Everything Great is *Nixbased

Lately I have been thinking about the things my father never taught me and I had to figure out on my own. In light of this I decided to write a list of 10 things I will be teaching my son.

Lesson #1

You can tell me anything and come to me with your problems anytime. I maybe strict sometimes and you will disagree with me but I am there for you, even at 3 o’clock in the morning when you need a ride home drunk or when someone’s going to kill you. Remember your old Dad has walked in those shoes and lived to tell about it.

Lesson #2

When someone tells you that you aren’t capable of doing something in life they are just jealous that you have goals. It is a perfect chance to prove to yourself that you CAN do it.

Lesson #3

You NEED to finish school, if you don’t you will regret it, even if here in reality the degree isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. The experience is worth it and a University degree does open doors that are otherwise tough to get open. Don’t believe everything the teacher tells you but know that the classroom is not the place to correct them. You will earn more respect and avoid the possibility of threatening their social value by approaching them when others are not listening.

Lesson #4

In general people do not do as much as they need to do, they are lazy. People do enough so that they don’t get fired and employers pay just enough that they won’t quit. Be the best, you don’t want to follow the leader and be like everyone else, not in the style of clothes you wear or the things you do. You are unique so BE unique. We are living in a world where you can be the difference.

Lesson #5

Talk with confidence and use proper English. The confident leader always attracts more people and gets you more in life then being shy and letting others walk all over you. Say please and thank you and always show that you have manners.

Lesson #6

Money isn’t everything. Friends and family are what will make you happy in the long run. Learn to see when others are using you and walk away from the relationship immediately.

Lesson #7

Alcohol and drugs will keep you from your goals and mess up your life. I expect you to experiment but avoid the hard stuff like crack, cocaine and heroin. If you do these drugs I will know and you will learn just how badly I can hurt you.

Lesson #8

You need to exercise and eat right. You will always feel better if you do. Just look at all the obese people on the street and in the fast food chains. McDonalds is NOT food.

Lesson #9

Learn to fix everything you can and always have a thirst for knowledge. It will come in handy when you’re down on your luck.

Lesson #10

The world is a big place. Travel to as many places as you can. Learn the native culture and languages. Take a cooking class while your there or learn something that is specific to that location. You will then be able to better understand and interact with all people.

Lately life has really kicked it into high gear. The business is coming together, the projects I volunteer on are buzzing with activity and on the downside the family is dealing with some stress due to some medical issues (not myself). In the midst of all the chaos my better (this can be debated) half has taken on a new pastime. She’s now playing Second Life.

So what is Second Life and why do I feel it is important enough to write about? Second Life is a Online game that simulates a world controlled by the players themselves. You are able to own land, build structures, and make clothes to sell to other players and so on. The world operates on it’s own currency which can be exchanged for real cash. My better half really wants to make a go at trying to get an income out of this game. Others have done it so it is possible and the concept is great but there is a not so pleasant side to all of this.

This “game” is extremely adult oriented. There is everything from sex toys to escort services. Often times as a new player your only choice for income is to become an escort. Lucky for my better half she met some people and bypassed this step. What is rather disturbing to me is not the escort services as I believe people can do whatever they please. It is the fact that some people are taking it a step further and doing web cam shows for the in game currency. From what I have been told some of these players are quite obviously underage.

I’m all for making money on a game via making clothing or avatars (this is currently what the woman in my life is focusing on) but you must not think much of yourself if you are doing live cam shows for what equals about $6 an hour at best. I’m curious if it’s considered prostitution or how that falls into some of the legal systems around the world.

I hope this little venture does work out for her but I sure am glad she has self respect.

It seems to me as we advance in the information age some people seem to loose track of what really matters to most users and consumers of software. We seem to be divided into two separate groups, which contain many subgroups within them. First, we have the group that I truly identify with; this is the group who wants functionality over the graphic appeal of the application. We want products, which perform as advertised and even go beyond our expectations with features that not only work but also provide usefulness in the tasks the software is designed to accomplish. For all intents and purposes we will refer to these people as userphiles.

Second we have those who are more concerned with the aesthetics of an application. These people are more likely to be satisfied when a feature doesn’t work as planned as long as the application is sleek and sexy looking. This group of people will be called glitzers Of course there are those who want both but even these people have a preference for one of the two sides mentioned which can make or break the experience.

