Why I refuse to use Apple products

I have always wondered about those Apple fanatics. The ones who have everything. iBook, iPhone, iPad, iPod, iShirt, iCup, iHouse, iWife, iCar etc. etc. etc. There are several things that put me off buying their products. But since I want to give a reasoning and not just bash Apple, I shall start with the merits of their products.

Firstly, the big, huge plus, that Apple has is, that their products are always innovative, easily usable and they always look spiffy. Noone can say anything against that. Once it comes to design, Apple rules the dumpster. There is a reason, the graphics designers tend to use Apple products for their work. They are just good at what they do, it is that easy and I want to make it clear that I have no doubt about the quality of Apple products. In fact, I admire it.

Now my reasoning, why I will probably never buy an Apple product. Let's start with the most decisive one. The price. To be honest, they are just plain to expensive for me. At the time of writing, an Apple MacBook costs €1,139.00 at amazon.de. As I may have mentioned in a different post, this is waaaay too much for me. I always have the feeling with Apple that I pay an extra 200-300 Euro just to a have a half-eaten fruit on my computer.

Moving swiftly on. Mac OS X. I like playing Computer games and I like programming. However much, Apple may want to change it, the OS with the most compatible games is Windows-based. Fullstop. Most games cater for that and I ain't gonna argue. Especially, since I can save money in building my own desktop PC and then install Windows. Programming, I also prefer to use Windows or Linux (also POSIX but for free), simply because Windows is the main platform so anything that I code has more potential to be distributed.

The next point, I would like to make is a bit of a tender subject with the Apple fanbase (and also addresses the fanbase a bit). I don't like it, how Apple always tries to create exclusivity. Y'know, look at how they only have the same suppliers for their MacBook. There is hardly any variation (if any) to their latest products. You cannot choose if you want to have Blu-Ray player or not with a certain setup, it is either that setup or none. Some people may like this, I don't. This coupled with their very aggressive stance in non-compatibility (only iTunes with iPod. If you attach iPod to a PC, no guarantee etc etc yadiyada).

This, followed by a rather annoying fanbase, who does not even want to listen to other people's arguments with regards to other opinions, makes it even more of a turn off to me. Some very good friends of mine belong to said group and it is just plain tedious talking with them about this topic. So I don't and also block it off when they want to tell me something amazing about Apple.

Anyhow, I felt this had to be said ;) Whenever someone now feels the need to try and convince me of Apple's amazingness, I shall direct him/her to this article :)

Tablet PCs - Do I want one? Yes! Do I need one?... Probably... no...

This topic has been going around in my head for hours and hours on end. Some of my friends must be quite bored by this topic by now.

Ever since Samsung brought their Galaxy Tab to the market, I really want a good Tablet PC. I am not a fan of Apple's iCulture, which is why I am not so fond of iPads. But then I see the price and I wonder if I really (and I mean "really") need it.

At the time of writing this, a good 10'' Tablet costs about €550 (compare amazon.de). Now to me, this is a loada dosh. For the same amount of money, I could get a decent laptop for working purposes without a good graphics card. This isn't bad for me, since I prefer gaming on a desktop PC anytime. I am just wired that way.

Now then, looking at what I can do with a Tablet PC. Pretty much mostly multimedia. So, watching films (which I would have to transfer as there is no DVD drive), browsing the net, reading eBooks and the odd app or another.

Now, I needed to assess what uses "I" would like to get out of a portable device. Essentially, I use a laptop mostly for word processing or programming. Not so much browsing the web, but to a certain extent. Unfortunately, for reading and writing code, a tablet is completely useless. Browsing the web is nice, but it is easier on a laptop and watching films is ok, but I like to have a DVD drive, so that I don't have to transfer them onto the harddrive all the time.

In conclusion, I am pretty sure, that all the functions a tablet PC can fulfil, I can cover with a laptop (and if push comes to shove, I may get one of those fancy smartphones) and I could probably get more out of it. Thus, do I need a tablet PC? Hell no! Do I want one? Yes, godsdammit :D

Just a video clip...

