Frequency

Not Quite As Open As You'd Like

Wed Feb 7th 09:59:18 2007 *

I haven't posted a blog entry in the longest time -- I don't think I've posted one since I arrived in Korea last May, not even on my other blog, which hasn't been working very well due to the drastic changes in Ruby on Rails 1.1 and the webhost not keeping up with the updates. Bastards.

However, I've decided to post here since there actually is a small community here, said community is decently tech-savvy, and I've got some opinions to post. Mainly about Microsoft.

The Redmond boys are at it again, trying to control everything about their operating system, effectively controlling everything that happens on the majority of personal computers and office workstations. The first problem I have is with Microsoft's competition with OpenDocument Format. Why can't they just accept the fact that ODF is better than their Office Open XML? They've even submitted OOXML to ISO/IEC to have it considered as a standard. According to the article, the OOXML "standard" would require any implementing software to have intimate knowledge of undocumented parts of Microsoft Word, pretty much rely on Windows use date/time standards that are not in accordance with other ISO standards, the list goes on and on. Those faults right there are probably going to get it kicked back. I'm sure there are plenty of other problems with the proposed standard, since it's a full 6,000 pages long. Read the article for more info on it.

My main issue is that they're trying to reinvent the wheel with this. There's already a perfectly usable format available that is widely accepted, is thoroughly documented and for which anybody can suggest changes. However, since we all know Microsoft is so against open source and open standards (oh, they've "supported" open source in the past ... solely for PR purposes) and, really, anything over which they don't have complete control, they've gone and created a parallel, if inferior, "open" document format. The only reason they call it open is because you can see it; you can read the documentation on the format instead of having to hack it out like OOo has done for years (and has done quite well, I must say), but it's not truly open. If accepted, you could propose changes to Microsoft, and they'll take those suggestions all the way to the wastebasket.

Ever since I've adopted open source completely, even hacked on a few projects myself, I haven't looked back. I've realized just how liberating it can be not to be locked into how one single entity thinks a computer should run. In the open-source world, several bodies agree on these standards. You get what is good for the community, not for the pockets of a few executives. Granted, I enjoy making money as much as anybody, but they're doing it the wrong way.

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I've gotta get me one of these!

Sun May 7th 11:31:33 2006 *

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Field Training and More Paintball

Mon Feb 20th 00:03:46 2006 *

From a week after my last post until last weekend, I've been out in the field, training up for Korea. Frankly, I think half of the field exercise was useless, but you can't really tell the Colonel that. We did a lot of drills on our equipment (I honestly hate Air-Defense Artillery line units now, by the way) and went to the range a lot. Can't complain about the ranges, because I got to fire my M249 Machine Gun a lot, but that thing sure is a bitch to clean. Carbon and sand and dust get everywhere inside it. Not to mention we had to clean them to inspection standards for the Battalion XO (Executive Officer) when we got back, so I spent several hours on mine as well as those belonging to other people who didn't want to spend their valuable time cleaning their own weapons.

I honestly don't remember what I did half the time I was out there. I was so tired the whole time from working from 5am to 9pm. Then after that, half the nights out there I had overnight guard duty. I've been exhausted and this weekend has been my first chance to really relax. It feels so nice to sleep in 'til 9am. :-D


On a more fun note, I went to play some paintball today. Everyone was going nuts over my paintball gun -- a Tippmann A-5 with a Tasco Red Dot Sight (which I mount on my M249) and a BT 3-position M4 buttstock. Also, since I've done a bit of tactical training, I appear to know what I'm doing out on the paintball field. ;-) It's pretty fun. There were even a few other soldiers out there. All of us had on camouflaged pants -- they were in their desert (DCU -- Desert Camouflage Uniform) pants and I had on my woodland camo (BDU -- Battle Dress Uniform) pants. We played a series of 10-minute games, and the kids out there kept coming up to me telling me how awesome my paintball gun is and one of them even said "hey, you're the guy nobody can hit!" That made my day, 'til I got lit up. One game someone shot my gun, so I raised my gun in the air to show I was eliminated, and when I stood up, someone absolutely tore into my chest with a barrage of paint! The funny thing was, not a single one of them broke. Well, it was funny because it wouldn't have eliminated me, but it sort of wasn't funny because it hurts more when they don't break.

