Vlog updates + Kansas

So I just got back from Kansas yesterday evening. But before I get to that I have to mention that Zeb came over to my house last Saturday so we could do our Project for Awesome video together, and it was super awesome. Thanks Zeb! I think the awesome actually degraded the longer we were there until we actually finally got the video uploaded, and after that it was fine, but whatever.
Here's our P4A video, in case you haven't watched it (assuming you want to)!

Aaaand also I made a vlog right after!

Then, the first whole day in Kansas, I made another vlog, but before you watch that you have to watch Zeb's edutaining Christmas Eve special.

Wow. I look really bad in these.

FTL I really want to vlog!

FTL = french the llama. Also, our channel is up and Zeb's already uploaded the first vlog. Whoo! The channel is here.

I'm vlogging!

Yup, and I posted a video on my previously boring regular channel about it. Check it out:

Test

This is to test something relating to Buzz. Please ignore it. Click me

Quotes from a NaNo Night of Write

epotts believes in the power of the supernatural. They watch you sleep.

strugee is a guy.

epotts is not a guy.

strugee also has nothing better to do than declare, in a fancy way, that he is a guy.

zebburkeconte is a guy

painting.roses is a girl, not a guy

epotts has lots of better things to do, cuz she's awesome.

zebburkeconte ponders the fact that, for once, there are a statistically correct number of males in a NaNo chatroom

epotts shouts, "AH!" in a sudden attempt to wake herself up.

painting.roses recommends playing music through headphones.

epotts really shouldn't be trying to wake herself up, as her real friend is coming over later today.

strugee agrees... for now because he can't remember his real friends as well as his recently made nano friends because his recently made nano friends are talking to him right now but his real friends aren't because it's like 11:58.

strugee copies epotts.

epotts is also already playing headphone music.

zebburkeconte forcefully tells alex to go to his blog

strugee says "nuh-uh" in a petulant manner

strugee has to take an isee practice test

epotts is juggling two chatzies.

zebburkeconte advises alex not to take it at midnight

 zebburkeconte grabs alex by the virtual collar and pulls him over to zebbc.blogspot.com

epotts suggests that alex sue zeb for virtual assault.

strugee agrees with epotts and laughs a carefree laugh towards zebburkeconte's corner of the internet

strugee lies yes.

zebburkeconte rofls his head off

zebburkeconte wonders if alex is now going to live at a foster home

epotts opens a writeordie.

strugee sets up his already opened writeordie

epotts sets it to kamikaze mode.

Quotes from ppl

Quotes from Genevieve:

38, 39, 30-10... wait...
I thought a mongoose was a bird...
OMG LIGHTNING!!!!!! no... thats a streetlamp... OMG THERE IT IS AGAIN!..... nope still a lamp... AGAIN!!!!!!... darn streetlamp...
owned. wow i'm being such a boy


Quotes from Sophie:

(to Mr Crawford) Is that a gorilla? (Mr Crawford) No, that's my son... (Sophie) Well it looked like a gorilla from this angle!!!!!!!


Quotes from Zeb:

Your mom.
Your face.
Oh snap.
Whoaly crap!
Whoaly snap!
Noob, you just got pwned.
Radiolab is awesome and epic beastage.
Beasting it up.
VEGITA, WHAT DOES ZEB SAY ABOUT JACKSON'S "I JUST GOT PWNED" LEVEL? IT'S OVER 9000!!! WHAT??? OVER 9000??? THERE'S NO WAY THAT CAN BE RIGHT!


Quotes from Gus:

It's flappy.
You look like a helicopter.
Shlomo looks funny, plus he has a weird name.
FOOT!
I feel like rice.


Quotes from Kiki:

Derek, I don't even know what you're doing anymore.
I was doing great, but no, you just had to poop all over that idea
I wish rain wasn't wet. or rain.
Mmmm... paste
Sophie that's just plain stupid
lol my brain is stupid


Quotes from me:

wow, that was a valuable waste of my time
it was hilarious. to myself.
i pwn everyone by pwning myself and not caring
BUZZ IS FOR STAPLERS
i think i'm high on happiness right now
i high five you. in my head!
i should motivationally coach myself! you can motivationally coach me while i motivationally coach myself!


Comment if you can think of any others...

US Censorship

You may have noticed that the title of this blog is censored.
This is in protest of a new US Bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act, which is supposed to, well, stop online piracy. But that's not really what will happen. This video explains it pretty well, and you can join the protest at americancensorship.org.

The world is ending and the Apocalypse is nigh

Rebecca Black - Friday
153399 Dislikes
52071 Likes

NaNo! aww yeaaaah

So I'm staying up and Word Warring with Zeb on NaNo, plus chatting with him. It's super awesome and I passed like 3000 words!

My other blog

So I started another blog. It's my second and it's very different from this one. It's called 'A Story' for now, and I'm purposefully not publishing the link. It's not on Google or the Blogger listings, either, and the reason for this is that I actually don't want anybody to find it. The idea is that it's somewhere where I can just talk, kinda like a journal. In fact I guess it really is a journal, only in blog form, since I like that format. Also, this is my 75th post. Woohoo!

I am literally printing out the xkcd tech support sheet

Yep, and I edited it to include the alt text. If you want it here it is:

Click on it to get a full-sized version

the end of tinkering

Well, that last article apparently was wacked up; I'm not sure what's happening but here's the article.

Tinkerer's Sunset [dive into mark]

diveintomark.org | Jan 29th 2010 

[Translations: Arabic, ...]

When DVD Jon was arrested after breaking the CSS encryption algorithm, he was charged with "unauthorized computer trespassing." That led his lawyers to ask the obvious question, "On whose computer did he trespass?" The prosecutor's answer: "his own."

If that doesn't make your heart skip a beat, you can stop reading now.

When I was growing up, "trespassing" was something you could only do to other people's computers. But let's set that aside and come back to it.

My father was a college professor for much of his adult life. One year, he took a sabbatical to write a book. He had saved up enough money to buy a computer and a newfangled thing called a word processing program. And he wrote, and he edited, and he wrote some more. It was so obviously better than working on a typewriter that he never questioned that it was money well spent.

As it happens, this computer came with the BASIC programming language pre-installed. You didn't even need to boot a disk operating system. You could turn on the computer and press Ctrl-Reset and you'd get a prompt. And at this prompt, you could type in an entire program, and then type RUN, and it would motherfucking run.

I was 10. That was 27 years ago, but I still remember what it felt like when I realized that you — that I — could get this computer to do anything by typing the right words in the right order and telling it to RUN and it would motherfucking run.

That computer was an Apple ][e.

By age 12, I was writing BASIC programs so complex that the computer was running out of memory to hold them. By age 13, I was writing programs in Pascal. By age 14, I was writing programs in assembly language. By age 17, I was competing in the Programming event in the National Science Olympiad (and winning). By age 22, I was employed as a computer programmer.

