Hi everyone,

Whilst I have been audio blogging, I felt that I should return to written form because I need to write / type some stuff in order to properly self express myself, as written language seems to give more freedom than verbal and less prejudices than verbal. Although I can’t really be sure. First up

Computer Science / IT / Linux Nursery Rhymes

This little piggy programmed in Lisp
This little piggy programmed in C
This little piggy programmed in Perl
and this litlle piggy programmed in CPL & basic assembly

Little miss muffet
saved to her emacs buffer
her files and data displayed
Along came a vi-er, who terrified her
and flushed the buffer away

Three MCSEs
Three MCSEs
See how they code
See how they code
They code with VB and ASP.NET
So terribly that you want to forget
Three MCSEs
Three MCSEs

Add the data to stack
Place it their in sequel
Give it some CPU time
Pop goes the weasel

Next

I was able to get in contact an old friend of mine that I meet in Yr 10 when studying Indonesian as a visiting student at USC. As I thought I had lost all contact, this is definitely something I am very happy about :). I may be able to get credit for one my Indonesian subjects I did there, and that should help my GPA.

That said my mood is currently conflicted after watching two movies (WarGames, Rage in Placid Lake). The theme question of WarGames regarding futily of war and other things (What a strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? ) makes me wonder how many other strange games there are in Life, in thought and in everything else ? The second movie talks about a semi social outcast and his efforts to attempt to normalise himself, it hit very close to home, as the main character’s situation reminded me of my own slightly, and also caused more thought and consideration into previous memories , decisions and actions.

Hope however is a marvelous thing, because despite everything from illogic, philosophical questions about life, busyness caused by my university situation and my current mood, hope allows me to attempt to pull myself out of digging my own grave of despair mode and attempt to refocus and restabilise / justify who, why and what I am to myself and the world around me. Thanks for those have been supporting and inspiring me, it is greatly appreciated.

If it is better to have loved and lost then not to love at all, does that mean that love isn’t a strange game ? Big Brother is a strange game however, because despite the prizes at the end, both the contestants and the spectators lose their dignity in exchange for a million, a holiday and car …., nothing changes the romans enjoyed watching the gladiators, now the people enjoy reality television which is in fact one of the biggest oxymorons that I am aware of.

I am not doing too badly at Uni, although I would have liked to have done better on my Statistics Midsemster, and provided I do better on the final exam, I should have no issues, I also have to focus on getting the outstanding assessment commitments done, so I can study for exams. I have examined my degree pathway and am a little annoyed that MAB580 isn’t offered anymore, but as I have identified a valid secondary pathway (Plan B ) I should and will be fine.

In all the reflective learning we have done in MAD (Modeling Analysis and Design), I have come to the same conclusion as a both my team members that most systems are much easier to just lightly plan and develop as opposed to using the techniques taught by the subject. Whilst I am sure UML will come in handy, I prefer Petri Nets and State Machines and other more mathematical ways of modeling. On this note Umbrello and Dia are really good tools for UML modeling, but both still need a few more improvements.

People having being shoving Discworld (Pratchett) references in my face and it reminds me of the amount of stuff (Discworld,C, C++, Emacs, Vi, Language / Linguistic skills, Rollerblading, etc, list goes on) that I learnt or mastered a long time ago but need to brush up on. I am most likely going to enter Trolltech’s Greenphone competition (I have the SDK, and am brushing up on my C++, both for comp and Wesnoth, and my QT). As probably aforementioned I really like the greenphone and winning one or even having the chance to develop apps for it and QT, is a great oppourtunity.

Also wanting to get WINE to link correctly on my Gentoo 2007.0 (originally from Sabayon), which doesn’t seem to want to link wine to right libraries without a custom ebuild or an EXPORT statement. It would be nifty if WINE was slotted so I could do the regression testing on WinMX a fare bit faster / easier.

I also have to study up on Networks, UML, Abstract Data Types & other concepts, Linear Algebra and Statistical Analysis for my exams. Wish me luck. My emerge world is all done now (finally, kde-meta 3.5.7) except WINE but that will be fixed shortly. The Syntek Driver for my Webcam has version 1 release out, and it is a noticeable improvement in webcam quality. My apologies to the people I unintentionally irritated this week, group assessment creates short fuses…

The Asus Acpi also has new driver out that turns my previous always off wireless led to always on (bug filed), it should be changeable like the mail led using echo, but for some reason it is not. Make 5 Wishes Manga also reminded me of Rage in Lake Placid, and also helped me related to myself.

I am virtually sick of games without good or innovative game play, we need to revert to the classics or to innovate lest people die of boredom. (ET Quake Wars is going to be awesome when it comes out.)

This blog’s questions are related to both WarGames and the song lyrics of AT 17 (remember those who win the game, loose the love they thought they gained),

Is love a game ? Is life a game ? Are either of them strange games ? Is winning everything ? anything ? Is it better to roll the die or pass, fold or hold, take a chance or sit on the fence ? Are the sacrifices worth the victory ? How many sacrifices can one make and still win or draw the game ? What the game fun ?

Best wishes
Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 🙂

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