Finally, I can post that this version of my journal/blog, v3, is outdated and I've got a replacement.

You can reach v4 from here, or you can be redirected from the homepage. If you're relying on RSS to keep yourself subscribed, be sure to find the new RSS feed here and subscribe to that instead.

See you over there.

I'm going to make this short and sweet so I can get back to designing v4; I just found this cool little free app that lets you specify the size and position of a Windows window. Appropriately dubbed Sizer, it allows you specify the exact pixels that you want your windows to appear. If you're like me and have to work on today's larger monitors (oh, the pain!) and you spend time getting your windows to just the right size and position to maximize the space that you've got, you'll really appreciate something this simple yet useful.

For as long as there have been programmers seeking monetary compensation for their time and effort coercing a machine to do their bidding, has there been users who look to take the former group's 0's and 1's and claim them as their own. Like conjoined twins, commercial software and piracy tend to pull each other along, not quite able to rip free from the bond that, well, makes this analogy interesting.

Remember the days of Intel 386's? I was first imposed to computing sometime during their rise to popularity, and I distinctly remember all the clever schemes sales and marketing came up with to thwart people from taking a shiny new 5 1/4" disk and digitally replicating their $200 piece of software; or, in my case, $30 games.

There were a number of devices to generate the right key needed to start these games: printed on the back of the packaging box, buried within the instruction manual tome awaiting adventurers with the ability to count words, a multi-layer, multi-word, sentence permutating flywheel that could give the Enigma machine a run for its money, etc.Not so interesting were the ways to crack these schemes: scanned shots of the box, a crudely photocopied manual (the printing costs must have ate up a large chunk of the profits made from pirating that game), and a full paper replica of the spinning circles, respectively.

Then I started playing consoles, and fighting piracy there consisted mainly of locking down hardware and producing expensive cartridges. I'm only aware of two solutions that "console hardware enthuasists" have found (interpret that term as you will): trick the hardware to accept a cartridge that's reading data off of a much cheaper disk medium (the Nintendo Famicom had a disk drive), or modify the hardware to bypass its normal checks for authenticity (Playstation modchips). Not much imagination on either side of the fence there.

Nowadays, the Internet is the tool for making software safe from unpermissioned copying; you install some program, and it forces you to register your program ID to the company's servers, validating that you're indeed a legitimate owner of said software. Except that you might want to install it on another machine, or your machine died and you need to reinstall it, or you are an IT shop and you have to redo your company's 10,000 computers every year and by god you're not going to let ten thousand machines say they can't run software you paid a small fortune for. Enter corporate software versions with none of the above protections.

My thoughts stem mainly from having to help my uncle replace his crusty old hard drive with a sexy new one over the weekend. Reinstalling a home version of Windows XP proved to be quite challenging; they require a 25-letter code before installation and online activation after, with the provision of completely disabling Windows 30 days after. Failing the activation means you get the joy of entering a 45-letter code, on the phone, to an automated support machine, which will admit its inability to process that many digits and transfer you to live human support after it, who will hang up after failing to understand your non-accented speech.

My rant against software piracy protection forthcoming.

Just spent the better part of the day helping my uncle and grandparents move from their recently sold, 250% appreciated value house of 5 years to a nearby apartment complex of much smaller size. I personally dread moving, so having to drive 2 hours back home just so I could assist in wrecking my fingers while other family are relaxing on their Spring Break vacations irks me a little.

This latest event has reaffirmed my suspicion that the wealthier a person is, the stingier they are when it comes time to spend money to get something done easier or faster. These are the people you see driving Mercedes's on the street and go to expensive dinners with friends, but would not hire professional help (thinking they could always do it themselves) and would squeeze you for your last penny if you're unfortunate enough to be under their position of power. My former Berkeley landlord was such an individual; and I'm sad to say that my uncle confirms to the mold.

Between yesterday and today's moving adventures, I'd say that there were at least 10 people who showed up and helped out at one time or another: this is with the general packing of the belongings in the house (this was a model home when purchased, so it consisted of personal and model crap), the move from his house to his new apartment, and the post move cleanup before handing off the place to its new owner. Ignoring that he was supposed to have packed his stuff himself prior to the move, you'd think that making half a million on a house would afford you some leeway in hiring, well, movers and cleaners.

Alas, the task falls to family, whose payment of sincere gratitude and perhaps a lavish dinner is apparently cheaper than renting professionals to do what they do best. My family doesn't quite understand the concept of time value - the idea that your leisure time is worth a certain amount of money and that using it to give yourself more work can be seen as a loss - so it's usually the case that they'll sacrifice personal time to save/earn money. No amount of explanation on my part will stop their insistence that I get a second job ("You need to buy a house!").

Aadly, it looks like I'll be stuck with the cleaning portion of the ordeal tomorrow, and I'll be bone tired driving back to the bay tomorrow...in time for work Monday. Heck, I won't even get the foreshadowed thank you dinner that I deserve; sometimes, that's the cost of being family.

Sometimes the most exciting things turn out to be the simplest. Lately, two very simple yet surprisingly satisfying games have threatened my thumbs with crippling arthritis: Tetris DS and Grid Wars. I can't quite put my finger on what makes both games so addictive.

I'm the little white ship in the center. Everything else is out to kill me.

Everybody knows Tetris. The Russian block puzzler's been around for a good 15-20 years, and the "dropping pieces" puzzle games that it has inspired has continued until today, but arguably none are as famous or as simple as what the original Tetris offered. Now, years later, Nintendo's new game Tetris DS is banking on nostalgia, classic gameplay and [b]massive[/b] multiplayer options to educate a younger generation of gamers on the addictiveness of falling blocks. And it's a ton of fun, playing random people online from around the world.

The other game, Grid Wars, is a copy of an XBox Live game Geometry Wars. It almost feel like Asteroids on steroids - you have one little ship with a lot of firepower, and polygons of all shapes and sizes chasing after you on a rippling blue grid. Particles and polygon bits are flying all over the place, so you hold up on the controller and hope that your ship can squeeze through that tiny little gap between 30 enemy pieces and escape to freedom.

Wow...that sounded more like a review or the back of the game box than an honest personal opinion. It's interesting to see how these relatively simple games are just as, if not more, attractive than some of the complicated games that they release nowadays.