RANTISSIMO

Friday, December 31, 2004

GoodBye A goodbye to the 2004. Good riddance, and may you NEVER come back! It was one FUCKED UP year! But an okay one from another perspective. Hopefully the bad luck streak the humans were having bottomed out at the god-dammned 9.0 earthquake and the tsunami. On a positive note. At least one major death fest that the europeans weren't directly or indirectly involved in. 150 thousand people died. All from natural causes. no geopolitical savagery here (at least in the creation of the event) yay for mother nature bitch-slapping the human race all high on their punk-ass hubris. As a sign of solidarity with all the victims. RANTISSIMO will NOT be celebrating the so called "New Year". 7:02:27 PM    comment []

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Coolness Ya know what I'd really like to do? I'd like to build some real hardcore bleeding edge ass choppers. That's right! 6:05:29 PM    comment [] Free at last! I'm off for a few days after a 6 month stint!!! FUCK!!!! driving 200k every other day SUCKS ASS. FCUK the bills! .. and 50" TV's. I just need to settle down and have a breather and not talk to no one else. Here is a little HaiKu for you: Exist! Mutha Fukka! Exist! P.S. My apologies for the rotten language. If you're outraged. I'll understand! 2:38:49 PM    comment []

Monday, December 27, 2004

Oh the humanity! Well, looks like my OSX "Jaguar" (Grrrrr) iBook has proved its worthlessness once again. I think my next machine is going to be a Sony VAIO. I've been pissing around trying to install Rails on my osx and it needs gems and gems just won't install. Just looked at the Windows side.. and I can't believe how much easier it is. I also just took a look at XAMPP and its Frikkin amazing. I mean Apache, Mysql, phpMyAdmin and a bunch of other shit. right out of the box. What else can a brotha ask for? I think I'm gonna get my windows machine a whirl. Now to the next decision. Sony Vaio or Panasonic 50 inch DLP?? they cost about the same. P.S. If you really want to be frikkin amazed, at how poetic a well written object oriented framework can be, go to Ruby On Rails On Windows site here. (inhale). And look at the recordings. Also, wouldn't it be nice, if a lot more people started doing their gui documentation via movies rather than attempts at trying to explain it with screen prints. I bet this actually takes less time to do (and we have the bandwidth nowadays to sustatain such documentation). 11:07:24 PM    comment [] The Taco Sez "You go through life, you try to be nice to people, you struggle to resist the urge to punch 'em in the face, and for what? So some pimply little puke can treat you like dirt because you're not on the team. Well, I'm better than dirt. Well, most kinds of dirt. I mean not that fancy store bought dirt. That stuffs loaded with nutrients. I... I can't compete with that stuff." Moe Szyslak 3:39:12 PM    comment [] Should I? This kiwi blog is a treasure trove of information. I started reading it to get some info on the Ruby on Rails blogging app that the author(ess) wrote, but looks like there are a few other nuggets of information along with a Whole lotta attitude. Amen sista! I think I'll restart my blogging effort. But this time on TextDrive. lets see how this goes. One thing that I found on One Before was a reference to MacJournal. I had tried MacJournal before but not quite very recently. So I downloaded and gave it a whirl. Pretty Nice!! MacJournal has a [base "]full screen[per thou] mode, which reminds me of the green terminals of the years gone by. Even though I like the full screen mode, maybe I should revert back to the regular mode? I love the Green on Black though. So, I[OE]ll just keep typing like this. No distractions, no other windows to worry about. Just me and the text. yeah babay!! Next question: Should I pay for the following? MacJournal TextDrive TextMate ... ... ... ... ..1. .1.1. 3:28:41 PM    comment [] Less is More I've been trying to read the ruby code for the weblog app that Sarah Wedde has written. Its refreshing to see how little code there is. I think the philosophy behind the RoR framework and the language itself may have something to do with this. In any case, I'm going to try to decipher it.. I wish I had a a newere iBook! :( interesting reading when you're stuck in -30 degree weather in Toronto.. sometimes I wonder if I should go and live in NewZealand.?? 11:33:04 AM    comment [] You aint seen nuthin yet.. linky: The vessels 40 are also tubular and are adapted to telescopically engage about the lubricating rings 88 of the flanges 71. In addition, the upper end portions of the vessels have spider mounted ball bearing expansion rings 69 therein which are movably supported on the bodies of the nipples 38 to ride on the outer peripheries thereof as the vessels telescope up and down on the rings 88 of the flanges. Below the flanges 71, the vessels 40 have disc-like closure plates 45 therein which are apertured with a multiplicity of openings 43 that are controlled by a corresponding number of float operated check valves 46. The valves 46 are mounted in the openings 43 to open when the vessels are retracted, that is, raised on the corresponding nipples, and to float closed when the vessels are at rest at the top of their stroke, and to remain closed as the vessels are extended, that is, lowered on the corresponding nipples. And I thought I was a little kooky!... :) 11:25:37 AM    comment []

