I thought it worthy of mention that the best band ever (IMHO), Pink Floyd, currently has their latest release "Echoes" available for listen on their website. Echoes, in addition to being a 25-minute song on the album Meddle, is their latest "best of" album. It's got most of my favorites on it, even the title song (bands don't usually put 25-minute songs on their "best of" albums, but then they also don't usually put the entire contents of said album up on their website in high-quality stream for anyone to listen to). So, if you've never heard Pink Floyd, go there, and give a listen to some of their stuff (70's stuff is best). Not that I would listen to Pink Floyd at work (association), it's nice to have the option.

You know who would be a great character for a porno flick? The invisible man. All the advantages to having a man in the porno, with none of the drawbacks (so long as he doesn't make any noise). Of course, without an actual invisible man, this would be quite the undertaking. If the CG porn industry ever takes off, this won't be far behind. I've seen some CG porn, but it's got a long way to go. Of course, they can do anything they want with hentai anime, and I still haven't seen any angel kitty girls. Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places.

I don't know how many Linux distributions there are, but there's always much debate about which one's the best one. Well, really, none of them are the best one. Yet, they all wonder why none of them can really get a foot in the home desktop arena. They often blame compatability and Microsoft's incredible mafia... I mean marketing tactics, with their monopoly and all, but that's only a little bit of the problem.

The real problem with Linux is the documentation. I've read less cryptic things in ancient crypts. It's not unusual to find a sentence that makes absolutely no sense no matter how you look at it. With an almost complete lack of examples, you can't even try to comprehend what the hell they're talking about.

Now, true, some of the documentation is good. Yeah, if you can find it. Where do you start looking? You need a guide to the guides, and a guide to that guide. You can't just execute a program and expect it tell you where to look for help. In Windows and MacOS, programs generally have a "Help" option. Linux programs generally don't. So, how are you supposed to learn how to use this program? Guess. No, really, that's how, you have to guess.

I've got this program I need to play DVDs in Linux. Now, I can get the DVDs to play, but I can't operate the menus, because it's all keyboard-command based, and you can't find anything on what those keyboard commands are.

Now here's the part where I'm supposed to say "And that's why Windows/MacOS is better". Well, they're not. Linux is great if you already know how to use it. The problem is getting to that point, in which case Windows/MacOS have Linux beat to a bloody pulp. All the distributions are concentrating on making it easier to install. Well, fuck, a monkey can install it, but if a rocket scientist can't get it to work, what's the fucking point?

If you want to make a successful distribution, don't use the crappy documentation that's just been modified from its original version written in the 70's. Write new documentation. Then test it out with monkeys. Barring monkeys, people of equivalent intelligence. They're easy to find. You see them driving cars with cell phones help up to their head all the time.

Eat my two cents.

Many years ago I came up with an idea for a program that would generate every image possible. I figured it was possible with modern computers, however long it may take to run the program completely. It took about a year to come up with the first prototype, which failed only due to the memory restrictions of the time and my lack of programming knowledge (I coudn't break out of that 640k thing, and I needed a little over a 1M).

A couple years later I realised that with more modern resources, I didn't need to worry about that memory restriction, and attempted the program again. Unfortunately, I had lost the code it took me a year to figure out (was very short, too). I still can't figure out how it worked. However, I came upon better alternatives that allowed a function I would have desperately wanted with the old version. That method was to run a decimal loop and do a base conversion of that decimal number to make a string of smaller numbers that would represent color values for their respective pixel. Then I stumbled upon a new problem.

There were actually two problems, but the second is because of the first. The second problem, I'll tell you, was that I didn't know how to do a base conversion down (from base 10 to base 2) in a single equation. That wouldn't be a problem if not for the first problem. For a 2-color 10x10 square, the decimal value I'd be working with is 633,825,300,114,114,700,748,351,602,688. That's quite a large loop, and I was hoping for a little larger of an area to work with. Also, more colors would be nice. But even increasing it to a 11x10 area increases the number to approximately 649,037,107,316,853,453,566,312,041,150,000. To put it bluntly, that's hella big.

