Nonsequittal Rumblings

Maybe I’m back. Maybe not. I’ve never been a writer. But as the need to document my programs more at work, I need to be more proficient and willing to write. So here’s my attempt to come back to my writing tasks. I do have a few things in my mind to keep myself going, such as writing more about my programming journey, and reporting what I’m doing to keep my health up – especially my challenge to lose a few pounds here and there.

Let’s all see where this will go.

I caught the moment, and I couldn’t let it go.

As I read different people’s blogs, I notice…

I’m such a geek.

People write about their daily lives, their feelings, etc…

I write about new open source software I find, programming stuff (I will in the future, I’m sure), etc, etc, and other geeky stuff.

But, hey, let’s face it. This is the stuff I get excited about. And I don’t see myself changing anytime soon. No, if I change, then that wouldn’t be me any more.

So, let’s have some change of mood. I’ve talked about Jazz band before. It’s the band is organized by my work place. We recently had a party of our own. The band played in the back yard of one of the band member’s house – in which we rehears every Monday evenings. They invited their neighbors to let them see what in the world is going on at their place every Monday.It so coinsided with the weekend when Emily flew in from W.V., and Evan was with me as well. It just turned out to be a perfect timing.

Playing music is always fun. I’ve always enjoyed it since the first day I picked up trumpet… 18 years ago. Emily also told me that she had fun listening to us. It was really good to hear. So far, she had no chance of hearing me play with the jazz band I talk about all the time. It’s not a professional band. It’s just a hobbyist group, just for fun… and people love us for it. She loved it! What a great feeling.

http://www.nuclearelephant.com/projects/sharing/
This is a place where people can post their purchases if that purchase was influenced by something you’ve downloaded via P2P. There are some studies that shows that P2P file share is actually boosting the music sales, not hurting. This is one person’s attempt to show that it is a possibility. While I don’t know of the effectiveness of this data, I’ve encountered something neat.

I just found the site yesterday via slashdot. Then, just today, shiorichan made a purchase that was motivated by mp3 albums she had downloaded. I was happy I could share this little site with her.

Oh, horror. Yet another virus e-mail flood attacks Cessna. I actually got a copy of those e-mails too. Now, what’s this virus? It’s Music Worm! Dammit! That’s first discovered in November 2000! That’s more than 3 years old, and it’s still floating around? And the damage gets so bad that the company’s IS department have to strip all the ZIP file attachments from all the messages that goes through their e-mail server?
I knew people were pretty ignorant. I knew that people in general are idiots… But what a reality shock. It’s way worse than I thought. No wonder Mr. Cook was so damn confident with his statement. I mean… come on! With the latest MyDoom attack that got highlighted all over the news just recently, people should’ve learned to take caution with e-mail attachments. And these e-mail messages comes out of blue, from the people you’re unaware of. And these e-mail look significantly different from regular business e-mail. If you have even 3 ounce of brain, it should trigger your caution alerm, and make you at least THINK before opening the attachment. For chrissake, the attachment is in zip format, so you have to open the zip file, then double click on the file inside of it to activate that damn worm! And it still works! Aarrrrrgh!

I just read the “about” section of Doom9. It talks about how the site came around to be. Just a simple reading. Mildly amusing. But, now I came to realization – you know, I have had my own struggles and discoveries and what not when it comes to my computer experience. That goes same for programming web sites and fansubbing, among others. If I had the patience to sit down and write down all those things I’ve found, and have in my head, and then publish it on the web, maybe some people can benefit from the tips I give out. Please, somebody, give me some patience and some time, so I can do that myself!
Actually, I once found some time to teach some people how to typeset. It was a lesson that was done over IRC. The log is still available. I want to do more of these types of guides. Of course, there are some questions to be answered at this point too. On the IRC network where fansubbing groups roam aruond, there are so many people who are skilled in such things as timing, typesetting, etc. Those functions are relatively easy to learn. Conversely, things like translating and encoding skills don’t come as easily. So there’s some inbalance of work force. And, even if the inbalance is taken care of, there are already abandunce of people out there! Why do we need more? Why do I need to teach people, so we’d create even more of these people?! I started subbing of Kita-he, thinking that it wouldn’t be as popular of a show as some other show of the season. Heh. Now look out there. There are 3 groups who are actively subbing it. Then why bother?
And that’s when I get really boggled. For me, it’s kinda fun. I’ve learned the fun of fansubbing. Translation is challenging. Other functions of fansubbing are fun too. The interactions are great. But… “Don’t fansub just because you want to be famous… Also, doing it to please the fans isnt a good reason either.” (http://atocha.mit.edu/nnl//t00t-01.html). Ah, great. How do we tell who falls under this category, and who don’t?
Then, back to my own dillemma. Who is to say my motivation isn’t get my famous? I don’t know… I just don’t know any more…
I just think… if people are more willing to go explore on their own, do their own homeworks, do the web search on their own, learn on their own, experiment, etc etc… all on their own, then the world would be a better place. I wouldn’t even need to write the guides and etc.

If this submission goes well, this marks my first real journal entry. Yes, I built my own from the scratch. Not all too hard. Maybe someday I’ll show you my code to people… No, it doesn’t have fancy feature yet. But hey… it’s my own stuff. I can tweak all I want. Or I can leave it as plain as I want too.

But hey, congratulations to me…