Sunday, December 26, 2004

Blogging the RIS I'm at the sky dome at around 3pm. Trying to blog a public event. Why did I choose this particular event? I don't know. Maybe because my favorite Cricketer and Politician, Imran Khan was going to be here? In any case. This was certainly a freeking experience. I was here yesterday as well, and stayed only for about an hour for the duration that Imran Khan was speaking. I am currently dictographing the thing on my dictaphone. There were somethings that were good, some that were not so good. Was it worth the 40 bucks? I dunno. I got Imran Khan's autograph on my Attendee's Pass. Which has NO Date, No time, No NOTHING. Its just a piece of paper, on which I wrote my own name. That's about it. Then I had Imran Khan auto graph it. I took a couple of digital images of him, but couldn't really talk to him. simply because the people were hurrying everyone. They didn't let me properly talk to him. And I think I was a little abrupt and loud and might have kind of startled him. To me he was the only progressive, moderate and rational thinker/speaker in the forum, and was promptly ignored by the audience. I'm not done with this one. I'm going to have more to say about this one. Where's that "dictaphone" of mine? 10:44:27 PM    comment []

Saturday, December 25, 2004

Why the West has Won An insightful commentary on modern warfare. Written before n1n3 313v3n. Link Here An Excerpt from the review on that site: In an interesting thesis, Hanson attributes this decline to the inability of the Ottoman system to develop financial instruments. The state-sanctioned capitalist economy of Venice allowed for liquidity and investment. There were private shipwrights and specialised production lines that allowed a galley to be "assembled, launched and outfitted" in the space of an hour! Hanson notes that 150,000 gold sequins were found in the captured flagship of Ali Pasha: "Without a system of banking, fearful of confiscation should he displease the sultan, and always careful to keep his assets hidden from the tax collectors, Ali Pasha toted his huge personal fortune to Lepanto. There it was plundered after the battle when the admiral was killed at sea and his ship sunk. If a member of the highest echelons of Ottoman society [^] he was brother[^]in-law to the sultan, and on a great jihad for his ruler [^] could neither safely invest nor hide his capital in Istanbul, then thousands of less fortunate subjects could scarcely hope to. Wealthy Ottoman traders and merchants often stealthily invested money in Europe and chose to import costly European luxury items; or they hid or buried their savings rather than risk seizure of their stored coined money in the future. There result was a chronic shortage of investment capital in the Ottoman Empire for education, public works and military expenditure". 3:40:58 PM    comment []

Friday, December 24, 2004

Converting .DMG images to .ISO to create OSX bootable CD's Okay, so.. lets say you had a DMG file, that you wanted to make an ISO image out of?? This is basically what you do: Get the DMG file. Lets say its called cdimage.dmg Fire up a terminal session. cd to wherever this file is, and give the following command: hdiutil convert cdimage.dmg -format UDTO -o cdimage.iso FINITO! Okay, I admit!! I thieved it out of this post on that forum over there. But still, its good info. I'll update this space if this doesn't help me in what I'm trying to do.. nudge nudge wink wink. ;-P Update: Well, I created the so called ISO image (even though hdiutil called it name.iso.dmg). I trucked right along and copied it to my windoze box and renamed it to ISO. Now when I try to burn the image as ISO, Easy CD Creator complains that it is NOT a valid ISO image. FCUK!!!! 9:19:57 PM    comment [] I think I've had enough of Narnia.. I think I would've really liked it when I was a kid, but it tries to explain too much. And it talks down too much. This ain't no 'obbit sir! 11:07:49 AM    comment []

