foxpro.catalyst «

FoxPro workBLOGS and MORE… . . .

I’m reading this list where a certain member posted about having problems with Product-A (which is by the way a default program of OperatingSystem-A). It seems that his copy of Product-A shows a sexy picture of Drew Barrymore but closes a split second after the whole picture is displayed. Same thing happens if he opens a picture of a fire-breathing dragon devouring one of our funny presidentiables with an awkward hair-do. So like most humans online these days he asks in the list about the problem instead of RTFMin’ or doing other RTFM-related tasks first.

One of the recent replies surprised me. It suggested junking Product-A and using Product-B instead, even calling Product-A names that would make even my imaginary pet tiger cringe upon hearing them.

Though in some ways Product-B is indeed better than Product-A, and in a way switching to Product-B could probably ‘solve’ the problem, it still bothers me that most humans think and approach problems this way.

If finding alternatives is the first way of ‘solving’ problems then there must be something wrong with one’s problem solving techniques. Finding alternatives is an escapist way of solving problems. Solve a problem by finding the root of the problem and what causes the problem. That’s how real programmers tackle things. Finding alternative should be the last means of solving problems and is in a way considered a lazy and coward’s way of finding solutions.

If such a practice continues what we’ll have is a world filled with looping alternatives after alternatives whose main existence is brought upon by the attitude of escaping from a certain problem which in the first place has not been solved at all, how can it have been when the attempt to attempt fell flat?

I’m not saying of course that alternatives are useless. What I’m saying is in every problem there’s a root cause which one has to know and tackle first before choosing other better alternatives.

Besides Drew Barrymore looks prettier when displayed with Product-A.

Sunday once again… marathon bloggin’ day. As you can see one of the little problems that I have with this site is I often have ideas which I’m a having a hard time following up.

Sometimes I end up giving hints of what I’ll post next but they’re left there… just hints. And I do have a lot of things I want to post but until now they’re still buffered in the chambers of my mind well protected from porn-related neurons.

For example last week… make that two week ago (see I’m that lagging that far behind), I was reading Rory Blyth’s post about wanting to hire U2’s The Edge to ‘code’. Ah yes I’ve posted something about giving up being a programmer to become a ‘rocker’ a couple of months ago but that is not the point here. It is stressing the importance of having ‘simple appearances of code’ with elegant and efficient approaches over complexity-infused ones which are oftentimes slower. One of the many reasons why I’m using VisualFoxpro over Visual Basic when it comes to database-related development is it’s simplicity and the clarity of its syntax and semantics.

Anyway Rory Blythe is one of the funniest bloggers you’ll see on the ‘net. I’ve been reading his blogs since that Goodbye Keiko post. He also co-hosts DotNetRocks! together with Carl Franklin.

And of course there’s Dave Barry too (and his affinitity towards pi�ata)… on and off the ‘net in periodicals and other types of syndication. But if you’d ask me where I first read things from Dave, I would point you to a doddering old Linux-powered machine we had in our former office which has this feature that generates random Dave Barry and Murphy’s Law related snips.

The previous three paragraphs alone shows how I easily get lost. One cool thing leads to another. And just as I have organized my thoughts on what I have to blog, an info-flood of related and un-related stuff comes along. This is probably one of the reasons why Scoble separated his blogs related to his personal experiences with another set of posts from the things he receives from his feeds daily. There are tons of cool stuff that can be found in the ‘net if one takes more time to read instead of Ragnarokin’ and gearing into porn-overdrive.

And those influx of ‘cool’ articles often leads your reading-to-blogging process astray. You find self reading about guns being prevented from firing if it’s not the owner who’s handling it but requires embedding chips in the owner’ hand… and Signal Discovery… and studies about brains and beauty… and infotech related articles but as you’re about to blog about it, you find an article about an ex-porn star and her house, or rather, palace and then you again find yourself thinking… ‘probably I am really in the wrong business.’ If i’d be blogging about libido-inducing links I’d probably be cruising on a slick HAMBURGER-GHini instead of buying burgers which come with free Mike Wachowski cars in it.