Today I am a programmer, a technical writer, and a hacker in the Hackers and Painters sense of the word. But you don't become a hacker by programming; you become a hacker by tinkering. It's the tinkering that provides that sense of wonder. You have to jump out of the system, tear down the safety gates, peel away the layers of abstraction that the computer provides for the vast majority of people who don't want to know how it all works. It's about using the Copy ][+ sector editor to learn how the disk operating system boots, then modifying it so the computer makes a sound every time it reads a sector from the disk. Or displaying a graphical splash screen on startup before it lists the disk catalog and takes you to that BASIC prompt. Or copying a myriad of wondrous commands from the Beagle Bros. Peeks & Pokes Chart and trying to figure out what the fuck I had just done. Just for the hell of it. Because it was fun. Because it scared my parents. Because I absolutely had to know how it all worked.

Later, there was an Apple IIgs. And later still, a Mac IIci. MacsBug. ResEdit. Norton Disk Editor. Stop me if any of this sounds familiar.

Apple made the machines that made me who I am. I became who I am by tinkering.

This post's title is stolen from Alex Payne's "On the iPad," which I shall now quote at great length.

The iPad is an attractive, thoughtfully designed, deeply cynical thing. It is a digital consumption machine. As Tim Bray and Peter Kirn have pointed out, it's a device that does little to enable creativity...

The tragedy of the iPad is that it truly seems to offer a better model of computing for many people — perhaps the majority of people. Gone are the confusing concepts and metaphors of the last thirty years of computing. Gone is the ability to endlessly tweak and twiddle towards no particular gain. The iPad is simple, straightforward, maintenance-free...

The thing that bothers me most about the iPad is this: if I had an iPad rather than a real computer as a kid, I'd never be a programmer today. I'd never have had the ability to run whatever stupid, potentially harmful, hugely educational programs I could download or write. I wouldn't have been able to fire up ResEdit and edit out the Mac startup sound so I could tinker on the computer at all hours without waking my parents.

Now, I am aware that you will be able to develop your own programs for the iPad, the same way you can develop for the iPhone today. Anyone can develop! All you need is a Mac, XCode, an iPhone "simulator," and $99 for an auto-expiring developer certificate. The "developer certificate" is really a cryptographic key that (temporarily) allows you (slightly) elevated access to... your own computer. And that's fine — or at least workable — for the developers of today, because they already know that they're developers. But the developers of tomorrow don't know it yet. And without the freedom to tinker, some of them never will.

(As a side note, I was wrong and Fredrik was right, and Chrome OS devices will have a switch for developers to run their own local code. I don't know the specifics of what it will look like, whether it will be a hardware button or switch or whatever. But it will be there, an officially supported mode for the developers of today and, more importantly, the developers of tomorrow.)

And I know, I know, I know you can "jailbreak" your iPhone, (re)gain root access, and run anything that can motherfucking run. And I have no doubt that someone will figure out how to "jailbreak" the iPad, too. But I don't want to live in a world where you have to break into your own computer before you can start tinkering. And I certainly don't want to live in a world where tinkering with your own computer is illegal. (DVD Jon was acquitted, by the way. The prosecutor appealed, and he was acquitted again. But who needs the law when you have public key cryptography on your side?)

Once upon a time, Apple made the machines that made me who I am. I became who I am by tinkering. Now it seems they're doing everything in their power to stop my kids from finding that sense of wonder. Apple has declared war on the tinkerers of the world. With every software update, the previous generation of "jailbreaks" stop working, and people have to find new ways to break into their own computers. There won't ever be a MacsBug for the iPad. There won't be a ResEdit, or a Copy ][+ sector editor, or an iPad Peeks & Pokes Chart. And that's a real loss. Maybe not to you, but to somebody who doesn't even know it yet.

1. Tinkerer's Irrationality

   If you've been tinkering on Apple computers, you've been tinkering in the wrong place.

   This is not new. Apple has always sought to build appliances and not "kits" for the hobbyist. From day one they positioned themselves as being the computer for the "rest of us" and that meant those who do not wish to tinker with their machine but simply want them to work. Apple wasn't only making fun of IBM with those ads, they were chiefly targeting the IMSAI and other hobbyist machines.

   Watch Steve Jobs in the iPad demo. How many times does he utter the phrase, "It just works." That's what matters to him.

   That's his goal, to sell a finished product, an elegant product, a simple product, a safe and secure product, not a box of Legos.

   You can go to any computer store, buy a case, a power supply, a motherboard, a processor, ram, hard drive, keyboard, monitor, and a CD with a LINUX distro and tinker and play to your heart's content.

   What is it that makes you want to do this to an iPad?

   Apple is successful in no small part precisely because they discourage this. If they did not, I'd be dong for Macs what I'm doing for the PC next to me right now. Struggling with nVidia drivers for the pice of crap.

   There is another important difference here as well. Apple does not FORCE you or COERCE you into using their products. They set out to build the best possible experience they can and then offer it to you. There is none of that behind the scenes Microsoft skullduggery forcing vendors to include Windows.

   In addition there is a big security benefit here. It took what, a DAY before significant security problems appeared on the Nexus phone while such threats only exist on Jailbroken iPhones.

   I have a client/associate with muscular dystrophy. He's currently got a clunky old PC that I clean up and repair from time to time. He knows little about it other than it "Seems to be sick again." I can't wait to present him with an iPad. It will easily cover 100% of his needs while opening up a whole new world of e-books, social media, and secure web browsing.

   On top of all this, as it was pointed out, you can write software for the darn thing.

   I suspect that maybe what bothers people is that the iPad is good, perfect, functional out of the box without the need for additional assistance from anyone else really. You can write applications. You can write complex, elegant, problem solving applications, but as far as the platform itself is concerned, Apple will handle that, thank you very much.

   What's the problem?

   — Marvin 

2. clasqm: What do we tell kids today if they want to tinker? "Learn C++, and the Gnome API, and the APIs of a dozen Gnome dependencies, and all the make switches". Some will manage to do that. Most will not. The bar for starting to tinker is just set too high.

   I can't speak for everyone, but I never did that. My first big satisfying hacky moment was realizing that I could use Perl to solve the NPR Puzzler–it wasn't so much about making the machine do something it wasn't designed to do, as understanding that the machine was completely open-ended, that the possibilities were limited only by what I could express in code.

   I suppose that's lost with something like the iPad.

   Laroquod: But it's also those who tinker the most with our *culture* who are being asked to take a hike. This is a crucial distinction for democracy.

   Are you certain? Apple doesn't censor what you write with Pages or record with iMovie. I'm not downplaying the significance of Apple moving to a walled-garden model, but writing apps for the App Store is hardly exactly the easiest or most popular way to promulgate one's views.

