Monthly Archives: August 2008

Personal, Site News

48 Hours until Academic Battle Phase is Initiated

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So I got my financials taken care of at school and it was quite simple… Just a reminder that my interest is 6.00% both on unsubsidized and subsidized loans and not to “eff up” (for slang) my work or I will once again be chased by the feds again. It was my first bad encounter to and from school with rainy roads while fending off wacky drivers at 100+ miles per hour in my soft shelled drop top in a long while. It was a fun journey, but I will say that having great tires means I have great traction for gear transitions.

The last bit of financial junk I need to resolve is paying the school $536 that the loans didn’t pay out. I guess one could consider it as Uncle Sam’s “Are you serious about school?” fee. I should be able to muster out the cash with no issue… However… I also need to get my PSP and DS sets sold off to generate repayment capital for my boon of luck from my family.

I still can’t believe that in about 48 hours I pack my crap up and drive out to my dormatory. It’s daunting, but exciting at the same run. I will be packing modest, as with becoming mobile… I don’t have much crap for save a printer, laptop, phone, and bags. It’ll be interesting being type-cast into the category of “starving college student” with my life on campus and coming back to town to work at the office… but for me, that’s more than worth my time! It is much like my philosophy, sometimes legends are born from a blank slate. This semester is my carte blanche, I will make a new legend for myself!

As far as the new site relaunch… That may be delayed for a while… In the mean time, I will probably search for a temporary lay-out that announces who’s writing what articles at ZeroXR.com so that when Wyno’s writing bug bites her, no one will assume it’s me! However, the new “About Zero” revision is underway and I have to thank my friend Nikkie for going out of her way to do that with me. Expect a very light hearted interview as it’s going to share a side of me that few get to know.

With this, I bid you all adeau so that I may walk into the office.

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Personal

Thanks from my Soiree – [Thank You Post]

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Last night was a night of fun and casual elegance… We had a grand time of conversing and dining and the best part being that it was with a few of my friends that I cared the most for. My friend Devon showed up and I had not seen him since almost 2001! That in itself was surprising as we reflected on amusing memories.  My partner and her roommate also showed up for the event, so they were terrible amusing as well! With that being said… With Sol to the mix, we were just socializing and having a wicked fun time. We feasted on many items and relished in the taste of them as well as how much fun we’ve had in this life.

With back to school nigh, it was a final celebration of freedom before the educational grindstone. I am thankful for the few friends I have but even more thankful for the ones who could make it to my event. You all mean the most to me!

Rant, Technology

Google May Have Android eDrama – Editorial

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A few days ago, I stumbled upon [H]ardOCP talking about a “front page” article saying that Google may have inadvertently pushed some Android developers to the iPhone SDK… This is rather an ironic tale of karmic shock as about a year ago, there were some whispers in the grapevine that Google was proposing to OpenMoko prospective programmers with a rather gutsy move to say “Come to our project, cause we are Google after all! We have tons of capital and our project is more financially stable.” So naturally, most programmers do want a buck for their efforts and most basically said “bye” to the OpenMoko Project and hopped on the Google Android bandwagon. In the midst of all the hub-bub of Google vs. OpenMoko, the Apple iPhone crowd was rather disappointed that their shiny $500+ toy had no clean API layer to play with like Windows Mobile or PalmOS. They managed to juryrig their own method of installing applications onto “jailbroken” iPhones by apps like iPwn or WinPwn to free the phone’s certification of applications in a means of giving the device a gray zone to play in. Of course, the problem with that was Apple’s coders releasing new firmware builds for the iPhone would render these “jailbroken” iPhones into paperweights unless the unofficial teams such as the “iPhone Dev Team” found ways to circumvent Apple’s check-sums. That somewhat changed with the iPhone 2.0 software release and the offical push of the iPhone Software Development Kit (or SDK for short).

Let’s delve into the background of the 2 “major” projects…

The Android project (in my observation) almost is a deceptive concept of “open source” as depending on how you rank with Google, you get certain layers of access with Android. What do I mean? Like if you’re an amateur coder who wants to make an application for fun, you would have basic access to the API. Now… let’s say you did something like won the “Google Summer of Code” competition or you are dumping millions of dollars to Google’s Android venture, naturally, you get premium access to the newest SDK builds and even API access to even control device functions. That could get some users who have slaved hours on Google’s Android project pissed! This is really the pressing concern from the article highlighted by AppleInsider, actually. Imagine that you and a few friends of yours make a killer app that just requires you to know the exact pressure sensitivity readings of the touch screen for an Android phone, but the caveat is none of your “staff” are big name commercial people or Summer of Code winners… This could be the one failing crux to your masterpiece to ever find completion. However, someone who won the Summer of Code competition may have an all access pass to all functions of the phone and could create a killer app that could rival yours. End result: Your team loses out on a chance to monetize on your killer app, yet your competitor gets a chance to dominate the market. Could you imagine the frustration to know your competitor’s app would be up for sale in Google’s Android App Shop for $2.99 a download while you’re going “If only Google let us access code on touch screen sensitivity…” with your friends?

