Captain's Log Supplemental

After spending at least 45 minutes pacing the halls here, courtesy of a power outage, I must admit, I see another perk for upgrading from my netbook to that ransformer: the battery charge is enough to supplement my work station!

Most of what I need to do off my work station, can either be done using Android or done on Android, as long as things are properly setup. So me thinks it is worth a shot. Not to mention the extra charge would also be really nice when travelling.

So, tonight my mother got yet another Blood Glucose Meter, because the one she got from this one company was to inacurrate, and of course the replacement is to. So she has seen it setup a couple of weeks ago plus already has been shown how to use it. My mother must have at least eight different meters by now, six minimal, and they all are programmed and operated the same.

I obliged her by putting the battery in and telling her to do the rest, as she already knows how to use it. But oh wait, the date is wrong. Never mind that AFAIK she doesn’t actually use (let along know how to) the meters memory to record her stuff, in place of paper (oi). I told her to RTFM.

Now not everyone who is not diabetic, or been around those that have (I have for most of my life), setting up the meter is as complex as setting the time on a wrist watch. You push one thing to set/toggle what is highlighted and another to change the current one forward. Easy, simple, universal, and oh so clearly documented in the manual. It is not hard. Maybe wrist watches have gotten harder between when I last bought one eons ago and when cell phones took over but still, it is not that complicated. Seriously, it’s so easy s child doesn’t even need the manual for something like that. Either that or I must have been Really Smart as a small child.

After an endless stream of being used as a substitute for her having to do anything, be it this or other things, I drew the line: either figure it our yourself or I’m charging you all the money you owe me as punishment. Because if you’re not learning to fish by being given the “Nice” treatment, it’s time for to terminate the politeness.

So obliviously, because I don’t think my mother should be allowed to use her lack of ability to use grey matter, and her diabetes as an excuse to have me do everything for her without her learning how to fend for her self even as much as a child can, I am the most rotten bastard one earth? Wow. People need to learn how to fish for themselves.

By now, on the  metres alone, it’s a picture to me that is more or less like a young parent asking an old mother how to diaper a child: sure, I’ll show you but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to diaper your own kids ass.

When my website takes a more proper shape, I will likely hack at my blogs styling to match it.

I’ve been thinking a bit about what to do with spidey01.com, mostly about the implementation; I think usage is perhaps deserving of another entry, so as to keep this quickly written.

My host like many, focuses on PHP. Unless you specifically go somewhere that specializes in language xyz (such as a Engine Yard), every host does PHP—because that is what most ass clowns want. Now me, I know enough about PHP, that I have no desire to utilize it beyond running canned web apps written in it, such as stuff like Mantis or MediaWiki. In fact, I prefer to avoid even PHP powered web apps unless it is best of breed (Mantis yes, phpBB no, MediaWiki maybe). You can say there are three languages I don’t like the taste of: PHP, English, and Java; probably in that order. I have my reasons for each but that’s not the subject here.

Now, I am rather fortunate spider because my host provides a lot more than just PHP :-). I can’t say that I particularly care for the heavy weight frameworks some people use: Ruby on Rails, Pythons Jango, ASP.NET, or Java land in general. Something smaller like CherryPy is more my speed but I really don’t want to deal with that right now. In all probability I will likely try using Perl or C++. Why Perl, because I love it, or C++? Because I use it.

On the subject of Perl, most people will likely look at something like Catalyst or rely on the built in CGI module. Me, I would prefer something more like Dancer. Which is exactly the kind of web frame work that I like: small, concise, powerful. One that lets me focus on what the fuck I am doing and not how the framework decides things are stitched. Ever since I first bumped into Dancer, I have always wanted to try it but never had the website or the cause, hehe. Dancer+Moose sounds like a very good idea to power my website. I cannot think of a framework that would make me happier than something like Dancer, unless there is one that mind maps thoughts to implementation code, and then just makes it magically ‘go’ at deployment time.

I must be insane to be thinking of doing web development in C++ in 2011, but hey, why not? I assume that statically linking the (C/C++, and compiler) runtime libraries and any associated dependencies I may wish to link with, should be sufficient to deploy as a CGI program. This blog page suggests that it is more or less possible to do it easily enough, and the GCC manual suggests it should be O.K. for my deployment targets.

A little test on a Linux box:

    $ cat > s.cpp
    int
    main()
    {
       return 0;
    }

    $ g++  s.cpp -o shared-s
    $ ldd shared-s 
      linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x00007fff4a9de000)
      libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007f61fdead000)
      libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007f61fdc28000)
      libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f61fda11000)
      libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f61fd67d000)
      /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f61fe1da000)
    $ g++ g++ -static -static-libgcc -static-libstdc++ s.cpp -o static-s
    $ ldd static-s 
      not a dynamic executable
    $
  

Never really have tried it for an experiment like this before but I assume that I can have the web server rewrite URLs in such a way that it passes them to my program or a script, which then processes them accordingly to a configuration file. The utility of dynamic languages is great but the usefulness of more staticly typed languages is not out weigh-able.

O.K. now back to getting crap done.