   — grendelkhan 

3. Laroquod: Why should these people be ghettoised in old media? Do you really have no problem with this?

   This is pretty weak tea. Look, I agree that the iPad is a terrible tool for tinkers, a terrible tool for coders and a terrible tool for anyone who knows what the hell root is. That doesn't translate into cultural control. The set of people who care about coding and the set of people who care about expressing themselves culturally has a pretty damned small intersection on which to hang your thesis that Apple is destroying free culture.

   — grendelkhan 

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© 2001–present Mark Pilgrim

Original Page: http://diveintomark.org/archives/2010/01/29/tinkerers-sunset

Shared from Read It Later

The end of tinkering

This is a fascinating article on the iPad and tinkering.

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2010/01/29/tinkerers-sunset

Halloween and Disc Club

So you probably knew this, but Monday was Halloween. Me and Jackson were both the hat guy from xkcd, and almost (almost!) no one knew who we were. There was one, but I'll get to it in about a paragraph.
So me and Jackson went with two of his friends from school; one was a computer and the other was Sherlock Holmes. We went all over, then came back to me and Jackson's street. We went to my house and trolled my mom - we asked for candy, but when we all had some, I led the way in, and without saying anything, we went all around the house. When we came out, we just said 'Thanks!' and it was hilarious. Then, we went to Greta's house, because I thought that Scott or Colleen would answer the door and we could troll and play a hilarious joke, but instead Greta's grandmother answered the door, but we didn't realize that something had gone awfully horribly terribly wrong because I was the only one who knew who she was, but I was turned away from the door. Awkward...
Anyway, then we met Greta, Genevieve, Avery and Sophie (like 5 seconds later) and they said that there was a flash mob on 17th, so we went there, but it was already done. But, on the way there we stopped at this house on the end of our block AND THEY KNEW WHAT XKCD WAS AND IT WAS SO AWESOME and it basically made up for everyone else who didn't know what it was.
Also, Wednesday was the last Disc Club day. It was awesome, we went to Coldstone and then came back and played Freestyle Ultimate (which is Ulitmate but with Freestyle throws and catches - mostly catches). Also Wednesday was the open house at SCDS, which I wanted to go to, but always figured would be "later".
Last but not least, there's a new Humble Bundle called the Humble Voxatron Debut, and it's awesome (as usual).

CALCULATOR IS STABLE

YEAAAAAHHHHHHH! MY CALCULATOR IS NOW MARKED AS STABLE WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

(Second) best troll ever

This is the (second) best troll ever: link

I Love Top Pot! (right now)

So today I went to the essay writing workshop after school in Brian's room, and then my mom picked Greta and me up for carpool.
And then we were talking about stuff and mom's like, "Hey, do either of you want to go to Top Pot Doughnuts?" So we're like, "Uh, Ok..." and then we went and got doughnuts and it was really awesome!
Yay for spontaneous decisions!

Rock climbing

I went rock climbing today! As in, real outdoor rocks!
I got all the way to the top and then managed to lean back and get lowered most of the way, which was also awesome! Plus, then when we got back to SCDS, we stayed on the Greencourt and talked a little and played a little, which was really good too ;)
And then I went to this high school thing, and then I asked Maria for a little bit of advice and ended up getting a lot of advice from like 5 people. :)

Some interesting figures (and bananas)

Here are some interesting figures I just noticed on my dashboard:
First, on October 19th (I think) pageviews spiked to 16 views. And now it sounds like I get like no visitors (because if that's a spike the normal amount must be really low) which is pretty much true.
Second, my top amount of traffic is from plus.google.com - Google+. I wonder how why that happened, maybe I appear in Sparks. I have no way of testing this out since Google+ won't let me use it because of my age. My second amount of traffic is from zebbc.blogspot.com, Zeb's blog - this isn't that much of a surprise since my blog is listed in the sidebar of all pages (thanks again Zeb!). But the third, adf.ly, is really puzzling. I have no idea how I'm getting traffic from there.
On another note, I ate a banana a little while ago and it was good.
Also, I played Frozen Synapse today and it is AWESOME! I bought the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle on Friday (I think), so I got Frozen Synapse for only $6. And since $6 is over the average I also got the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle, which is also super awesome. Plus, I get soundtracks for a lot of the games, plus copies of TRAUMA and SpaceChem, and a prototype of Jack Claw and a Splot preorder! (The last two are part of the Frozenbyte Bundle, I'm not sure about the first two)

I has a photo!

Stuff. I used a tired word.

I haven't blogged in a while, so I have to say a couple of things.
First, I went to Disc Club yesterday and it was awesome.
Second, I'm sad. For no apparent reason.
Third, my calculator now has a shiny new readme file (as of about two days ago)

Fourth, I tried to install Windows 8 in a VirtualBox a couple of days ago but failed a couple of times, then gave up.
Wow, I keep wanting to write that I have more stuff to say but I forgot, but I keep remembering all the stuff I wanted to write about. Anyway...
Fifth, I read and finished reading Behind the Bikeshed in a day (on Sunday), which was cool. In case you didn't know or didn't feel like visiting it, it's stuff from Mozilla designers, like mockups and interesting videos (which may or may not apply to application dev).

I think there might have been more stuff I wanted to say, but maybe not. I'll stop talking/writing now.
Also, if you're reading this on Buzz, I disconnected this blog a while back, but recently added it again. In case you didn't know, you can also find this at ramblingsfromalex.blogspot.com.

P.S. My birthday was September 3rd and it was AWESOME! Thanks to everyone who came - lol I'm a teen now

Life is good.

Life is good. I feel good about things.
Also science was good today. I'm pretty happy about science right now.

Happy birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!
Your birthday's tomorrow, but we're taking you out to dinner tonight.
WE LOVE YOU!
- Alex

Blogger 4 iPhone/iPod touch!

Yep, Google released a Blogger app, and it's ok. I have a couple of issues though: it doesn't work in landscape, which makes it hard to type, and editing existing posts is weird.
Now, this is the first release, so I'll excuse the issues, but one would expect Google to fix them in the future.
For now, I may stick with Mail-to-Blogger just for the landscape editing.

The game / Tweet tweet, privacy issues!

Well, the time has come. It's school time and the no talking game is over.
My personal score was: 0. It's hard! If anyone got more than 0, you should totally tell me, on Facebook, Twitter, Buzz or in the comments. Which brings me nicely to my next topic...
I got a Facebook and a Twitter! Also, when I linked those accounts to my OpenFeint account, it friended everyone who I was following or friends I had with Feint accounts. Which apparently included Notch! I think I'm now one of his 4 or 5 friends on there. Honestly, I don't know why he doesn't get mobbed on there.

Philosophy

No, this isn't me finally posting on the subject of philosophy.
I just forgot to say that I have a new philosophy in life, Which is: I am a great person, no matter what anyone says.
:)

Annika's here!