Thursday, December 23, 2004

Installing Ruby A good intro to Installing Rails on Mac OSX enjoy! 11:27:32 PM    comment [] ... I guess I should be working on learning some stuff today as opposed to exercising or sorting out relationship stuff?? Biorhythm: 2004.12.23 Physical: 9% Emotional: 10% Mental: 98% The Graph looks like this: P=physical, E=emotional, M=mental -------------------------+------------------------- Bad Condition | Good Condition -------------------------+------------------------- 2004.12.23 : .PE......................|...................M..... 2004.12.24 : ...P.E...................|......................M.. 2004.12.25 : .......P.E...............|.......................M. 2004.12.26 : ............P.E..........|........................M 2004.12.27 : ..................PE.....|........................M 2004.12.28 : .........................E.......................M. 2004.12.29 : .........................|.....EP..............M... 2004.12.30 : .........................|..........E.P.....M...... 2004.12.31 : .........................|..............ME.P....... 2005.01.01 : .........................|..........M........E.P... -------------------------+------------------------- 7:15:41 PM    comment [] Global Guerrillas John Robb (of Userland etc.) Global Guerrillas has a very interesting analysis of the ongoing insurgencies and their effect on the global power relations. One of the very few people who are looking at the ongoing insurgencies in this way. I mean the Iraq, and the Chechen insurgencies. Not to mention the analysis of the currently, steadily ramping up insurgency in Saudi Arabia. I tend to agree. I think one thread that combines all these insurgencies is "Islamism". I have my theories about the rise of the religious fundamentalism in tradionally Muslim societies. I havent seen anything about Kashmir and Palestine in there, but those are not geo-strategically (read Petro) important insurrections of the Muslim populations. And both seem to be under state control in both examples. I found this through John Robb's other blog, and I think I'll keep an eye on this blog for a while. I need to put some links (eg; Alireza in the left pane.). I wish using Radio wasn't such a pain. Half these entries on the left bar, I don't even visit any more (salaampax, fucked world, Seth's blog.. who's Seth? is it Set Goldin? what does Seth do? I have no firggin idea.. but I got him on the blogroll.. so much for purpose and focus and all that stuff.. No offence Seth, my dear chap.. and who the fuck still does "warwalking"??? that is so 2002!! 5:06:02 PM    comment [] On the Go Sometimes doing too many things at the same time becomes just that much more impossible. Right now, I'm trying to.. Read "Che, A revolutionary life" Read "The Chronicles of Narnia" Watching a documentary about the Zapatista movement in Chiapas. Trying to Learn Ruby so that I can try to create something useful (but I talk about it all the time) Trying to write a NOVEL.. (not EVEN close..) Design the architecture for a Peoplesoft Automation and Monitoring solution.. yikes!! 4:26:01 PM    comment [] GTAB I'm trying to get the GTAB category going so I can submit my RSS feed to Rannie. But my older version of Radio is being a pain in the a$$. And I'd be damned if I pay another 40 buckaroos for something that I'm just too lazy to figure out. So, this is the first OFFICIAL post for the GTAB "category". Lets see if I can create a useable xml/rss thingy out of it. Will someone create a Radio clone already? so it can go with the PYCS server? Now that would be a great idea. Create a PYCS for Radio (or maybe a webbased (ready Ruby based) weblogging community. And so everyone in GTAB gets an account on it and blogs away!! neato!! Super !! Fabulous !! Alrighty Then !! Sooper Dooper !! Shazaam !! I'm sure you feel the urge to KILL ME NOW :) but I just can't stop.. I wish I had one of those text writer thingies.. I'm just this awesome writer dude.. I keep writing rubbish.. it never ends.. okay .. it ends. NOW! 1:35:10 PM    comment [] Monster I've been watching "Monster" on the Movies on Demand. Its kind of hard to watch actually. One issue I do have with this one is the fact that they make her out to be someone who is doing it just cuz she "had to". Even though I like Charlize Theron's acting in that.. I think from a production/Direction perspective, the director has tried to portray the woman as an aberration in the "serial killer" phenonmenon. I dunno... I believe in equality of genders.. so I think women are just as capable of being serial killers as men. Stats probably disprove this theory of mine. Which is just as well. Nice movie though. 1:23:43 PM    comment [] Narnia I have started reading Chronicles of Narnia. At times it feels childish, like "The Hobbit". But I think once we're over the first book, things will improve tremendously. Is it an "epic" on the same scale as JRR's trilogy? I don't know yet. Right now I just find it interesting. I'm also reading up on OO stuff using Ruby. Lets see what happens. My hibernation is about to start. Things to do: Cleanup Apartment Write a 50k word novel. Learn Ruby Write a community site package using Ruby on Rails. Well 0 out of 4 ain't bad now is it? 10:52:27 AM    comment []

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Talkin bout weird books! Well, I just don't know how to characterize it, but I gotta tell ya.. Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby has GOT to be the weirdest book I read today (or this month for that matter). Actually, I think its fscking HILLARIOUS!!! especially the little cartoons.. I mean.. fuck the language learning.. let's just read the damn thing for the artistic value.. hahahaha 11:16:07 PM    comment [] things are slow. I am starting to like ruby a little bit more that I exptected. I think I might try to write a throwaway system in RoR in the coming couple weekends. I am also thinking of getting a cheapie membership on the basecamp site. I mean something a tad higher up than the freebie that I already got. I wonder if they would license it out to corporations. I wonder if my current employer would use something like this? Heaven knows M$ project sucks ass like there is NO tomorrow. but that's just my own personal opinion... note to self: check out 37signals website. 7:49:42 PM    comment []

Monday, December 20, 2004

I have discovered Ruby again!! Looked at some of the Ruby on rails stuff and lookes like it can do the job of the community site that I was thinking about.. is this adeiu [sp] to Plone? Not sure, but Plone is way too sophisticated (read over-engineered) for what I want to do. When I get around to doing a total freak out portal for a 120k employee company, I'll give Plone a call. Or, maybe, I'll just use Ruby On Rails. Check out the video docs, especially the 22mb file.. You'll be amazed. At least I was. Using movies of a task is such an intuitive way of documenting things. A movie is worth a thoushand doc pages... w00t!!! I just realized that the version of Radio I have is really very old and it doesn't allow titles for my posts.. WTF.. maybe I'll use the blog app written in rubyon rails.. Its her site and its a demo too.. The code (zipped)is here.. I still need to figure out what the ISP requirements are. 8:32:12 PM    comment [] After so many years.. I discovered some drawings that I had done when I was 19. I was a little bit amazed at how good they seem compared to what I can do right now. I think I had much better concentration and I could focus a lot more. I'm really amazed. I didn't think I every did something like that. Also, I had always assuemed that one of the water colors I had was done by my friend Naeem. But I found a copy of a pencil drawing that I did. I must have done 2 drawings and Naeem colored it with the watercolors. Okay, and also, in that notebook I found the beginnings of a science fiction story that I had started to translate. I always wondered about that story, but I could never find it on the internet. today when I was looking through that old notebook, I found the translation (in urdu) and searched for the character's name. And lo and behold, I found this!! 12:01:07 AM    comment []

Sunday, December 19, 2004

Somehow I have the "documentary" channel now. I just noticed it a couple days ago channel surfing.. Maybe its a "promo". Just watched "Bus 174", a documentary about a bus hijacking in Rio. Very moving. Can't wait to see "The Fog of War" 10:14:02 PM    comment [] I'm looking into twisted. started using my OSX radio client with PYCS.net community server. Its odd, but you can't really look for a directory on teh PYCS server.. I don't know when they will kill the server either.. all in all.. its a fine mess we have.. you start out with brain-damaged ideas, and you end up with brain damaged solutions. 6:24:33 PM    comment [] hi 5:57:50 PM    comment []

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