justin's blog

RMS, I must confess: I am member of the church of XEmacs

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:28:37 +0000

Why you might ask? Well I initially moved from the standard GNU Emacs editor to XEmacs for one feature: tabs displaying open buffers (similar to tabs in Firefox). Then out of curiosity I began do delve further into the rift that was the Richard Stallman / Jamie Zawinski split of Emacs & XEmacs. I won't get into it here, but I suggest to anyone that's having a hard time sleeping, read JWZ's recount of how everything unfolded (cliff's notes here).

So I saw Richard Stallman a.k.a. RMS speak last night. He's still as smelly of a geek as anyone's ever described him. I'm pretty sure he picked his nose several times during his talk. But I think he is fighting for a good cause, and he's one of the few people that are willing to go the required distance to see the vision incarnate. Some may still argue (myself included) that while he speaks about community, his actions do not always foster it -- this is one of the things I believe caused the XEmacs rift. I dared not to ask about this subject as it might have bored everyone into a coma. But here you can choose to leave this page before comatose is induced.

To me an open source community becomes truly "open" when developers can submit patches in a civilized fashion. BTW "Open Source" is another term RMS doesn't like. I understand that these projects have maintainers that choose the direction (i.e. Torvalds with the Linux kernel), and there are often egos involved (see also: CK's resignation from kernel development). Egos are always going to be a factor because people take pride in ownership of something they feel they either started or make major contributions to. However sometimes we need to put egos aside to take in a broader 'world-view' so that every voice is heard. If you're unwilling to do that, you might as well just keep the source-code to yourself IMO.

To open it's doors to the world XEmacs began accepting developer patches from the community via their mailing list as of version 20 (Feb. 1997). They are using a modern bug tracking system as of 2008. Not a stellar performance, but on the other hand GNU Emacs' developer list was opened up for version 21 (released Oct. 2001), and are not yet using any bug tracking software.

More important than these dates is the fact that GNU Emacs now has a GUI interface and a multilingual environment... all features implemented in XEmacs and submitted as patches to GNU Emacs but were disregarded due to the maintainer's (Richard Stallman's) lack of interest for whatever reason. But I suppose RMS would argue that this is how Free Software works: If you don't like it, change it; and if the original author doesn't like what you changed, fork it!

Now back to that tabs issue. It seems someone wrote a (albeit uglier) version in lisp that works in GNU Emacs. So for today I'm going to be a visitor in the Church of GNU Emacs. If I find the pews comfortable enough, I may stay.

Reznor offers a variety of options for new NIN album: Ghosts

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 17:30:45 +0000

After the release of Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D, a.k.a. Halo 25, the remixed version of Year Zero, Trent Reznor of NIN is officially free of the Interscope label. His next album, Ghosts I-IV, a.k.a. Halo 26 comes with a variety of free download and purchase options in multiple digital and physical formats, many exclusive to the Nine Inch Nails website:

http://ghosts.nin.com

YoYoJam Lyn Fury, a great beginner to advanced yoyo

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 02:19:16 +0000

YoYoing is for geeks who can't juggle. Well, that's my excuse because I really can't juggle and yoyoing requires some amount of skillz and is also fun. I got into yoyoing when my 5th grade teacher, Mr. Jaeger, sold Pro-Yos (which are still sold and are great for looping). After being away from it for a long time, I've recently gotten back into yoyoing only to find that modern yoyoing is a whole new world: there is unresponsive play, hubstacks/t-stacks, and top-tips. So after buying over 15 new yo-yos, I'd like to focus on a favorite brand of mine: YoYoJam, and here specifically their "Lyn Fury." YoYoJam isn't as big as brands you may have heard of like Yomega or Duncan, but I think they offer a lot more choice and playability.

Casio Waveceptor: Atomic Timekeeping & Solar Powered

Sat, 12 May 2007 01:15:26 +0000

Be geeky without looking the part

I was in search for a watch with some geeky features, but suitable enough that I can wear it while dressing up without looking like a pocket-protector wearing nerd. I knew Casio had a wide variety of watches with atomic timekeeping features, but the last time I wore a Casio I was in grade school and they looked something like these:

Upgrading the 4th gen iPod HD & battery for Rockbox, FLAC

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 20:27:12 +0000

Kill your iPod (part II).

When it comes to audiophiles all is but lost.

With the advent of MP3, the idea of lossless audio seemed to have fallen upon deaf ears. Enter: FLAC, the Free Lossless Audio Codec, it compresses waveforms by finding similarities (like bzip), not by changing the the waveform itself (mp3 et. al.).

When it comes to playing FLAC on a portable, a HD based one is the only way to go because of the increased size of FLAC files -- roughly 1/2 the size of the original uncompressed stream. FLAC players are listed on the FLAC website, but as far as I see it there are only two choices for gapless MP3 and FLAC playback:

Rio Karma -- purchase from Karma Limbo, his are pre-hacked with upgrades
a Rockbox enabled device such as iRiver, or iPod

Gapless MP3 & FLAC in Linux with MPD

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 15:11:26 +0000

Kill your media player (part I).

When it comes to digital formats quality is all but lost.