Ok Annika told me I should blog about her being here in her own house. And before you say 'what were you doing in Annika's house', I'm at a carpool party. With Will and Kiki and Annika. And earlier Anna and Ellie were here but they left.

Block Party!

We had a block party last night! It was pretty cool - there was lots of nice food and friends to hang out with. But my toe injury from Canada got reopened - I don't know if I blogged about that but I was riding the two-person bike in Canada and my toe dragged along the cement. It hurt a lot a lot a lot. :(
But aside from that, it was really cool!
Also now I'm really into the song Lighters by Bad Meets Evil.

Python!

First read this comic.
Then know: maybe a minute ago, I literally typed import antigravity into the Python interpreter. It's hilarious that, as an easter egg, it actually works. :D

I'm back.

So I got back in Seattle a couple of days ago. Maybe I'll blog about stuff I did since then, maybe not.
That's all I'm going to say now because I'm in a terrible mood and don't feel like blogging anymore.

I need to vent.

I need to vent. BAD.
What happened was, Tucker (my cousin) had some peanut butter cups. And earlier today, right after Will, Ben and Sam (more cousins) got back from hockey camp, Tucker checked his candy and saw that he had three left. When he checked them later, they were gone. Who cares, right? It's just stupid candy.
Well, Uncle Tom (Robby, Will, Ben and Sam's dad) drilled everyone and no one confessed. So guess what? That means that some blockhead was lying. And that means that all the adults are steamed, and all the kids are either steamed or super upset or both, because if he or she doesn't confess by tomorrow, the Besches - except for Tucker, Avery (Tucker's sister), and Clipper (their dad) - are leaving tomorrow night. That's 8 kids who won't get to spend the rest of their last week here, which they should be able to do and were supposed to do, because one STUPID person won't admit that they stole three STUPID peanut butter cups.
We did everything. First we stressed that no one was going to be mad. We named reasons why it was better to say it now rather than later. Finally, we had everyone go into separate rooms so the person could confess privately and no one would know who it was. Still nothing.
This isn't fair. It's not fair to punish everyone to get back at one stupid kid who just couldn't bring themselves to say they stole some peanut butter cups.

Crazy stuff in Canada

Hey guys, sorry I haven't been blogging that much. I've been in Canada the whole time and haven't found much time to get on here but I'm finally getting around to it.
So far, I have:

• Cut myself on a zebra mussel (ow)
• Gone fishing and not caught anything
• Jumped off the Rideau Ferry Bridge - about 30 feet - three times, once a day ago and twice in a row the day before that:





Us getting ready to jump off

• 

  Getting ready to jump off. Soooo epic...

  

  When Will got up to the surface of the water he told Erin she was a baby and a wimp. She only jumped off when she found out that Dad was recording the whole thing on video.

   
• Jumped off the boathouse roof (~15 feet) numerous times
• Been to the drive-in and saw Harry Potter 7 Pt. 2 for the second time
• Slept... a lot
• Had sword fights with my cousins (and lost... I was better last year)

My first addon!

I wrote my first Firefox addon! If you have Firefox, you can install it from here. Plus, it's a restartless addon, which means that you don't have to restart Firefox before it's installed. Yay! :D
Don't worry about it saying that it hasn't been reviewed by Mozilla. It's currently in the queue for preliminary review, and the notice should change soon.
Check it out!

// This is an active module of the strugee Add-on
exports.main = function() {
    require("widget").Widget({
        id: "widgetID1",
        label: "My Mozilla Widget",
        contentURL: "http://www.mozilla.org/favicon.ico",
        onClick: function(event) {
            require("tabs").open("http://www.mozilla.org");
        }
    });
};

:(

We're leaving for Canada now. Actually I'm writing this in the airport at about 2:23 Michigan time, and we're probably boarding in about 15 minutes (even though the boarding passes say we were supposed to board 10 minutes ago), because the flight before us hasn't even left the gate (it still says Grand Rapids - where we came from - on the little gate status thingy). I miss Charlotte. And Mom. :(
But I'm excited for Canada. :)
But I miss - you know what, shut up, me. :( ;

:( 2

Also I forgot to mention in the last post that there's a wifi access point called Free Public WiFi but if you connect to it it's not connected to the Internet. Fail.

I have a lot to blog about

Yeah. Let's start. This might be really boring so don't read it all if it is :D
Last night Mom and I went down to the beach and looked at the stars. We saw the Big Dipper and we thought we saw Venus. Then Dad came down and he said that this band going across the sky probably wasn't clouds, it was probably the Milky Way. Also he said that what we thought was Venus was probably Mars, which Mom decided was probably right.
But before Dad came down Mom and I saw a shooting star! Mom actually saw two but I only saw the first one.
Today is our last day here in Michigan. Tomorrow Dad, Sushila and I are leaving for Canada, where we'll see a bunch of our cousins, which is pretty cool. But we'll miss Mom and Charlotte.
Sushila down to the beach with the dog and I followed soon after. Then Sushila splashed me (even though I didn't want to be splashed) and all the sunscreen of one arm came off so I had to go back up. Then when I went back down I had lunch (a sandwich) with me, on a paper plate. I got all the way down the hill and onto the sand and I had to go over like one or two more dune(s) but then my sandwich fell. So I went back up again with this pile of sandy sandwich parts and did some stuff and went back down again with another half a sandwich, this time on a PLASTIC plate, only THAT fell, too. (I actually ended up just eating that and not eating the sandy part)
The water was really nice though and I basically spent most of my day in it :)
Then we went up to call the Bhiels (I dunno if I'm spelling that right that's what Mom said), who apparently have a cottage here too, and to go to this soft serve place called the Whippy Dip, only we couldn't reach them so we just had dinner, which was burritos, instead. And then I sat down with my iPod to write this post! :D
I (think I) had a good day today

Harry Potter @ amc Theatres

When I blogged about seeing the Harry Potter movie, I forgot to mention that there was a leak in the theater. We could hear it dripping.
Only here's the thing: when Voldemort pointed his wand (at Hogwarts I think) and there was a really loud noise (an explosion I think), _the ceiling of the theater caved in_. When the movie was over we all went to see the corner, where there was this rubble stuff that was the ceiling :D
Also while I'm on the topic of weather, we had really WEIRD weather that day. There was almost continuous lightning, and it was absolutely POURING. (Kinda reminds you of Seattle, eh? Wow that sounded weird)
Anyway... Mom's making us get outside, which will probably be good. So I guess I don't have time to blog anymore, at least for now.
Wait, what do I mean, _I guess_? Although I suppose that since I have time to write this, it might be justified... I should probably go and post this now.

