My Stuff

2011-05-16T23:40:00.000-07:00

Ok Today I wanted Netflix on my nintendo wii.

It's an old wii that has a neogamma loader, (it's hacked ) so I wanted to put netflix on it as a wad without having to update the damn thing. ( You need Homebrew channel for this )

ok Real Quick here's what I did, I grabbed a copy of the netflix WAD. you can google the file here's the name:

Netflix.Channel.USA.Wii-OneUp_iNT

NetFlixChannel-v1-USA

Ok after you get those you need a program to install the wads on your wii.

The program to do that is a wad manager.

you can get the wad manager anywhere the version is 1.7 when I wrote this may 17/2011 so maybe there will be other newer versions if you ever read this, anyhoo the file name is this:

128067_WADManagerv17

Next you need to have the HOMEBREW channel installed on your wii, if you do not have this you are screwed, and you need to install it, that's covered everywhere on the web so really I won't cover that.

ok so here's what you do next.

1-Grab an SD card or USB disk anyone will work.

2-Check that it's format on FAT or FAT32 ( NTFS won't work, if you have the SD from a camera most likely it will work without formating, you do not need to format the SD or the USB disk unless it's not fat or fat32 )

3-Make a folder on the device called "apps" inside this folder make another folder "wadmanager" Wad Manager file ( it's called WAD-Manager_v1.7.dol but you need to rename it to boot.dol)

4-Really rename the file to boot.dol

5-Copy the netflix wad to the SD or USB disk it's called Netflix NTSC-U.wad or NetFlixChannel-v1-USA.wad

6-you'll end with a this like this:

Root

|--- Apps

|*****|-----wadmanager

|*****|--boot.dol

|---NTSC-U.wad

The* are blank spaces =D

7-Go to your homebrew channel and your wadmanager will show up (if you did everything correctly, if you did NOT do everything correctly it will not show up, however it will have no icon or anything, you do not need it...

8-run the wad manager, keep pressing A until it tells you to select the wad to install,install the NTSC-U.wad and you are done.

Ok now you will have the netflix channel on your wii.. congratulations.

now if after you get the netflix channel you try to start it and it does not run, you have an old IOS.

so really you click on your netflix channel then it flashes and sends you back to the main screen, after a black screen you need another 2 steps.

Get a newer IOS, I used IOS56 and the filename is this: IOS56-64-v5662 so here are the steps:

1- Extract the IOS56-64-v5662 and get the content it's called: IOS56-64-v5662.wad

2-Place it on the SD card or USB card besides the netflix wad

3-Again run the wadmanager and now select the IOS56-64-v5662.wad

4-Install it ( same way )

5-you are DONE.

after that restart your will and the netflix channel will not only be there but it will work also.

well you need to activate it like any other netflix device.

Remeber you can almost always get a free 1 month Trial for netflix ... and they got anime and other stuff that kicks ass.

Good luck with using your wii for movies !

2011-03-31T01:40:00.000-07:00

From time to time I write stuff here that I might forget... so here it goes

in windows the power control is done with this program powercfg , now you can make windows Not look at different programs that might be blocking your PC for going into sleep mode with this command:

powercfg -requestsoverride

now if the RAS, ( PPTP ) is not allowing your PC to go to sleep there's an easy fix you can type this:

powercfg -requestsoverride Service RasMan System

and then one would expect the thing to just go away but there's more to it... or there can be more to it, first of all in power settings ( look around control panel... or type the word power on search on the start button ) there you can do several things: ( in case this fails )

1-Create a whole new profile ( to the right of the power control )

2-Edit the power profile to:

1m power down the monitor

2m sleep

3m hibernate

this is for testing, if it does not sleep or hybernate you can just again re-make a new power profile

3-on a powershell do this: powercfg -requestsoverride Service RasMan

This will remove the Rasman from the exceptions then you can just re-add it by typing:

powercfg -requestsoverride Service RasMan System

4-To see what's overriden again type powercfg -requestsoverride

5-If with this you can't get it to sleep try a powercfg -ENERGY to see what other stuff is in there stopping the sleep mode

6-Try this also to see what's in the way: powercfg -requests

7-Remember you can ALWAYS remove any driver/system app or whatever just by using powercfg -requestsoverride

8- to see how to fill it up use the powercfg -requests, you'll get something like this:

C:\Windows\system32>powercfg -REQUESTS

DISPLAY:

None.

SYSTEM:

[DRIVER] Realtek High Definition Audio (HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0888&SUBSYS

_8086D608&REV_1000\4&3acc46d&0&0201)

An audio stream is currently in use.

[PROCESS] \Device\HarddiskVolume5\Users\chuby\AppData\Roaming\mjusbsp\magicJack.

exe

AWAYMODE:

None.

So I could remove the sound card like this:

powercfg -requestsoverride Service "Realtek High Definition Audio" System

The last word is what you see when you use the request mode it can be:

System

Process

AwayMode

that's all for now... thanks

Media Center for Windows 7 gets NETFLIX OFFICIALY !

2009-10-21T13:59:00.001-07:00

at last !

What I had been wating for an official netflix for WMC !

Early on today I was going to watch some netflix, however yesterday I was looking at some stuff on internet tv ( part of WMC ), so I wanted to show it to my wife.

When I opened it, it started downloading again, I said weird an update I just installed it 2 days ago, so I let it go.

and then SURPRISE, InternetTV has a complete new look and the SO much expected WMC netflix plugin !! WOOT !!!!!!!!!

It seems to have everything, and it acually looks like the old netflixplugin

however it is fully embedded and starts the movies in full screen !

So after months and months of waitng here it is !

BTW, I am using the RTM ( build 7600) no idea if this is in the beta, I guess it is :)

have fun !

PHP some more !

2009-10-20T00:07:00.000-07:00

today I had a small yet interesting chore to do on PHP...

again with charsets, anyhow I needed to find a specific UTF-8 char on any given string.

I don't play that much with UTF characters however ( this might be public knowledge , well it is , but I did not know it )

ok it seems every UTF 8 character is 3 characters in one... so when you want to analize it you have to analize the 3 characters separately to get a final response.

so a UTF character enters to the PHP script like this: %E2%95%90
and it becomes inside the PHP E2 95 90 so the string contains E2 95 90 :)

so then I wanted to filter out characters like this so I made a small conversion of the first character to decimal

E2=226

so I did this check against he variable:

$val = $_GET['text'];
if( strpos ( $val , chr(226) ) !== false )
{// stuff}

So after looking at many UTF functions out there, this was the best option based on performance and whatnot...