And then you find out about an instruction on how to create a USB turd and view a PC case for hamsters and then you realized once again… oh wait I think am in the right field… forget porn.

And when you talk about porn, you can’t help yourself but remember how the ‘old internet’ looks like, which for heavenly reasons is slowly being brought back these days. Yes… through RSS. No porns… no pop-ups, no worms, ad-less and spyware-less (28 spywares for each computer is the average these days).

And then I’m reminded to post that collection of information about RSS. I kept on ‘evangelizing’ them to my friends and former classmates but then I’m often faced with that ‘What the fuck is RSS?’ question. (Yes some of them are that rude [“,]) And then you find yourself explaining things for the Nth time and wishing that you have finished that blog about RSS and can just link to that blog and make things easier for yourself.

Ah yes I should finish that ‘What the fsck is RSS’ section and I should end this very blog as well.

Before I’ll scribble some things for today, allow me to place this entry first. Instead of including this in one blog entry, I decided to separate this part and just refer (or ‘call’ if you prefer) to this part on the next scribble… and other scribbles/blogs that will follow in the days to come. You can view this as a sort of procedure that is being called. Or you can call it whatever terms OOP has invented.

Ah yes I forgot, there are some readers that are not much into programming. OOP stands for Object Oriented Programming… if you’d ask me, it is one of the best ‘discoveries’ since pancakes, binary numbers and lawsuits on jokes.

OK… enough of the introduction… let’s tackle the ‘real’ thing.

You know… Heaven decided to upgrade things these days. It now calls itself Heaven version 2.000.0007 Build 10005 after being called with its codename, ‘PROJECT VOLTAGE’ for three months. Hell had been constantly upgrading/revising for decades already due to lawsuits and the influx of disgruntled and dis-unified lawyers who have been flooding their place but this is the first time heaven decided to upgrade. Some rumors even claim that the horn which the next WindowsOS bundles has been stolen from Heaven by one of the sentinels from Hell. I, with my limited resources, cannot confirm it though.

No please don’t get me wrong… I’m not referring to Microsoft nor I am saying that they are evil. They’re not even the sentinel who stole the horn in the first place. Besides the heist rumor still has to be verified and it is not the main purpose of this scribble.

And yes I don’t believe that crap that totals the ASCII values of BillG’s name. BillG gives donations to children… that’s something most OSS-lovin’-anti-MS humans often overlook. And let’s not talk about that Microsoft GIF logo with 666 bytes I found while HTTracking their site last week.

No. Let’s not go into that. Let’s talk about heavenly things. Let’s talk about Heaven 2.000 and its new features.

First… it renamed the Pearly Gates into something they now call as the ‘aPORTAL’. It should’ve been iPortal but Heaven doesn’t want to face lawsuits from Apple. Besides up to this day Heaven believes that ‘i’ is the center of ‘pride’ which it considers one of the deadliest sin. ‘ePortal’ was also a candidate before Hell started claiming patents for the letter ‘e’ which it considers a derivative of the word ‘evil’.

St. Peter still guards the aPORTAL… along with this holy hen that lays silvery-barcoded Easter eggs once a year. St. Peter is now considered the Senior Vice President of Security. In between accepting new souls who they call ‘clients’, St. Peter is reviewing codes that heaven-based developers create. He constantly and patiently looks for loopholes, possible exploits and bugs that might compromise security in the future. Like Microsoft, Security is also the ‘new religion’ in Heaven. When Security-related tools are released up there, it is St. Peter who tests things first using a number of hacking tools stored in his arsenal.

Once every part is considered good, he then posts the compiled .EXEs in a place called as Havanah where bored and torched Hell ‘devilopers’ can view and start testing, bombarding and exploiting it. They have to do this while AGHRARVEMNORN constantly whips them, slices them and torches them in loops every time an attempt to hack that newly released software fails. Up to this point the seven major released applications remain ‘unhackable’ and sliced ‘devil-oper hackers’ are constantly being transferred to a different job… cleaning toilets.