KRADDY! 2

Recently I've been listening to a lot of Kraddy (again).
I just want to state that the Labyrinth - EP album is basically pure awesome mixed in with some total beastage.
Actually I only have Mono and No Comply... :( (my iPod won't download the other ones, mostly because of the Internet connection)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Pt. 2

After this line, I'm going to write about the movie. The reason I'm saying this is because I'll be writing it when the movie ends, which would be a little after 11. So I might not be very fluid with my language.
-----
OMIGODOMIGODOMIGODOMIGOD! That was seriously (one of) the best movie(s) ever (it was just as good - if not better - as Inception) and now I can't believe it's over. Plus it went way too fast... :(
But I'm looking forward to The Hunger Games too
And also Sherlock Holmes 2
And possibly some other stuff that I can't remember at the moment
Ok I'm going to post this now

Clarifications and explanations

First of all I just want to clarify that the image I posted with the Mozilla logo in the star, and which said 'hack' in a really cool font, does NOT mean hacking in the sense of breaking into computers.
It means hacking in the sense of messing around with your favorite programming language, submitting patches to a program, our downloading source code. This Wikipedia article may help to clarify.
Secondly, I want to comment on the name of this blog. Since I didn't really create it with any specific purpose in mind, I kind of categorized it as 'ramblings'. And because this is a personal blog, I came up with 'ramblings from me'. The final part, '(who knows really)' (plus the ?) came from an idea that this blog post touches upon (although that particular post was not the inspiration for it) - the idea that we, as humans, have no way of knowing if we are really ourselves. Thus, "ramblings from me? (who knows really)".

:)

A word on the internet. And a birthday!

This was written yesterday but not published until today due to Internet issues. Old news, huh?
So for those of you who don't know, we get internet through the cell network here in Michigan. Which means that it's subject to the weather and just luck and it's sometimes über slow.
Also: I finally got around to sending the link to my birthday list to my relatives. I put it on Google Docs this year and I think it will have a lot of advantages. Yay!

I got a Blogger app! Again!

So I just downloaded a Blogger app for the tablet and now it'll be easier for me to blog from here, especially with the stupid Internet connection. Yay!
Edit: I forgot to say that I wrote this post on the tablet, in the car. :D

Ugh... + Bleh... = Day

 This post was written last Monday (5 days ago) but never got posted due to Internet issues.

So I'm writing this in the car in Michigan and it's like 10:29 here. So like 7:29 in Seattle. And I'm actually surprised how good I feel because usually I get sick when I read in the car.
Actually I don't feel that good to begin with, since I was flying all day and flying makes me sick to my stomach, which sucks. As I said to Dad on the plane: "I don't want to go to Michigan. I want to be there already".
Also it's possible I left my iPod touch in the plane.
BUT we have access to the Internet through Mom's tablet but since the network comes though the cell network and the cell network is kinda bad out here the network could die at any time.
Yesterday I upgraded my Ubuntu installation to 11.04 (LTS - long term support) and I was SO excited because it had this super cool new interface with a dashboard and a global menu bar and a dock thingy. But when I used it the dash doesn't work right - the search is useless cause it can't find anything, and the buttons for find files and more applications and like 2 others that I can't remember don't work. The only buttons that work are the Browse the Web button, the chat client button for Empathy and 2 others I can't remember. The only one I really care about is Firefox, which leaves whatever is in my dock and Firefox as the applications I can launch using the new interface. So while it looks cool, it actually kinda sucks. And when I used the classic interface because I didn't like the new one, a ton of panel items were missing. >:/ !

;

Just in case anyone receives/sees a ; randomly in a message/buzz/chat/whatever, I want to clarify -
It's a ;) that I didn't feel like finishing.

Beach stuff!

Yay! On Monday (or maybe it's Tuesday) I'm going to Michigan!
It's near the beach, close to Stony Lake. It's in the woods with a hill leading down to the beach and it's pretty awesome. I might not be able to blog all that much (well, it won't be anything different if I don't) but I'll try to blog more than I have been recently since there might be more stuff that I actually feel like blogging about.
Oh yeah, Charlotte's coming too and she's really excited 'cause she ADORES the beach. :)

Found it!

I found my hat yesterday. It was in a bag from Great Wolf Lodge, and I'm very happy to have found it.
Yeah, I went to Great Wolf with Jackson, and I was going to blog about it but since it was about a week ago I think I'll just skip it. :)

(edit: This post was written like a week or two ago but never published. So here we go!)

xkcd - Binary Heart

Binary Heart (alt-text: i love you)

So I was a little bored and a little sad recently and I found xkcd #99 (Binary Heart) again. And since I was a little bored and sad I decided to see what the decoded binary looked like. So I translated all the 0s and 1s out of the image into text, which got me this.

011010010110110001101
111011101100110010101
111001010011110111010
101101001011011000100
111101110110011001010
111100101101111011101
010110100101101100011
011110111011001100101
011110010100111101110
101011010010110110001
001111011101100110010
101111001010011110111
010101101001011011000
110111101110110011001
010111100101101111011
101010110100101101100
010011110111011001100
101011110010110111101
110101011010010110110
001001111011101100110
010101111001010011110
111010101101001011011
000100111101110110011

 Then I ran it through a binary translator. Honestly, I thought I was going to have to post this comic:

Dream Girl (alt-text: No matter how elaborately you fool yourself.)

but it actually came out something.

iloveyOuilOveyouiloveyOuilOveyOuiloveyouilOveyouilOveyOuilOv

And I think that's pretty cool. (If you don't get it right away, just read it left to right. You'll see.)

SCORE!

So today for the first time ever I caught the disc in the end zone! It was pretty epic; actually, the reason I hadn't done it before even though I played a whole season is that no one ever throws to me. Yay!

Ultimate!

Yay! I went to an awesome Ultimate camp today! We threw disks (obviously) and did drills and stuff, and then we scrimmaged (is that spelled right?) and then we played Stick. :D

Mail-to-Blogger

That last post was actually the first post I ever made not using blogger.com. I used a thing called Mail-to-Blogger, which I set up recently. So now I can post from my iPod without using blogger.com - which isn't optimized for mobile. :D

Real men don't need shoes

So I just walked down to Jackson's house with no shoes (or socks) and it was pretty awesome. See the title.

iD, Days 4 and 5

So on Thursday, I did some more stuff with my calculator. I think I just added features all day, and played Room War in breaks.
Friday, I put my calculator and another project that I made (to learn classes) on a thumb drive. I worked on it a bit more and added trigonometric functions, although I'm not entirely sure whether those are working or not. Right before the showcase stuff, we played Zombie Invasion in the hall. Then we had pizza for lunch (provided by the camp) and then we had the raffle. See, all week the instructors give out these tickets when you do something good. Then you write your name on your tickets and put them in the raffle for different stuff. I put mine in for some Magic cards but didn't get either of them. When all the parents were there, we had this diploma ceremony thing where we got these iD Diplomas and the instructors talked about our work, and then we had parent showcase. My dad had to leave, but I'm going to show him my program here, at home. Oh yeah, we also got these t-shirts from iD, and mine was waaaaaaay to big. So was Jackson's, but he switched with someone who's shirt was too small. So we showed our parents the programs and stuff. And right before me and Mom and Jackson and Dawn were about to leave (we rode with them) some of the instructors were playing Nyan Cat, and we had a discussion about that.
And then we went home, which was sad because the week was over.