I don't think it would be valid for all types of UTF encoding and there are UTF functions in PHP but sometimes they are just too big do to something small

I know I could have used the E2 directly but I am the kind of nerd that likes to use the dec notation :)

anyhow that is usefull.

=)

Green Segunda vida

2009-03-27T21:04:00.000-07:00

Green Segunda vida

My last blog post about second life, was taken quite good by many users, so I decided to place more things that have been on my mind or that I use on second life to make that life a bit easier, and maybe share it with the community to also make things easier for them

Anyhow a few weeks ago or so someone did a post about a green trend on SL scripting, however I think that the idea was novel, but there are many other things that can make SL greener for everyone.

Graphics… do you really need them ?

This will be somewhat controversial, but most of this article is based on this, I am maybe trying to raise a new awareness about how to use the graphics on SL.

First of all many, many people using SL has very “powerful” high end graphics cards ( by today standards ) , but, how much do you really need to see?

If you can set your graphics card to max, and have everything on ultra, and well the bells and whistles, you have to know that to get all this information is divided on 2 parts:

-Server side
-Client side

Server Side.

Ok, to explain this a bit more, let’s talk about each part, and how SL actually makes you “see” things. LL™ had a great idea on how to make a virtual world that is not stored over several gigabytes on your PC, they accomplished this by sending small chunks of “raw” data, basically it sends “parameters” to your PC, so it knows that a cube exists and it has a shape, and a position, so on your PC the viewer grabs that information and makes the cube.

So instead of sending tons of data with a few simple lines it can tell you where the object is how it’s is shape etc.

After that LL sends the textures, and what texture goes where, and voila, you have your world made.

Of course when something moves like vehicle, it sends the data again, but not the full data, just the new positions, or when you move a cube etc.

To send this data uses your bandwidth as well as LL servers bandwidth, keep that in mind. (bandwidth is your internet connection)

I know I talked somewhat of the PC side or client side here also but basically the concept of sending small chunks of data from one side to the other is what the server does.

Client side

Ok the client side as mentioned before, grabs all that information and builds the “world” that you will see, this part is where your video card and your CPU take over, the faster your video card and CPU the faster the world will show, and move. ( of course your bandwidth )

Green…

Ok now I can go and explain some of the “green” part of working with this, when you go to your Graphic preferences, you will see that SL selected the “best” settings for you, but you can tweak this, based on what you really need.

For instance, if you set your draw distance to 512 meters, or even more on the advance settings on the debug part, think about this, every object, avatar, texture that is around you at 512 meters, will be sent to your PC, with textures and well EVERYTHING, if they move that gets updated etc.

Now I have to ask, if you go to a club, or if you are working on a project or something do you REALLY need to see everything around 512meters from you?

Unless you are making a movie or taking pictures or spying on the sim next door, you will not need to have this at such high settings.

Just make a little test, set your draw distance at 64 meters, then sit down somewhere and wait, then press control-shift-1 ( to get the statistics panel ) and look at your bandwidth, it will not be much, unless you just arrived to that place but if it goes up, it will not stay up for long.

Then set your draw distance to 512meters, and see how your bandwidth behaves, it will go up and up, and stay there for quite sometime, just think about this if you are on the middle of Sims, using each the 15.000 objects that they are allowed to use, before that bandwidth goes down you will have to download information for 30.000 objects, textures for those 30.000 objects, and if objects are moving then you also will have to update those objects.

Now, just think how much energy your internet modem will consume getting all that information, also a lot of that information will be either stored on your hard drive or ram, using more energy, then your CPU has to process that, and at the end, your graphics card will have to deal with the textures and what not, all of that uses a lot of energy ( just put your hand on your PC to see how hot it is, or if you can touch the heat sink for your graphics card, or your CPU, they will be hot, that heath, is just wasted energy, that you will have to end up paying.

And not only that if you are on a limited internet connection, you will reach your limit VERY fast, just by doing teleports to other places, not to mention the amount of energy the routers, modems, and PC’s that deliver that data to your PC will use, I mean, is it really necessary to go around having 512 or more meters, ALL the time. I have to say, no, not really.

Your pc has a power source, it can state 400,500 watts, but that’s the maximum power it can give, when you overload a program like second life, your PC will draw more and more and more power, and over time, this will add to some money, as well as some more burning of fossil fuels, etc, so basically you can help the world and save money just by using what you just really need.

Greener !

As I said before the GPU ( Graphics processing unit or video card ) performs a lot of operations on SL, but you can control those options as well, once again on the graphics tab, you can see several options (when you click on custom ) you’ll see “Shaders” most of the options there put strain on the GPU, as I said before you don’t really need all that for good SL experience, basically with basic shaders, and atmospheric shaders you will have a good SL experience ( because it will render glow) and bump map and shiny, but you can turn those off, but notice that if you build something when you texture specially if you want to add glow, it’s important to have them on, or you will make things so “Glowy” that people will just see everything as if they just arrived to heaven, so it’s good to keep this off, unless you are building, well texturing.

Water reflections, once again good for pictures, useless for a day to day SL experience, then we move to particles, it’s not a real good idea to turn them completely off because you’ll loose some of the SL experience, but a good practice is to keep them on low, that way you don’t put as much strain on your video card but you’ll also be able to see things that require particles.

There are other options there, most can be lowered for a day to day use, the only one that will act to help you is avatar impostors, since it will not render full avatars unless needed.

Mesh detail, again good for pictures, but not for a day to day thing.

Multimedia..

Ok as you know on SL you can see media , and audio, and it’s good to have them enabled, but try not to keep on the audio and video tab, the automatically play media on, because for instance if you teleport to a place where a video is playing even if you are not even close to the TV it will start to play, so once again more bandwidth and costs, so keep it on, but play it on demand it only takes for you to click on the play button, or a script to start your play but when you want it !

Your Fried PC.

Now this is all good, and will make your “consumption” of resources from RL and SL less, but that’s not the only benefit you will get out of this, as I said before using everything on ULTRA, will cause heat, a lot of heat, and you maybe know this, but heat is the natural enemy of PCs , if your computer runs very hot during hour’s days or months, IT WILL FAIL, when you see your motherboard it has small tracks ( the things that resemble roads on the green plaque ), and it also has small components that where soldered there, with heat, but a PC that stands heat and heat and more heat, over time some of the tracks and the soldering will become loose, and something “strange” will happen, your pc will start to fail, it will fail randomly, maybe a frozen program, a reboot, a Blue Screen etc, and this is a thing that personally I have seen happen a LOT of times, random failing PCs because the components got overheated and failed.

Also if you have several hard drives, lets say you have one to save your pictures, or music, and you will not use it while on Second Life, make it go to sleep, ( you can google and check how to make your hard drives sleep ), it will basically make your unused hard drives go to and idle state where they use a lot less energy, and will generate less heat, and at the end it will prolong their life.

Also, you can make other parts of your pc ( or all your PC ) go to sleep, instead of using a screen saver, make the monitor turn off, once again google up how to make your PC and it’s parts enter sleep mode.

So by keeping usage low, you will save money, energy, resources, and make your PC live longer and work better, great deal if you ask me.

The BUZZZZZZZZ sound….

Maybe your PC from time to time buzzes, or sounds like an airplane, maybe it happens when you open SL or a program that uses a lot of resources, this basically has 2 causes, one, is that your components notice that they are getting hot, so they tell the PC: “hey I need to cool down, please make the fans spin faster so they can take more heat out!” , so when that happens you’ll start listening to the annoying buzz sound.

But that’s not the only cause of the buzz sound, or “airplane pc”, a big problem that people are not aware is that dust gets collected on your PC, that dust ends up on the heatsinks and then they can’t work properly, even with the fan going at a full speed, the air will not flow as intended, and will cause the airflow to get resistance, so, the GPU, CPU, motherboard will get hotter, and well once again the problem, more electricity, less PC life.

However there are things you can do to solve this, if you can get a can of compressed air you can blow it on your heatsink, and remove the dust, I warrantee you that the sound will either go away or become very very faint.

Personally from time to time I go to the gas station at the corner where I live, and I ask them if I can use the compressed air they have there, and I blow all the PC, when it comes back I get 0 sound, more stable temperature, and the good feeling of knowing my PC is working better !

Oh my Laggness !

As you might have assumed by now, all that I’ve written here can also affect you, generating lag, once again by pressing control-shift-1, you can get the status window there you can see a parameter ( FPS , Frames per second ) as I said at the beginning SL is server and client side, but sometimes you get lag and a lot of it by having your graphics settings to the max.

Basically you’ll use a lot of ram, a lot of GPU, a lot of everything, so your PC will not be able to process everything the way it’s supposed to do it, and that will show on your FPS ( of course if the sim is laggy it will also affect you ) but anyhow, if you are getting very low FPS ( 3-8 ) making the changes stated above most likely will allow you to get more FPS, and end up making your SL experience smoother, so you might also consider that sometimes lag is not only the sim fault but maybe all the resources you are using, will generate more lag.

Thinking about the Future !

Maybe you have seen or have bought those new energy saving light bulbs, they are amazing! ( however they have been with us for so long Tesla invented them on the late 1800’s or early 1900’s ) anyhow those are made to save you money on electricity.

Well based on that concept now you will see flat screen monitors, ( LCD ones ), and well the “old” tube monitors, the ( CRT ones ), maybe you still use a CRT, anyhow where I am going with this is that if you have an old monitor or an old PC and you change it most likely you’ll end up saving a lot of money, and for instance if you right now have a CRT monitor, a LCD one will pay for itself, just by the insane difference on power consumption that one has compared to the other, the LCD one uses fractions of the energy that the CRT one uses.

Now when you decide to change the PC, or if you want to change the motherboard and processor, try to get a 45nm processor, ( 45 nanometers , that’s how they build them ) anyhow, a 45 nm processor will use A LOT LESS POWER than a 65 nm processor, so really on the long run you’ll have a better, greener PC, that is energy aware, and that will have a long life.

I really hope this makes your Second Life easier, better, and more aware of the environment, I know some people will say that all of this is not worth it, but let’s just talk about the money, if by making this changes you end up saving 0.5$ per hour that you use Second life, and you use it 4 hours a day, every day, for 1 year, it could save you 730$ a year ! ( 0.5x4x365 = 730 ) , and just imagine the amount of energy saved !

Thank you for reading.

RS.

Future Changes on SL -Expensive Ram ! -

2009-03-20T02:57:00.000-07:00

Hi I decided to take a break from my schedule to write about something that seems to be on the Idea Panel, at Linden Labs(tm), and most likely will be implemented in soon to come versions of the Second Life Server.

A few days ago at 4AM SLT, babbage Linden called up on an office hour meeting ( march 18 to be exact ), to inform us about new things that are cooking on SL.

Basically 3 things where discussed, some of you might know about them some of you might now, however I will talk about this issues here:

-The New Scheduler

[2009/03/18 4:03] Babbage Linden: so, the biggest thing that happened this week is that the new mono scheduler past internal QA.

ok for the non tech people out there the scheduler is the "soul" of SL scripts, it seems that based on the work of some hard working beta testers ( like moon metty ) they found out a serious flaw on the scheduler, that from time to time allowed mono scripts to go over it's 64K ram allocation limit, therefore using more ram, as well as bigger time slices, so that is indeed a thing that could potentially create a lot of issues, from the server side where the scripts are run.

in Babbage Linden's words:

[2009/03/18 4:04] Roberto Salubrius: now new limitations that we should be aware of ?
[2009/03/18 4:04] Babbage Linden: previously it was possible to exploit the scheduler to get long time slices
[2009/03/18 4:05] Babbage Linden: that should now be fixed
[2009/03/18 4:05] Babbage Linden: also, it was possible to temporarily use more than 64K with mono scripts within a time slice

Babbage Linden: scripts that are most often affected are those which use list operations like this
[2009/03/18 4:07] Babbage Linden: l = llListSortList(l);

on a personal note:
This, has been "exploited" by some scripters, deliberately, and maybe others are using more than 64K without being aware that they are using it, or more time, since we really don't have the appropriate tools to measure this, and we thought it was controlled correctly on the Server Side, well thankfully this new scheduler will be for some time on the Beta Grid, so we can go out and test some scripts, that we could think might be using more than they where supposed to, and try to fix them, however, it's known that some content will break, but well, there's not much we can do about that right now, the new Scheduler is expected to come with the 1.26 Server.

-limit script memory based on parcel ownership

It seems that in the near future, we are going to have to worry not only about the prims we have on a parcel, but also the ram that we are using on each parcel:

[2009/03/18 4:24] Babbage Linden: there is a separate project we're working on which we limit script memory based on parcel ownership
[2009/03/18 4:25] Babbage Linden: which will work like prim limits
Babbage Linden: when scripts are running in world, they will request memory from the parcel's script memory pool

So then as the conversation unfolds it seems that we are going to have to sell items, like this " Techno Kitty Development - Future Object - Prims: 3 Ram: 16K -

As Babbage said after this, when you do not have enough ram to run a script, it will just not rez, just like it happens now when you don't have enough prims on a parcel, maybe we'll get a "Parcel Ram Full Unable to rez item"

on a personal note, as a system administrator of years, I understand why this is going to be implemented, you need boundaries and limits, however as a user, I see this as something potentially problematic, now it will not only be prims, but also ram.

