AlanBarber.Org
Twitter Updates
Rocking out in cubicle land... http://t.co/trOKKOy5
Thu May 17, 2012 12:34 PM
New project to play with for the day. Writing a VS2010 plugin that runs on every build... this should be fun!
Thu May 17, 2012 11:48 AM
Today is *facepalm* day... Dev DB was rolled back without telling any developers. ugg!
Thu May 17, 2012 9:13 AM
Started watching Breaking Bad the other day. Little slow at first but it gets really good. Bryan Cranston turns into one serious badass :)
Wed May 16, 2012 8:52 PM
Sunday, December 14, 2003
Saddam Captured!
Well I'll be! Who would have thought this was possible. We've been chasing Osama around and never seem to be close I just figured Saddam would be the same. We'd be in Iraq 2 years later and still saying we're looking for him. To catch Saddam like this is just to say the least, surprising.
Hopefully this capture will give the people of Iraq some peace of mind to stop worrying about how they act for fear of Saddam coming back and punishing them. Everyone can now think about the future of a free Iraq and start working towards that goal.
This won't stop the almost daily attacks in the country and if anything will probably mean more attacks for the time being. You'll have Saddam supporters trying to do revenge attacks for the capture so I'd expect to see many, many more bombings. Not to mention with the rumors the Al Quida ramping up operations in Iraq you have to wonder what will happen. Will they back off now that there's no chance of chasing off America and getting Saddam put back into power? Will they ramp up even harder now to retaliate? With the capture of Saddam might they activate sleep cells in America and start doing suicide bombings in our streets and homes? It's hard to know and that's the scary part.
Politically this is pretty good for President Bush. The fact that the administration doesn't have to keep fending off questions why we don't have Saddam will do good for popularity and the '04 election. Of course getting Saddam to talk and tell us once for all if there are WMDs and where they are will be the big clincher. The anti-war groups have been saying "where are the WMDs?" since the beginning. If Saddam himself admits he had weapons of mass destruction the President and his administration get the proof they needed to start the war.
With whatever happens, at least for today we can celebrate that one of the two bad guys we've been after is in custody and will get his just deserts.
Friday, December 12, 2003
BlogShares is back!
Hey good news, maybe. It appears that BlogShares, the stock market game that uses blogs as companies to trade, is back from the grave. Apparently It's still in limbo right now though. The new owners have the site back up running but it's still running as bad as it did when it got shut down. Plus not everything is working yet. The forums for example are still down.
It's nice to see BlogShares get a second change. However I'm not sure If I'll start playing again. At first it was fun to play but the game was too artificial. The stock prices followed preset tracks and regardless of a blog once listed the stock price would go from 20cents a share to almost 40 dollars a share within about a week. So there was little fun in playing the market. Of course that was new blogs that no one bothered with. If you trying buying and selling in popular ones the price would fluctuate so wildly share prices could go from 50 dollars to 10,000 dollars to 10 dollars within a single day. The market really became stagnate and so the site operators created a whole new system known as Ideas and Artifacts. Based on number of incoming links to blog within an industry (category of the blog) the industry would produce these Ideas every so often. You could buy these ideas and when you had 10,000 ideas turn it into an Artifact. The artifact gave you special abilities such as causing a stock price to rise (hype it) or fall (public relations disaster).
The idea market become what the game was all about. Depending on number of Ideas produced and number of blogs in an industry the Idea prices could vary wildly. It became a competition for the top few players to fight over getting cheap Ideas and then waiting a day or two in hopes the price would skyrocket and sell the ideas. It was very possible for a person to turn a hundred thousand into a billion in short order. The problems came when the owner of the site created the ability for people to write applications to play the game. More people used automated tools to buy and sell than visit the website. Within about a months time the site became completely unusable. WebPages would take 2-3 minutes to load if they did load. It just got to the point where it wasn't fun anymore. It became work just to play.
Then one day the site crashed bad. The database just exploded. It was the second or third time it had happened. The site was down for several days before a message finally showed up and said BlogShares was dead. Well it's been a few weeks and it appears that some small web development company called Santa Cruz Tech has taken control of the site. I'll be keeping an eye on it. However, I really don't think I'll start playing again. So once they're up full steam if you're a player look me up and maybe I'll give you some free stock or something. I'm known as AB Investments, Ltd. and worth a little over 21 billion.