All in all, a fun day was had in paintball. Definitely a lot more fun than being out in the field. Sometimes I wish they'd let us use paintball guns to train. :-) I'm really getting into it.

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Paintball

Fri Jan 13th 18:16:26 2006 *

I've taken up playing paintball to get some extra exercise, a little bit of tactical training and also to have some fun. I went out and bought a Tippmann 98 Custom paintball gun that came with a mask, CO₂ tank, and I'm sure it came with something else but I can't be sure at the moment. I also bought a buttstock to go with it that is a lot like the M-4 buttstock (to give it a more familiar feel ;-)).

It's not a fantastic gun, but it's pretty good. I'd like to get a longer barrel for it, possibly one that resembles the M-4 to make it a whole military-lookin' weapon, but I think instead I'll invest in the better Tippmann A-5 gun. There are more accessories for the A-5, plus it has what Tippmann calls a "Cyclone feeder" that is more efficient at putting a ball in the chamber than gravity alone. I'm going to buy the M-4 buttstock for that, as well, along with a new barrel -- probably either the Tippmann Flatline for better distance or the M-4 look-alike for badass aesthetics -- and probably some sort of sight, like a set of iron sights (it's just what I'm used to) or a red-dot sight. I've never used a red-dot sight, but I heard they're pretty good for paintball. A scope is overkill for paintball, but I do want something better than just staring down the barrel and estimating.

I'm also going to have to get a better vest for carrying paintball equipment. The vest I currently have is for carrying M16, M249 and M203 accessories and not suited for carrying paintball pods or air tanks. Special Ops Paintball offers some pretty good vests for carrying equipment. Luckily, a lot of my gear is suitable for playing paintball, like my uniforms, boots and elbow/knee pads. I wonder if they'd let me wear my flak vest and tell them it means I don't die if I get shot in the chest or back. :-) Of course, that would divert all paintball fire to my face. Nevermind.

I'm trying to get one of the guys in my old unit (oh, btw, they put me in a new unit and they're sending me to Korea .. I forgot to mention that) to go play with me, and maybe a few of us could form a team.

Been doing truckloads of research on paintball lately, too. When I do something, I try to do it right. :-) Anyway, I found out that Special Ops Paintball has a little club called the Special Ops Paintball Brigade that allows players near each other to find each other and gives everybody an idea of what kind of player you are. It shows what gear you have, how much you play (you log each time you play and how well you do), and it even gives you little promotion points for all of that, and you get to go through each rank and get promoted. Kinda cool. Cheesy, but cool.

If anybody'd like to talk some paintball, let me know. I'm still a beginner, and I'm trying to get all the information I can get.

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I find this pretty funny.

Sat Nov 26th 23:44:09 2005 *

I know this story's over a week old, but I just saw it on Yahoo News.

It seems a little ironic that First4Internet, in an effort to keep people from copying songs illegally, has illegally copied someone else's code.

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Google apparently doesn't consider Veterans' Day a real holiday.

Fri Nov 11th 13:45:34 2005 *

As a tradition, Google replaces its standard logo on its home page with a special one for holidays and other special days (like the 100th Anniversary of Flight and even Van Gogh's birthday), but a Veteran's Day logo is not being shown today.

Honestly, why are they celebrating Ray Charles' birthday but not Veterans' Day? That's a nationally recognized holiday. Doesn't make sense to me.

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Open source is becoming quite the trend.

Wed Oct 19th 20:21:06 2005 *

I have a /. RSS feed on my home page that generally doesn't do a whole lot for me, but sometimes it comes in handy. For example, this article talks about how a breathalyzer machine isn't being trusted because nobody can see its source code and confirm the accuracy if its formulas. I am really going to have to use that idea next time I get pulled over.

"I'm sorry, Officer, I can't accept this ticket until I can verify that the code contained within your radar gun returns an accurate representation of the speed I was travelling."