I enjoy listening to CD quality (uncompressed) audio streams and have been known to bring a CD to work on occasion to do so. However most media players geared towards playing file streams (like MP3s) have broken implementations for CD playback. So I'll stick to encoded files for media players -- and why not FLAC? Lossless, yes, gapless, maybe. Let me restate that if several tracks from the same CD bleed into each other across the track marker, surely our 21st century computers should be able to reproduce the 'gapless' 1980's technology known as the 'compact disc' (even if they're in separate, adjacent files). Tracks should play back with no interruption AS GOD INTENDED IT.

Fast Forward Football

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 06:49:53 +0000

Ingredients:

1 DVR device of sorts
1 NFL football game, recorded/recording (at least 2/3rds through)
1.5 hours of time (to watch a 3.5 hour game)

This recipe is best used for anyone that enjoys watching football, but maybe can't dedicate the usual 3hrs. to the ritual. Especially if the team is not your team, but you suspect it may be a game worth watching. It's also useful if you don't particularly care for the inter-play dialogue supplied by the "color commentary." Believe it or not, I enjoy Sunday Night Football on NBC (gasp!) more than Monday Night because as lame as Madden can sometimes be, he and Michaels are brilliant compared to the guys on ESPN.

MythTV & High Definition...minimum requirements

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 05:13:05 +0000

Why have you forsaken me?

My MythTV box has been chugging along nicely, playing DVDs and recording two shows off of a 2-tuner standard definition hardware MPEG encoder card (doing all at once). Just before Thanksgiving, I purchased a projector that can do 720p and had been enjoying the finer detail of my DVDs at full resolution. However, standard definition material really looks like crap when displayed on a 69" screen. Enter: High Definition. I bought a HDTV tuner card, thinking that I had prepared myself for this moment. According to the MythTV documentation, the minimum recommended processor speed for recording and playing off of one HD Tuner card is about 2.4GHz. So I built my box with an Athlon XP 2800+ (2083MHz clock speed) thinking it would be up to the task. Think again...

X-treme Programming in the real world

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 06:05:57 +0000

Stevey, a Google employee/programmer type talks about life at the company. More importantly he debunks the fad-diet equivalent programming mantras with some real world experience of what works and what doesn't in the software development world.

CES, a week after

Sun, 15 Jan 2006 09:21:19 +0000

Now that I've had a week to recover, let's do a damage estimate...

A Sirius Letdown.

I found the Sirius' S50 (like much of this show) to be underwhelming. While this unit is quite sexy and small, I found out what its achillies heel is: you must have the unit docked to listen to live satellite radio. Yes, it can record shows from satellite and play mp3s, but no radio while undocked? Bummer.

Double the memory, double the fun!

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 04:57:07 +0000

So I thought I noticed the other day that my computer was showing 512MB of RAM installed. I thought to myself, "I'm pretty sure I bought two 512MB sticks, making an even 1G." Later that week, to assure myself that I had indeed not gone crazy, I opened up my case and found two sticks of RAM installed, 512MB each. So then I dismissed me seeing the 512MB of installed RAM as me going crazy on an earlier occasion (maybe I was reading the swap space size?).

So, I double checked. My BIOS said I had 512MB of RAM installed. So I cracked the case again. Yep, still two sticks of 512 in there. Now I was thinking, "Oh, great I have to send back one of these sticks gone bad." Luckily I bought them from a reputable dealer (newegg.com) and they were a reputable brand (crucial) that has a lifetime warranty. So I took one out to see if my computer still boots.... it does. "So what is wrong with this stick of RAM I'm holding?" I asked.

Recipe: Thai Iced Coffee

Tue, 18 Oct 2005 03:03:53 +0000

subtitle: Starbucks, drink your heart out!

So here it is, Jason's famous iced coffee recipe -- ripped off by myself (which has also been ripped off of every Thai restaurant in the world).

Here's what you need:

Ice
Coffee (double shot/two parts)
2 Tbsp. (one serving/one part) Sweetened Condensed Milk (full-fat, low-fat, fat-free, etc.)

Optional: Hammer & sandwich bag (for crushing ice if you like it that way and don't have a crushed ice ice-maker)

Geeks, get girly!

Sun, 14 Aug 2005 05:33:58 +0000

This subject may be taboo, but since I've been diagnosed as being 47% gay (care of some random internet test), I figure it's an appropriate subject. The item in question is: The Man Purse. Seinfeld tried it, should you?

My night

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 18:47:25 +0000

This is not informative or educational. But it is funny which may additionally qualify it as interesting. So here is an email I received from a friend/co-worker (maybe less of a friend after his experience) after a party this weekend. Some background info: The "T-Club" was supposed to be a club where in order to join you would have to consume eight (8) "T-Bombs" in 2 hrs. A "T-Bomb" is similar to a Jäger-Bomb where you would drop a 1 oz. shot of Jägermeister into a glass of Red-Bull. However a T-Bomb (or Todd-Bomb) replaces the Jäger with Bacardi 151, a 151 proof (75.5% alcohol) rum.

Book Review: Cryptonomicon

Wed, 13 Jul 2005 18:39:51 +0000

Yes, this is probably an "oldie" to most hackers out there... but just last week I became a self-proclaimed stupendous badass by finishing this 1000 page monster. The book is great and a recommended read to hackers and generally avid readers alike. Some things I found interesting: