Well, I figured it’s been a while since I posted. I thought I’d write a post about the tools that I use, their links, and the like.

Browsers

I currently use Firefox‘s Aurora browser. It’s just like Firefox, just a little more cutting edge. I have installed all of the others that matter to me, Chrome and IE, but recently the addons available for Firefox has been a blessing (and a curse). I only use IE when I have to.

Communication

I currently use Thunderbird for email. I rarely use the web sites of those email services I use. I have three seperate gmail accounts, a hotmail, an AOL and a Yahoo, which all work for free within Thunderbird.

For IM’s and the like I use Trillian. The skinning capability of Trillian allows me to run the dark skin I like, fitting with my Windows 7 Aero theme. I also run Windows Live Messenger for now, but that’s likely to change here soon and bundle it into Trillian. Trillian will allow you to connect most, if not all, networks you could ever want to be connected to. Facebook, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Gtalk and Jabber are the ones I use. If I have to connect to an IRC network at all, I can do so through Trillian as well, although it’s IRC features are lacking. Skype requires it’s own download, but does integrate with Trillian.

For any major communication through IRC still, I use XChat 2.

I have tried alternatives, like Digsby, Pidgin, mIRC and whatnot. Just doesn’t keep my attention like Trillian and Xchat 2 does.

Documents

I use Google Docs the most for documents. Skydrives abilities leaves something there for desire, where Google Docs allows me to get everything I could possibly want as long as I have an internet connection. For more offline documents, I’d use OpenOffice or it’s spawn LibreOffice.

For PDF’s, I typically do use the Adobe Acrobat Reader. I have tried alternatives, but one or another feature is missing and stuff doesn’t display right, so I stay with the maker of the PDF format.

I’ve started trying out Mindmaps and Gantt software. The easiest I’ve found to use for mindmaps is FreeMind. You can just start putting your ideas down in the hectic style that is your brain. Gantt charts and the like are taking me a while to get used to and set up, largely because i’m not an organized person. GanttProject is the best that I’ve come across so far.

Ebooks are also starting to come to me in one form or another. I started using Calibre at the request of a friend. Easy to set up, supports the Kindle Fire, which is the only ebook reader I’ve tried, and many others that I may not think of. Does have a generic profile too for those no name ones.

Pictures, being a form of documents, are hard to manage as is. I use Picassa for integration with my Google account. Also supports features that are sought after in programs like iPhoto on the Mac. Faces, places and so on.

Music is a form of document as well. I mostly use Windows Media Player here, but Winamp is very good as well.

Programming

I stick with the typical Microsoft Visual Studio for programming. They have an express(free) version that would suit a programmers needs from the beginning. I also use Eclipse for the Android development, since it seems the best integrated IDE for Android. Code::Blocks didn’t grab my attention and wasn’t as easy to use really.

Unity appears to be the best platform to use for game development without making your own base. Uses javascript for game controls, imports most of the major 3d modeling software formats that I know of, including Blender‘s. I’ve downloaded Blender, but I’m no good at it.

GIMP for image manipulation is going to be my choice. Not much to say here except it’s a free version of photoshop. Again, not being artsy, I’m not good at it, but it gets the basics done.

For remote projects on Linux boxes and the like (web development, php and SQL, or MUD’s), I stick with Putty for the SSH stuff, and WinSCP for file transfers.

Entertainment

Other than music, listed above as documents, I use the Hulu software for most of my entertainment with videos. I also use my internet browsers for things like Netflix and Youtube. VLC is great for the downloaded videos, like camcorder stuff and shared videos because it plays almost every format out there.

Games that I play range from EVE Online (I have a seperate blog for those adventures) to World of Warcraft to Guild Wars to other items that is free. Need For Speed The World is a different change of pace when you want to get away from the typical stuff you play, as well as World of Tanks, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Pirates of the Carribean (if you’re a fan) and Minecraft (cheap). This is expanding with some free stuff from Gamefly that I’m trying out, but I don’t know how long that’s going to last. Also, with any MMO, you’re looking at communication while in game, you can’t go wrong with Teamspeak or Ventrilo. I’ve tried Mumble, which is a great free alternative if you don’t want to buy/rent a server for more than 5 people.