iD, Day 4

So I wrote a post on today but there was an error. Since I'm too lazy to write another one, I'll include what I did today in tomorrow's post. :D

iD, Day 3

So I'm still working on my calculator. Definitely going to be my final project, 'cause I've spent way too much time working on it to abandon it and start a new project. I've spent most of today implementing a new exponent function, which will be able to handle any type of exponent. Then, I'll be able to route the square function to the exponent function without having a separate procedure for squares, and in the future, cubes. This will work well because the exponent function is smart enough to recognize squares and cubes, and will display them as such.
Also, after I'm done with that, I'm thinking of switching to use classes.

iD, Day 2 (Haha)

So I totally forgot to post on my second day at iD! So here it is.
Today we programmed more. I worked on my calculator app a lot, and added support for factorials and squares. I still have to fix some bugs with factorials, and I tried to add a square root function but it didn't work, so the bad code is currently commented out, which means that C++ just ignores it.
We also learned classes, which are really confusing. But it means you can do objects and methods and all sorts of cool stuff. Which is all still really confusing.

My first Mac app!

So I wrote my first actually functional Mac app ever. It doesn't have a GUI and it's unbelievably simple. In fact, it's so short I'll post the source right here.

//
//  main.cpp
//  TestC++
//
//  Created by Alex Jordan on 6/20/11.
//  Copyright 2011 __MyCompanyName__. All rights reserved.
//

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

class words {
public:
    string words[5][10];
};

int main()
{
    int exitinput;
    words words;
    cout << "Hello, World\n";
    cout << "Type a color. \n";
    cin >> words.words[1][1];
    cout << "Type an animal. \n";
    cin >> words.words[2][1];
    cout << "Type another animal. Almost done. \n";
    cin >> words.words[2][2];
    cout << "Type a place name. Last question. \n";
    cin >> words.words[3][1];
    cout << "Okay, let's tell a story. \n";
    cout << "A " << words.words[1][1] << " " << words.words[2][1] << " chased a " << words.words[2][2] << " around " << words.words[3][1] << ". \n";
    cout << "To close this program, type anything and hit enter.\n";
    cin >> exitinput;
    return 0;
}

 And it runs just fine.

iD, Day 1

I'm writing this during free time at iD. It's pretty awesome, we could either choose C++ or Java to learn to program. Jackson and I chose C++, which was OK but then the instructor didn't really have time to teach us much. Now, though, it's ok and I've programmed a brilliant console application:

Foreground: C++ console application. Background: Source code for said application.

So it's pretty cool. I'm going to work on it some more now. I might post the source later, depending on my whims :D

Stay Tuned...

I don't have much time but I'm going to post a little later today during break. Stay tuned...

YAY!

Yay! Two things:
1. I'm going to Jackson's house! (actually I just arrived (actually actually now it's evening, but I went earlier and it was really epic))
2. Tomorrow I'm going to an iD Tech Camp! To learn C++! internaldrive.com
Also, HAPPY FATHER'S DAY, DAD(s)!!! I made my dad a mug with my sister and we're going to fire it and it's going to be one of the best presents ever.

Aw, beast!

I just found out that I'm on my friend Zeb's blog list on his blog :D
Yay! I'll have to put his blogs up here, they're zebbc.blogspot.com and startagainphilosophy.blogspot.com.

How to create custom private posts in Buzz

Okay, so you probably already knew that you can create public posts in Buzz, which anyone can see, and you can create private posts from contact groups that only the people in the contact group can see. But did you know you can also make custom private posts that don't fully come from a contact group?
Steps:
1. Create a contact group with nobody in it.
2. When you want to make a custom private post, select this group as the contact group it'll be to.
3. Somewhere inside the post, @reply every person you want included in the post. You can also @reply people to add to a contact group that already has people in it.
4. Post.
For example, recently I wanted to make a private post to my friend Kiki, and no one else. Instead of making a new contact group, I used my 'nobody' contact group, then put @kiki.****@gmail.com (I've obfuscated part of his email) in my post. When I posted, Buzz added him to the post.
Go try it out! It's pretty awesome.

Yogurtland

I just got back from this place called Yogurtland and... oh wait, now that it's the morning it was actually yesterday. But anyway yesterday evening we went to this place called Yogurtland and it was pretty awesome, because you basically got to choose your own frozen yogurt flavors (from what they had available, of course), exactly how much you wanted, exactly what toppings and how much of each you wanted, etc. It was pretty awesome.

Teeth and stuff

Yep, I just got two teeth out at the orthodontist, which I just got back from. :D
The first one, the orthodontist just pulled the tooth out with her fingers, but the second needed Novocaine. So before she did the injection, she did this other numbing thing were she just swabs this blue stuff (I don't know what it was) and I swallowed some by accident and it made my throat numb, which was really weird.

The Game

Okay, so I've been thinking of a game that people can play this summer. It will start as soon as this is published, and will end around the end of summer vacation (I'll post something when it ends to let you know). When it ends, whoever has the most points will win.
Here are the rules.

RULES
1. In order to get points, you have to not talk for a whole day. (It was originally going to be based around weeks but I changed it on the advice of Greta Zorn - thanks for the input, Greta!)
2. This only includes using your vocal chords. You can still talk using the computer (e.g. Google Talk) and you can carry around paper to write your thoughts on. You can also carry something to get someone's attention, like an air horn, and even get someone else to say it for you.
3. Involuntary noises such as sneezing and coughing are allowed. Note that you have to do your best to suppress laughter.
4. If you REALLY have to make an exception you can. A good example of this would be if you had to give a public speech.
Okay, I can't think of any more off the top of my head, so let's move on to scoring.

SCORING
1. For one day you get one point.
2. For a day after another day (two consecutive days) you get the previous day's point value + 1.
3. For the beginning of each consecutive week (7 days in a row, it would be the 8th day) you can add 1 point to the number of points you add to the previous day's point value (except for the first week).
4. Once you miss a day, the number of points you add to the previous day's value is reset to 1. The next day you do it, you'll get one point (which then adds to the total score you had before - the total score does not reset.)
5. This is based on the honor system, so don't cheat please - it ruins it for everyone else.