And as a "SL scripter" this really worries me, since as we all know a program might grow over time, for instance a visitor counter, right now we have a predefined allocation of ram ( or we thought we did, look the scheduler part ), and we knew that we could use up to 64K of ram, I have no idea how much ram we will get for each SQM, however it would be interesting to see, how things will unfold, when you sell a small script telling people it uses 64K of ram, and well to start it might just use 1K, or 2K, I really have a lot of questions about this, but well, I guess time will tell.

[2009/03/18 4:29] Babbage Linden: you will need to sell it as a 6 prim, 16KB object
[2009/03/18 4:29] Babbage Linden: people are widely aware of prim limits
[2009/03/18 4:30] Babbage Linden: "memory limits are like prim limits: you get them with your land"

@_@

Also it seems that in the not so far future we will be able to allocate more ram per script, so we won't need to "cut scripts" and use linked messages as we do now, that might be nice, however I think that if a script requires a lot of ram, well, it won't be a big seller, as I said before I have more questions about this, and the implications of this, than answers:

[2009/03/18 4:46] Babbage Linden: you might have a 1 prim object that needs 1MB
[2009/03/18 4:46] Babbage Linden: or a 100 prim object that needs 16KB

[2009/03/18 4:50] Babbage Linden: there will be edge cases were people are running 2000 scripts on a 512m parcel of land
[2009/03/18 4:51] Babbage Linden: those will stop working

-avatars allowance for attachments

[2009/03/18 4:24] Babbage Linden: and give avatars and allowance for attachments
[2009/03/18 4:25] Babbage Linden: which will work like prim limits
[2009/03/18 4:25] Roberto Salubrius: so limit ram and or script time per avatar
[2009/03/18 4:26] Babbage Linden: when scripts are attachments, they will request memory from the avatar's script pool

This is basically the same thing as limit script memory based on parcel ownership, but it will be per avatar, basically you'll have an amount of ram for each Avatar, for scripted attachments, if you have enough ram you'll be able to attach the items, if not, well it won't attach.

[2009/03/18 4:45] Babbage Linden: parcels and avatars will have a memory pool
[2009/03/18 4:45] Babbage Linden: in order to rez a script you need to have enough memory available in the pool to fulfil the requirement
[2009/03/18 4:46] Babbage Linden: just like a prim limit

[2009/03/18 4:53] Babbage Linden: but again, we will pick numbers for avatar pools that will mean that most people can continue to use the scripted attachments they currently use
[2009/03/18 4:53] Babbage Linden: only extreme edge cases should be affected

On a personal note, I really hope they give each avatar a very LARGE pool of ram, because it will be so bad to get costumers screaming at you, telling you that product X or Y is nor working, and then you are gonna have to tell them something like, look if you go bald, take off your shoes, and all your jewelery, you'll be able to use your new item... that really concerns me.

Well all of that being said, the "why" this is being implemented is basically to really limit things, and avoid lag, and griefing:

Babbage Linden: and actually, running tons of scripts on a tiny parcel is griefing all the other parcel owners anyway
[2009/03/18 4:52] Roberto Salubrius: yes of course
[2009/03/18 4:52] Babbage Linden: i agree that this will require lots of communication to get right

[2009/03/18 4:53] Babbage Linden: but again, we will pick numbers for avatar pools that will mean that most people can continue to use the scripted attachments they currently use
[2009/03/18 4:53] Babbage Linden: only extreme edge cases should be affected

I have no idea what a extreme case is right now, but I guess I'll know soon enough, well it seems that right now the lindens are conducting a grid wide assessment, on how much ram each person is using, and how much ram each parcel is using to have real numbers to work with, I hope this numbers are REAL high, so we don't see content broken, or we don't see as much content broken as we could see when this is fully implemented.

However I have to say that RIGHT now, when they are getting the metrics of all this, Bots do affect us more than imagined, since most of them are just "dummies" with no attachments, they basically could end up lowering the pool for the rest of us real users, I hope the lindens take this into consideration before they get the metrics up and running, and I really call massive bot owners, to keep them out of the grid while the metrics are set, so LL(tm) get a better understanding of what is required with real significant numbers.

As I Said before this really raises a lot of questions, from my side, and makes me wonder, if on the long run this will be for the better or for the worst, I guess we will see, this is is a change that will touch the core of SL as we know it right now ( no I am not screaming wolf, or writing about another end of SL ).

Now I do have my own personal theories about why this might be being implemented, but I will keep this to myself, and let you all come to your conclusions, basically I wrote a few comments, and decide to share this information with the community !

Thank you for reading !

RS.

The hell of nsbp or char 160 or %A0

2009-02-01T12:59:00.000-08:00

I was coding a website and I came with an issue, it seems that if you use select option then add the text, well that normally works UNLESS you end up with double spaces, so if you have something like "HELLO HOW ARE YOU" and you place it in an option you will end with "HELLO HOW ARE YOU", if you are working with thins, products maybe that have several spaces and you can't change the product name, what do you do ?

well you can add &NBSP so it would end up begin something like "HELLO&NBSP;&NBSP;&NBSP;&NBSP;&NBSPHOW ARE YOU" that will result in the correct text inside the option !.... now here comes the pain in the ARSE !

if you grab that data and try to include it on a database it will not enter as you would expect "HELLO HOW ARE YOU" but it will enter as:

"HELLO%A0%A0%A0HOW ARE YOU" ( %A0 is character 160 )

** note even here the damn Blog ate the SPACES .... I will re-write
but basically most of the text =

S/HELLO(SPACE)(SPACE)(SPACE)HOW ARE YOU/

so when you try to do more "transactions" on the name, you will get an error, because you would normally write something like:

$sql="update value="newvalue" where salute="HELLO HOW ARE YOU" ( just a code stub )

but inside $SQL you already have saved the text with char(160)... so this:

"HELLO%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0HOW ARE YOU"

is not the same as: (%20 is the normal space)

"HELLO%20%20%20%20%HOW ARE YOU"

so ... well this kept me up all the night it has to be corrected like this:

( in PHP )

str_replace("%A0"," ",DATA WITH NBSP);

that will replace the unholy NSBPs to real spaces...

then you can add it to the DB and work as you please.

this really gave me a headache today... geez.

2009-01-18T00:28:00.000-08:00

I'm gonna start posting bits of PHP or other coding langs here so I can remember them when I need them.