Hell now is planning to outsource the hacking-related tasks to Earth.

Either that… or they’re conspiring with the NSA or some big-time software companies to create scenarios that will produce more starving-angst-filled-fire-breathing crackers disguised as security experts.

Ah wait… I’m going quite far from what the main purpose of this scribble is. You see Heaven is getting so interesting and big these days that discussing every feature in one scribble is not enough. So I’ll concentrate on the feature that this blog is supposed to tackle… Miss P. Filter.

Yup… Miss P. Filter. I’m not sure what ‘P’ stands for but when i’ll find out you have my assurance that I’ll post it. Miss P. Filter is in-charge of the part/section before a ‘client’ reaches St. Peter and the Pearly Gates aka aPORTAL. She is also different from that Angel entity that filters out suicide bombers that plan to get near the aPORTAL. That’s the job of Angel GARATCRAZHER which we will tackle in the next few days.

Miss P. Filter is located in between St. Peter and Angel GARATCRAZHER. She sits there comfortably in a swivel chair near an Intel-based hyperthreaded computer which is just a meter away from a small glittering pond decorated with white orchards and violet plums. It is a pond where mollusks, clown fishes and piranhas peacefully dwell. You can even let Darla swim in there and still the bliss and peace remains. Ah well Darla’s braces are now made of aluminum and ‘mod’-ed by one of the regular tweakers that resides at overclockers.com.au.

If you think Miss P. Filter is biased towards Intel-based machines, iThink again… on her right is a green jelly-lime iBook whose main purpose is to transfer music files into her iPod. I find it ironic though that the words ‘Adam’s Apple’ are beautifully and electronically etched on the cover of that iBook.

Now what Miss P. Filter does is to let you press your left thumb in a scanner and do a breath check. With that, the Intel-based computer displays the number of times you have pirated something on this Earth. This includes pirated copies of Windows and Office, bootleg CD music recording, Kazaa and MP3s, cracks you have downloaded, key-generation tools you have on your hard drive, ideas you claim as your own, articles and assignments you have downloaded from the ‘net and submitted, programs you copied from your classmates and other countless things that is related to piracy. Even the usage of mushy quotes when wooing your girl or apologizing to someone is included in that list.

It even holds the inventory of your visits to your local pirated DVD dealers. ARGH.

You see… piracy has becoming an issue too in Heaven and in Hell. With that Heaven is taking necessary steps to prevent it. If you think you can ‘get away’ with some hobbies you do here on Earth… in Heaven you cannot. And Miss P. Filter is known for two things, her husky voice and her ‘zero tolerance’ principle.

So if she sees one entry on that database regarding piracy and the fields lPiracyREGRET, lPiracyFORGIVEN and lPiracyCompensated values are still set to .F., then you are in big trouble, poor human.

But she gives chances too. If she sees one field in those lPiracy-related fields set to .T., then she runs an algorithm that computes your lHeavenAccessStatus considering different factors such as oSituation, cReason, nReasonValidity, lSpreadAttitude, nIncome, nBeerIntake and other countless factors she refrains from disclosing as of the moment.

If you still fail, you are then politely requested to be transported back to an undisclosed location through that pond for 45 seconds while the piranha reverts back to its old self in a span of 30 seconds. There’s a certain scent about ‘pirates’ that triggers piranhas to change moods. Miss P. Filter did promise to tell me more about this part of the process and the location by next month.

For now take a moment to reflect on what the piranha can do to you for 30 seconds and we’ll discuss the other Heavenly features later.

Because of a certain demand of a certain client-related situation, I decided to install Microsoft Windows XP Professional in one of my office computers that is running WindowsME for almost a year now.

Bad decision.

Good thing I was still able to back things up even if the installation went south which caused the destruction of the LBA and some portions of the FAT probably on my second partition. I chose the scheme that installs the second Windows operating system on my second partition hoping everything will be fine and safe. Despite the failure of the installation after three tries, the primary partition was still pretty much alive until I decided to clean the shrapnels of that failed WindowsXP installation and deleted a file named BOOT.INI. That was the Doom’s Day part of today’s installation process. I never knew that BOOT.INI was like the Michael Jordan of Windows… when removed, everything else went down with him. Add irreplaceable too.

