My weird ramblings are at the bottom.
I have a GMail account! Anyway, if you wish, you can email me through that account now as well.
I do plan on putting stuff here that deals with porting applications from Windows to UNIX-style operating systems (Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD, etc.) and vice versa (to be honest, though, I'm actually at a point where I just don't care enough to do this, so this is not likely to happen.) Email me! Notice, though, that you will need to change the email address appropriately to actually email me. This is done to prevent spammers from spamming me!
This page isn't actually under construction. I leave the first sentence there for posterity's sake.
I don't feel like publishing my current schedule at the moment, so... Maybe some other time.
For the moment, you can check out the links below:
The following links I have yet to describe (for the most part, these are all links to websites created by my friends):
KDE Stuff:
Version 0.1 of the KDE window style dotNET-R
So, what is RulerDotNET? Will it solve world hunger? No, of course not, but it might someday since it's under the BSD License. "But what is it?" you ask. It's a ruler written in C# (so you need CLR, i.e. .NET Framework, support.) I haven't tried it under Linux and Mono, but I will. I want it to work, anyway.
I have updated the source code for wxImagick to work with more recent versions of wxWindows and ImageMagick (though, not the latest.) You can find the original here.
md5sum: 063202a1f2902e1ab15eba3abd8ef563
Important stuff:
Gah! Tuxtime is no more!
litigious bastards
miserable failure
libellous bastards
warning: may be politically charged to the left at times
November 20, 2004:
Dear Other Side,
I want to extend this invitation to you so that we could speak face-to-face with honesty. I realize that there are many points that we disagree on, and some rather rancorously, but there are things that we agree need to be taken care of more urgently, such as our economy, the well-being of our soldiers, and violence from those who hate us (I dare not use the ambiguous term of "terrorist," which has been applied unfairly to some groups of people and individuals). Let us not allow feelings and idealism get in the way of necessitated action. Basically, let us prioritize those issues that we know affect all Americans, and not some small minority. We have have made some vicious and scathing attacks upon each other, some of which were completely unnecessary. Let us be adults and debate these issues in a civil manner. Perhaps such debates will lead us nowhere, and we may continue to disagree and thusly get little or nothing done on this important issues, but at the least we are trying.
Sincerely,
"Super-elitest" Liberal out to make America (and
the world) a better place.
Now that I got that out of the way, I have great distaste for those who call Democrats "obstructionists" for voting according to their core values. I'm looking at you, Trent Lott.
The entire notion of "liberal biasness" makes me sick. There is no liberal biasness in this nation. I live in a nation of Republicrats. Even CNN (a.k.a. the "Clinton News Network") is rather conservative. True liberals very rarely get any media attention. Conservatives are just afraid of anything that sounds even remotely liberal, and will thusly immediately call such a thing "liberal biasness," even if what is reported is the truth.
Why should non-violent criminals go to violent prisons? In particular, why do so many drug-users, who have not committed a violent crime, get sent off to prisons with violent criminals? Will that not make them worse off? I'm not condoning the use of drugs, but rather advocating that these people should be helped, and not carted off to a violent prison where they learn to become violent. The sooner that Americans realize that prisons are violent places, and that violence begets violence, the sooner we will be able to solve our overpopulating prison crises. Perhaps we should even entertain the notion of decriminalizing currently contraband drugs, and just regulate them. We have had much greater success keeping people off tobacco than we have in the "War on Drugs." At the least, drug users will be monitor-able, and we will be able to reduce the amount of violent crime in the nation.
A short story I wrote a couple of years ago, reposted here:
I was walking with my friend from Alpha Centauri the other day, and I had to ask him, "So why haven't you revealed yourself to the world yet? Don't you think people would be ecstatic to meet a person from another planet?"
"I'm afraid they'd kill me first."
There were quite a number of people around since it was a nice bright sunny day in the park, but he had disguised himself as a human, so no one knew the better. I was puzzled. I thought that all people wanted to know a person from another planet. "Kill you? Why?"
He looked at me, shaking his head, with this look of surprise. "Oh, I'm sure someone will say I'm 'the spawn of the devil' or something to imply that I'll corrupt humanity in some way. Your people do that all the time. Look at the history of Western Europe. It's full of such intolerance. You should know that. Weren't you taught that in your educational system?" Of course I was, but I always took the optimisitic approach to humanity. I guess he didn't, and with his life at stake, I guess I could understand.
"Yeah, that's true, but we can muster up enough support to protect you and get bodyguards and such."
"I don't need a group of extremists of my own. I'd like to tell your world, but I would like to do so without anyone losing their lives."
A child kicked a ball over to our area. He bent over to pick it up and hand it to the child. As the child took it from his hand, she paused and said to him, "Mister, are you gay?" We looked at each other in confusion.
He gave a little chuckle, since on his planet, they reproduce asexually. "No dear."
The little girl smiled, "That's good, 'cause my daddy says fags are evil." I held my breath and bit my lip in somewhat of a shock. She ran off with her ball and I looked at my friend, and he looked a little miffed.
"See, your people can't even tolerate themselves. How do you think they're going to tolerate us?"
November 10, 2004: Do health insurance companies sponsor research for cures to diseases and illnesses? I would imagine it would be in their best commercial interest to do so, but I have no idea. Of course, this is something so common sense that I doubt it happens.
I thought about this question when I thought about the accusation that drug companies specifically do not sponsor such research since they make money off of people buying their drug treatments at semi-regular intervals, and profits from a cure would be temporary and sporadic. I don't know whether this accusation is pure conspiratorial myth or completely true or somewhere in between, but I have heard it before.