Just came across this video clip from the 90s. I remembered liking it as a child, but now that I see it, the first thing, I am wondering is "What's with the wooly hat?!?"

t;

It looks like these little suckling teats, y'know, on baby bottles.

compare with

I don't know what conclusion, I should draw from this, apart from this is really horrible fashion-sense... or maybe fashion is stupid, because in as short as 2 years you probably look outdated if you don't keep up and in 10 years time, you look like an idiot with a potatosack as cocktail dress (if you are a man).

Roland Emmerich Films are boring

Yesterday, I watched, as a favour to my darling wife, Roland Emmerich's film 2012. Now, unlike most Germans, I strongly dislike his movies. Funnily enough, I find them too American and the story is always weak at best.
Whenever, I watched a film, I always get the feeling, that I have seen something like that already. It's always (with a strong American... often Texan accent) "the best <insert appropriate person or machine> in the worrrrrrrrld". Then, the people always speak directly to "the Prrrresiden*no 't'*". Then the world goes to shits and generally some monument or another is destroyed. In 2012, it was the Washington Monument, but we also already had Paris and its Eifel Tower, the White House and many more. Then, they show a couple of pictures of how the world looks like after the apocalypse and then the film ends.

Sorry, Roland, not good enough. Please, PLEEEEASE, pretty pleeeeeeeease, less pathos, better story and "different" special effects, you don't have to go without, just different ones please. Destruction is all nice and well, but does it always have to be the grandest scale of things? For that matter, does it always have to be the "Prrrrresiden of the United States of Amerrrrrrrica" who is a hero (flying a fighter jet or helping the common man and whatnot). Good stories don't necessarily feed off superlatives, they feed off a well-written and well-told script, suspense, a good story arch, a good setting and good actors. Now all these things you can choose.

So please, PLEEEEEEEEASE, change something, SOMETHING! I'm starting to wonder if you prefer to be American. I would have thought that a non-American would add a slightly different viewpoint, too. I heard people refer to his movies as "the great cinema experience"... sadly, they aren't.

The magic of the "Tone" in a text

I've been busy lately trying to figure out how to contribute to the Python Project. Because of this, I have come across Python Mentoring, a fantastic project and idea!

One thing that struck me as outlandish, but which I received very benevolently; Their Code of Conduct:

• We ask everyone to be welcoming, friendly, and patient.
• Flame wars and insults are unacceptable in any fashion, by any party.
• Anything can be asked, and "RTFM" is not an acceptable answer.
• Neither is "it's in the archives, go read them".
• List archives are available only to subscribers, but subscription is open to everyone.
• Since the archives are "closed" - cross posting to public mailing lists is discouraged.
• Statements made by core developers can be quoted outside of the list.
• Statements made by others can not be quoted outside the list without explicit permission.
  • Anonymised paraphrased statements "someone asked about..." are ok - direct quotes with or without names are not appropriate.
• We endorse the PSF's Diversity statement.
• The list administrators reserve the right to revoke the subscription of members (including mentors) that persistently fail to abide by this Code of Conduct.
  • All mentors are signed up as administrators.

This is rather nice, as so far it was quite daunting to even dare to write a question at the danger of not being elite enough. The amount of times I read RTFM lmao, is actually countless times.

Here is a counter example of someone who means it nice but his tone of voice basically says: "Dude, it's probably best you don't bother." This here is the text, I spoke about.

I like how the author tries to make suggestions in how to get the right answer, but his writing style kinda suggests that it is the wild west out there. He does not make any amends for a rather anti social community of people who just want to be left alone with their code ;)

The python mentoring guys have truly noticed that this is a problem. Well, at least it worked with me. I've now submitted my first issue and hopefully will do more in the near future :)

Lots of enthusiasm, no direction

I hate these moments in programming. I have lots of enthusiasm spare in between all these things I do during my daily routine to get some bread on the table, but not project in sight to work on. Unfortunately, I am currently also at a loss as to how to choose a suitable project. Unfortunately, now that the work on my musicplayer is over, I have nothing to sink my teeth into... or better, no idea how to sink my teeth... if that makes sense ;)

ah, well... my search continues...

