VNC Problem Going from Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex to 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope

This week I have upgraded one of my Ubuntu boxes from 8.10 to 9.04 and thanks to a glitchy hard drive, its been the bumpiest ride I’ve had with Ubuntu thus far.  Having worked out the kinks in the hard drive, I’m still left with a bit of bugginess that I have not been accustomed to in Ubuntu.

Apparently, even though 9.04 was released nearly 4 months ago, this old bug has returned and has not been resolved yet in the repos.  VNC just simply does not refresh any connected client if the server uses the restricted Nvidia drivers and uses Compiz for enhanced visual effects, which I can’t imagine is an uncommon scenario.

Aside from that, I’m loving the new version.  I just got Gnome-Do set up with the Docky theme and I’m loving it, despite the fact that I come from a Windows background rather than Mac.

If I can just get around this VNC issue, or find an equally user friendly alternative, I’ll feel that this is the best Ubuntu yet.  If anyone has suggestions, please let me know!

Iterating Over Increasingly More Interesting Data

While talking with a coworker yesterday I think I accidentally summed up a career spent in software development in a single sentence.  What I said was that I feel like as technology has evolved from platform to platform, programming model to programming model, all we’re really doing is iterating over increasingly more interesting data.

When I first started writing code in QBasic in highschool, I was iterating over arrays of ints and strings that had some relevance to the text-based games I was writing.  In college I learned OOP and was iterating over my own new data types such as “words”, which were strings that could be associated with a proper spelling and corrected accordingly.  In my first job as a professional software developer I was iterating over residential and commercial addresses in a G.I.S. system in order to more effeciently map routes for waste collection services.

Since then I’ve iterated over financial transactions, packages awaiting shipment confirmation, tickets being purchased for concerts, and a thousand other objects of more and more interesting classes.

I don’t really have any conclusion to take away from this, only that I wonder what we’ll be iterating over next.

Twitter-Induced Introspection

Twitter sure is a cool service, but I’m just not quite sure how to use it for myself. I have had an account for over a year and have only updated my status five times. I’m neither proud of this nor ashamed.

There are two primary reasons for my lack of tweeting thus far. One is that a good deal of my tweets would be work related and a good deal of them would very much not be work related. Some of my coworkers follow me and could see my non-work-related tweets and think to themselves, “why’d we hire this clown?” And honestly, I would do most of my tweeting while at work simply because I’m on my computer more while at work. Sure I can tweet from my phone, but would I? I don’t know.

The other reason is that I’m not sure that I have anything of very much interest to say. Therefore, anyone who would follow me avidly has got to be a weirdo and I don’t necessarily want them following me. I mean sure my blog posts rock but there’s no way I can maintain this level of awesomeness in a constant stream of 140 character snippets.

What interests me though in the Twitter system is the idea of a corporate presence. Maybe corporate isn’t the best word for it, but what what I basically mean is when a Twitter user doesn’t represent a single human person, but a group of people or an idea. This could manifest as a corporate entity, or a club, or a newsletter, etc. I guess this notion is what has led to much of the field known as Social Media.

The easy-to-use and freely available Twitter API is, in my opinion, the true reason Twitter has gained so much momentum. It’s not only easy to tweet, it’s easy to write new software that let’s you tweet. Most of the apps out there right now that let you interface with the Twitter system are the same- a fancy cool UI front end that lets you tweet and organize your friends’ timelines. What I haven’t seen (much of anyway) is an app that let’s you work with Twitter from the standpoint of a corporation, or any entity that is larger than just yourself.

So now I’m putting together plans for a Social Media Dashboard application. Initially it will be aimed square at Twitter and its uses, but I wanted it named Social Media Dashboard and not Twitter Dashboard because I want it to be extended to Facebook and other API’s as well. It will act as a single client that lets you manage your company or group’s social media profile.

I’ve been gaining some added insight recently through the book Twitter Power, by Joel Comm (@joelcomm). Despite some wordy and repetitive moments and ideas in his writing, I’ve enjoyed the read and its given me some great ideas for key features in my app.

If anyone has plans for something similar, would like to colaborate, or would just like to pitch ideas for functionality, please comment on this post! Alternatively, you can DM or reply to me on Twitter at @libdsoftware.

Hope to hear from you!

Guinea Pigs at Last

I just realized that the byline of this blog has always carried with it the promise of guinea pigs and that so far I have delivered very little content pertaining to the little guys.  So here you are.

