More Odds & Ends

Right. So, I’m trying to get back into the habit of writing something down every day. I’m finding it difficult to think of anything. This is my normal mode of operation.

Maybe I haven’t been reading enough news or something but I find it quite exciting that there’s a woman and an African American (is that still PC today?) as top contenders for president. I don’t see a lot of people making a big deal about it, though. And I’ve yet to hear anyone overtly say that they wouldn’t vote for either of them because she’s a woman and he’s black. Any thing I hear about them that’s negative has to do with their policies, although I do hear a bit about Obama being Muslim. Not a lot, though.

So, overall, I’m quite happy about it and surprised it doesn’t get a lot more attention. Then again, I could just be plain ignorant about everything because I don’t pay a whole lot of attention.

I haven’t gotten very far with learning Common Lisp. I haven’t had a lot of time to play with it, so I may not get a working HAL 9000 by the end of the weekend. All this thinking about artificial intelligence has gotten me back to thinking about my original thoughts of AI. A lot of it I’ve already written about, though, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to go over it again.

I’m using Lisp-in-a-Box on Windows. I haven’t booted into Linux so I haven’t gotten a Lisp system working on it yet. I’m wondering if KDevelop supports it. Hopefully I’ll be able to get something going this weekend.

I’ve had way more than six Dr Pepper’s and I haven’t won jack. The bottle says “1 in 6 Wins a Free Dr Pepper.” Lying bastards.

Technorati Tags: dr pepper,obama,clinton,lisp,linux,windows

Bits & Bobs

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything of substance. That’s not a good thing, since the purpose of these blogs is to write down anything regardless of content. At least once a day.

I seem to fall back on things I’ve written about before, and all of that is based on stuff in the past. Hopes, dreams, fears, things I used to enjoy but grew out of. All things that are part of growing up and growing old I suppose.

This is supposed to be a daily thing, though. And I’m not really supposed to care if you’re bored of it or not. Good for me, bad for you.

I haven’t had too much time for writing lately, with the new job and all. So what have I been thinking of lately? The past, mostly. As usual. In truth, a lot of it has been focused on the “Golden Age” of computers and video games. I’ve burnt myself out on that for the time being, though. There are very few people who are even interested, anyway.

My company got me a cell phone. For Valentine’s Day I got one of those Bluetooth ear piece things. As much as I love the old computers and stuff, this is one of the neatest things ever. If, back in 1984, someone had told me that there would be a device that would let someone read a paper, talk to someone a hundred miles away, and take a dump all at the same time — well, I would have laughed. Why anyone would ever want to take a dump while on the phone is completely beyond me, but it is possible. Just having a wireless ear piece is awesome. Being able to voice dial numbers using it is icing on an already sweet cake.

Yes, I know I’m about four years behind everyone else. There’s no need to point that out to me.

I’ve decided to teach myself Common Lisp. I’ve never looked at this language before but seeing as how I’m drifting down memory lane I’ve decided to see what all the fuss is about. Lisp is pretty big in the Artificial Intelligence comm unity. Perhaps I can learn enough over the coming weekend to get my Turin Test Beating AI working.

Technorati Tags: bluletooth,lisp,computer,cell phone

How To Be Crushed

Way back when I had heard Dodge was going to be showing the Challenger concept at one of the auto shows. I was kind of

interested because Chrysler was pretty good about bringing their concept cars to the road. The Viper and Prowler being good examples here.

Then I saw what the prototype Challenger looked like and I became even more interested. It was a distant sibling to the original Challenger, much like the Mustang is with its 1965 relative.

I wasn’t too excited because I still remembered what the 1999 Charger prototype looked like.

When it became known that the 2008 Challenger would look very close to the prototype, well, then I became excited. I figured it would be like the good old days and it would compete with the Ford Mustang and the new Chevy Camaro. A relatively inexpensive, relatively powerful triad. How great would that be?

On a lark, I went to Dodge’s web site and saw that they finally had the Challenger listed as one of their cars. I clicked on it and saw what the price was going to be.

I was crushed. Completely crushed. Not that I ever had a chance to get one, mind you. But now I saw that I would be so far out of the running of ever getting one, there was no reason to even dream about having one. Not for another ten years or so when, maybe, I could buy one used at an affordable price.

So, if you’re looking to buy a Challenger you’ll be looking at an MSRP of $40,000.00. Well beyond a Ford Mustang GT Premium, which weighs in at $27,260. Judging by the specs of the Challenger, though, it looks like they’re going to go after the Mustang Cobra’s.

What a bummer.

Technorati Tags: dodge,charger,challenger,prowler,viper,cost,ford,mustang

DragonPlayer

Ah, okay, I found out why I couldn’t emerge DragonPlayer.  It’s part of the Gentoo SVN installation for it.  So, I checked it out and it seems pretty functional.  It’s small, loaded up pretty quick, and I haven’t had too many issues with it.

The only issues I did have was being in full screen and having graphic issues with the information bar at the top.  I kind of expect this because I’m still seeing graphical issues with the composite stuff turned on.  Otherwise, it looks pretty nice and I’ll more than likely end up using it as the default.  I’ll still use VLC for the odd problem child that turns up.

KDE4 SVN

I just updated KDE4 through SVN. Some good news is that you can now configure the task manager to show only applications that are in the current workspace. This is good news for anyone who feels like the task manager gets a little cluttered. You can also adjust the size so you can make it nice and small or quite gigantic. I’m sure these two changes alone will thrill many people.

The only downside I see so far is that I’m still getting graphical glitches. I suppose it could be because my xorg.conf is set up incorrectly, or it could just be remaining bugs. I’m sure I don’t know.

I also can’t emerge DragonPlayer. What a bummer