Scoring example - I don't talk Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday all in a row. Then, I miss Wednesday and talk, then don't talk again on Thursday.
Monday, I get 1 point. Tuesday, I get 2 because Monday's Score (1) + 1 = 2. Wednesday, I get Tuesday's score (2) + 1 = 3. Thursday, I get 4, Friday, I get 5, Saturday, I get 6, Sunday, 7.
Now, I've done it 7 days. Since Monday's the beginning of a new week, I add one to the number of points I get. Therefore, I get Sunday's score + 2 (as opposed to one) = 9 points on Monday. Tuesday, I get Monday's score (9) + 2 = 11. Wednesday, I talk and the points I add to the previous day's score is reset, and I get zero points that day. Note that I don't lose the 11 points I already had. Thursday, I don't talk and get the 11 points I already had + Wednesday's score (0) + 1 = 12.

If you have any questions, post in the comments (people reading this on Buzz, it would be great if you could post questions on the actual blog, ramblingsfromalex.blogspot.com, as well as Buzz, because then other people can see them).

Omigod, school's out. I get to sleep!

So yeah. School's out and as the title says, I finally get to sleep 'cause I've been up all night recently reading Shakespeare and making maps and stuff. Yay! :D

Last (real) day of school

Yeah, it's the last day of school where we actually have classes. I have to go pretty soon but I just wanted to post something quick about it before I walk down to carpool. Tomorrow, it's Park Day or something, and we walk down to Gasworks Park and play there, then go back to school and get dismissed at 11:30 or something because it's a half day. And then it's summer; I'll probably be going to a pool party my grade has every year. Man, that's scary - I'm almost an 8th grader.
Aaaaaaaaaa....

Open Tech Lab!

So it's fourth period and I have Double Tech, which is really awesome, because we get to just screw around on the computer. Which is obviously why I'm writing a blog post instead of working.
The thing is, we're watching old World Tour projects. And mine is unbelievably awful.
We did the World Tour project last year. In this, we basically pretended we were a music group. We worked out a tour with a certain budget, and also produced and edited a music video. However, I wrote the lyrics for my group instead of using a regular song... which equals awful music video.
Oh god... oh god oh god oh god, I'm next...

OMIGODOMIGODOMIGOD (OMG OMG OMG)

OH MY GOD I JUST FINISHED INCEPTION and it was so awesome.
It has got to be one of my favorite movies of all time, ever.

OneRepublic - Good Life

Hello all,
I just wanted to highlight this video because I really like the song! It actually might not play unless it's playing on the actual YouTube site, but you can click the link to watch it there; it's really good. Ready, GO!

No posts?

I just want to say sorry in advance if I don't post for a while. I'm going though a tough time and might not feel the urge to blog all that much. Thanks for your understanding.
- Alex
Edit: this post was actually written before the KRADDY! post but because of the way I had it scheduled it'll be posted presently (well, by the time you read this it will have already been published... duh), so it'll look like it was posted after the KRADDY! post, but in reality it was written right before.

KRADDY!

Omigod, there's this new artist that I found and he's called Kraddy. I have the Labyrinth album and have been listening to it all afternoon today! That's almost 8 hours straight (although I actually had about 15 minutes in between). Go! Look him up on iTunes!

Hey, subscribe!

You guys need to follow my blog! Well, only if you want to, but, you know, FOLLOW IT! It shows on the right and makes me look popular :)
Hey, that was short. I never posted any blog posts before because I never really had anything I thought should go on here, but now I'm finding it easier to blog. Yay!
I think since I also have a Buzz, I felt like I should post all my short stuff there and only post really long posts here. Interesting; luckily, I have corrected myself and am now including short posts in whatever I think should go on this blog. Yay for me! (I'm a narcissist! Well, sorta.)

Okay, secret's out

In case you haven't already figured it out, the post with all the 1s and 0s was written in binary. Just run it through a binary translator to read it; there's a nice one available here. I used that site to translate the post.

I got a Blogger app!

Yup, I made it myself and actually, any one of you can do it! In fact, it works for any web application, like Gmail (got an app for that), or Google Docs, Google Calender - you can tell I really like Google - Google Wave, Grooveshark... etc. (got an app for all of those actually; I just listed off most of the apps I've already made.)
Instructions for making your own Blogger app -
1. Download and install Prism at prism.mozillalabs.com
2. Download a suitable logo image for the web app - the one I used can be found below. It would preferably be of high resolution. If you don't know what this means, just make sure that it looks ok and is reasonably big (at least as big as the icon will display in the final application, like on your Windows Task Bar or your Dock.)
3. Open up Prism (whether you got the stand-alone version or the Firefox extension)
4. For the URL, type the web address of the web app. In this case, it's blogger.com (or www.blogger.com, if you prefer)
5. Type the name of your application. You can call it anything you want, but in this case it would probably be Blogger.
6. Select whether you want the navigation bar to be displayed. If you select this, a bar will display at the top of your window with the URL, which you cannot change, a refresh button, a home button, and back and forward buttons. The home button will take you to the URL that you specified in step 4.
7. Select whether you want to display status messages and progress. If you select this, a bar will display at the bottom of the window showing status messages on loading the web page and a progress bar on loading the page. It will also display a little gear, which will let you modify preferences (note that the only thing that the preferences let you do is modify the default font and color and proxy settings - if you don't get that, don't worry about it). The gear will also allow you to print, do a page setup (for printing I think), show the Error Console, and manage extensions and extension preferences. Personally, I don't really care about any of that except the extensions, but it's your choice. Any extension icons that would normally display in the Status/Addon bar of Firefox will display next to the gear.
8. Select if you want navigation keys enabled. Personally, I always check this because I figure, "why not?"
9. Select where you want the final application to be placed. If you like, you can move it later.
10. Almost done. Last, because the favicon that Prism retrieves from the web is probably crappy quality, select Settings... on the right of the image at the bottom and click Choose image...
11. Navigate to the picture you downloaded in Step 2. Select OK, then OK again.
Congrats! You're done!
One last thing worth noting. Since Prism isn't well known, some websites won't recognize it. This can lead to them thinking that you're using a browser that isn't compatible or up-to-date enough, and maybe even them not letting you use the site. For example, wave.google.com in a Prism app will tell you that your browser isn't supported by it. If it gives you a way to try it anyway (Google Wave gives a link for this) you might as well see if it works, chances are that it will. Good luck!

Blogger Logo - make sure to get the full-sized version, not just the small one here. I think you can click on it to do this.

A post to say "Thank you"

Hey guys -
I was thinking and I really want to say thank you. I want to say thank you to everyone in my life for being there, I guess. 
For the SCDS people - I've known some of you for around seven years, and that's a long time. Some of you for not quite so long, but still time enough to know you guys and really like being around everyone. You're wonderful people. Thank you.
For Jackson - I've known you forever (or at least pretty close to it) and we've had some of the best times ever. Thank you for years and years of programming talk, LEGOs, forts, pillow fights and walks down the street. Thank you.
For my parents - I guess - thanks for the house. And the food and bed and stuff. And for being there.
To carpool - now I know that I've already mentioned the people in carpool, but they especially deserve to be mentioned again. These people are there, each morning and each afternoon, they're some of the best people ever (not that I'm trying say that other people aren't) and I honestly cannot imagine a time where I didn't meet them every morning to go to school. Thank you for what seems a lifetime of laughs, inside jokes, music, talk, and fun.
You guys are great to be around, and I get to be around you almost every day. And for that - thank you. Always.