AB Investments, Ltd. (the owner of AlanBarber.Org)
It's nice to see BlogShares get a second change. However I'm not sure If I'll start playing again. At first it was fun to play but the game was too artificial. The stock prices followed preset tracks and regardless of a blog once listed the stock price would go from 20cents a share to almost 40 dollars a share within about a week. So there was little fun in playing the market. Of course that was new blogs that no one bothered with. If you trying buying and selling in popular ones the price would fluctuate so wildly share prices could go from 50 dollars to 10,000 dollars to 10 dollars within a single day. The market really became stagnate and so the site operators created a whole new system known as Ideas and Artifacts. Based on number of incoming links to blog within an industry (category of the blog) the industry would produce these Ideas every so often. You could buy these ideas and when you had 10,000 ideas turn it into an Artifact. The artifact gave you special abilities such as causing a stock price to rise (hype it) or fall (public relations disaster).
The idea market become what the game was all about. Depending on number of Ideas produced and number of blogs in an industry the Idea prices could vary wildly. It became a competition for the top few players to fight over getting cheap Ideas and then waiting a day or two in hopes the price would skyrocket and sell the ideas. It was very possible for a person to turn a hundred thousand into a billion in short order. The problems came when the owner of the site created the ability for people to write applications to play the game. More people used automated tools to buy and sell than visit the website. Within about a months time the site became completely unusable. WebPages would take 2-3 minutes to load if they did load. It just got to the point where it wasn't fun anymore. It became work just to play.
Then one day the site crashed bad. The database just exploded. It was the second or third time it had happened. The site was down for several days before a message finally showed up and said BlogShares was dead. Well it's been a few weeks and it appears that some small web development company called Santa Cruz Tech has taken control of the site. I'll be keeping an eye on it. However, I really don't think I'll start playing again. So once they're up full steam if you're a player look me up and maybe I'll give you some free stock or something. I'm known as AB Investments, Ltd. and worth a little over 21 billion.
AB Investments, Ltd. (the owner of AlanBarber.Org)
New Blog Style
I was getting pretty bored of the sites style so I decided to change it this morning.
The old style was called Georgia Blue and is just one of the default styles that you can get on the MovableType website. This new style is called Gettysburg and you can grab it at the MovableType website too. I've made a few modifications to make the links on the sides the orange color instead of the default blue because the blue on gray was hard on the eyes.
The blue and white layout was getting a little ugly so I decided to try something new. I think this color scheme is pretty nice. It's not as bright but it's still readable unlike many blogs. Seriously some people have no common sense. Dark gray text on a black background, red text on a pink background, and so on are not good color schemes. I don't know how the owners of the sites can stand to look at their own sites?!?
C'est La Vie!
The old style was called Georgia Blue and is just one of the default styles that you can get on the MovableType website. This new style is called Gettysburg and you can grab it at the MovableType website too. I've made a few modifications to make the links on the sides the orange color instead of the default blue because the blue on gray was hard on the eyes.
The blue and white layout was getting a little ugly so I decided to try something new. I think this color scheme is pretty nice. It's not as bright but it's still readable unlike many blogs. Seriously some people have no common sense. Dark gray text on a black background, red text on a pink background, and so on are not good color schemes. I don't know how the owners of the sites can stand to look at their own sites?!?
C'est La Vie!
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
Nelly Furtado’s Folklore
Sunday night I went to the lab to work on some programming projects. I brought along my headphones so I could listen to something besides the idiot freshmen and sophomores bitching about how hard their Computer Science 200 level courses are. I can't help but laugh every time I hear them. If they think the 200 level courses are hard wait till they see the 400 level courses!
I hit up WindowsMedia.com to just find some streaming radio station but found out they had some streams of new releases. Low and behold Nelly Furtado's new CD Folklore was there.
It was really good. It's one of those CDs you can turn on and listen to without any work. I listed to the stream twice though while I was hacking away on my projects.
It's much better in my opinion than her previous CD Whoa, Nelly. It's much less pop and cookie cutter tunes and very much real and original. The strong vocals and catchy, yet meaningful lyrics of Nelly comes through and just blows you away.
The first song "One Trick Pony" is the perfect start to the CD. It's beat grabs you in and the quirky lyrics get you into a good feeling. The next song takes the fun parts of the first one and plays with lyrics to get you to sing along and tap to the beat without even realizing it.
It then all ends with this amazingly poignant song "Childhood Dreams". It uses a church organ throughout the song and it's just so powerful. Her lyrics just cut through you and you can't help but feel the emotion of the song. It all culminates with ringing church bells that prove to be the perfect ending to the CD.
The range and mix of song styles mesh very well and give enough variety so it doesn't get boring. It's very much a work of art from a talented women. When you get done listening I guarantee that you'll put it back in to listen again.