The problem is that I often hear both sides lodging complaints at the same time with little to no constructive criticism to help the developers of products lacking in either area to fix these problems. This forces the developers to choose one side or the other; limiting the amount of people they can possibly market their product to. Yes it is true that many companies market on a wide scale but they effectively waste large amounts of money sending their message to a large group of people who will refuse to buy the product because of the consumers stance as a glitzer or userphile. Therefore this approach not only produces a low return on investment on the marketing budget but also produces no possible financial gain from those customers marketing for the company by word of mouth.

After reading several blog postings and various articles which were focused on reviewing software products I feel I have a very easy to implement solution to the marketing issue. If developers concentrate on writing clean efficient code that properly does its job while the program is still in its infancy they can satisfy the features group. It has become obvious that if a program is broken when a userphile attempts to try it for the first time they are less likely to give it another shot. However glitzers are very likely to retry a program they had used previously if word of mouth reaches them that the UI has been improved. In the most simple terms, if the software is user friendly and works as advertised you are much more likely to gain a following of loyal users while improving your chances of breaking into the other half of the market then if you were to produce software that only partly worked but was aesthetically pleasing.

It is always easier to improve a user interface of well-written software then it is to rewrite the core of an application to function properly. If developers and marketers would take a step back and notice this fact less money would be wasted in development and marketing of a product. Fewer products would fail. Be remarkable, release products with features nobody else’s software has, features that work and can be used with minimal effort. Stop trying to trick consumers with slow, large footprint applications, which are hard to navigate. BE REMARKABLE.

First of all, sorry for the long time of no posting. Things have been pretty busy. Today is Canada day and I did take the wife and the son out to see the festivities but really they weren’t worth writing about. What is worth writing about is my new reptile addition. The other day I walked into a pet store as I do often. I walked to the reptile section and started to browse what was in and what improper care they were providing them. At this point I lay eyes on a beautiful Ball Python who’s fairly skinny and being housed on sand with the most useless hide I think I have ever seen.

I left the store as I tend not to buy the animals at pet stores but latter that evening my wife brought it up. She asked if she could go get it. Thinking for a moment I agreed that she could and wrote down a list of questions she needed to ask. She went and picked up the ball (she literally had to take it out of the tank herself as the guys there were afraid of the little baby) and returned home.

She was told that the snake was about 2 months old and had eaten this past Wednesday. Looking at the snake I could tell it has had some feeding issues just by the slimness and doubt my wife was given any true information. I will be trying to feed her a pinkie rat or 2 tonight and hope it goes well but I’m not so sure it will.

Here are some pictures of the new arrival:

Last night I was browsing along and all of a sudden I have no Internet connectivity. As usual I check that the modem is showing that it is connected to my ISP, that my router (which ISP’s are too lazy to support so we all lie to them and say we’re directly connected) is running properly and handing out internal IP addresses to my network via DHCP etc. I then notice that my router shows it has acquired a 10. Address and that only 1 DNS server is listed instead of 3.

Immediately I know they have suspended my account. This isn’t surprising since I download ALOT via BitTorrent. It’s been 3 years with this ISP and I had forgotten what my bandwidth cap is and considering I download so much monthly I was curious. So I call the ISP. I get told it’s been suspended and transferred to the security department. The voice on the other end identifies his self as “Norm” and proceeds to tell me my account was suspended for downloading copyrighted material. After telling me that I play dumb and say I do not download copyrighted material. He then lets me know the real reason, my cap is 60GB a month and I have downloaded 192GB this month thus far.

Now why couldn’t he be honest in the first place? They didn’t know or care if the files I were downloading were copyrighted. Granted they had good reason with that amount of bandwidth that they were but no hard evidence, they were just concerned for the network bandwidth.

I continue to act like someone who is clueless about computers, asking him to walk me through setting up my email account given to me by the ISP (which I never use but they send warnings there). At that point I’m really playing it up. I tell him again that I don’t download movies etc. and that nobody here has access to the computer to which he replies it is probably a virus. He asks what anti-virus I am using and I tell him that I am using the one from the ISP’s website. (He assumes I’m using Windows and they don’t support Linux so now was not the time to be honest). He re-enables my account and tells me that I have 1GB of bandwidth to last me until the end of the month (this is bull as I’ve heard of others with this ISP being told the same and them going over similar to them saying theirs a 60GB cap and me being able to download more then that on a monthly basis).

