http://www.cneophytou.com Things programmers do that they know shouldn't work but they try anyway, and which sometimes actually work, such as recompiling everything. Fri, 12 Nov 2010 17:07:39 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v= http://www.cneophytou.com/2007/05/18/rare-risk-and-overreactions-schneier-on-security/ http://www.cneophytou.com/2007/05/18/rare-risk-and-overreactions-schneier-on-security/#comments Thu, 17 May 2007 22:04:39 +0000 Constantinos http://www.cneophytou.com/2007/05/18/rare-risk-and-overreactions-schneier-on-security/ Wired and Bruce Schneier’s blog, as well as many other places).

Link

I won’t talk about personal liberties, tax dollars being wasted, or even people being (un)reasonable. No matter what’s going on around us, we always all have a choice. We may not like the choices we have, but we still have them. My problem with all this is that I see the world fast approaching where people are told they do NOT have a choice about anything. 1987 came and went, but at this rate we probably won’t have to wait for 2087. Lock every person up, lock the jailers up, throw away the keys and kill everyone. Then maybe, just maybe, there won’t be any dangers around.

Grow up. Live your life.]]> http://www.cneophytou.com/2007/05/18/rare-risk-and-overreactions-schneier-on-security/feed/ 0 http://www.cneophytou.com/2006/04/07/jim-munroe/ http://www.cneophytou.com/2006/04/07/jim-munroe/#comments Fri, 07 Apr 2006 10:42:25 +0000 Constantinos http://www.cneophytou.com/2006/04/07/jim-munroe/
I recently (as in a year or so ago) came across Jim Munroe, of No Media Kings, who is a self-publishing indie author. At first I was attracted to his work because it was free. “Cool”, I thought; “a free book!”. So I started reading Everyone in Silico. I think I managed to read about 2 pages before I “put the book down” (or in this case closed the file), mostly because of the inherent problems of reading a book on a computer monitor, and I really didn’t feel like printing it.

A couple of days later, I read another 2 pages. And that was it. I was completely hooked to this futuristic novel, with its wonderful and at times dismal and distorted view of the future. Reading that book made me feel like a child opening presents, not bearing the time it took for me to actually read a page and already wanting to scroll down to the next one!

I’m not entirely sure why I was so hooked to this book. I can definitely see a few people I know reading and not liking this book at all, but I loved it. Yet I was still hesitant to read anything else by this author, in fear of not getting the same rush I did with Silico. But these books are only one or two hundred pages long, so a few months later when I again stumbled upon the first book Munroe wrote, Flyboy Action Figure Comes with Gas Mask, I couldn’t resist.

I think about half way through this second book I was reading by the same author was the point where I decided not only that Munroe was one of my favorite authors, but that I would also buy the two books I had already read (or was in the process of reading), and most likely other books as well. I ended up buying all four of them.

Now almost done with the third book, Angry Young Spaceman, I can’t wait to go on to the fourth! Being a strong Palahniuk fan, I think I enjoy most the way Munroe constructs the descriptions of the physical space around his characters, and the general tone of the narrative. He makes it very easy for the reader to not only identify with the main character, but also to experience the story as the character does. With each turn of the page you submerse deeper into the abyss that is the protagonist’s mind, even if he lives underwater teaching English to a bunch of squid-like tentacled children.

If you really hate science fiction, then I might not recommend these books to you, but there is still a very good chance you would enjoy them. If you do like sci-fi, then I can only recommend that you visit the No Media Kings site, and just read one of his books! Then, if you have the cash, buy them! I think this is a great ad for how making something publicly available to the public can only increase your reach and generate more fans (RIAAhem!)

If you’re interested in purchasing the books, they’re available from Jim Munroe’s site, or you can follow the Amazon links from my reading list on the sidebar.]]> http://www.cneophytou.com/2006/04/07/jim-munroe/feed/ 0 http://www.cneophytou.com/2006/03/06/voodoo-programming/ http://www.cneophytou.com/2006/03/06/voodoo-programming/#comments Mon, 06 Mar 2006 02:18:57 +0000 Constantinos http://www.cneophytou.com/2006/03/06/voodoo-programming/ WordPress entirely, including the static pages. Some serious tweaking was necessary, including creating a new WordPress skin from scratch. The skin is based on the prosimii web layout from OSWD by haran, and the whole process took the better part of a day.

I did this update mainly because it was due, and WordPress would give me an easier way to maintain the site from now on, though I do find it a bit constraining. A nice feature I have not been able to implement using WordPress yet is displaying the date a page was most recently updated by looking at the modified dates of posts AND files both displayed and linked to from any page, and use the most recent one. I think I will start using the Exec – PHP plugin a bit more than I should.

That being said, I don’t see myself as someone who would maintain a weblog rigorously, ever. I guess that remains to be seen.

A few things about this blog… I will probably be posting anything that comes to mind. Rants about programming, rants about life, ideas, notes of interest, etc, etc. The title of this blog comes from the term Voodoo Finance, a term my friend Constantinos Michael used some time ago as the title of his own blog. I chose it because as a programmer, I cannot count the number of times I’ve come accross something that shouldn’t be working, but it did… A bit less often than the other way around, but still! (And because it’s catchy, and I’m a shameless ripoff).

Well, that’s that for now. Watch this space for updates (but don’t hold your breath!)]]> http://www.cneophytou.com/2006/03/06/voodoo-programming/feed/ 0