RPG Music'N'SFX - a Roleplaying Aid Written in Python Pt. 2

Here a little update. I've put the first version online for everyone to download.

https://bitbucket.org/Nebelhom/pymusicnsfx/overview

I don't know yet, how to use mercurial or any of the other stuff, but I'll give it a shot. For now, I am glad that I released something that can actually be used by someone.

RPG Music'N'SFX - a Roleplaying Aid Written in Python Pt. 1

I've been busy the last year or so with writing a little tool to play music in order to help me do the GMing. I figured there are already rules specific GM aids for The Dark Eye, but noone ever bothered writing something with music.

In order to realise this software, I first had to get some parametres straight. Using Python was already set, simply because I didn't know how to use anything else. The next thing was which GUI. This was quickly answered by using wxPython, which is based on wxWidgets, again, because I was most comfortable in using it. The last thing was a good audio library. Now that was a problem.

I wanted to have a library that could play both .mp3, .wav. and .ogg as minimum requirement and play several files of any format at the same time. I wanted to make it cross-platform, but minimum was Windows compatibility.
This proved to be quite challenging, especially that dreaded .mp3 compatibility. Most open source libraries stay well clear of .mp3, because of its licensing issues and prefer the open source format OGG VORBIS. Now this is an issue, since most people who use Windows, use .mp3 instead of .ogg files.
After some searching and trying (which also resulted in my rather amateur GStreamer with wxPython for Windows posts 1 2 3 4) I finally came across a library that would do the trick: PyAudiere. Put plainly it is an awesome library based on the C-library Audiere. It has some issues, but all in all it is a very good library to use. Unfortunately, I could never get it to work in Ubuntu, which actually led to one of my reasons to abandon Ubuntu for the xth time (for more see this post).

Anyhow, so I finally have it written and it is working... rather well actually. All I have to do, is create my own button pictures and remove all test files, since the licensing and copyright does not allow for shipping music files with it. Licensing in general is something, I don't quite understand yet, so I am going to play it safe, before I put it online and use the GNU General Public Licence ver. 3.

The only problem, I currently have is, that it will be quite a task to convince people to install all the libraries on their PCs before using it. I will try and create an installer for this instance and explain very carefully to everyone of them, what they are about to do. It is a shame, that Java's JRE is so widely used and accepted and Python's essentially same approach is not know at all. If I manage to do it, I will post here to tell you and a future me who's forgotten all about it, how I did it :)

This leaves me only with the posting of a screenshot for your viewing pleasure :) Enjoy.

wxPython - Little Things - Pt. 1 of many - Grey out radio buttons

When I use GUIs in Python, I always use wxPython. Simply because when I first wanted to create GUIs, wxPython was the one that I understood quickest. There is not much else to it.

I will not write another tutorial about it, because there are enough out there already. For basic ones, just have a look at these:

http://zetcode.com/wxpython/
http://wiki.wxpython.org/AnotherTutorial
http://wiki.wxpython.org/How%20to%20Learn%20wxPython
http://wiki.wxpython.org/Getting%20Started

and then there are also loads of videos on youtube and on showmedo. And last but definitely not least you may wanna check out the book on wxPython. These are all written (or made) by people who have the tendency to know more about the topic than I do.

So here is what I am going to do. Since I am still a learner myself, I will always try to note down a little bit of wisdom of wxPython to you.

The first one is the EnableItem(n, flag) method for a specific Radiobutton. Until this day, I truly thought that you could only enable or disable the entire radio box widget. Just call radiobox.Disable() or .Enable() and bob's your uncle (this works for all widgets I believe). Today, I wanted to disable separate buttons of the radio.
After some googling, I finally came across the wxWidgets documentation and stumbled across EnableItem(n, flag). So calling this with the index of your selection to be disabled and the flag "False", you actually can grey out a single button :)

Voila.

Geekiness in Movies

Today, I remembered something that I noticed when I watched the film "Swordfish", the film with Hugh Jackman as one of the best hackers in the world, who promised to never do it again and John Travolta as the megalomaniac baddie. For some reason most software developers quote the scene, where Hugh Jackman has to hack into some high security site within ...60 seconds I think or he gets shot, while receiving a blow job from a hottie, as their dream job. Personally, I don't mind challenging situations with a certain amount of pressure to deliver, but this is a bit too much for my taste ;)



Has anyone of you ever noticed how Jackman's character is called Stanley Jobson and one of his hacker friends who gets shot early in the film is called Axl Torvalds? Very smooth, you script writers. Truly very smooth. I was actually looking if Travolta's character was called something along the lines of Brian Gatesburgh... but I guess that would have been a little too obvious ;).