I tried minor hacks hoping that I could manually patch things up but I guess I’ll use the excuse of ‘you-must-nuke-your-hard-disk-every-six-months’ this time. I should’ve studied BOOT.INI too since it is ‘only a textfile’… but at this point I was looking at the bright side already… that the worst mistake was already behind.

So here i am blogging this while I’m re-installing WindowsME the Nth time around after backing up files, copying and doing other countless things. I need to decide too if I’ll trudge that dual boot process once again or if i’ll choose the upgrade path this time.

There are really a number of things Microsoft has to do but I guess most of these problems are being addressed already. For example their 60 minute installation (or even more, Microsoft operating systems have a different sense of time I guess) is quite HUGE… so totally HUGE, dude (Imitating FindingNemo’s Crash character). Although I’ve read that Longhorn will do the installation process in 15 minutes, I am hoping they’re not saying this because along with Longhorn comes higher specs and demands for hardware that is bundled with your new computer.

One thing that an OS should also have I think is what I’ll call as the COREESSENCEofCYBERNETICLIBIDO. In English, if one stupid user accidentally left his brain in the cafeteria (just like I did) decides to delete one file, just one file, the OS should still run and not halt, crash and do other countless things I would refrain from mentioning here. COREESSENCEofCYBERNETICLIBIDO insures that the most important files are stored in a CORE somewhere that in case it detects that it was deleted or if it even senses that an idiot user is near the computer, it prepares those files for automatic installation/re-configuration making the occurence of the problem virtually unnoticeable. One file amiss should not cause the WHOLE system to whimp, whine and cry.

I know it is not easy to create an operating system and products such as Windows, UNIX, Linux and other OSes are a product of years of endeavor considering a lot of things, hardware, barb wires, lawsuits and politics… but i believe that COREESSENCEofCYBERNETICLIBIDO is possible to implement. And while they’re at it they should also find a better name. Besides, the name I am calling it already has patents backed up by seven starving lawyers ready to devour anything that comes their way.

UPDATE:

At around 6:30PM, I was able to successfully install WindowsXP and the networking-related matters that I need most. It automatically detected the video and the sound but wasn’t able to auto-install the drivers for my AVICOM LAN card. Tomorrow I’ll install the server packs and Visual Foxpro. I don’t have plans of installing other applications for now.

I’m spending the past two days catching up with my sleeping quota that I’ve been missing for the past three weeks. I’m even having weird dreams as of late. One of those include a GIANT jigsaw puzzle that forms like dark clouds in the sky. Uber-surreal if you’d ask me.

This day I woke up at around 1:30PM already and the first thing I did was to log online and check my RSS Reader.

The first feed I check was from migs, a fellow Filipino who’s into Java and OpenSource. I’m also looking for more Filipino techbloggers with RSS feeds… and so far I only have two on my list. The other one is not updating that much these days and I’m still in this quest of convincing other Filipinos who are into IT to post some tech-related blogs online. (And that includes Avatar!)

Anyway, back to migs’ post, he posted a link to an April 04 article at INQ7.net about Mr. NameDeleted()’s views that Open source has ‘no future’ in our country. It was quite opposite to what my former student, Beakman pointed to me yesterday which was an article about IBM backing Filipino software startup against Microsoft. Ironic that they are even posted on the same news site apart by just approximately 27 hours. (I’m too lazy this day to run my CalcTime algorithm)

I don’t have any ideas on what side of the bed Mr. NameDeleted() woke up that day but labeling something as having ‘no future’ is something I would least expect from a ‘software expert’… especially if one is referring to a thing fueled with worldwide visions, collaboration and passion. One’s future is never equated with financial matters. Yes, we can see innovative companies closing and evaporating… but the works, inspiration and the legacy they bring will always continue.

OpenSource _HAS_ a future in this country. In fact its potential is even greater. OpenSource advocates and evangelists just have to start/re-start somewhere.