Also to note, I use the Xbox 360 for a lot of entertainment. Randomly I’ll log into old MUD’s I’ve played with cMUD, zMUD’s reincarnate. MM2K (no longer developed, see link for MM2K6) and plain old Telnet doesn’t work well with me.

Downloads

Downloads happen a lot with gaming, programming, blogging and just plain boredom. For torrents (my dabbling into almost every major linux OS – Thank you VMWare) I use uTorrent.

For browser downloads, I use the DownThemAll addon for Firefox. Those that might not be in Firefox I use Free Download Manager (rarely).

I hope I helped you find some software that is free and great for your day to day use. If you have any comments, alternatives you’d strongly recomend or just want to comment on anything I’ve said here, please feel free. We use the Disqus plugin, so no need for another username and password.

I’ve been getting that a lot recently. What does my life matter. Why do I try? Those kind of things. This probably stems from the marriage situation, which isn’t really public stuff I wish to put out there but know there is trouble in the neighborhood. Also my job has made choices that I don’t agree with, and adds to the frustration.

Largely, I just feel like my life is unfulfilled. I haven’t touched enough lives in the positive way.

Just thinking out loud.

I feel that a world or system like this can not exist peacefully. There would be too much fragmentation, Ubuntu vs Red Hat vs Puppy Linux vs Slackware vs <insert Linux OS here>. Windows had an early advantage, probably through some shady business practices, but it is what it is. As far as it’s concerned, it meets users needs. Mac came into view as well, and I’m not up on my history, but the idea was to maintain simplicity. Or it is now. They do it well, I will admit, for new users.

Without OS wars, developers would have to develop for many incompatible versions of OS that it would be impossible to maintained. Games like WoW and Counter Strike can not afford to do that, it would cause too many rifts.

Don’t get me wrong, I can see the argument for both sides, developers needing to get paid for their time, etc, but those that volunteer for freedom also have their own jobs, to which they may be doing the same job for pay.

Just thought I’d throw this up, lost my steam, so may pick it up later.

In short, I wish I could move away from this hell hole. It’s going to get worse before it gets way better. Currently we’re finding that our Army Corp of Engineers is managing a tight ship at the dam’s north of us. The river is currently above flood stage for this area, the town’s area called Riverside is flooding, and many areas in the surrounding area is just simply unsafe.

I’ve taken a few pictures myself and posted them publically. You can see them at this link, but I’m going to try and display them here as well.

		Flood 2011 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

The area is bad enough to where the governor of Iowa declared the counties along the river as disaster zones.

Thought I’d share that, I’ll update more my personal live later.

Well, here’s what I’ve been doing.

<insert a bunch of white space mentally>

That’s right, nothing. The usual, EVE Online (click here if you’re interested in this), other games like Second Life, World of Warcraft and whatnot. I’ve been working. No big deal.

Activity is going high however. Relatively soon anyway. Apple had pulled its contract with Stream in NW Iowa. We’re not the only ones and it’s purely business, I’m sure. This did put my job in jeopardy, and it still is. We do have another contract opening up to replace them, and they are hiring a large number of people, but I haven’t been offered anything that would leave me with a job the entire time. May 15th is the cut off date for Apple, and there are two training classes that I know of before that date, not providing much room for all of us to get in there before lapsing in employment. Oh well, that’s life.

As a side note, I have been considering leave the workforce a little to pursue my career enhancement of a degree. I’ve been thinking about going to Georgia State. (O.O) You say? Here’s my logic. The game developer of EVE Online, which I’m a huge fan of and is graphically beautiful, has recently announced their USA HQ is expanding. That office, if you haven’t guessed it, is in Atlanta, GA. They also indicated that their foreseeable primary force is college students in the area. Fine, not me right now, but that program at GA State has to be sturdy, considering a company like CCP is looking at their students for talent?

Other than that, I’m still living with my parents (married life not working so hot, but looking up). I’m still vehicle-less, and still in Iowa. Not much excitement going on.