Apple’s iPhone SDK is much in the same spirit like Google, an illusion of open source, but I feel they have mitigated drama by allowing all users certain levels of access. There’s the “Free” SDK which is just basic tools to build and test apps for personal use. But to get your name out there… Apple wants you to pony up $99 for a Basic Developer license which gives you the right to distribute your app to other iPhones via WiFi and also sell/give your app away at the iTunes App store. Should you sell your app, you do get 70% of the revenue. Then there’s the “Enterprise” license for $299 which allows you the power to make in-house corporate apps for the iPhone, like a trippy app that monitors and plays with your custom ECU for a tuner shop or other endless things your corporation wants to use the iPhone for. This license in particular is recommended for firms employing 500 people or more.

In my opinion, Apple’s rules are a little more concrete than the undefined access rules that Google has imposed on it’s users… We’ll have to sit and see how things brew down. The fact that Google’s been dawdling with producing a real and hard phone is making their time slip, while Apple and even OpenMoko have live phones to play with! Sure, Google has a deal with HTC to have a phone created as well as make it so that users with HTC phones can do a firmware update to have Android operational on their phones… Add to this that they are trying to fight between T-Mobile USA and Sprint|Nextel as official providers… You have a concept that may simply have trouble breaking the market in a solid fashion. I guess in a sense I am saying… Google better give everyone an “eHug” and get their crap straight or come up with a better strategy quickly unless they want to let Apple take more limelight from them..

Technology

[Preview] Google’s iPhone Killer Project May Be Dying…

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Apparently, even though Google’s Android project drama with weasling away OpenMoko devs and other Lin-phones has been good and well… Google may be in quite the tizzy internally.

Unfortunately, I have work soon, so I’ll have to dissect this argument later tonight.

I have quite the musing on it…

Personal, Rant

[Mini Editorial] Gotta love the Feds sometimes…

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Financial aid is quite the “clusterfuck” as my former boss mentioned the quoted term.

A while back, I had a personal set-back and a medical condition that ended up being the one-two punch that basically had me dropping out of college while on a federal Pell grant. Let’s just say the Feds were awful quick to scream “ZERO!!!!! WE WANT OUR MONEY YOU ASSHOLE!!!!!” in a proverbial sense and they were aggressive as hell (like calling the day the semester ended). Once I paid them back… They conveniently kept a record on their files saying “Zero has paid his dues in full” however, the forgot to put it on my FAFSA file saying the same apparently all summer… I had contacted them about this flag since February, with various agents going “It takes time for the computer to flag an account as paid.”

Chain reaction: My school basically found that same flag and said “Zero, we can’t offer you any financial assistance cause your file is flagged as you have not paid the Feds their due cash.”

Cue this morning: I call the Feds up this morning and met with a amicable agent on the phone. Got hit with the standard gauntlet of questions to verify my identity of Zero, so after that I fire off my query of “Is there a way I could get my status immediately send over to my school for verification purposes and have my file cleared?” Sadly, I got the standard “It takes up to 2 business days for us to fax that to your educational establishment…” line from them.

That’s actually a bit ironic as when you ever owe the feds cash, they will hunt you down like a pack of bloodthirsty rottweilers. On the converse, when you pay them off… They just silently clear your file and set you free, while not updating anything else vital. That is almost a tactic that the nefarious credit companies would pull to try playing the game of “Oh… you still haven’t paid up” and conveniently putting off to the side you’ve paid in full.

Ugh… I hope the document updating my status shoots over sooner than “two business days”. We live in an era where electronic facsimilies are possible, it should not be that hard to pull up my file, drop in my financial aid office’s fax number, and then say “Send to this number.” I think I am going to be feverishly worried for a good while until my school goes “You’ve been verified and here is your financial assistance eligibility…”

Uncategorized

Anyone know any good lawyers? [Personal Request]

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Just like the topic states… I am thinking of going official with ZeroXR 13mg so I need to flesh details out with a good lawyer. This is more in a step to turn this site into a semi-serious journalism gig as I would like to be able to pay my lower minions (Miss Wyno at the moment) for her articles as well as go big enough to cover some of the gamer and technology venues at some point. So I need some legal help on that vector with what official forms and things I would have to abide by.