First:

how to get the filename of a PHP script ( without the server or anything )

echo end(explode('/',$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']));

now a way to get just where the script is being executed the main path of the server
would be:

$scriptname=end(explode('/',$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']));
$htmlpath ='http://'.preg_replace('/'.$scriptname.'/',"",$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'].$_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']);
echo $htmlpath;

My take on cloud computing

2008-12-25T11:03:00.001-08:00

First of all I would like to say that I have been working on ITT for quite some time and on Computers for well all my adult life, I have had websites up since 1996, so I can surely say that I do have over 10 years of experience on the web and more than 20 years as a computer programmer.

Now as a person that likes to enter new technologies I started checking up the computing clouds such as Amazon EC2, Aptana and GoGrid, have to take time and 3 articles to talk about each one but the first one I would like to refer to is GoGrid. You might wonder why GoGrid first, and I have to say because it is still a beta, and maybe if the developers do read this there’s still space for improvement.

First of all about signup and startup, I have to say that those are a breeze, actually I spoke to costumer service before signing up and I got a very “juicy” coupon for 100$ free usage of their grid, that’s more than enough not to only get acquainted with the service but also, to get a site up and running and hold it for a few weeks.

Ok the interface is very self explanatory you choose what you want to deploy, select a pre-made image, start it, give it a public ip and you are up !, very simple.

They offer several images that you can check on their wiki, from Centos, RedHat, windows 2003 2008, and a variety of dedicated MySql and MySql images from the same providers, but if you choose you can even get a full featured LAMP server to start with.

Ok their prices are discussed on their site and they are good compared to other services, and you can actually purchase some pre-paid plans that allow you to pay even less, GoGrid, unlike others I have tested, opted for a ram/hour method, basically it is this, you pay for 1GB of ram for each hour of usage, as of now their current price is 0.19us$ an hour, but there’s one thing that they lack to mention on their website, if you pay for 1GB ( that is the least you can pay for each hour ) you can split that 1GB into 2 different 512Mb servers, and I think that’s a very nice thing that they have, specially since you can have a dedicated MySql on the back and a web server on the front, assigning 512mb of ram to each one, personally I have to say I would love it even more if I could assign chunks of 256mb instead of 512, that could allow someone that requires it to have two 256 MySql databases, and 1 web frontend of 512 running apache.

And actually since you are paying for ram/hour, you should basically be able to assign it anyway you want, but there’s this little, HUGE problem…. You can’t make your own images.

This is a thing that really made me think about GoGrid, I know that their images are very good, and cover most of the aspects of what you need to start a web server, but sometimes, based on the infrastructure they give you, it would be nice to make an image that just runs a dedicated apache for instance, of course you can remove all the “bloatware” that comes with all of their servers, but it would be handy if when you remove all that, you could actually save the image, and re-deploy it.

Now what really is a kill for me right now, is the fact that as I stated before you can’t save your image, you can “shut it down” but when it is shut down, it still charges the assigned ram that was given to it initially, so if you have a server off, you are still paying for it, and that’s something I don’t really like to say the least.

To stop the image from eating your money you have to delete it, and of course with deletion you waste all the effort you placed on your configuration, and as a system administrator I do know that sometimes it takes longer to actually set up a server just right (including updates, patches etc) than to add the costumer data, (normally a few GBs of data, a few Databases, etc )

On GoGrid they say that they are thinking of allowing in the near future to save images, and a way to really shut them down, ( they have had sites running for a long time on their cloud, with 100% uptime ), but I have to say that for a live environment to allow you to keep images that you modified saved is a must.

I have a few examples, for instance, if a new costumer is looking to get a web presence, and maybe they require a demo site, for them to try it out and at the end actually hire you, it would be nice to have an image, just boot it allow them to see how it works, and shut it down, if the deal closes, then you re-start the image and get it up and running.

Scalability, one of the BIG HUGE parts of cloud computing is to allow on the fly scalability, either automatic, or by hand, ( automatic would be the best ), but when you start a server from GoGrid, you assign to it some ram, you work on it, and since you can’t save the image, you can’t just tell it to re-start with 2GB of ram ( max amount right now but they are scaling up )

So you have to really think what do you need, because if you decide to deploy a 1GB server, make all the changes and then you see that the server is not getting up to par with 1GB you have to seek the pre-made image again, give it 2GB, then go in, make all the changes and make it run on 2GB, of course that either means 1 of 2 things.

1- keep the 1GB server on line until you change and make the 2GB server just like the 1GB one, or
2- DOWNTIME.

So you really have to think about this one, on the other hand if they provide you with a way of saving your images and just re-assign resources it would be awesome, however as of now that’s not the case. Also, if they allow the server to check if it needs more ram allow for ram bursting automatically and charge accordingly.

Now this issue of not being able to save the images, personally is what’s keeping me from moving into GoGrid cloud, I know this is not the case, but I feel that I have a server running in ram when I start it, and it really freaks me out, and leaves a lot of what-if’s on my head.

However they do provide persistent storage, but I have to say that I have not really tested that persistent storage, or I have not found it on the panel, I have to seek more, but from what I understand, and I hope, I am mistaken the persistent storage comes in the image, but if I find a way to keep just a drive that exists for persistent storage that would be a great plus.

For instance on Linux you could easily do something like this: grab X image then have another drive for /home then mount /dev/sdx to home, and that would allow you to just change a lot of things in a matter of seconds, go in make a new image, assign resources, configure it, and when it’s all done mount /home and make things faster.

But I insist the lack of image saving really is a point to think about.

I have to say that 2 other great things they have is the load balancing that is free and that inbound data is free as well, so those are good points on their favor.

Now I think that places that are offering computing clouds should think about this, a large percent of the population that could be in considering clouds, would be previous dedicated or VPS users, ( myself I do use various VPS ), and since there are VPS sprouting all over the web they have to learn to compete with them, for instance, as a somewhat “lazy” system administrator, I love to use Cpanel for some maintenance of the sites, and now that I have been looking in the possibility to move to a cloud, I have seen that there’s no Cpanel installed on any image, ( I know about their license fees and such ) but they should have that as an option, a lot of people would be more willingly thinking about changing to clouds if they can just migrate the existing accounts via Cpanel instead of doing it by hand, I know that there are other alternatives to Cpanel, even free ones, and any system admin can be able to deploy them in a couple of hours.

But then we go into the same problem, the image saving !

Personally what I would like to see on future clouds is this:

1-Ability to make and save your own images, but change them on the fly

-I know that some system administrators would say that’s insane, but I have to say that medium to small companies that have relied on VPS, are used to making on the fly changes. ( basically this is what Amazon EC2 cloud lacks, and one of the things that moved me from them and look for other solutions, I know that on EC2 you can make your own images and save them and whatnot but they are static once you save them, that is not on the fly.