I know the RIAA are a bunch of morons and should not buy music to protest their actions but this is a definite must buy. It's really a mater of voting with our wallets. If people would only buy quality works like Folklore and leave the pre-manufactured junk on the shelves they'll learn it's not piracy that's hurting them but the trash they put out.
I hit up WindowsMedia.com to just find some streaming radio station but found out they had some streams of new releases. Low and behold Nelly Furtado's new CD Folklore was there.
It was really good. It's one of those CDs you can turn on and listen to without any work. I listed to the stream twice though while I was hacking away on my projects.
It's much better in my opinion than her previous CD Whoa, Nelly. It's much less pop and cookie cutter tunes and very much real and original. The strong vocals and catchy, yet meaningful lyrics of Nelly comes through and just blows you away.
The first song "One Trick Pony" is the perfect start to the CD. It's beat grabs you in and the quirky lyrics get you into a good feeling. The next song takes the fun parts of the first one and plays with lyrics to get you to sing along and tap to the beat without even realizing it.
It then all ends with this amazingly poignant song "Childhood Dreams". It uses a church organ throughout the song and it's just so powerful. Her lyrics just cut through you and you can't help but feel the emotion of the song. It all culminates with ringing church bells that prove to be the perfect ending to the CD.
The range and mix of song styles mesh very well and give enough variety so it doesn't get boring. It's very much a work of art from a talented women. When you get done listening I guarantee that you'll put it back in to listen again.
I know the RIAA are a bunch of morons and should not buy music to protest their actions but this is a definite must buy. It's really a mater of voting with our wallets. If people would only buy quality works like Folklore and leave the pre-manufactured junk on the shelves they'll learn it's not piracy that's hurting them but the trash they put out.
Friday, December 05, 2003
Mission to the Moon?
Yesh! FoxNews.com is reporting that President Bush wants a mission to go to the moon.
Oh man what's up with that? He better not be thinking of pulling some JFK like move at the State of the Union address. It's a bad idea to be dealing with space stuff right now. While I'm sure they're just fishing for reactions right now I hope they don't get any crazy ideas. I mean I know it's tempting to make some big announcement to give people something positive to think about. However, in the current state of the country/world it's just silly.
The war on terror hasn't exactly been looked upon favorably lately. Starting NASA on some big moon program now will just backfire. Liberals will just have a field day running around saying it's a smoke screen to distract people. They're already bitching about the billions being spent to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan so saying you're going to spend more to go to the moon will just drive them into a fury.
Right now the best thing to be do is just focus on cleaning up Iraq. Get an official government in place fast and start shifting power and control of the country to it's own people. The same goes for Afghanistan. We should be shifting to the smallest size deployments in the country as possible and keeping the deployment times short. It'll be good for both the troops and politics.
Anyways, it's just not good right now to be thinking about space. When things calm down on this planet then lets talk about a renewed energy in space travel. Plus the current state of NASAs shuttles are very questionable. If anything the President should take the advice of Dennis Miller [Dennis Miller just might have a point] and strip NASA to it's bones and build a national rail system. If he announced that at the State of the Union he'd probably have the election in the bag. Just doing something to improve the lives of people at home would sucker all the moderates and on the fence liberals to support you.
Just think about it Mr. President.
Oh man what's up with that? He better not be thinking of pulling some JFK like move at the State of the Union address. It's a bad idea to be dealing with space stuff right now. While I'm sure they're just fishing for reactions right now I hope they don't get any crazy ideas. I mean I know it's tempting to make some big announcement to give people something positive to think about. However, in the current state of the country/world it's just silly.
The war on terror hasn't exactly been looked upon favorably lately. Starting NASA on some big moon program now will just backfire. Liberals will just have a field day running around saying it's a smoke screen to distract people. They're already bitching about the billions being spent to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan so saying you're going to spend more to go to the moon will just drive them into a fury.
Right now the best thing to be do is just focus on cleaning up Iraq. Get an official government in place fast and start shifting power and control of the country to it's own people. The same goes for Afghanistan. We should be shifting to the smallest size deployments in the country as possible and keeping the deployment times short. It'll be good for both the troops and politics.
Anyways, it's just not good right now to be thinking about space. When things calm down on this planet then lets talk about a renewed energy in space travel. Plus the current state of NASAs shuttles are very questionable. If anything the President should take the advice of Dennis Miller [Dennis Miller just might have a point] and strip NASA to it's bones and build a national rail system. If he announced that at the State of the Union he'd probably have the election in the bag. Just doing something to improve the lives of people at home would sucker all the moderates and on the fence liberals to support you.
Just think about it Mr. President.