Geek on Two Wheels

I want to be like this in thirty years:

I believe it to be a totally awesome and worthwhile goal.

My family keeps a tiny aquarium of three goldfish.  Two are stubby, have tiny fins, and move about more by waddling than swimming.  The third resembles a tiny golden carp with the behind of a Fantail, and is larger than the others combined.

It’s also a huge asshat.

The three fish are housed in a pathetically (but not quite unethically) small aquarium, and have only each other for amusement.  Now, I don’t know what goldfish or carps usually do for amusement when not being fed, but I’ve often noticed the largest of the three using the others to play what I’ve dubbed Upside-Down Fish.  The rules are simple: pick a fishmate, chase it into a corner, use the aquarium wall to flip your mate over and push it to the surface, then see how long you can keep it upside-down.

Remember those old-timey cartoons where sometimes a bully would pick up a smaller guy, roll him into a ball, then use him to play hoops or knock down some pins?  It’s exactly like that.  Except it’s only slightly funny, and mostly just mean.

In the words of the wise animal sanctuary warden:

Well, animals are not like people, Mrs. Simpson. Some of them act badly because they’ve had a hard life, or have been mistreated…but, like people, some of them are just jerks.

When I was growing up in China, there was a weekly SciFi radio show that was along the lines of Power Rangers. I listened to it religiously, and it featured the Beverly Hills Cop theme music as the opening score.

To this day, whenever I hear that tune, I think giant battle robots.

One more for the Linux graphics-related series of articles: How DRI and DRM Work.

Since we’re on the topic of Linux graphics systems, here’s is a recent article by Peter Hutterer explaining how X.org releases work:

X11R7.5 released – but what is it?

I missed my Photo Friday post last week.  The week before was a rushed job, and, honestly, wasn’t up to my standard of This is Pretty Interesting.  I assure you, I had good reasons for sucking.

Now, I usually avoid meta posts about this blog, but I’ve been attempting at establishing more online presence, and missing a single post, even if just a photo, was too much of a personal let down to simply brush away.  Let me assure you that Photo Fridays will continue to be a regular feature, and I’ll try my best to stop being lame.

That said, the primary purpose of this post is not to make excuses, but to solicit some ideas.

One thing I would like to do regularly here is to write technical articles on topics within the GNU/Linux and open source software domain.  Having been involved in X.org at a capacity beyond being an average user for some time, the amount of misconceptions and misunderstandings surrounding some of the open source platforms have been both surprising and frustrating.  As much as I have tried and mostly succeeded in remedying individual cases, there’s definitely more that can be done in terms user education.

Item number one on the list of article ideas is a three-part series on video playback, specifically rendering.  Item number two may be an (simple) exposition of the state of graphics in Linux: where things have been, where things are going, and why certain things are so difficult.  Three and beyond: I haven’t a clue.

This is where you come in—what would you like to know better?

Post a comment, dent me, tweet me, or even suggest ideas in meat space.  I can’t and won’t guarantee that I will be sufficiently knowledgeable in most topics suggested or care enough to find out more about them, but I believe most of you are aware of my ability to ramble on about obscure technical trivia, and how much I seem to enjoy it.

It’s win-win, really.  You have a chance to learn about something without first having to do all the legwork (assuming you trust my competencies) and I get to explore more interesting things.

Give me your best shot.

I do not like online social networking.

When it comes to interpersonal interaction, I have always preferred mine to be in meat-space, conducted over a few cold beers, some hearty food, and generally with more vocalization and eye contact than TCP and text rendering.

That said, in this day and age, especially for one with my occupational slant, having a positive online presence is generally recommended, if not expected.  And, whether I like it or not, these new-fangled social networks are a good way to keep in touch with old friends and new acquaintances alike, not to mention being fairly effective for organizing relatively larger scale gatherings.

So, for my own sake, I’ve gotta put some effort into  this whole shebang. That means blogging on this here blog, photoing on flickr, linking-in on LinkedIn, denting on identi.ca, and at least being aware of what “Facebooking” even means for the month.  That’s a lot of nouns to verb, and I’m a very lazy man.

Luckily, integration tools exist. After some futzing, my Facebook status is now updated via identi.ca (without the annoying “dented: ” prefix) via XMPP via Pidgin and the blog is being aggregated to both LinkedIn and Facebook.  With the latest redesign of the latter, I would rather have my blog entries show up in News Feeds as links instead of Notes posts, but that’s something I will have to investigate for later.  As for Flickr, Facebook does a decent job scraping thumbnails when posting Flickr links, so doing it manually will have to do for now; in fact, I think I prefer the extra control over having it happen automagically.

And, finally, updating my main page to contain all the appropriate links.  The only things left to do is to create a good profile photo of myself, and put up a resume.

Now if only they would all become OpenID consumers, I wouldn’t have to log in to them separately…

Subject: “Mongoloid” is a no-no term?

It’s recently come to my attention that “Mongoloid” is on the list of off-limit words on the official volunteer training manual.

As a Mongoloid, I am frankly offended that you think people may be offended by the term.

(Yes, I am now aware of the secondary, archaic meaning of the term after having to look it up.)

What if you happen to encounter an athlete studying archaeology who is specializing in tracing the lineage of East-Asian people, and wants to strike up a conversation about said topic because you, by sheer coincidence, is also an archaeologist?

Think of the archaeologists. Oh, why won’t anyone think of the archaeologists?!

I want to have this man’s falsetto babies.

• When things go bang, pull over before it bangs even louder.
• The wrench in your car’s spare tire set may not give you enough leverage to actually remove your tire. Alternatively, train yourself to be able to bench press more than your own weight, with one hand.
• Getting a tow truck to drive out to the middle of two small BC towns is expensive.
• … but was probably worth being reminded that, in small towns, things are closed on Sundays.
• Coldwater Rd is a fantastic drive.