2-Ability to manage resources as needed, scale up and down ( preferable automatic depending on the needs )
The big idea of cloud computing is that if you unexpectedly get a large amount of hits, ( like getting slashdotted or something ) your grid will be able to handle them and adapt to this needs, also when the site is slow, should allow you to save some money. ( a real what you use is what you pay for )

3-Specifically on GoGrid, allow me to really shutdown a server, not just delete it.

4-Ability to assign memory for the servers in blocks from 64MB and up.

The idea behind cloud computing I have to say is amazing, you get a lot of resources that you can “more or less” assign based on your needs, but if we think about the constraints that I see we have right now, the basic cloud or the concept is not being fulfilled.

The companies have to think that you have to be able to really “play” with your hardware inside a cloud, at the end the more flexibility, as final costumers we get the more we can get out of the cloud, and at the end it would be more profitable for the service providers.

Basically I would like to see a somewhat Lego environment that stands in front of the cloud, make it a kids game, for instance I would be able to sit down, grab an image of a CPU, then drag and drop one of my Os’s ( even an Atari, or Amiga image if I want to )

Then grab a block of ram, drop it in the CPU, then a piece of the processor, drop it in the CPU, HDD, click a virtual start button and have it running.

Then if I choose to do so, I can just turn off the pc (or do it on the fly) , grab another block of ram, assign it, another piece of CPU, and just keep working.

If I require a new server, for testing or whatever make another image, then if I choose to, I can just turn off the virtual hand made PC, and leave it on standby until I need it again.

Tired.

2008-12-23T00:55:00.000-08:00

Lately I have been kinda tired, but no matter what, I have to work, well, this past few weeks I have been kinda off Second Life, because, SL can be very very hard, it takes a lot from you, so I am giving myself a SL break.

Well now in the good news department, my NEW daugther was born 51cm, 3.7kgs, very healthy and my other daugthers love her, so that makes me happy.

Lately I have been working on my site Internetico adding stuff, I bought some software for classified ads but I have to say it was LAME to say the most so I grabbed the best of it and modified it in full, so now I have my new classified part of internettico you can check them here: classifieds ( like a craiglist ) I really like how it ended, but I guess that not very far in the future I'm gonna pimp it up with CSS and all those goodies.

as I said I am tired but I am also working a lot, I made a new opensocial application, I still have to submit it to more places but so far it has been accepted by hi5, it's called "Tabla de posiciones de costa rica", and I really like it.

I have future plans to develop more opensocial apps as well as to see how opensocial translates to facebook, so I can reach more audience, also get them on other sites like orkut and such.

Oh also .. very important... I have been dieting ! since october I have lost 17-18 pounds, doing calorie counting and stuff, so I am happy for that as well, at least my gut has come down.

I have other things to share but I guess that all in due time.

Thank you for reading.

she did it again...

2008-09-06T02:55:00.001-07:00

lately I have been working as usual on SL, now I am making a guided tour thingie, if you where on SL you would understand, besides that, well I have been spending more time with my fiancee, I don't know if I wrote about this before, but we are expecting a baby, her name ( yes it is a her, the miracle of modern science ) anyhow her name will be Maria Cristina, it sounds kool for me, it's fun, well we are 28 weeks now, and the baby moves all over the womb, she gets very excited when I'm around, kicking and moving, and all that, sometimes, it seems that we play, we touch a part of the tummy and then she picks or punches or whatever she does there.

It's funny I have to say, that's one thing I really like now, to play with her ( I know she has not been born yet but still ), she is due for nov. 25, I hope everything goes smoothly, I want to meet her and hopefully she'll look like her mom ^^, well I have to do other stuff so I just came to write for a second.

thank you for reading.

Bored....

2008-08-26T22:28:00.000-07:00

interesting now that I wrote the "bored" title on this page, I was wondering how many people are actually bored and just write on their blogs, well this seems every so often for me, I have a few blogs but I write either when I feel I have something to say or I am really bored.

Well lately, since my last post ( I guess, I have not checked ) I have been working on SL as usual, today I got a few messages from facebook, that thing looks like my schoolbook, only former classmates. ( high school )

I grew up with them, I was on a school where we all got in kindergarten and we graduated all together, so I really did not have much social interaction outside of high school until I got out of it... well graduated.

After that I had what I thought at the time was a healthy social life, then after some years I realized some parasites just where my friends or """FRIENDS""", to get a ride on the car, sad aint it ?

Anywho after that I had some friends in college, university, I guess that either I am a pain in the ass or those friendships are not worth much, there are a few I still know their whereabouts but that's about it...

I remember I saw one day on TV that when you are young you have an average of 50 friends or so, and as you grow older that number goes down until you are around your 60's and only have around 3 friends... well at the pace I am going It seems that at 65 I'll have no friends lol

actually during my life I did not care much about friends or acquaintances, now that mostly it is me and my GF ( wife, fiancee ), I kinda miss having other people to talk.

there's an issue thou, I have never been easy to speak to, or mostly I can say I have never been the kind of person to open up to others so I bottle up a lot.

I have always said you can know me for years and know a lot of things about me, but never really about me, to some point, a ghost you might say.

you can say a lot of the things I have done but not who I am or what my life is.

I think that even here, I talk a lot about my stuff, by not about myself, sometimes I feel like I want to open up and just say thing right out, but it is hard, even in writing.

someday perhaps.

well thanks for reading see you soon I guess.

agust 21

2008-08-21T18:07:00.000-07:00

nice day, tomorrow is my Bday... kool, I never do anything for it, I guess I'm not the type of person that celebrates the fact that another year has passed...

today August 21, it reminded me of a song "Cuando agosto era 21" I'm not going to translate it but it's a very nice song indeed, about an abortion, or like what causes a young girl to abort, mostly the society. I guess life is like that, I'm not pro or against abortion, but I think it has to be seen on a case by case basis, some people can abort, other's can't.

Lately I have been working still on my HTPC ( home theather pc ) it is working now after some modifications, I realized something, what I like of having something like TIVO or a HTPC is mostly the ability to record rewind or pause live TV, all the other things are just icing on the cake, but well that's what is most important for me, I hate to spend my time just watching comercials. I have to say when I am in the right mood to watch commercials I go to youtube and watch them, ,and that's it.

also since my Video Caputre card the Hauppauge 2250 is somewhat new I made a website to centralize my knowledge of it it's : http://hau2250.eslashdot.com/ it does not has a lot of information but at least it has the information I have been able to find around the net.