If you know a good lawyer, drop me a comment or send an e-mail to info (at) zeroxr.com

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Personal, Rant

Happy Bums

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Happiness seems to go hand-in-hand with laziness. The more content you become, the more you begin to slack off. Of the late I’ve begun to sleep for longer periods of time and my naps have become more frequent. However, there are those hours where my sleep schedule has been hacked into pieces and I find myself awake in the wee hours of the night. During this newfound insomnia I think of everything and nothing. All of my thoughts drag on and on in my mind but in reaching for my pen, pencil, or laptop to record them they dissipate. Eventually I fall into a good passing out.

I did manage to ensnare one floating thought, though. I’ve been a firm believer since before I can remember that a human can never be satisfied. We all seek happiness. Could it be that even if we were the happiest a human could ever be, that we would miss our sorrows? Maybe for the same reasons that a child wants to be an adult and an adult misses being a child, all of us want things we can’t have. This is probably something that we all know already and I might even seem stupid for pointing out, but I figure that we all need a reminder. Perhaps there is no way to cure this disease called desire. I don’t know. I do know that it can get the best of all of us so… Be happy while you can!

Well, the good news is that my inspiration is back. Not even sure what all the above meant but… Fear not! Heh, the fat, happy, chip-eating couch potato in me will be back soon.

Games, Personal, Site News, Technology

Things to Come and Such!

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I have another slew of tech reviews coming soon so keep your eyes out for those! I plan on taking a new approach to this particular one as it does need a second opinion for all fair intents. It will be pretty sweet!

I have returned my machine to “OEM” spec with Windows XP Media Center Edition and await for my new machine purchase hopefully later this semester. However, due to the temporal return… I have been bitten by the gamer bug again and I have a few of my favorite games. I just need to get my vintage favorite game Quake on my system and all should be golden.

My family has been bugging me to set them up a machine so they can start trying to use the web again. My last experiment was a bit of a failure as Adobe’s implimentation of Flash for Linux in combination with Firefox and Konqueror on KDE didn’t quite pan out as well as I had hoped. From what I experiences with Ubuntu 8.04.1, Adobe is STILL slacking on the job there… So I am at a loss of how to make a safe and “idiotproof” machine for them that I won’t get the lovely service call at college of “Zero! We broke the computer! HELP!!!”

To close, I leave you all with a notice that “Zero’s Farewell to College” party is almost done on the details… From that, we wait for completion of everything and I will post the invite here, on social networks and personal e-mails. Expect it to be goofy and fun!

Games

Real Time Strategy – Chess on a more grand scale

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With the past days… Miss Wyno has prodded me more and more to play strategy games as well as to wet her bloodthirsty taste for victory. For a while it was friendly games of Settlers of Catan which made me remember my occasional ventures into the comic and game shops when I was a wee lad. It’s almost amazing how deep a board game can make Risk look like child’s play. From that… Wyno wanted to move into active digital mediums rather than stare at a passive Java applet of Settlers of Catan. I am a Blizzard fan and so is Wyno and Sol (who’d be dragged back in to this) so naturally, WarCraft III was the game of choice.

I will concede to the fact that I am not a “perfect” player… If anything I enjoy the recreation of playing. It was fun to see that Blizzard still supports the competitive spirit for even their “vintage” titles such as WarCraft II BattleNET Edition, StarCraft (Brood Wars), and WarCraft III even though they have bigger projects looming (Diablo III, StarCraft II, etc). I don’t harbor hate or distaste for the Command & Conquer series, just I was never much into theme of an alternate reality… That is actually somewhat odd as StarCraft is sci-fi based, but that’s another tangent…

In chess, the seasoned player knows that even the pawn can be one of the more lethal units of the game. Like knowing that if you can get your pawn to your opponent’s side that you can promote your unit to become any unit you desire. Most (wise) people would opt to promote the pawn piece to a queen to ensure best possible returns on their “investment” as their movement is far wider than most pieces. In WarCraft III, Blizzard retweaked the game’s errata from the earlier sequel (WarCraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal) almost in reverence to this principle. Sadly, I didn’t take note of this back in 2003 when I originally got into the game… rather, I learned the merit of this a few nights ago with Miss Wyno and Sol in our 4 person match.

Wyno would attack my human encampment that was woefully doomed to a swift death. My town was overrun by many of my peasants just harvesting materials in hopes of being able to fund my army of dwarven gunners. Unfortunately, my hero, footmen, and buildings were being savagely beaten… In a final rallying cry and more for novelty, I decided to hit the town hall’s “Call to Arms!” command, converting my peasants to a militia unit for a time frame of 45 seconds. I’d see the animation of my peasants dropping whatever they were doing, be it chopping wood or harvesting gold to run back to the town hall to grab armor and a sword to give a last stand. What I would see was something amazing… I saw my peasants encircle her hero unit, just laying down their swords for battle and slaying her hero. At the same time, my peasants were also fending off her armies fairly well even though the game was set and match. From seeing that, I will never underestimate the power of a lowly peasant or peon be it in game…