One good place to start is with the students… the computer science/IT-related students hold the future. Introduce OpenSource to them, introduce the passion for OpenSource, the advantages of OpenSource, the cooperation and participation it needs without including that inherent hate for MS products that most humans that are into OpenSource possess.

Philippines is a fertile ground for OpenSource and the principles underlying it. The problem lies though on some of the attitude Filipinos have. Attitudes such as disunity, mistrust and that famous ‘aho-aho/ija-ija’ attitude… include lack of passion… lack of drive and laziness. I’m not generalizing here… but I see this kind of attitude everyday. Of course there are persons with passion… with drive that they become BIG and successful. But then they start calling others as having ‘no future’, discouraging them instead of inspiring them.

Then there’s this crab mentality too.

But these things I believe can never hinder OpenSource. Not in this country. Not in this time.

Just as I have fully absorbed that GMail‘s 1000MB e-mail quota was not really an April fool’s day joke, here comes SPYMac. SPYMac which was released a couple of days ago is now available while GMail which was announced last April 1, is still in its beta phase. (Although someone posted screenshots of GMail already)

While a number of individuals, especially those whose e-mail accounts were rendered useless by SPAM, leaped in joy… there are also individuals that are concerned with privacy related issues. Google did express their respect for privacy and I believed them. Besides, their continuous quest against evil is much respected. Needless to say, SPAM is indeed evil.

But there’s a subtle problem I see in this. The very same problem that bugs computer users with large capacity hard disks… the more resources they have the more inefficient they become in terms of file management. There was a time when 100MB storage was expensive, users were more organized and file management was file management. These days I see a lot of users storing and piling up useless crap in their systems and don’t even bother to uninstall applications that did not survive the seven day software rule.

Same holds true with software applications. Some programmers and developers don’t care to optimize their codes and rely much on the excess of higher end hardware that is getting cheaper. Bill Gates was even bold enough to predict that in the future hardware will be free.

So what we have are bloated software applications that do not manage memory well. Garbage collection has become a thing of the past. So what if my program will run slow on a lower end machine, it’s the user’s responsibility to upgrade. That has been one of the bad practices I see these days.

Let’s just hope that online services such as GMail and SPYMac, will not be devoured with what humans usually do best… abuse and misuse things in this world.

One of the best things in this world would be lying on someone-who-you-hold-dear-to-your-heart’s lap. Seventy-seven times better than solving any three day old bug using a WinAPI+ActiveX approach.

Next would be lying on your back on a smooth wooden bench in a garden of Bermuda grass surrounded by twelve trees on a softly windy afternoon listening to the rattling of tree leaves and the music of chirping birds and breeze. You look above and all you see are leaves and twigs with the occasional peeping of the blue sky and the glistening the sun rays in the right part of your eye. Such pure bliss� that I realized I have been dealing with this abstract thing called ‘software’ for years now that I often forget this feeling of being ‘one with nature’ these days.

Now I’m adding in my to-get list a garden of delight where I can install a computer or two in the middle of that place.

There’s also this wooden gym besides that garden in the place we visited earlier this day. The gym is packed with body building stuff, a billiard table, a ping pong table, a jaguar car (don’t ask me why it’s there) and this videoke set. But none of them grabbed my attention except for that big brown punching bag in the middle of the room. I think keyboards soften the fingers for it took only less than five minutes of random punching with boxing gloves before my fingers began to ache. Right now as I am typing this, my left little finger is still in pain.

You know I should have that one too in the future� a punching bag where I can sort of transfer the printed form of the code that is bugging me for a certain day and lash my anger towards it by punching it until my knuckles ache.

Hmm� which prompts me to ask this question… what do you do when you’re pissed with your codes/computer project by the way? How about sharing your in-front-of-the-PC angst rituals?

There are some things in here that I do not like. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t respect it.

I seldom give comments on things I haven’t tried, but I must say that I don’t like the notion of creating database-related programming language solutions that tends to mold ‘lazy database programmers’ in the guise of ‘personal productivity’ which claims ‘to help developers overcome their most pressing challenges in minimal time’.