(Binary) - 01000010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01000010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001

01001000 01100101 01111001 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101100 00101100 00001101 00001010 01010100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001 00100001 00100000 01001000 01101111 01110000 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101100 01101001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100001 00001101 00001010 01001101 01111001 00100000 01100110 01110010 01101001 01100101 01101110 01100100 00100000 01001010 01100001 01100011 01101011 01110011 01101111 01101110 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101101 01100101 00100000 01101111 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110100 01101111 01100100 01100001 01111001 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110111 01100101 00100000 01110111 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01100010 01101111 01110010 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110000 01100101 01101111 01110000 01101100 01100101 00100000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100100 01101001 01101110 01101110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110100 01100001 01100010 01101100 01100101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01110000 01110010 01101111 01100111 01110010 01100001 01101101 01101101 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01100001 01101100 01101011 00101110 00100000 01010011 01110101 01110011 01101000 01101001 01101100 01100001 00100000 00101000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01110011 01101001 01110011 01110100 01100101 01110010 00101001 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01101101 01100101 01101110 01110100 01100101 01100100 00100000 01100001 01100010 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101000 01101111 01110111 00100000 01100010 01101111 01110010 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01110111 01100001 01110011 00101100 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110111 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 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Cancer

Hey all, sorry I haven't been posting a lot. I just wanted to share the following status that's been popping up again recently.

♫ Every person has 1000 wishes. A cancer patient only has one: to get better. I know that 97% will not post this as their status, but I know that my friends will be one of 3% and put this as their status, at least for an hour, in honor of those with cancer.

I really encourage you guys to repost this. I know/knew a couple of people who had/have cancer - they shall remain unnamed - and it's really unfair that they got it. Thanks for your support to any patients that may see this status.
Pretty soon, I'll be posting some music I made in GarageBand. Coming soon! (actually, knowing me, coming... well... not particularly soon)

Another Internet warbler warbling about Easter

Happy Easter!
I hope you guys are having/have had a great day!
Today was the day that Jesus is supposed to have risen from the grave (I think). So to all you religious people out there, double happy face for you guys.
Anyway, I just wanted to say happy Easter!
Bye for now,
Alex

Blogger, only like Percy Jackson

Okay, confession time. (yeah, that's from Percy Jackson. I'm reading them again - out of order). I've totally been a lazy bum on my blog, and on Computer Dictionary. But good news - I'm probably back in the blogosphere. If you're named Zeb, that's an xkcd reference. So, um, just wanted to let you all know that.
Firefox 4 came out recently, which is really exciting. I basically fell in love with it as soon as I found out, which was back when it was still in mockups. I was SO excited, actually, that I did some research (poking around if you like) and concluded that the only way to get it and try it was to get a nightly. As it was still in mockups, there actually was no alpha version. Now, you techy people know that alpha versions are like the very earliest software, right? Before betas and stuff. They're even more dangerous that betas, which tend to be fairly stable, but inherently risky - especially if you're dealing with something like an operating system - and they (alphas) tend to be buggy, weird and often enough not polished software. Well, you would be wrong.
A nightly is often known as bleeding edge code, bleeding edge software or bleeding edge builds. No actual blood, I promise, just as long as the software doesnt have blood in it. Oh, nevermind. This is getting disgusting. Anyway, a nightly is a version of the software that's generally built every night, usually by a script, then published, hence the name. It goes through absolutely no Quality Assurance, and isn't even guaranteed to run. Oh yeah. To represent this status, Mozilla brands the Firefox nightlies (nightlies.mozilla.org) as "Minefield". Isn't that nice.
I followed Firefox 4 for a long time, and I must say it's brilliant. Mozilla has really outdone themselves. Get it at mozilla.com - it's uber awesome. Go on!
- Alex

So what is a computer anyway? - 2ndgen

Hello, and welcome to 2ndgen! This is article 1, so happy cut-the-red-ribbon day? I don't know. Something like that! Anyway, let's move on to the post!

So. We know there are these things called computers. Exactly what are they anyway?

Well, to start, you're using one.

Computers are really complex machines. Instead of using gears or something, they use wires and electrical impulses. At the lowest level, they're zeroz and ones. Binary. Zero represents no impulse, and one represents an impulse. But we're not going to get into that stuff - we're more interested in what that means for us. You can think of a computer as a really fancy extensible calculator. Only one that can do a lot more than process numbers.

Computers are a collection of hardware (computer chips), and software.

2ndgen!

Hello again, everyone! I would ask how you are, but this is digital and we're not actually talking. So... To get to the point.
I'm going to do a little thing on this blog that I've dubbed "2ndgen". It's pronounced a lot like it sounds - second jen. It comes from the phrase "next generation", meaning the generation of technoloy. 2nd replaces next, because it's, I don't know, similar. Genererion is then shortened to gen.
In this series I'll be outlining a bunch of computer stuff in layman terms. We'll advance sequentially, building on what we've learned before. It should be fun.
Expect my frat 2ndgen post soon, called, "What is a computer anyway?"
We will be addressing mobile devices, although not in detail. This is because I actually know a lot more about desktops, so I'm not in a good position to be teaching about mobile devices. Another setback is there is such a variety of hardware and software, and you've got tablets in there too. The structure will basically be that we're going to totally ignore mobile devices, so you could read through the whole thing without sparing a whit of thought for them, but then we'll have little bits that add relavent info to the post that relates.

Hello, World!

Well, as you can probably tell I got a blog. I'll be posting on this from time to time on different subjects and stuff happening in my life. As you can see, I've borrowed the programmer's tradition of Hello World. For those of you not familiar with this, the tradition says that whenever you learn a new programming language, the first program ever that you write in that language is just one that says 'Hello World', 'Hello, World!' or 'Hello World!' or some variation. It doesn't matter if it's in a terminal, it's just text in an interface, or if it's being dynamically rendered (for you non-tech oriented people, you don't need to know what any of this means. Just know that they all will make Hello World appear on the screen, just in different ways), it's all good. This isn't exactly a programming language - actually it most definitely isn't. But since I like programming I figure I'll do it anyway.
So anyway, things that might go on here:

• Stuff happening in my life. This is probably a given, but who knows.
• Technology stuff. This will include new languages, new technologies such as HTML5, interesting software like Firefox 4, and all sorts of other stuff.
• I know this will sound weird, but maybe a bit of philosophy. It's quite an interesting field.
• Poetry. I write a lot of it and may put some on here.
• Other stuff. If there's something I've missed, I'll probably post an entry on it and go from there.

Thanks for reading.

And for my final thing, I have two words to say. This is my...

FIRST P0ST!