Assault is a MUD (text based game) that you would connect to using any telnet capable application and be able to run around a virtual world, building a base and collecting resources. Those resources and research and whatnot would then go to building bombs, weapons, armor and vehicles. This would allow you to defend yourself and ultimately take out your enemies. You can work under alliances or be against everyone. You could blow up other peoples bases (which get a “grace period” to rebuild afterward) or be destroyed.

I feel this would make a great combo with a game like Minecraft because it’s low graphics, thus should be low resource usage, but focuses more on gameplay than graphics, since I can not operate Photoshop to save my life…

The tasks in this is monumental for me though, I haven’t done much graphical designing. Java would probably be best, so I can hit all OS’s, but I hate Java because I find that it uses more resources than I figure a native compiled application would. Also, I would have to make it so players can run their own servers, because if I want to terminate development, I’d like to have players not have to suffer withdrawal because there isn’t a server. The coding is another problem. Advanced methods I have yet to learn would have to be utilized, so this is not an overnight project by far. Maybe years of learning and refining. But hey, that’s what updates are for right?

Perhaps I’ll create an image of the end product, a design document, and a features list for the first release and go from there.

Comments? Suggestion? Drop me a comment.

The United States of America is not following this rule. As long as I can remember, it has never followed this. I appreciate the need to save the world, but save yourself first. The USA has problems of its own that it seems it can not accomplish anything against. Poverty, unemployment and fraud within it’s own laws.

Yes, these people in Libya are bad. Japan is an awful tragedy. It doesn’t have to be our job to provide things to these people that we can’t even supply ourselves.

Don’t get me wrong, the Japan earthquake and whatnot, I fully support assisting in. This is mother nature telling us to knock it the fuck off, and play nice. It’s primarily the Libya conflict that is getting me riled up. Compounded by Afghanistan and Iraq, Libya is their own people. They, as I understand it, are of no threat to the USA. We do not need to enforce an ideology of democracy (commercialized democracy) on another culture just because the government there doesn’t agree with us and our rules. We don’t live there and the best we can do is welcome refugee’s from that country with open arms. Once it becomes a threat, then we can put Libya off the map with our guns, military and economic enforcements.

For those that don’t know, I live in Sioux City, Iowa. Recently I found out that the location I work at is currently going to go through some layoffs. In an attempt to save myself hassle of finances later, I started looking at alternatives. There is nothing here for jobs. In the middle of the USA, there are no technical service items for an unofficially educated person to accept to fulfill the American Dream. There’s something wrong with that. We have people on disability, unemployment screwing the system, which I probably wont get due to how business works. I’m about to lose my insurance, mind you I’ve never used and paid for (hopefully I’ll fix that). I’m living with my parents as well due to marital problems and still can’t make enough to buy a vehicle to make myself more independent and productive member of the society of earth. There is something wrong with this.

Now that I gave insight into my problem, how about some ways to resolve it? School, to become officially educated, paying thousands of dollars for a sheet of paper that means nothing to the intelligence of a person. Certifications and degree’s are not exclusive to “You can do this” it means “You passed a test”. I can tear down a computer, put it back together and have it work still. I can reinstall operating systems and learn new systems quickly. I am, however, passed up on IT positions because I don’t have a piece of paper saying I can do this. No one bothers with an interview, their own physical test to see what I am capable of.

Let’s also dig deeper into a story of my step father that I’m living with. This dude had injured himself on a job. The government/insurance companies have a way of screwing people out of their money. Obviously he should have been paid for medical expenses and trouble of the injury that he legitimately received. He didn’t want to break his leg. This situation has been compounded even further because an infection had infiltrated his defenses, leaving him without substantial muscle to work his entire leg  without assistive technologies (cane, brace, crutches or wheelchair). This then also causes pain. The man is seriously fucked up at this point in his life, and never will get it back. Doubt he’ll be able to do any work (physical labor and he lacks the attitude and skills for service industries). The system here had tied him up in legal battles, claiming he can work, he’s not injured etc. The story I heard involved bribes toward doctors and his attitude, I’m sure, had made the situations difficult as well, changing doctors and whatnot. That’s his right, however. The legal battle lasted for over two years, while he’s seeking minimal medical attention until this all gets resolved. Finally, the case closes out of settlement because the appeal process would take an additional 7 years after this court goes through, and yes, the companies would appeal to the death. He gets a fairly substantial amount, but now he has to pay medical bills (which should have been taken care of the rest of his life due to insurance) and pay off his lawyer of two years and now he’s left with less than half of his money that goes to back due bills and whatnot due to a double income being reduced to single individual income in the household. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS?!