This prompted me to do some little research into geekiness in film... I mean my geekiness, you know, cross-references to roleplaying or stuff like that.

The two latter Matrix movies are gems for that. The first example comes with these creepy twins with the razorblades from Matrix: Reloaded. Check out the first video below and note how right at the end they say "We are getting aggravated... <Other one answers> Yes, we are." Shortly thereafter, they are actually getting blown up in their car (See second video clip). Now comparing this to the White Wolf system and their definition of "Agravated Damage", it makes me wonder, if the wording as it stands, was a coincidence. Personally, I would like to believe that it wasn't a coincidence and that the Wachowski Brothers are RPG geeks :D






The second one, I actually quite enjoyed was in Matrix: Revolutions. To me it was a little bit like the first StarCraft Movie. Just imagine the machines are the Zerg and the humans are the Terrans. If you watch the excerpt of the movie below, I see a striking resemblance between the StarCraft Terran Goliath unit and the robot units that face the machines.



Have you ever noticed some hidden geekiness in movies? I'd be more than interested to learn about it :D

Role-Playing is a hobby like any other, alright?

Many people look at me oddly when I openly admit that I role-play. Over the years this has improved since being a geek is a good thing nowadays apparently (look at those horn-rimmed glasses), but being a nerd is still bad (or so I was told). Still some people really think role-playing is the equivalent of having a fifth, sixth and seventh appendage.
To me role-playing is just another way of hanging out with old friends that I do not see that often. While many people meet up to drink beer in a pub or a club to chat or dance and spent sh*t-loads of money on that, I tend to sit around a table at a friend's place, drink beer and we chat (no dancing really. sorry)... well, play through a scenario essentially and tell a story. If at this point, you as the reader wonder what role-playing exactly is, I would direct you to a couple of good articles, like this one or this one or even this one... or you could just google it. I am not here to explain what it is because many people have tried and did it rather well.

But we lose track, all I am saying here is, that to me this is a great way to meet up with friends regularly and have an enjoyable evening while having some drinks over an activity we all enjoy doing as opposed to meeting up with friends regularly for an enjoyable evening while having some drinks over ANY OTHER activity we all enjoy doing.

The C64 - Nostalgia, Nostalgia and a beer with a little bit of Nostalgia

I remember the Commodore 64 fondly. It was my first exposure to video gaming. It belonged to my eldest brother and it's greenfilter monitor had an almost irresistible pull to me. Problem these days was, I was 8 years old, couldn't speak English and guess what "ALL" games were in English... I have to admit though, it did not deter me :).

Following are a couple of games that I played almost nonstop. It was crazy considering that I actually couldn't speak English back then and the games were heavily text-based... yet, I thoroughly enjoyed them all. Here are my top ten in no particular order as I think that each game was awesome in its own way:

The Great Giana Sisters

 What a great game! My all time favorite. Chris Huelsbeck's PC-Speaker music made it all the more enjoyable. I can still hum the level tunes! Apart from the fact that it is a blatant Super Mario rip off, I have to admit, though, that I actually learnt about Mario after I played this one. To my surprise, when I played it recently, I realised that it has aged rather well!

Curse of the Azure Bonds

Hach *sigh*, my first ever computer-based rpg. It will always hold a special place in my heart. The graphics were shit, the gameplay was atrocious and the story a spin-off from an AD&D book that wasn't that good in the first place. Yet, I had to play it and beat the evil Tyranthraxus who, for some inexplicable reason, faced me as a storm giant (the only storm giant in the game) although he could have chosen any form he liked. My Paladin killed him in two rounds. That's how good that baddie was. Dust of Disappearance made that fight ridiculously easy... I loved that game. Also my first contact with the realms of Faerun. Good times...