Also.. I found out a couple of things using MEDIA CENTER for XP, XP MCE, for vista home premium, and for vista home premium code fiji ( the 2008 TV pack )

first where I am located I don't have an EPG, ( electronic programming guide ) ( bummer ) but I can generate one with a program such as TVxb, then using another program ( bladerunner ) you can "inject" the EPG into MCE, it's kool, but it seems that that only works on MCE XP, and MCE vista without the service pack 2008, as soon as you input the service pack 2008, the guide that bladerunner creates DOES NOT WORK with vista. so if you don't have an EPG listing for your card and use XMLTV ( generated by TVxb or anyother software ) don't even worry about installing vista TV pack. the standard changed and it changed a lot !

I analized the stream that was being requested by media center TV pack, in the past it was a guide.bin ( that is known and has been decoded ) but now there it seems to be using a .enc file, I did not even bother to capture the Enc file to try and decode it, because the other BIG problem is not the enc file ( well it could be super encrypted ) but on vista MC, the old one, you could re-set the download URL, and ask it to download the guide locally, so far I have not found where to change it on vista TV PACK, all the registry entries that you normally changed on vista MC to allow the download from another source are not respected by this new TV pack.. so no EPG, really REALLY SUCKS.

now I found out that installing the guide.bin file on vista is a real pain in the ASS, so I am coding an automatic installer / web server for doing it automagically, I think it will be released next week or so. ( depends on my back pain )

I have been working a lot on this ( therefore my back pain ) but at least it's kool to have an outlet from my regular job on Second life.

ty for reading

ok All Done

2008-08-06T23:24:00.000-07:00

Ok the surgery was a success, a few hours after it was finished, she was already hearing better, and well even with the surgery she was feeling good.. so well for the next few days I'll be taking care of her ( of course with the help of my GF ( wife ) mom and others around me, but that's fine. )

ok, that's it for that I guess.

I don't recall if I wrote or not on the Veoh thing that I found a way to "bypass" their protection, of course I will not discuss it here, but it actually allowed me to check out netflix "view now" you know netflix live movies "broadcasted" over the net.

yesterday I needed to see something to take my mind out of things so I watched superman, I have to say the quality was not what I expected, I mean, it was not 100% bad and I watched it and enjoyed it, I know for certain that netflix when they analyze your stream to see the quality they should deliver assigns you a quality that is fit for comfortable viewing using your internet speed, but I have that feeling that because of my "trick" I get less speed than what I am supposed to get.

but I also think netflix compression is not the best in the world. why, well for instance the ABC feeds I can watch them in full HD resolution, no skipping or anything. just a great feed, also on joost the images are AWESOME.

that reminds me of something I readed a few days ago about HD and Digital TV.

here where I live we has a HUGE report on a newspaper about the 2009 change to Digital TV in USA. but it was all WRONG.

and speaking with some people it seems that a lot of people have that concept messed up, DIGITAL TV, is not HIGH DEFINITION.

there I said it, but only DIGITAL TV, can have HIGH DEFINITION CONTENT...

now it is interesting where I live I saw something, that I did not know exactly how to explain I do have 3 HD channels, and 5 or so digital channels ( well 5 digital no-hD and 3 digital HD, so 8 digital channels )

anyhow I always scrolled around and saw the normal Analog channels, and they looked like SHIT, but the Digital ones where always crisp sharp, awesome, now the HD channels, well HD is HD.

well going back to what I readed they did a test, showing TV to different people with different qualities.

first the analog one ( the one we have been using since TV started, the yucky one )
of course it is AWEFULL.

then the Digital Broadcasts.

non HD... People loved it, because the image is very clear, and crisp.

HD... the same people love it, because the image is very clear and crisp.

most people did not find a significance difference between HD and non HD.

and well now I do understand that.. HDTV and DIGITAL NON HD TV after a few minutes your eyes think of them almost the same way, of course with HD you get to see things more clear, with more detail, but as we all know our brain when it has too much detail tends to just "remove" detail, because things would get very messy if we retained all that detail ( for more info about that look about researches on the savants, or savant syndrome, Google is your friend. )

So it makes me wonder when you first experience HD it is like WOW, but after a few minutes it is just... the same I guess, ( not the same as analog but the same as non HD )

So is HD too much for our senses, and we en up wasting "bandwidth" on something that we would never really get to appreciate, that makes me wonder really.

but I have to say one thing that since Internet Television, is delivered via digital, ( either HD or non HD ) it looks great, as long as you have the bandwidth to sustain a stream of a video feed, what you get is totally worth it. now if someone would start selling real CABLE over the web, ( not slingshot ) but I don't know get contracts with MTV, FOX, VH1, ABC, CBS, NBC, Discovery etc etc. and send their live feed at what 500-2000KB/s that would really end up replacing cable TV.

and personally I think that joost is one of the pioneers on that field, I mean it would be awesome to pay your internet, a high speed connection and then pay well 20-30us$ a month to get 40-50 channels, I know akimbo did something like this and broke but maybe because of instead of using a PC they sold a box, that killed them but right now we can plug our PC's to our TVs and with slim clients and even linux or small distributions of XP ( like PE ) we could achieve this ( and I am not talking about IPTV )

we have to see what the future has in store for us.

see you later.

today it is the surgery

2008-08-06T08:53:00.000-07:00

ok today is my daughter's surgery everything will be ok, and well of course one is a tad scared, but that's normal, as I told my daughter if you where not scared you won't be human. that applies to myself as well, I woke up kinda early and I have not slept much.

anyhow it's at 1pm, she'll be here at around 3pm to eat icecream.

bye for now.

2008-08-04T22:44:00.001-07:00

hi Me again...

My head is all over the place, my oldest daughter has a surgery on wensday and well I am worried, you know as any other dad would be. today we had to take some blood samples from her but it was almost impossible, ( her mom was with her for a change ) but tomorrow she'll give it another try, and if it does not work, then I'll do it.

ok Lately I have been watching an Anime series called "Death Note", it's not my kind of anime, I have to say, it's somewhat dark, considering what I like to watch or what I normally watch regarding anime, but i have been seeing it anyhow ( normally I like stuff like Ranma 1/2 or Girls Bravo, or what I think is my favorite of all time Onegai Teacher ) anyhow this one is interesting.

