Pretzels, Pretzels, Pretzels!

Where have all the pretzels gone?

Now don't get me wrong, I am grateful for all that gets put on the table during our 4 hour long class, including those weird yellow I-have-no-idea-what-they're-stuffed mini biscuits that no one ever comes close to; but seriously, I miss those pretzels.

I have a friend. My friend's name is Ahmed. I like Ahmed. I sometimes study with Ahmed.

But now I study with Ahmed MORE!

Why? Because Ahmed has pretzels. And even though his 8 year old sister sometimes steals the bag from me, laughs at how pissed off I get, and would literally shout 0wn3d if she knew what it meant, the cheese flavored ones make it all worth it.

Here's a not so random fact I just came up with: Pretzels make you more productive. I won't bother trying to prove it because no one would dare question the power of pretzels.

Okay, so this guy talks to us about how open source software is supposedly the best thing that ever happened to humanity, but he failed miserably at convincing me. He's a very well educated man, obviously knew what he was talking about and has quite a good work experience, so I'm not trying to make any less of him, all I'm saying is that I just wasn't convinced.

Let me ask you a question, why shouldn't software be treated like any other service? Do people open source your hardware? Do I run around telling you the secret of my recipe so you'd go home, make it and spread it? I don't think so. I'm pretty sure everyone has something they value, something only they know, and want only themselves to know. Why? Because it gives them an edge over the rest. Because it makes them who they are.

It's just like that amazing shortcut you discover. Saves you 20 minutes, yet before you know it everyone else finds out about it and your shortcut becomes worth absolutely nothing. It just doesn't work that way. Just because writing code doesn't cost anything physically, doesn't mean it should be treated any different. But then again, that's just me. And it's 5:17AM. Which means it's way past my bedtime.

Goodbye for now.
Cool People.

Oh, Helicopter!

Asking me about Bespin is kind of like judging a product based on its advertisement. Bespin? Well, looks good, amazing idea, but it doesn't quite work yet.

On the bright side though: Processing!

Last night me and my team decided to meet up to work on our project, so straight after college, we went to Ahmed's place. Boy was I up for a treat! The second I got my laptop out of the bag, I found out the my charger was busted. Again.

It's my 3rd charger to buy. For some reason laptop chargers and I don't get along very well. This time though, the wire got detached from the actual circuit board. But because I'm mushroom *censored* cool; soldering wire, a soldering iron, bit of insulation tape and about 20 minutes later, I was up and running. Just thought that was worth mentioning. Now back to our project.

We decided to name it: Blogs on Blobs. Basically, it gets all the blogs on the wiki, and puts a link to each one of them in a separate blob. The blobs swim randomly in egg yolk, or at least that's how I see it. You can also drag a blob and play around with it. Once you click on one though, you're taken to that user's blog. We're still working on the code, so expect a more detailed description later, but I thought I'd keep you nerdy people updated for now.

Code coming soon.
Debugging in progress.

Worker Bees

There's something weird about a blog being college related that I haven't quite figured out yet. But then again, I'm not in a position to question that, so I'll be moving on.

Ubiquity:

A time-saving Firefox extension that simplifies common web activities by letting you give commands to Firefox. I took that definition of the description on the website.

Now I was supposed to mention the two things I worked on:

a) The feedback command.
b) The command I implemented.

And putting into consideration the last to do list:

c) The Bespin build.

Damn I'm late.
Mae, see? There always has to be a 'c' :)

Now starting off, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to present: The Feedback Command Not.

I never really got around to figuring out the feedback command, nor implementing it. For some odd reason, we always have to run into technical difficulties during our lab sessions. Come to think of it, this is an open source course, we're supposed to h4x0r our way around things, but then again, I'm personally not that familiar with the things being mentioned, and I guess I speak for at least 80% of my colleagues when I say that. I'm not expecting an 'Open Source For Dummies™' or anything, and I'm not a fan of complaining either, but certain things should just work. Like for instance, installing a program.

G-OSC User Talk:

Yes, you guessed it! That's the command I implemented for the second assignment. I have to admit that Ubiquity is quite a sweet add-on. What I fancy in it most, is that fact that it provides an API (Application Programming Interface) which enables people to write their own commands. That just opens infinite possibilities. Every user, or let's say, those who are programming-capable, can write their own custom commands to suit their needs. Which is quite cool if you ask me.

Now back to my command that is annoyingly simple. It basically links you to the user talk page, of obviously a user, on our wiki. What you do is, type in GOSC-UserTalk followed by the name of the user, and you're immediately linked to their page. A cute little notification also pops up from the bottom right corner informing you that you've been linked there. Useless, but I like it. What the code does, is simply take the name of the user you've typed in, concatenate it to the user talk URL and open the page in a new tab. You can view my command as well as the other wiki commands here. And in case you don't have Ubiquity yet, get it!

As for Bespin, let's keep that to the next post because I have a Computer Vision quiz tomorrow, and frankly, I don't even have the lectures yet.

Until then.
Goodbye people.