Dragon Wars

From what I remember, THE best roleplaying system ever made. It was the only game "to this day" where you do not start as a character class, but you can increase whatever you want. It was just awesome! Shame there is no follow up with the same system but better graphics.

Can't tell you much about the story since the limited Memory of the Commodore 64 meant that a lot of the story was actually written down in the handbook in Entry form. Very often, you would encounter a place and it says in the description <Read Entry xy... 63 or whatever>. Unfortunately, my older brother lost the handbook and it was in English anyway, so no use to my 8 year old self.

Miniput

This game was simply well made. Even back then, they totally nailed the gameplay. To this day, I play miniput games (browser games and the like) and the game play as such has not change overly. What the developers achieved with limited graphics was just plain amazing! It is still a good game to now. Again one of those that aged well :)

Sid Meier's Pirates!

I am not sure if it is just misled nostalgia, but the new release of the game has nothing on the old one. I don't know what it was, but the new, fluffy and spiffy look of the new one just puts me off (together with the dancing). The original was actually just the same.. but it was better goddammit!! The game was revolutionary for its time. The way it was possible to ransack cities with just the right tactics was just plain awesome and the sea battles were breath-taking. I am sure my vivid imagination as a young pup compensated heavily for the lack of good graphics ;)

Tennis-Manager

This game is a weird one. I don't know why I spent several months worth of my childhood sitting in front of the box playing this. All you did, was increase the percentages of each skill, every time you come back from a tournament and then you watch how well you play. It was inevitable that you would reach the number one spot. Simply, because at some point you will reach 100% in every single skill. Nonetheless, there was something endearing about this game.

Winter Games

 

No other game caused as much damage to the joysticks as this game (maybe Summer games as close second). Since the game play consisted mainly of violently yanking the the joystick back and forth as fast as possible (This may have prepared some young boys for their Baywatch watching career), it is understandable that a couple of new joysticks had to be bought. Fantastic group game!

Bruce Lee

 To this day, I have no idea what this game is about, or what I achieved once I finished it. What I know is that it is a fast paced Jump and... Kick and Run Game that makes you enjoy jump kicking ugly, green and fat kickboxing women with a horrendous hair do.

Microprose Soccer

First football game I ever played. Realism looks different, but it was awesome nonetheless. For its time very good graphics and playing against my siblings was always a treat. It just worked. Awesome game :D

Vermeer

The strange story with this game is that I actually didn't know what the aim of the game was (again due to a lack of English skills). I just liked the game, for planting crops and selling the materials in order to get rich. For some reason, I was never bothered that it was open ended ;)

Honorable mentions go out to Mafia, International Karate and Test Drive. Another three beyond awesome games.

Ah well, that's it. I enjoyed that greatly. I will however resist from getting an emulator, because I will only be disappointed. I want those games to live on in my heart the way I remember them. As games that it was worth taking time out over. :)

C#, XNA and Microsoft's Tutorial, they really get it all wrong!

So, I am starting to learn about C# and the XNA Framework for various reasons. I am usually a python ... hmm.. I don't dare call myself a programmer or developer... let's settle for "dabbler", shall we? Anyhow, as a consequence, I have been following Microsoft's tutorial.

Now don't get me wrong, I like it. I don't mind C#. The syntax reminds me shudderingly of Java, which I tried and then stopped, turned round and walked away, so far away, but C# I seem to get fairly quickly. It is probably the way the tutorials happened to be set out.

BUT... and here is the BUT. There is always a but, isn't there. For one, all the online tutorials are written for people who have no concept of programming whatsoever. I would like to learn about XNA and C# and not about the concept of having a variable... It really unnerves me, because the start is soooo superslow. I wish they would do something about it. it really, really puts me off.

The other thing that really puts me off, are the brief introductory videos. I know what they are trying to do, but unfortunately, all the people they choose to let talk, give me the creeps in one way or the other. Adding in this whitened white background and I suspect every single one of them of a felony that does involve the absense of clothing or a fetish. It just achieves the direct opposite of what it should. Instead of giving the reader/viewer a gentle intro to the material, it sitffenes every muscle in fear and the mentioning of the word "gentle" will make you cringe in fear.

Ah, well, on the upside, after 4 lessons, I can now finally make an icon move. Isn't it awesome?