This is an example of social engineering and playing into the person’s worldview. They deal with people like this everyday so a story such as the 1 I presented is believable and doesn’t get questioned much. I assume others do the same and that it works with other ISPs. Similar I know works with other large corporations.

As for those with morale objections, the company overcharges for their service because they know they are the only cable Internet provider available. They have lied to me many times over the years about refunds and service people showing up and even telling me there was an issue on my end when the issue was with a local node. If they provided the service at a fair price and were honest I would be mindful of my bandwidth cap. Some people will always disagree with this way of thinking but in business that’s how I expect it to go. If I am not fair to my customers I expect them to tell me and I will fix the problem. If I do not fix the problem I expect them to take advantage of me anyway they can.

Every so often I catch a movie that I find is worthy of writing about. The movie in this case is Michael Moore’s Sicko. As most if not all of my friends and family know, I am no fan of Mr. Michael Francis Moore (Note to my sister: I hope that xmas gift of Fahrenheit 9/11 was a joke) I have not seen Roger & Me, The Big One, etcetera or his various T.V shows in the UK and US. I read only part of Stupid White Men (I will at some point soon pick it up again and re-read it all for a review) and never picked up Downsize This! , Dude, Where’s My Country? or any other Moore book. I may provide a better insight into his work if I did but the fact is, I have seen the big ones: Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Now Sicko. Yes I did get Sicko from BitTorrent simply because I don’t wish to line Mr. Moore’s pockets due to the misfortune of others but do want to judge the material on it’s merits. I know with previous films he has made he has stated he does not care if the movies were shared and if he truly believes that all he is trying to “expose” is wrong then he would want everyone to see his film so please any piracy cops out there, avoid emailing me.

Moore as you probably know is known for making controversial left-wing films. He has made millions off of the very issues he documents and in general seems to take advantage of the misfortune of those whom he features in his films. Sicko seems to me to be no exception.

Sicko starts out by showing a couple of people who lack health care benefits in the United States. The movie then goes on to explain that it is not about these people, that it is about the people who do have health care, and the issues with the current health care system. Moore goes on to speak with many people in different situations throughout the film, some who have been denied needed medical care by their insurance companies and others whom have at one time held positions of power within the industry. As usual Mike can’t quite get through the filming process without making attacks, or at least insinuating negativity towards current President George W. Bush.

Moore travels to various countries including Canada, France, UK and Cuba, which have socialized health care systems. Along the way Moore does his usual twisting of the facts featuring those who are in situations where they feel hopeless. Is it just me or does he always seem to target groups of people whom are the easiest to manipulate and least likely to be able to afford legal recourse for libel et al? I will give the guy some credit; he has done a great job of social engineering the public and taking advantage of others like the 9/11 rescue workers whom he escorted to Cuba in the film.

Sicko does make some valid points if you can sift through all the propaganda and figure out what the reality of the situation is though the representation or misrepresentation of the Canadian health care system in the film as being great is one of the biggest shams I’ve seen in awhile. I think what truly bothers me is that Moore is great at creating and holding his own frame and making others believe that is reality.

Watching Mike’s films seem like watching someone slide on a downward slope, which is getting steeper. With each film the lies get bigger and bigger though there always seem to be some static targets. Mr. Moore often breaks the law during his films yet is not in jail, he lies more then the targets in which he chooses to attack and always complains how bad of a country the USA is; yet he’s still living there. I believe that’s pretty good proof he’s only in it for the money.

Do I believe the film is worth watching? Yes I do, I believe everyone needs to watch it and form their own opinion but please before you do, remember to put on the rubber boots because this is another pile of deep shit from Michael Francis Moore.

I have decided to join the fun and attempt to read 52 books in 52 weeks. The 52 in 52 2007 post over at Roblog inspired this idea.. I am starting late considering that the year is half over but nonetheless in this case I will still do it. It just won’t coincide with years start to end. I actually decided to start last night by reading Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary by Linus Torvalds.

I may consider The White Company by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle part of 52 in 52 because I am already reading it but that depends on how quickly I get through the reading material I choose and how many books I have read by the end of 52 weeks. If anyone wishes to join me please do so. I can always use more suggestions on what books to choose.