Assuming that I actually set stuff up correctly, soon spidey01.com should finally be associated with my website. Which has yet to actually be used for much of anything yet, except a few map files and a semi-private voice service. As soon things are done, I will attempt to make blog.spidey01.com point to this blog as an alias. I know plenty enough abotu web development, it’s just I am so darn lazy about getting stuff put up, given that when I’m not working, I’m usually interested in hanging out with a certain Firefly…hehe.

For how bloody long it took me to get all of my content here, I am not interested in leaving Blogger right now. Maybe someday I will transition to some software package, or write my own, but I am perfectly happy with Blogger—and the only “Mainstream” package I know for running it myself, is WordPress: which can suck rotten eggs and die as far as I am concerned. So unless I get an intense interest in writing web blogging software, nothing will change, except there will be multiple ways to access my blog :-).

Both spidey01.blogspot.com and blog.spidey01.com should refer to THIS website. There is no significant difference, except some more ‘advanced users‘ of my journal/blog may experience issues if they are using bots that do not understand redirections.

Which one should be considered canonical, well that is up to peoples bookmarks and Google.

At the present my techno-farm, for lack of a dedicated cave, consists of only a few systems:

1. SAL1600—Gaming system, cica 2006.
2. Alice—Netbook, a mid-2010 model.
3. Vectra—Franken server.
4. My phone—A simple froyo based LG Optimus/LG-509.

Dixie, my darling laptop lays retired along with spare parts from vectra’s old case. My mother’s PC, tablet, and cell phone are exclusive of my interest here.

A few quick calculations for my über penny pinching mindset:

My phone isn’t particularlly spectucular but after a year of abuse, it still serves sufficently for what it does: excessive texting / instant messenging, and about as much web surfing/e-mail as a normal person might do on a PC. I particularlly like being able to lay down (without using a laptop) and chat/surf in comfort. My main beef is the limited internal memory (About 30M out of 150M, even with almost everything moved to the MicroSD card), and small screen size. A phone worth buying as a replacement, would cost in the range of $500 without any contract deals. A prime target would be something like the HTC Sensation. All things considered, I am generally hesitent to get such an Android device until 4.x is the norm, and I will likely use this phone until it drops over dead or the carrier offers a free/low cost upgrade at renewal.

After all these years, I will admit that despite being annoying years, SAL1600 has had quite a long life, it is only now just starting to show signs of old age (for my tastes). Sooner or later it will need replacement purely to keep pace with it’s main task, running DirectX powered games. Within maybe 3-5 years the CPU will be to old for the job, and by then the capacity for memory could be exhausted (I’ve not upgraded past the stock 2GB DDR2). Building a new computer from existing parts can be done pretty cheaply. Maybe $400 for a modern CPU, mobo, and a chunk of DDR3 memory. Plus a video card. I like Windows 7 as far as it goes, and think modern DirectX is a good thing for game developers (because of the requirements for support), but the cost makes building up a modernized rig as bad as just buying a new PC and a better GPU. Whatever Windows XP would do if I suddenly changed out all the core componants, idk. But in the end, it is just cheaper to spend for a better GPU ($140-$200).

Like wise for how much all of that PC shit would cost for an overhaul/replacement, I could easily buy an ASUS EeePad Transformer and dock. That is a device I really like the concept of, enough so that if I had knew it was coming out, I might not have baught Alice but instead saved for it, then rooted it. However, as I do have Alice, which for less work lets me what matters more (i.e. a full unix/linux environment), I don’t care to spend that much just for the possibilities it offers.

The end sum of things? I’d really like to persue these vectors but the Return On Investment is not high enough to make me interested in the expense. Given the choice, I’d rather save more or even pay off my car (a lot) faster. The average person my age, given my level of income, would probably go spending on gadgets like a raging bull in a china shop!

In taking a look at tablets in general, I can’t help but note if I ever did get a tablet for ‘serious’ use, I would probably be inclined to get something like the old HP Slate 500, slap Linux on it, and go. iOS and Android are pretty much the big shiz now when it comes to phones and tablets, but I’d still opt for something that I can put *my* choice environment on.

Reason why I would exclude iOS is because of Apple’s control, I also do not feel that the platform is sufficently designed for “Hackability” in the way that unix systems and Microsoft Windows are. While I’d probably be willing to by a Mac someday if I could justify the cost, an iPhone or iPad really isn’t likely to be something that I will ever buy for myself.

Android on the other hand, is similar but I would generally take it over iOS. What I don’t like about Android is the lack of control. It excells at what it does but you can’t really get that power over the device, unless you gain root access to it, plus setting up a suitable cross compiler or doing development on system with most present-day Android devices, would be mildly irksome.

Which makes me think, if the principal difference between something like a Galaxy Tab or a Slate 500, is getting to install my choice of OS, why does it have to be so? I mean, Android phones and the like generally have the issue of “Rooting”. But simply, I think manufacturers should offer pre rooted versions at an additional cost. Like wise, I believe the world would be a better place if Microsoft Windows eventually took this model as well, although I find that unlikely before the next major version of Windows (likely NOT8), and I think it’d be a darn fine way for them to get sued lol.

Ahhh, but in the end, there is a real kicker to it. I have a netbook that offers everything that I want. The only reason to have a tablet would be if I operated in an environment where a netbook was inefficent, like travelling most of the time. So in the end, I do actually prefer my Alice :-).