Microsoft Strikes Back

I'm pretty sure we all know about the Conficker worm.

And we all know about Microsoft(right Mom?).

Put them together, and what do you get?



(No, that's not a serious pic, and I linked to it from Gizmodo by the way...its not my invention.)

"Is this guy for REAL?!!" you ask yourself, while laughing hysterically.

Nope, I'm just a figment of your imagination who writes this blog.

Anyway, those of us who use Windows Live Messenger have had to tolerate that piece of crap called the Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner anytime we transfer files. Scanning my files every time I send and receive them wouldn't be so bad, but it always seems to freeze my PC (and no, its not a memory or processing power issue, the OneCare scanner just sucks). Yes, that's right. The WINDOWS LIVE ONECARE SAFETY SCANNER sucks, and I hope it's mother gets run over by rabid, castrated, hellbound MOUNTAIN GOATS!!! (Yes, I know you can turn it off, and I did that, but I just had to get that out of my system :D)

So, I check out the BBC World News website today, and what do I see?

Well, I see Microsoft out to release FREE anti-virus software. Yup people, that's right, free like beer!! Its called Morro. And it won't come bundled with the latest version of Windows (probably due to antitrust concerns....you can't expect to be an evil megacorporation without some consequences now, can you? You should follow Google's example...lol). I wish them all the best with Morro, but I hope they remember to make it so that it doesn't piss people off.

Windows has actually been pissing me off a lot lately, and I don't know why. I suppose its WMS(think PMS style symptoms, but as it pertains to Windows...yup lol).

So will I actually be using Windows 7?

The answer is, yes, I will.

Why?

Because Windows has a monopoly on gaming. And as both a dedicated gamer and aspiring(read: wannabe) game designer, I have no choice but to stick with established traditions(at least until I get the resources to run a campaign to put Linux on top as the ultimate gaming system :D)

Anyway, onto less serious issues:

First of all, I've almost beat Devil May Cry 3. The final fight with Vergil is really difficult...and its pissing me off. But I will persevere (this is coming from the guy who fought Beowulf about 15 times lol).



I love this song. I feel like a complete dork for not remembering the name of this song. The instrumental is wicked, although the vocals are sort of crappy.

Next video:



Yes, Will Smith used to be a rapper,for the benefit of those of you who never knew that (this means a lot of people, surprisingly). This was like the cool song when I was in Grade 5 or so. (Its still cool to me, and you people can't tell me shit otherwise :P)

Here comes Men In Black...Galaxy Defenders...
With a theme song like that, it could have been a cool Saturday morning cartoon. In fact, it had a cool Saturday morning cartoon at one point. The score for it sounded pretty cool too. Here it is for your benefit:



Anyway, I'm done writing enough crap for now. Its 2:24, but I don't want to go to my damn bed. I think I'll go read some Questionable Content, and then go eat some Oreos, then vomit them all over the floor.

Goodnight World!!
*Exits stage left*

Microsoft Word 2007 is a B****

So kids,here's my latest bitching topic. I'm working on my Chemistry project which I got for the holidays. I'm on the second to last topic, so I'm almost finished. Out of force of habit, I press Ctrl+S to quick save on a regular basis(like every 10 minutes or so).

So I press it, and it brings up the huge "Save As" dialog box. I decide to refrain from cursing at that point and just save over the document, which would have the same effect as the quick save. It's located on the base C:\ drive. I click the button. The little green bar on the status bar at the bottom of the screen fills pretty quickly, then it appears again. About 85% of the way through it stops and tells me there is an error in saving chemproj.docx. I curse.

My little brother hears me and laughs.I decide to try it again. Hmph. Same f**king thing. I decide to outsmart Microsoft and copy the entire document to an empty word document and saving it. Didn't make a scrap of difference. I got an error there too. Shit. I do a bit of googling for a solution, since I typed a lot and I don't want to have to retype it.

I see somebody talking about disabling their firewall and antivirus. I'm skeptical, but desperate, so I try it. Nope, no such luck.

I resign to my fate of losing the 3 paragraphs I wrote. I close it, and give up for a few seconds. I decide to open a blank document, type some crap, and see if it will save. It does. I decide to try saving my project again. It doesn't. >_<

I scream, and try the tactic of copying the whole document to a blank file again. I save it to My Documents, and somehow it works.