I’m not looking for “Move to the UK and take advantage of the NHS” etc. This is a state of the mis-union of our government and its people. It’s ridiculous.

We need to stop being police of the world, take care of our people and our laws, before we take care of others.

Politicians, leaders and other people thinking of this… before you do anything for anyone else, ask yourself one question… What’s wrong with this?

Sadly, I can name over 90% of those shows and relate.

I was bored tonight. I decided that I’m going to throw my self conscious ways out of the proverbial window. I turned on Chatroulette. Here’s what I found.

Before I get into my findings, let’s discuss the idea of Chatroullette and my expectations already going into this. Chatroullette turns on your webcam and microphone (You can turn these off, but what’s the fun in that?). It then selects a random stranger for you to chat with and connects the two of you. This is subject of many funny demotivational posters and topics on the internet, so I never got interested in it in the first place, but I was bored and disappointed already with the world. Why the hell not? I came into it many people skipping me. I have nothing unique to offer. I’m no 24 year old Justin Beiber. I can’t sing, dance or do anything on camera to force people to enjoy even looking at me, except maybe to mock me at how ugly I am.

For a good minute or so, I went through about 30 feeds on the website which the other end immediately clicked on to the next person, unsure what they were looking for. Most were male subjects, however there were two female in my night, which promptly clicked next.

The one person that didn’t click next on me responded to my “hi” with a butchered spelling of “hey jew bastard”. I promptly responded, not jew, perhaps a bastard (I didn’t know my father growing up) and I saluted him with two fingers and clicked next on him 5 minutes later, I hadn’t met anyone except for a guy that likes to call random people jew bastards.

Usually I find this typical, people don’t particularly enjoy working with each other or randomly meeting others. The whole dating scene is annoying, meeting people in your day to day job isn’t so bad some days and to deal with the people you already know and have expectations of you can be cumbersome.

Today, I took this as a sad state. A state of boredom and predictability. Mind you, I live in Iowa, small town of 90 thousand people, if I recall. We don’t have anything to do in this area, or surrounding areas. You know it’s bad when someone like me feels the need to call the State of the Internet a sad place to be. Games run wild, places like Second Life largely unpopulated because of the potential of complexity. Games of EVE Online abandoned quickly because you aren’t the best at something right off the bat. These are the normal interactions online, chatting with friends you do know, or grinding worse than your daily job of flipping hamburgers while you hold a PHD in business administration in the world of Azeroth. Forums of like minded folks show up, which is a great time if you don’t mind waiting hours or even days for response on a joke that grows old by the minute.

The state of society needs to change, and how we react online needs to change even more so. Anonymity can’t be sourced as a problem online, no consequences for what you say and whatnot, but to even require a law to be civil in a global environment means that our intelligence as a race is diminishing at an alarming rate. Here soon Chaos will reign because Ethan from Ctrl-Alt-Del had a bright idea that some moron thought it would be wise to imitate a cartoon (hrm, sound familiar?) and attempt to create AI on his own without properly debating how it reacts to people. Our relationships will be limited by avatars in games like WoW, Second Life and these little pictures that get sent as a representation of us (but not necessarily pictures of us) with our instant messages. Our thoughts will be provided by the government without the ability to start a revolution we need because once that thought does enter our mind, our Freedom of Speech Under Certain Restrictions Act of our Constitution allows our government to terminate the signal that allows us to breathe through our computer.

As I write those sentences, I find myself asking if I’m influenced by movies like I, Robot or The Matrix. I’d say so, but that’s only because the stories present themselves in completely realistic logical beliefs. My 2:30am rant is done at this time. Please come back for sleep deprivation mumblings of a guy who is just trying to get through the world with his pants on and his thoughts that of his own.