I’ve been considering releasing some of my reptile cage designs in a dead tree and ebook format. For this idea I’ve been exploring print on demand printing services as I am not well known enough or have a product large enough to have a real chance at being accepted by a publisher. While exploring the world of print on demand a few facts, warnings and choices have manifested themselves.

Someone wanting to publish via print on demand has about 12 major companies to choose from. Each of these companies have their own set of pros and cons. Some are backed by large corporations such as Booksurge backed by Amazon.com while others are independent. Some require a package fee where others only charge on a copy-by-copy basis.

For my project I cannot justify paying a package fee, I don’t know how many copies I will sell as the niche is fairly small and I don’t see the sales outweighing the cost with such a service. Due to this my choices of POD companies are limited.
I have decided thus far on lulu.com. Lulu’s CEO is Red Hat co-founder Bob Young which is a bit ironic to me as it makes some of my interests come full circle. The cost is .02¢ per black and white page and .15¢ per color page. Lulu also has the ability to have an ISBN for the book, which is great because I would like to sell on sites like Amazon.

I’m still formatting the book and working with the design progress among other projects but it is something I have found fairly interesting.

The weather is getting warmer and this means more time spent outdoors, especially for those in colder climates such as myself. This year as part of getting back to being someone I feel is closer to my true self this means spending more time on the beach, taking my Bearded Dragons out in their homemade screen enclosure to get more natural sunlight and just spending time with the family trying to find interesting outdoor activities we can all enjoy.

I have a Bar-B-Que to attend to tomorrow which I never look forward to as it involves conversing with family members who are not interested in what I have to say nor interesting themselves. I may avoid it due to the temperature and the fact it shows no potential for helping my growth as a person in any way.

Much thought has went into what needs to be done to advance my position in life, very few answers have presented themselves thus far but one thing that I have always found helps is to read. I read as much as possible and offer some tips below for those who are wanting to advance their intellect at all times via reading:

Always carry a book at all times: When people tell me their children are very smart or advanced I always look for a book in the children’s pockets. If no book exists it is hard for me to fathom that they are quite as smart as their parents would like me to believe. This may seem too general to be true but it is a logical thought and well proven opinion that those who enjoy reading are also those who will learn more and retain more information.

Enjoy an audio book in times when dead tree copies can not be read: At work (if you have a job that permits) or while driving are great times for this.

Vary the genre of material in which you read: This will keep you interested and help you hold conversations in many different groups of people. It will also help you grasp different styles of writing and understand different opinions or points of view.

Look for the diamond amongst the rough: Many great books and authors have been forgotten over the years or overshadowed by the mass marketing of many titles today. Look for these books as they may give you some of the best reading experiences you will ever remember.

Encourage those around you to read as well: This is probably the hardest sell in today’s society. Many people have forgotten what it is like to actually sit down with a good book. How you approach this depends on the person being approached and what mindset they are in so unfortunately you are on your own on this one.

Read reviews before picking up a title which you feel interests you: I find reading reviews others have provided on titles I am considering reading always helps me choose books which hold my attention. This is not to say that you should shy away from books with poor reviews but use your judgment and if possible find others who have similar reading tastes to your own (but remember it is still important to explore other genres).

Some people will advise you to join book clubs but personally that isn’t my scene. I’m sure there are other tips but those should get you started.

Happy Reading.

I’ve been really busy lately, more so then usual. The reason being, my desire to take on interesting projects. After reading a post over at The Reptile Rooms forums asking if anyone knew of a reptile management application for Linux I took it upon myself to start designing one. It has only been a few days but as usual I have added more ideas to form the projects direction. Not only do I plan on making this project a application for Linux but I plan on making it cross platform.

I have much of the UI design finished on what is to be known as “Herp Tracker” and am working mostly on the backend of the program. The first release may only cover one or 2 platforms (Windows and Linux) but if I can find a few users with Macs to test that version will come along in time as well. Here’s a development thumbnail of the UI:

Though I am still in the early stages, a few friends (who also keep reptiles) and I have been thinking a few steps ahead. In the future I would like to add an online component, which allows the user to upload the reptile data to a central server for others to view. This would allow statistics to be generated and for others to better understand the captive habitats and procedures of species they are interested in keeping and the users who currently keep them. This would also allow for a we-based interface to be constructed allowing for more choice and modularity in how people use the software.

If anyone has any ideas for the software or input on the idea your feedback is welcome.