For you to overcome ‘pressing challenges’ in minimal time, you must have experience. And experience you will gain in the hard and longer way of writing ‘codes’.

Before I’ll continue allow me to state that I do have great respect behind the minds and developers of this so-called ‘approach of the future’. In this era where time is considered ‘gold-ier’ than before, it is indeed a great achievement to be able to trim down the development period of whatever project. I am also referring to database related things here which I believe is different when you’re developing a different type of application say a word processor, a spreadsheet or a software that calculates(nDistance, DetermineNearest(human(HealthCondition(X, Y, Z)), lReferencePoint=You)) has to be if You(lDecision = !visit(bathroom), nDays) for that said Human not to kiss the floor.

The baby-sitting type of approach to program development I believe is needed but in some ways I feel that it is the responsibility of the database programmer and not the PL itself. I want to extend the outmost limits of the control I have on the code I create. It is my code; get your hands off it� now! Yes… you, MissPL-with-the-white-shirt.

I also cringe at the idea of that ‘fill-in-the-blanks’ type of programming. Decades ago parameters were invented and even in these days, this is one of the greatest things a programmer can include in his arsenal. That would be next to OOP and one level behind neuron-pumping-trance/technotronic beats WinAmp plays while you’re coding/’developing’.

If one has to trudge that path of fill-in-the-blanks-because-I’m-too-lazy, let the programmer himself create his own user define function that fills in the blank.

This is probably one of the many reasons I left VisualBasic for VisualFoxpro five years ago. I want to have more control of the flow, the code, the logic, and to see more clearly what each line does instead of allowing a line or two of reserved words produce things for me. Call me ‘old school, call me ‘traditional’� call me whatever you want� but for now this is where I stand.

But do continue in this innovation of yours, great minds. Who knows in the future I might be convinced to jump on this jelly-looking bandwagon of yours. Besides, humans always have choices.

But for now I’ll dwell in this thrill and the art of pounding the keys, whispering longer eloquent words that only a digital loving silicon can fully understand.

This afternoon, I purchased a copy of Charles GoldFarb and Paul Prescod’s XML Hand Book, Third Edition (You can find a newer fifth edition at Amazon.com). This is the first computer book I purchased since college days for I was relying on downloaded e-books, various online reference materials and Google for more than five years already. But the book for its price is something I find so hard to resist. Located in between another XML book worth P2335.00 and an HTML related book for P1240, the said book is only P175.

I have to blink my eyes a couple more times to check if there’s damage, a typo or a blot in the price tag. I was calling out Evoschuke’s name while I was in the counter hoping that the price will remain that way even after the swipe. Evoschuke is the goddess of barcodes, price tags and red lasers by the way.

Two CDs, which include 170+ XML tools and stuff, are even included in the book.

Europa, the next version of Visual Foxpro, promises a better support for XML. The demand for XML support even exceeded expectations for a better and improved Report Designer. This, and other countless things, makes XML a good thing to tinker, exploit and abuse.

On our way home after a client visit this day, I was too tired from two weeks of almost virtually having no sleep creating Project Sopheia, that I was able to sleep in the bus. In the middle of the travel, I have this realistic dream that I was passing this part of the road where we usually pass on our way home. We’ve been passing that part for almost a year now and I was not quite surprised that the image projected in my dreams was so realistic and not the usual fuzzy, distorted and dragon-filled weird type of dream.

I woke up just minutes before reaching that part and ironically, the bus driver decided to use a different route… for reasons unknown to me… for the first time. I wasn’t even aware this alternate route exists until that moment.

It didn’t bother me that much, we’re at home now and as usual I’m still in front of the computer at two in the morning. I was even about to sleep when I realized what if I was not dreaming? What if there�s this certain portal that took a part of me (or worse the whole part of me) and it was a parallel world journey that was manifested in that dream.

What if dreams are a sort of ‘bug’ in that system of body snatching, swapping and bouncing beyond parallel dimensions. What if it is this very bug that causes dreams? What makes me sure that this is really me? That I am really what I am. Besides, what makes you so sure that you are really you?

