SKJ's Personal Homepage

My Take on Pariah

Gaming at 12:20:24 AM MT (link) | My vote for the biggest game dissappointment of 2005 goes to Pariah. You can tell they rushed it. Really rushed it. They attempt to make a story (that would have been pretty decent) but completely botch it up; you move from level to level having no idea at all what is going on. The level design and upgradable weapons are extremely interesting but that doesn't make up for the rest of the game. The multiplayer demo they had out kept me playing for a while, but the single player doesn't hold a candle (probably due to the whole, 10 servers that are up?).

I think if they gave the game a few more months of work, it easily could have been a Halo killer.

Apple's Steve Jobs goes psycho (again)

Technology at 12:54:58 AM MT (link) | Everyone's most hated computer conglomerate Apple--well, at least my most hated computer conglomerate. After stuff like this Microsoft transgressions don't seem as bad (though their transgressions are much bigger and get more press).

First read over at Overclockers.com's iBaby article which pointed to the original story by SignOnSanDiego.com, it just demonstrates Apple's audacity.

Basically, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs did not like his portrayal in an unofficial biography, so he decides to pull all books from by that publisher from Apple's stores. Because the book is not out and I've not read it, I can't say how bad they portrayed him, but I have no doubt believing Overclockers.com's comment about making him look "merely human" isn't too far off.

Notice some tidbits in the articles. Things like removing all of the publisher's books from the shelves, even by authors that had nothing to do with this certain book. Why should other people other than Apple make money? They sued the ISPs of some reporters, trying to gain information on their sources. When I don't think the government should have access to that kind of information for finding terrorists, why should a corporation like Apple?

Remember kids: Think Different.

50-Cent's "BulletProof" video game trailer

Gaming at 09:11:16 PM MT (link) | I believe I've just seen the best video trailer for a game, ever. You should watch it!

That said, the game is probably going to suck. You can tell as the trailer features basically no in-game footage whatsoever, and, after how completely kickass the trailer was, it'd be HARD to make anything better.

Slashdot sucks

Technology at 09:00:50 PM MT (link) | I stopped reading Slashdot a couple years ago when I couldn't bear how retarded it had become. Someone gave me this link today, and it's just proof that Slashdot needs a new moderation for phenomenal idiot.

Server outage

Site at 08:06:54 PM MT (link) | Yes, my site (as well as the entire server it was hosted on) was down. Everything appears to be back up now. I'll writeup something for historical reference later.

Dealing with SSH agent forwarding and GNU screen problems

Linux at 10:03:58 PM MT (link) | New article on GNU screen and SSH agent forwarding, by yours truly. Yes this problem has already been solved (and my approach is basically a clone of someone else's solution), but one more page about the problem (for which there are few) can't hurt.

Handling e-mail overload

Technology at 04:30:49 AM MT (link) | Stever Robbins of the Harvard Business School has an interesting article Tips on Mastering E-mail Overload. Though I'm not really there yet and hopefully never am, these are some certainly nice tips.

RIP bitchmaster.hotnudiegirls.com

Site at 04:10:10 AM MT (link) | I'm killing the DNS record for bitchmaster.hotnudiegirls.com because I don't want it being used anymore. I doubt anyone is actually using it, other than search engines; if you're a search engine, stop using it, thanks.

I've never really announced the new domain, but this site is accessible by either:

• tamasrepus.hotnudiegirls.com
• tamasrepus.rhombic.net

The latter being the one I'd actually want to put on resumes and such where I don't want to give people weird thoughts, and the former for everywhere else where I feel like demonstrating my opinions on censorship and free speech and don't care what people think.

Dell 2405FP working with Linux and binary "nvidia" driver

Linux at 09:31:52 PM MT (link) | I have my new Dell 2405FP working with my older Geforce 4 Ti4400 on the analog port (on my main workstation, machina, with Slackware 10.1). With the binary nVidia driver (7197), the one everyone supposedly has been having problems with and this monitor... Other than haggling for 4 days trying to get a working modeline, it works great.

My X11 server configuration is in the "Linux" section if anyone wants to take a look at it.

Windows XP DEP

Technology at 01:27:37 PM MT (link) | Is the Data Execution Prevention technology in Microsoft Windows XP SP2 useful for anything if people have to turn it off to get things to work, especially with Microsoft Outlook, an application NOTORIOUS for security issues?

That said, I find Windows's XP DEP stuff to slow my machine down a lot; thus I turn it off on most machines that I use.