I don't know the answers to any of these questions. Maybe both industries do research into various cures. I can see the reason behind not wanting to find a cure and keeping people on treatments perpetually. Any such research would be for purely humanitarian reasons, which, I guess, would be a good commercial reason as well, or at least the guise of there being research would be a good commercial reason.
November 5, 2004: We need to mobilize the religious left and get them to spread the progressive message as strongly as the religious right...no, they must evangelize that message in a manner that is in accordance to the liberals' embracement of love, in a manner that is loving and embracing, rather than the hateful "fire and brimstone" exclusionistic manner that the religious right has done and does so currently.
You might be scratching your heading and thinking "The religious left? You're kidding, right?" I'm not kidding. Their message is as strong as any other progressive, and brings with it a strong message of values and morality that secular Democrats often have a difficulty getting accross to the general populace.
November 4, 2004: I need to speak on reforms to the Democratic party so that I don't forget them. It's strange to say that since I still consider myself to be rather independant, but I'm getting sick of the Republican party.
I don't want to say this, but I agree with what some say that the Democratic party needs to be able to appeal to religious voters, or we will be semi-permanently outnumbered. We need to promote efforts that cut down on unwanted pregnancies, and make sure people understand that there is a direct correlation between abortions and unwanted pregnancies, and that we can do more to prevent abortions by preventing unwanted pregnancies. However, we should always oppose anything that tries to overturn Roe vs. Wade.
We also need to find good religious, and moral reasons for gay marriage, but we shouldn't be pushy and preachy, or hope to change those religions that refuse to recognize it. At the least, we need erase the stigma and problems people see with gay marriage. At the least, we need to get people to realize that civil marriage and religious marriage are two very different things, and should be wholly seperate. With a 50% divorce rate (of heterosexual marriage), I would bet that foreign religious people would think us a very sacrilegious nation. Within the GLBT community, we need to promote artificial means of reproduction (e.g. adoption and artificial insemination) to promote the family image of a GLBT family. I do not want to settle for civil unions for GLBT families, but I do understand that it is a compromise.
Last, but not least, we need to change the image of the military among liberals. The military does a lot of good things out there that never get publicized and liberals need to take up the the press to publicize these good deeds by the military. On the flip-side, we need change the image of liberals among military folk so to dispel the Reality Distortion Field that automatically goes up around anyone who labels him/herself as a Republican. Honestly, want all military personnel to be Independents judging candidates on their merits, much like the military itself. That cannot happen as long as liberals do not understand that the power of our military is an amoral tool that can be used for good or evil.
PS Before I forget, something needs to be done about the subsidiesH^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^bribes Republicans give to farmers to vote for them. That would change things dramatically.
November 3, 2004: To say the least, I'm extremely upset about how elections went here in the US. To say the least, I hold great disdain for Mr. Bush, and will do all I can to show others why he is such a horrible president.
That said, I'd like to respond to one particular anti-gay-marriage point I've heard people pander about, and that is the benefit that heterosexual couples bring to society through children. It's not a very good argument, particularly since the state will recognize the marriages of sterile couples, and standing to reason is that homosexual couples can have children through artificial means, be they adoption or artificial insemination or otherwise. Some will counter that such artificial means account for a very small percentage of homosexual couples, but I will contend that it is not because homosexual couples do not want children, but are rather discouraged from having children due to the obstacles placed in front of them by the state's refusal to recognize their marriage.
August 21, 2004: Melodrama for the sake of melodrama seems shallow. It's obvious from below that I occasionally seem to fall into this trap, particularly when I interact with people who allow their emotions to cloud their judgments. Melodrama for the sake of conveying emotion in response to a particularly significant event in life is more appropriate, but then any documentation of such melodrama must adequately describe the event.
That said, I shouldst convey this much about a particular melodrama I experience at the moment. Yet, I fear to do as such, for doing as such reveals to the world a vulnerability that...may well be more than I could bear to reveal. It derives from the pain of not knowing or understanding where I belong. In so many ways, I always feel out of place, though least of all amongst friends...with whom I share in common small snippets of my personality, but with none do I share a greater portion than that so to be significant. There is also aspects of my personality that I share with none in my friendships, but that is not to say that I have not met people with such characteristics, but rather they are aspects of my personality that I consider to be as weaknesses. Being as they are, weaknesses, I naturally make attempts to avoid them, though often without success, and as a natural extension to that, I avoid people within whom I perceive those traits of personality. This is not to imply that those people are weak, but they are things of which I attempt to disallow any exacerbation of those traits.
There are other things that are creating my current melodrama. Some of it may well be physical, but I would be sans-knowledgeable of such a <stream-of-conscience-gone-blank-for-appropriate-term>. Some of it has to do with the way I perceive the world to perceive myself, and I understand that I should attempt to let go until a better time comes when I can more effectively deal with that matter. That is a trait of my personality I consider to be a weakness. This is the part I cannot reveal.
June 3, 2004: I've realized that I've been alone in a lot of problems I've had to deal with in my lifetime. I'm grateful that I've had the freedom to make my own mistakes, but no one has come to my aid after I made them and needed help. I'm in the middle of making up for a big one right now and it's a little difficult, particularly since I'm alone in it yet again.
May 28, 2004: Love has died.
May 14, 2004: Here's an interesting realization: IBM is going to 0wnz0r the next generation console market. They're supplying the chips for all three major consoles!
