(2) A “dwarf planet” is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape2 , (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.
(3) All other objects3 except satellites orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as “Small Solar-System Bodies”.

Resolution 6A concludes simple with ‘Pluto is a “dwarf planet” by the above definition and is recognized as the prototype of a new category of trans-Neptunian objects’.

So long Pluto. We hardly knew ye. Well, in about 8 years, we may learn more about this dwarf planet.

Update 1: I suppose this is bad news for the astrology industry.
Update 2: The semantics of dwarf planets and dwarf humans.
Update 3 (09/07/06): New Scientist on Astrology and Pluto.
Update 4 (09/07/06): And Bad Astronomy Blog on this story.

Posted in Scientifically | Comments Off on What about, Plutodwarfs?

Might. Not.

Posted on August 26, 2006 by Arthur

I got “X3: Reunion” the other day, which is why I’m generally doing other things than what other things I used to do. But I did follow the news and even had time to do some reading around:

First, I read about that plane that returned to Amsterdam airport because of suspicious behaviour of 12 or some passengers. The 12 were taken off the plane by the Dutch police. And then sent back to India, because they were after all innocent. The other part of the story is that the communication between Airport tower, Dutch Airforce and flight NWA 42 was recorded and uploaded to the Internets. You think I have a thick accent?

The other amazing story is about that Austrian girl who apparently was abducted at age of 10 in 1998 and managed to escape her captor1.

So: Cruise and Paramount split. Hey. He can always publish his movies on YouTube! And for some kind of reason I keep thinking of this particular quote:

”If I’d known that it was just going to be about these guys throwing drinks around then I might have had some second thoughts…”

There. I need to do a Space Fuel run. Back in a few.

1 I can imagine Hollywood making a movie out of this one, starring Tom Cruise as the father!

Posted in Hyperlinks, We-reflect-news | Comments Off on Might. Not.

Help! My Auto-Hide is br0ken!

Posted on August 23, 2006 by Arthur

Yeah, that kind of sucks when you work in Windows XP: apparantly this can happen frequently when Windows returns from hibernation.

The good news is that you don’t have to reboot your computer for this. UseNet to the rescue:

– Close any open Explorer windows. (I’m talking the file explorer,
not Internet Explorer)
– Ctrl-Alt-Del to open Task Manager. In the Processes tag find EXPLORER.EXE. (You can click on the “Image Name” heading to sort the processes.)
– Highlight EXPLORER.EXE, and click End Process. Answer Yes to the warning box.
– In the menu, click File >> New Task. Type explorer in the window and ckick (sp!, ed) OK.
– Close Task Manager.

Problem is that, you still have to do it again each time when Windows hibernates.

Posted in Ordinateurs | Comments Off on Help! My Auto-Hide is br0ken!

T-Cell 0wnz you

Posted on August 21, 2006 by Arthur

ThisA T-Cell attempting an attack on a cancer cell article (‘HIV Inactivates Attacking T-Cells’) at MedPage Today seems to reveal what exactly happened to the 6 British volunteers who tested new medication and ended up in intensive care (March of this year):

The fear (ed: of triggering serious immunological problems) was given tangible form in March, when six healthy volunteers testing an experimental T-cell stimulator in England suffered extreme inflammatory reactions and subsequently landed in intensive care.

There’s no mention of any experimental T-Cell stimulator in the original BBC report nor does the earlier mentioned article mention anything about the 6 patients.

Update: T-Cells at Wikipedia

Update 2: Looking for more background info on the 6 volunteers, more (recent) article at News Medical.Net about how the 6 men are coping: While all of seem have recovered, one of them has shown early signs of lymphatic cancer. The article details the complications after the (almost) fatal experiment and the fight to keep the 6 alive.

Posted in Scientifically | 2 Comments