OpenSSH tips for the extremely paranoid

Linux at 09:04:58 PM MT (link) | I get called "paranoid" a lot about my insistence on using SSH key authentication to access all my Linux and UNIX servers. Then, I found this article titled Understanding OpenSSH. Sincerely, some of these tips are completely hardcore... Even I am not that paranoid.

However, some of these tips would be useful for an automated backup system (the one I have yet to write, but will one day).

On a side note, OpenSSH 4.0 has been released. mostly an evolutionary than a revolutionary release, it now has neat things like encryption of the known_hosts file, to prevent people from snooping at the hosts you last logged into. Neat.

Remember, you'd be paranoid too if everyone was out to get you!

China cracks SHA-1

Technology at 10:56:32 PM MT (link) | Sort of old news, but SHA1 has been cracked. As a tax-paying, law-abiding American citizen I'm not really comfortable with the current Chinese military build-up, along with them now breaking one of our premier hash algorithms...

That I said, I still use MD5 for almost everything.

Dr. Dre why oh why has thou forsaken me

Life at 09:47:09 PM MT (link) | I've been into "gangsta rap" lately. And one of my favorite artists has been Dr. Dre.

After hearing the album Dr. Dre vs World Class Wreckin' Cru's track Horney Computer, which now is in the ranks of the worst songs I've ever heard, I'm rethinking this.

What doesn't help is after I saw this picture. Yes, THAT is Dr. Dre. Shattered are my mental images of just another California nigga on the streets of LA with nothing in his pockets and wielding a large lead pipe.

I'll live.

Microsoft is dying?

Technology at 09:36:03 PM MT (link) | An article by ABC news by Michael Malone predicts that Microsoft is going to die soon. Even though the company has been able to completely dodge the flak of it's software's security flaws, there is the frank problem that Microsoft is not really putting any new, interesting products (or any new, amazing features in them). Windows XP was released in October 2001--Longhorn is slated for, 2006? Five years for an update for the world's most ubiquitous operating system is a very long time for a company that prides itself on shrink-wrapped software. It doesn't help that newer revisions Microsoft Office have so few interesting features, many people (including me) don't see a reason to upgrade past Office 97. Time will tell.

Guestbook spammers strike!

Site at 01:03:32 AM MT (link) | I don't think I mentioned it recently, but my guestbook is back. Sign it!

So, the other day I noticed that I had been spammed, and that there were several spam entries.

Spam (unfortunely) isn't something you can not expect. I'm assuming that some bot program or script did this. Apparently this script was smart enough to figure out my self-written, custom-coded guestbook script and do it's dirty work. While targeting a mass-deployed guestbook script doesn't seem to much out of the range of possibilities, writing a smarter, more versatile script made to spam guestbooks like mine is just doesn't seem efficient. Either spammers are getting smarter or desperate (or both).

Oh well. There is now a "I am not a spammer" checkbox on the preview page that you must check for your entry to be posted. Let's see the spammers "smart" scripts get around that (and honestly, I bet they will).

Alive I am

Life at 12:53:55 AM MT (link) | Yes, I am still alive. Though I am not sure to what degree.

Winter break!

Life at 06:15:24 AM MT (link) | It's well into winter break--and I've basically accomplished nothing! Actually I have done a lot but in retrospect it does not seem like much--I should have gotten it all done faster. But it feels good to think I haven't done anything.

One more...

Life at 06:14:39 PM MT (link) | Just one more final exam (the difficult physical chemistry one). And one more project. And I will be freed from this semester!

hlds and ut2004 server admin mailing lists

Linux at 02:35:13 AM MT (link) | Just because this isn't documented on the internet very well, Valve has a mailing list for hlds_linux, the Half-Life dedicated server for Linux.

Epic also has a mailing list for Unreal Tournament 2004 server administrators. You can subscribe to it by sending an e-mail to majordomo@udn.epicgames.com with "subscribe UT2004servers" in the body.

Now presenting the all new samat.quasirhombicosidodecahedron.com!

Site at 11:58:30 PM MT (link) | And, in record time, behold my new site now located at samat.quasirhombicosidodecahedron.com! I will be making tamasrepus.hotnudiegirls.com and bitchmaster.hotnudiegirls.com point to this website soon.

I've decided to give up using plain HTML pages for the bulk of the content of the site: it's now powered by a WikiWikiWeb, merged in with my custom programming for my weblog, bookmarks, and administration systems. It's so far working pretty well.

The main downfall I see to using a WikiWikiWeb rather than formatting everything myself is that I lose XHTML compatibility and the rigid XML structure I had with the old site. But I realized, no one but me actually cared, and it'd probably be a good idea to start putting some actual content up.

There are some quirks in the design, but I am working them out. Let me know if you find anything.