Butters

Oreo

Copernicus

These are my 3 little piglets.  Butters and Oreo are brothers, and Copernicus is their proud mother.  She was sold to me under the false pretence of being male, and hence the gender confusion in her name.  But it turns out the name suits her just fine and her babies couldn’t be more fun.

And there we have it; the occasional guinea pig.

Can’t Update My iPhone Yet

I was looking forward to writing up a review of how cool/crappy/whatever the new iPhone software is.  Looks like I’ll have to keep looking forward.

iTunes let me download the update just fine.  Considering the software was just released within the last couple of hours, it downloaded extremely fast.  But I can’t update because, “the iPhone activation server is temporarily unavailable.”

Its crap like this that makes me hate organizations like Apple and MS and anyone else who has the ego to mandate that my stuff be contingent on their stuff.  Think about this:  I have an iPhone and I have the new software downloaded and I have the means to put the software on the iPhone… except I can’t because they have a server down.

This is a prime case of x+2=3, but not being able to determine x because you don’t know y, even though y isn’t in the equation.  Y isn’t in the freaking equation!

Imagine a world in which everything worked this way.  Like I can’t start my car in the morning becuase GM is bankrupt and they’re down.  Or I can’t play single player video games because my game console temporarily lost its Internet connection.  Or I can’t watch a movie on my DVD player because the planets are out of alignment.

Okay, maybe that last anology sounded absurd, but was it really?  Here I am with all the hardware and software I need, all of which was legally acquired, and I can’t use it because some server out there somewhere is down.  That server might as well be a planetary misalignment as far as I’m concerned.

My First Week Owning an iPhone

It is important for you to understand up front that I am 28 years old and spent roughly 27 years loathing Apple for a wide range of reasons. I could list those reasons out but most of them are fairly predictable for anyone who is on the PC side of the PC vs. Apple war that has raged for seeming eons.

But here I find myself for the first time in life, a proud owner of an Apple product, and only seldom cursing its name the way I have traditionally cursed other products of the same brand. Truth be told, I love my iPhone so far and can only think of a small handful of changes I would make if I were Apple.

First and foremost it is my phone. That’s its core competency and it functions quite smoothly. No better or worse than any other decent cell phone on the market right now so far as I can tell. If it had somehow gotten this part wrong, while succeeding at everything else I would have call it a failure (or possibly an iPod Touch, which is essentially an iPhone without the phone, camera, mic).

But I keep finding myself using it for so many other things. It is a means of keeping the Internet with me as I walk around and do whatever it is I do in life. The potential power that comes with having Google in my pocket at all times still hasn’t quite set in mentally for me, though I have been taking lots of advantage of it. The voice-recognition functionality of the Google search app is wonderful.

I also find myself more readily willing to check up on Facebook, or MySpace, read the tweets of my Twitter followees, search Amazon for product reviews, or just plain old play a handheld video game.

The iPhone excels at all of these things. It certainly feels like the generic portable information-giving device that has been on display in so many Science Fiction works.

Now it does have a handful of negatives. Copy/paste functionality has been promised for a future update, but as that is the future and this is now I sorely crave that ability. Also, multitasking apps would be amazing. The device isn’t broken without it, but as I become more adept at traversing my phone’s capabilities this omission has become more and more glaring.  Being able to “alt-tab” between a Google Map to a restaurant, a web page of its menu, and the half-complete text message I’m typing to a friend who needs directions would be wonderful.  Additionally, it wouldn’t kill them to make certain well established file-types readily readable (PDF anyone?) without having to download a poor but functional free app or a decent but non-free app.

Hopefully some of these things can come in the future with updates and app releases.  In the meantime I’ll enjoy all the terrific functionality it does have and encourage others to give it a try.

One more thing!  I’d just like to throw in that my friend Scott Brown wrote his own iPhone game and its a blast!  I highly recommend checking it out- Tic-Tac-No! is harder than it seems and only $1.00 for the full copy.

Hamachi Gets You All On The Same Network

Hamachi has to be one of the coolest apps I’ve seen in a while. It lets you establish an externally hosted psuedo VPN server that any number of clients (behind firewalls, mind you) can connect to and share resources.

I came across this while trying to figure out a way to use LAN gaming in Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 rather than using the online component. I had two computers on my own LAN and one friend across the Internet from me that I wanted to get into the same game. Due to limitations of my network, I couldn’t get both systems on my LAN to connect to the built-in Gamespy online component. That’s when I decided to use a VPN to get my remote friend to dial-in to my system.