Its pretty damn weird.

Right now however, I'm just thankful that it worked. I'll figure out the issue later. There is no way I was planning to lose 3966 words of information that was hell to find.

*Sigh*
Oh well. I just had to let it out. I also did a Twitter post about it. For those of you who don't know, besides being an aspiring computer programmer/neurosurgeon, I also want to be a PUA. You can see the Twitter status update on my other blog.

Thats about it still, so I'll write up something some other day. Wish me luck on the project.

The New Year's Nerd

Well, I finally did it.....Sort of.

I've partially purged myself of Microsoft's sin. I've dual booted Ubuntu 8.10 on my computer. I still have XP (since most of the things I use are on Windows), but I have Linux. Gotta keep my options open, y'know?

Ubuntu is damn pretty. It proves that you don't need fancy hardware acceleration and transparent menu bars to have a good looking GUI. I love how Python is so tightly integrated with the Ubuntu shell. In fact, if it weren't for the games I have on Windows, I'd gladly switch to Ubuntu at any time. Now if only I had a credit card so I could donate.

I've grabbed most of the apps I think I'll need(namely Blender, The Ur Quan Masters, Anjuta IDE, plus some plugins). The only problem I've had so far is with the sound and getting a recent version of Flash Player, but its cool, I'll have them fixed WAAAY before the New Year.

Well, I most likely won't be updating tomorrow...so Happy New Year when it comes!!

Later,
Gavin

Certificate Problems with Firefox 3 and Google

This morning, I tried to access my Blogger account using Firefox. I got a message about invalid certificate. As you might know, Blogger is owned by Google. I went to Google and typed in the error.

I got a LOT of results. One said that I should download some tool(avoid these sorts of advice at all costs, many of them are spyware). Another pointed out the problem didn't only exist with Google's sub sites, but other sub sites, like some belonging to Microsoft. It was a security certificate problem.

None of the suggestions really helped, so I decided to forget about it and go back to sleep. I checked the time. May 13,2003, 8:00 AM according to my computer clock. That was wrong, so I decided to fix the time. On a hunch, I decided to try my luck at accessing Blogger again. Viola!! It worked.

Well, if anyone is having that problem, and you reached here by googling for it, welcome to Happy Desolation!!

Anyway, I don't really have anything special to say apart from that. I was just planning to update my blog posting, to show my latest attempt at art. Yup, that's right. More Questionable Content characters. I love the art style. Its not as good as last time though. Amir is barely recognizable, and Tai doesn't look right. Only Winslow came out properly. Oh well, practice makes perfect.



Speaking of webcomics, I can't believe I forgot to mention Applegeeks and Dr.McNinja in my last blog post. While I'm a big fan of Jeph Jacques art style, those 2 are the best drawn webcomics I've seen so far.

Going to get a haircut today. Going to the movies next week Tuesday. Going to have a poem for you guys by tomorrow. I think that's about all there is. Its going to be a pretty uneventful life for a while.

Oh yeah, CXC results come out on the 18th of August. Wish me luck.

Later,
Gavin

P.S. Yeah, I haven't made a programming post for a while. I'm just not in the mood. I think I'll be back on my feet soon though. Sorry.

Free...

The title of this post probably says it all. Thats right. I'm free. No more exams. I was free from yesterday, but i was too lazy to post on my blog.

Now you have officially been informed. My first order of business is to download Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2008 and the Windows 32 SDK, because lately DevC++ has been pissing me off, crashing every minute.

You'll probably get the skeletal animation tutorial a month or so from now, because I'm still a little brainblocked. Sorry.

I've been practicing a bit of SS as I told you, this is the summer of pimp.

Remember how a few months back, I did an April Fools joke about switching to DirectX?

Well I'm still joking. I'm actually going to keep on using openGL, but since I'm going to have to switch to Vista sooner or later, I'm going to start learning up on how to use DirectX 10.

Maybe if Mac had decent graphics libraries, I would be programming games for it. lol.

As for Irrlicht, I really don't know. I sorta developed this preference towards doing things myself lately. I'll probably stop using it. I'll leave the tutorials up though.

I'm also trying to track down Shogo. (You know, the game, very old, anime style, done by Monolith?) If you're still clueless:



Tata!