What if some species in time are able to grab memory already, compress, decompress and store it on a different body. How will that body recognize? What if all this soul searching, journeying inwards is caused by this swapping of entities or whatever you call the human body and soul? You tend to look for the ‘original’ you… beyond time, beyond space. That’s the whole quest of out lives� forever looking for that part of us, that very self that was snatched while we are abducted from one dimension to another.

How will I know? How will you know?

We humans have sent rovers to Mars, invented hypersonic planes, wikis and made jokes out of war.

We have placed a GIANT matter on space to look for hidden worlds and take snapshots of the universe.

We defied gravity, discovered blueberries and water on Mars and claimed responsibility that life on Mars came from Earth.

We invented WinAmp and carved it on our desktop, saw a company that started in a garage become a kingdom and spiced up mobile phones (which I still strongly believe stifled our mental telepathic skills).

We brought to life fantasies that were once confined/but not limited to books, made best use of our idle hands and invented robots that rescue humans (though they have to get this “rescue robot driver�s license” first).

BUT still… we use primitive means to fight fire. In the world of touch screens, fast cars and T1 connections it still takes hours to stop this gift from Prometheus.

���

Uhrm. Enough of this mumbo-jumbos. There was a fire, a huge one that occured a firewall-away from my ‘regular-job’ office. It took 27 firetrucks, countless firefighters and four hours to completely eradicate it. I haven’t visited that office for two weeks already (I’m on a leave remember?), but I did visit it last night during the fire incident. Good thing the wind and luck favored us. The school was intact but homeless individuals there will be surrounding that place. Sympathies.

Shanara, Compaq and GODofLIGHT were safe though… and the other computers that dwell in that place.

Almost two in the morning and I find myself undecided if I’ll visit the bathroom. You see I don’t want to leave this computer for some ‘hacker’ might do some funny things in here. Going online is getting scarier and scarier-er these days. The ‘net had become a dumping ground of worms, spam, spy wares, hackable activex components in security-related programs and George Bush pictures.

Just the thought of someone browsing this PC frightens the bejeezus out of me.

Just think what he can do with that porn I have amassed for years. Worse if he returns for more and decides that �there can only be one� storage and deletes everything. Of course I do back-up things in a CD-R, which these days are a favorite toy of my two year old girl. My other little boy has discovered the keyboard and iconstory.swf already but for some strange luck, he still can�t get over the light switch and raising his fingers upwards and shouting the word ‘light!’

There he’s crying already… he sleeps late these days, wakes around 2AM or 4AM and do his regular howls. As if a solution to a certain bug was found while he was in a subconscious state and he needs a keyboard or something to pound that spark but can’t find one. This boy has the making of a ‘developer’.

A developer in the future where the ‘net is much safer and ‘holier’ place to cruise in… that is what he will be. As for my little girl, I’m hoping she grows up just like his lovely mother who at 20something-something probably wants to give up law-related dreams and become a Visual FoxPro programmer.

Grumble.

Like certain xx-chromosome-filled human I know, development tools do show an ILLogical behavior sometimes. There are even times when you find yourself deeply thinking if you’re logic circuit boards are getting rusty already.

Please don’t get me wrong… I do have great respect for women. The Peerless leader is included in that respect list of mine… and a hundred more. Women even live longer.

We’re now in a box. Inside the box… i’m referring to the new template this site holds. This gives you a slight preview of the main site’s look (RichardBase.com 2004) which will be updated in the days to come. So tell me what you think.

This afternoon, QS and i were discussing tech/philo-related matters. Something about humans using their minds to create technologies that would make lesser use of their minds. Ironic… eh? More thoughts on that one later.

So what if there’s water in Mars..? Will it make life on Earth easier..?

Hmm… it goes back to that old point that even we have landed on the moon, seen the farthest galaxies and conceptualized a space elevator, we humans are still unable to do the journey inwards, to know ourselves more… and explore the core essence of this planet.