Unfortunately, even though the Windows-based VPN allowed my friend through to see my game server, we ultimately could not play. Apparently Red Alert 3, as well as many other games surely, broadcast their packets when in LAN mode rather than route them when in Online mode. Once the game should have started, it kicked my friend out because his routed VPN connection wasn’t providing him with the broadcast packets that a bridged VPN would have provided.

Enter Hamachi. The app itself is an offering from LogMeIn.com and allows users to all join a remote network. It is free for non-commercial use, which made it perfect for our situation. We installed the client on all three machines, connected to the same virtual network, and suddenly we were all playing Red Alert 3 as if we were sitting right next to each other. It was truly a wonderful experience.

The implications of this application go well beyond gaming though. It is basically a bypass around NATed firewalls. You could install it behind your home or corporate firewall to allow remote access to specific clients, or get at their shared files/folders, or maybe connect to your source control server.

There are obviously a slew of security concerns here and I honestly haven’t taken the time to fully investigate them. During install and configuration you are asked if Hamachi should disable Windows services that could be exploited through its VPNish connection. So far I haven’t played with that feature enough to know which services are disabled exactly, but it is probably smart to allow them to be disabled and then make sure your system is still operational and useful for its original purpose.

Enjoy the software, take care regarding security, and please send me feedback if you learn anything interesting!

Karecards.com Now Open For Business

Over the weekend I got to aid in the deployment of the site Karecards.com with the site’s owner, Karen Sudduth.

Karen is a cancer survivor, but more importantly she is a strong woman with an amazing talent for all things artistic.  While going through her treatments to overcome her illness, she turned to painting as a means of relaxing and expressing herself and her feelings.  Her paintings are beautiful and she has turned them into a series of 16 “get-well” themed cards which can now be purchased on her site.

She donates a large portion of the money made from card purchases to the Wings Cancer Foundation.  At the time of this writing, the Wings website has a story featuring Karen and her incredible artistry on the front page.  The foundation is a non-profit organization whose mission is to “provide hope, education, research and support without charge to anyone touched by cancer.”  In short, this is a noble organization doing some very important and wonderful work.

Please visit her new website and consider contributing to this very worthy cause!  The world will be a better place for it.

Dell, AMD, SQL Server 2008 Promotional Video

I recently got to be minorly involved in the shooting of a promotional video for Dell, AMD, and MS featuring the small company I have been a part of for the last year.  Big thanks to all those involved in producing this film!!

Mega Man 9 is Harder Than Crap

I’ve loved the Mega Man games for nearly 20 years now.  I collected all six original NES Mega Man titles.  I have beaten them all, along with three of the Mega Man X series games.  But right now, I’m coming to terms with the fact that I may never beat Mega Man 9.  

I purchased it yesterday afternoon for the Xbox 360.  Probably a poor choice since the 360’s d-pad sucks, but whatever.  Hindsight would have me purchase the game for the PS3, but then I wouldn’t be able to boost my GamerScore on Live.  Oh wait, most of the achievements that Mega Man 9 offers start with the phrase “Complete the game…” and then tack on something crazy like “…3 times in one day,” or ” …in under 60 minutes.”  

Don’t get me wrong, I love the game.  The 8-bit graphics and sound make me feel like a kid again for all the right reasons.  It is truly a wonderful accomplishment on Capcom’s part to have created so perfectly a new NES game.  

But the years of modern gaming have spoiled me on easier difficulty levels.  Games are just so much easier than they used to be.  I’m guessing its the effort of game designers to cater to casual gamers.  Few games live up to the default difficutly attached to most retro games.  Beat Halo 3 on legendary?  Done.  Beat Gears of War on insane?  Done.  Beat Resistance on hard?  Done.  Beat a single boss in Mega Man 9?  Whoa hold on a minute!  Give me an hour or so with the level and then we’ll talk.

In my one-and-a-half-ish-hours of gameplay I’ve defeated one boss.  One.  That’s it.  To be fair, I don’t remember picking up the original games and just blazing through them.  It took patience.  It took replaying levels.  Some I’ve replayed so many times over the years that if I close my eyes and concentrate hard enough I can relive large portions and even hear the music (I’m not even joking, the music has always been amazing in these games and 9 is no exception).  So maybe its not that I’m not used to a game this hard, but it’s that I’m not used to a game that isn’t designed to be intuitive on your first attempt with it.  

Regardless, the game feels hard.  Harder than any game in a long time.  But I’ve loved every second of it.  Go buy it now, on whatever system you can (beware the 360 d-pad though), and enjoy it.  Playing it will make you feel 9 years old again.  If only more things in life had that effect.