Of course, it's probably written in Fortran or Cobol and we'd probably have to bring in someone like my Machine & Assembly Languages professor from college who's been programming computers since they've been invented (he's a very old man who has been there and done that and could probably convince any judge -- or even some of us seasoned programmers -- that the code is horribly wrong even if it's not). Maybe my crazy physics professor, too. That man was nuts. The two of them together would probably make an awesome team. I'm getting pretty far off-topic here.

I'd never actually thought about that before. I don't know why, but I've just trusted the machines to be right at all times, and I know better than that. Honestly, I've used heavily tested third-party libraries in my code that didn't always work right. Who's to say that the code in those machines is infallible?!

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More freaking hurricanes.

Fri Sep 2nd 01:22:52 2005 *

Hurricane Katrina went across Florida, not actually doing a whole lot of damage. She was only a category 1 when she made landfall in Florida, so nobody there was worried. A category-1 hurricane is more like a bad thunderstorm to Floridians. Grocery stores don't close down for them and you can still even get a piping hot Papa John's pizza in the middle of the storm. That is how desensitized Floridians are to a category-1 (and sometimes 2) hurricane.

However, Katrina was a category-4 hurricane when she hit Louisiana and Mississippi. I'm sure you've all seen on the various news stations the havoc that has been wrought in New Orleans and all along the northern Gulf Coast. Not only do they need volunteers to help take care of the victims, they also need security forces to assist the Louisiana National Guard. That's what this entry is all about.

Apparently, there are too many looters and people shooting and the National Guard is having trouble keeping this at bay, so they've caled on the XVIII Airborne Corps (including my unit, the 108th Airborne Air Defense Artillery Brigade) for assistance. All XVIII ABC units are deployable to anywhere in the world in 24 hours. We received unofficial word that we may be deployed to Louisiana to assist. Once the order comes down from Brigade, my Company -- 208th Signal -- will have 3 hours to assemble our Soldiers and get our gear ready for transport. That includes drawing weapons from the arms room and falling into Brigade formation.

However, we haven't received any official orders, so we're just standing by for now. A buddy of mine from Fort Gordon is now in the 82nd Airborne Division over at Fort Bragg, and he called here to let us (myself and another buddy from Fort Gordon) know that he was already on his way over there.

It's great, I'll finally be able to feel like a soldier for a few weeks, maybe even a month or two. I was actually supposed to go on another mission with another brigade for the next three weeks, but it looks as though that mission will be cancelled; it was just a training exercise.

I don't know when or if we'll get the order, but all my gear is squared away and I'm ready to go. Just waiting for the telephone to ring. I'll try to let everybody know before I actually head out.

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New Rails project

Sat Aug 20th 12:45:13 2005 *

I've been trying to decide on a new project to work on with Ruby on Rails, and I think I'd like to try my hand at a webmail application like Squirrelmail.

Of course, I'd more than likely have to implement an SMTP server to go along with it due to the fact that most SMTP servers don't work with Rails-friendly databases. Of course, if anybody knows of any that do, by all means let me know.

What I'm aiming for is a decent webmail, possibly eventually with functionality like Gmail has. I think every site should be able to offer webmail with that sort of functionality. Of course, that means I'll have to brush up on my Javascript. I'm going to host the project on Rubyforge, and I'll post a link once I get it approved so everybody can take a look at it.

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Ruby on Rails

Sat Aug 6th 18:26:25 2005 *

I just received my Ruby on Rails book a couple days ago. I've been waiting for a while now. Amazon originally said it wouldn't ship until the first week of September, so I'm kinda surprised. I got it a month early.

It's organized pretty well, and has just about all you need to know to build pretty complex Rails apps. But it's a small book (well, smaller than I would've imagined). Right now, I'm going through the earlier chapters just in case I've missed anything by learning solely by online tutorials. I've kinda peeked around the book and I'm pretty impressed.

Rails makes web application development really easy. So easy, in fact, that if I need to work with any amount of data, I hack together a database and a generate a scaffold to give me a head start. Then, with minimal modifications to models, views and controllers of certain classes, I have an application with a decent UI to allow me to create, modify and process the data. All in about 5 minutes. Purdy slick, huh?

I'll post more soon. I'm doing my entire website using Rails. My roommate knows some good design people, so it won't just work well, it'll look good, too.. ;-)

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