Some people have asked me why I want to do this. These are, of course, the same people who asked why we wanted to go the moon. And yet they all went to see Titanic, when they knew damn well the ship was going to sink (and the rest of the movie was overly predictable as well). You should all know the answer.

To reiterate on that last post, that kind of thing is normal for me. Last night, even, I get tired around midnight, which usually doesn't happen. So, I decide to go to bed. Being an insomniac, being sleepy is an opportunity. Three abnormal things happen. First, I can't find my sleepwear. Second, my computer doesn't shut off automatically on shutdown like it normally does, forcing me to get back out of bed and manually shut it off (hold down power for four seconds). Then I get back into bed. About 30 seconds later, the third thing happens. My computer powers back on. Now that's never happened before. Not once in my life has my computer ever powered itself on. Now, after the first two, I could have managed to fall asleep in good time, but that third thing finished the job of rekindling my awakedness (not a real word, but since there is no real word meaning that...). And thus, I repeated my lament.

While today would have been the perfect opportunity to get a lot of stuff done I've been meaning to do, I ended up walking around half-asleep all day. Last night I couldn't fall asleep until after 5:00am. Then, to my wonder, at 7:30am, I hear Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" playing. Of course it woke me up. It kept on playing, too. So I go into my father's study and turn his speakers down, what him not being there and all. As he walks toward the room, he looks at me and says "What?". I didn't even have words. It was 7:30 in the fucking morning, and I had to get up in less than two hours. Getting out of bed after being woken up by what at least is good music, was not exactly what I wanted to do after having slept about two hours. Less than four hours of sleep is bad enough as it is. I swear, if I wasn't a pacifist...

I'm pretty sure I've got terrible luck. I've been doing this experiment lately, just to make sure. I randomly pick one of the three lanes on Route 66 to drive to work. I stay in that lane and observe the entire process down. I've noticed that about 95% of the time, I'm in the slowest lane. There's also other things I've noticed, but i won't go into it, as that's really the only controlled experiment I've done.

It also seems like any time something good happens to me, something horrible is just waiting for me. Like this one night, night before Christmas Eve, when I found a game my brother wanted that was sold out everywhere, and got it even for a reduced price. Next day I get a call from the police, telling me I was involved in a hit and run. I did no such thing. The car was parked, so I didn't get prosecuted, but my parents' had to pay for it (I was a minor at the time).

Usually I get sick on my birthday. I'm not sure why, but it always happens. Last year I didn't get sick. I was amazed. I thought my luck had finally taken a turn for the better. My birthday is September 8. Guess.

As software prices rise, and licensing becomes increasingly difficult, more people will turn to piracy. It used to be easier to go to the store, buy, and install new software. Now you pracitically need a lawyer to buy anything that's not a game.

Then you look at piracy. No licensing agreements selling your soul to auditers. No lengthy installs involving serial numbers you have to read in cryptic numbers off the back (cracks take care of that). No time on the phone with licensing problems. And best of all, no money. Yeah, pirated software is free. It's just not legal.

We're living in a criminal society. People drive 5-10 over the speed limit because it's faster, and cops don't pull them over because everyone is doing it. People buy and sell stuff to each other under the table all the time (income tax evasion). There's many other little things such as that. Think back. When's the last time you committed a crime? Okay, other than speeding. It was probably stealing, whether you thought of it that way or not. No? You know, it's piracy if you use that 30-day trial after the 30 days are up.

Piracy doesn't feel like stealing. It doens't leave you with a guilty conscience. The FBI won't be knocking down your door (unless you distribute widely and advertise yourself in .nfo files). Most importantly, you don't have to deal with all the copy-protection in the non-cracked version. Nothing pisses me off like having to crack software I actually bought.

What do you want out of life? Maybe you're on your way to being something. Look ahead 10-20 years. Do you see yourself where you ultimately want to be in life?

Okay, so you're going to college. You're majoring in something. That major will supposedly help you achieve the career you supposedly desire. Once you have that career, what then?

Is the married life for you? Are you happy and fulfilled with your well-paying job, home in the suburbs, wife and kids? Is this what life has been leading you to?

Or have you been leading life somewhere?