Rest… and late night programming after this.

You can find treasures in old movies sold in widescreen DVD formats.

I’m lucky to be dwelling/working in a place not far where humans allow you to ‘borrow’ DVDs for around P65 – P80 (that would be a little over a dollar) and won’t care if you’ll return them or not. You’ll only be asked to return if the disc is damaged. If you don’t like the movie, as long as there are no scratches in the disc and you have enough guts to be abusive… you can even ask for a replacement (I told you i was lucky). No questions asked. (Of course you’re three-digit IQ already knows what i’m referring here…)

Anyway… one of yesterday’s loot was K-PAX. And… it was good. Good enough that i did scribbled on my EditPad some of the dialogue in that movie.

ON REPRODUCTION

Doctor: K-Paxians have babies, right?
Prot: Oh, yes, much like on Earth, but unlike you humans, the reproductive process is quite unpleasant for us. It’s more like having your nuts in a vise except we feel it all over. And to make matters worse, the sensation is associated with something like your nausea, accompanied by a very bad smell. The moment of climax is like being kicked in the stomach, and then falling into a pool of mod droppings.
Doctor: Mod droppings?
Prot:A mod is a being much like your skunk, only far more potent.
Doctor: Uh, if it’s such a terrible experience, uh how do you reproduce?
Prot: As carefully as possible.

ON POLICIES

Doctor: What about societal structure? Government..?
Prot: No, there’s no need for one.
Doctor:You have no laws?
Prot: No laws. No lawyers. (Microsoft won’t exists on their planet)
Doctor:How do you know right from wrong?
Prot:Every being in the universe knows right from wrong, Mark.
Doctor:But what if someone did do something wrong– how would you punish them?
Prot:Let me tell you something Mark. You humans, most of you, subscribe to this policy of ‘an eye for an eye, a life for a life,’ which is known throughout the universe… for its stupidity. Even your Buddha and your Christ had quite a different vision, but nobody’s paid much attention to them, not even Buddhists or the Christians.
Prot:You humans, sometimes it’s hard to imagine how you’ve made it this far.

Do watch if you have some time. You can even watch it even if you’re coding and you’re DVD is playing in the background.

If there’s one thing i miss these days that i usually do before… that would be teaching. The joys of teaching, its fulfillment and all, is something a soul can crave. Include the sudden rush of cruelty-enhanced neurons that calculates the possible permutations allowed for one to ‘torture’ and push computer science students not only to their limits but beyond their limits. It’s not about crossing the line this time… but moving the line (and the bars) that in a way limits learning. True learning.

Quite sad that one of my college buddy who happens to be the computer science dean of that school where i left, doesn’t share the same principles with me. I’m not saying though that my ‘style’ is correct… and it should be followed. It would be just fine i think, that in a pool of kind and lovin’/nurturing/spoon-feeding college teachers and professors, there is one or two that poses more challenge than what smiles and kindness can offer sans the commercialism that infests the educationaly system in our country today.

I have an alternate e-mail account on one of the free servers one can find in the ‘net. For the past three months it was rendered useless by SPAM, which just celebrated it’s 10th year birthday a couple of days ago. It was only yesterday when out of nowhere the cyber-Gods started whispering in my ears pointing me to the SPAM filtering option that i am able to breath life into that sufferrin’ account once more. SPAM, or unsolicited commercial emails, are getting worse these past few months (if not years). Even Microsoft is mapping out their plans to tackle this problem. Some theories would even tell that the proliferation of worms have something to do with a deeper SPAM-related creeping attacks, that e-mail addresses gathered are being sold for a big amount of money, and SPAM is being used by aliens who have plans of colonizing our solar system. A number of mentally-spammed entities can even make SPAM unstoppable.

Which is bad… we all know there are a lot of valid e-mails that are trashed because of this… not to mention the time, resources and bandwidth that are wasted. Hopefully in the near future, the combination of technological software advancements, laws and ‘maturity of humanity’ can help solved this problem. Or better yet… use SPAM as a tool along with fireflies in finding alien lifeforms.