I won't discuss the plot of it here, because I REALLY REALLY hate spoilers, ( they piss me off ) but I have to say it makes you think about stuff, about power, and all that.

ok I have been also doing some research about my Anxiety/Agoraphobia, Earlier this year I decided to give up trying to get cured, but now I have a new daughter on her way and well my other 2 daughters and my Girlfriend, so I thought I might give it another shot.

first of all, well a few months ago I was doing a lot of Buddhist meditation, there I learned about what really is anxiety.

at least for myself, but I guess other people could have the same, anxiety is not a feeling by itself, nope, far from it, when you have panic or anxiety as far as I have felt or seen I can describe it as a complete shock of your body emotions, that lead to having panic.

so I know there is not just one feeling involved, that is why it is so hard to explain what makes you feel anxious or panicky ( what makes you feel is not the same as what you feel )

Now since sometimes during my meditation I got panicked, and if you know about meditation you are supposed to study what you feel and feel it, so I was able to see a chimera of feelings just gathering up and becoming overwhelming and then taking over my sense of peace.

the one in my case that has the most "force" seems to be the lack of self confidence, not self esteem but self confidence, and when you evaluate it from the point of view of an agoraphobic it somewhat makes sense.

and agoraphobic needs a safe place and or a safe person, that person gives you support support to carry your own persona, now if you had self confidence you would not need that "safe" place or "safe" person, right.

so this time around I am going to focus my therapy on building self confidence first, actually when you think about behavioral therapy, like exposure, it makes your brain get re-wired to stop feeling anxiety, but that has not been proven to be the case, what we have proved really is that people with high exposure, just feel less anxious. but lets think it from a self confidence POV.

if you are able to be alone on a situation that normally would cause you anxiety and you can "overcome" it, and you do it over and over and over, is not like you are building anxiety defenses, nope, believe me i have been there. you just manage to control it better.

now, if you not only get that exposition but also get to believe that you are a confident person, and that you can carry your own weight, that I think is the exit to anxiety with agoraphobia.

( this is all based on empirical research observing myself )

but it all seems to fit so much in place, that I think that after 16 years I have hitted the root of this spot on. I hope I am right, because if I am this will be the end of this for me, the anxiety.

I will share at another time more about what I believe are my "discoveries" about anxiety. for now actually to write this is causing me to get anxious, so I guess everything will be happening in due time.

ty for reading.

Cyber Racism ...

2008-08-03T11:57:00.001-07:00

ok I love youtube, actually I do have a blog where I post some of the nicest videos I have found on youtube, I think it rocks, anyhow we all know that there have been other services based on youtube that have emerged all over the net, one of them is called VEOH, I do not live on USA, ( believe me this is relevant for this ). ok anyhow, I used veoh since it started, I liked to watch anime, and videos there, it was a kool site, but then one day I went to veoh, and what did I find. I could not even log in VEOH, not even open the main page I just get a note:

Veoh is no longer available in .
If you are not in or you think you have received this message in error, please report the issue below.

how kool, it seems that since I am not a USA resident I can't log in Veoh Anymore, well I went online searching about this ( at first it thought it was only my country), but SURPRISE, Veoh blocked access to people of 164Countries claiming that they are not a big enough audience ( well others say that because Veoh is supported by sponsors the ==clicks== of those 164 countries do not cover the usage of bandwith )

but anyhow the real issue here is, that is just a form of racism or Xenophobia, lets give a real life example, lets say there's a place in what... California, they are giving free balloons, and there's a line, ok you go there with your kids and make the line, at the end they ask you for your ID, or any document that states where you live.

so you present it, and they say ok no no, look you are from a poor neighborhood, we will not give you the free balloons, this are just for people that live on hollywood... that would piss you off or not ? ( I guess so )

But this case is even worst, they don't even ASK you for an ID to know where you live, they SPY on you, they check your IP against a database to know if you are worthy ! ( that's just sick )

I know that there is the issue about Digital Rights Management of content and all that, but they could have managed it in a smarter way not just blocking out more than half of the world.

for instance I also use another service like veoh or youtube, called JOOST, ok anyone from anywhere can download their client, surf their pages, and also watch their videos, now I have to say some videos are BLOCKED, yes but I mean it's ok, they explain because of Rights those videos are not available in your area, that I do understand, they offer a service, and they have to abide to the law, and they explain why, and well they offer respect to the people.

like imagine again the balloon situation, they can't give you the flashy balloon, because they are not allowed to, but you can still get a plain white balloon. that's ok in my book, not 100% but it's better than just kicking you to the curve.

ABC, also does it in a VEOHISH manner, they have full episodes of their series online but you can only watch them if you live in the USA.

I love USA, they say it is a country of equality and freedom ! and they are the first people to BLOCK others from the WORLD WIDE WEB to access content...

it just ROCKS, WTG guys...

hello.

2008-08-02T19:54:00.000-07:00

Hi, I have had blogs on the past, but they are somewhat pointed towards specific topics, I figured out I need a blog space to post whatever comes to my head, independent of anything.

If I think it I might just write about it.

My name... I guess it's not important and it would be easy for you to find it ( VERY easy ) but this time I rather choose to be just another joe on the web.

I'm currently 32yo, will be 33 soon, ( I really don't like the number 33 ) anyhow, I work online, basically on Second Life, I "script" there, ( SL scripting is the programming language that makes thing become alive inside second life )

there I like to make utilities, toys and anything I fill that can full fill a need, normally my needs, and it seems that my needs are global, because I have had luck placing my products.

I have a condition called agoraphobia, so basically I do all my work online because, currently I can't go out of the house to get a "Real Life job" but I don't complain, I don't make millions but I am my own boss.

I have an ultra beautiful and awesome Girlfriend, she is the best, most of my life revolves around her, I also have 2 daughters ( and one on her way ) they are very lovable little girls, the light of my life.

I also have my other family mom, dad, aunts uncles, the works, they are nice people, I don't relate to them as much but they are kool.

people call me smart, I don't like that label but they still do, I think being smart is a bit of a lot of different things, and I don't fit in there, just partially, that's why I don't really like that tag.

anyhow besides that I love computers, and not only PC's but anything related to them, like Xbox, PlayStations, Cell Phones, PDA's you name it I like it.

I love to know how things really work, and how to make the most of them, so you could say I like to "hack" but not on the sense of "malicious hacker" but I just like knowledge.

one day I might be reading about Linux, the next day about Bluetooth, then about satellites, well you name it and if I find it even remotely interesting most likely I will get informed as much as possible about it.

sometimes I just read for the sake of knowledge because well you know sometimes you don't have the equipment to test everything but still that does not changes the fact that something is interesting.

I have coined a term, many many years ago... "Technocracy" a compound word between technology and democracy, personally it has a double sense, meaning all technology should be open to the people, and second, that we are ruled by a technology oriented world.

anyhow as I said before here I'll be writing about the things I do, and learn, about myself, my life and whatever I feel like.

Ty for reading.