Clete’s Blog

A few days ago, I spoke with John Phillips (he is a computer science professor and adviser here at Mansfield) and I found out that I had made three class-selection errors in my Fall 2008 schedule. Luckily, he was able to set me on the right track. My new schedule is linked below. Instead of Accounting II (sorry to Dave and Vinnie), Data Structures (sorry to Dan McKee), and Honors Research (sorry Sara, Andrew, and others), I will be taking Computer Organization, Finite Math, and Principles of Microeconomics.

Revised Fall 2008 Schedule (PDF).

Google’s SketchUp is an incredibly easy-to-use architectural and 3D-modeling tool. The Computer Science Club here at Mansfield has been talking about modeling the university for a 3D perspective in Google Earth, similar to what Google Earth provides for New York City and other metropolitan areas. Recently, I have been experimenting with SketchUp. A free version is available from the website and a professional version can be purchased for about $500. People enrolled in Universities can obtain the professional licenses for $50 a year. The $50 counts towards purchasing a full license, so after 10 years, it’s yours forever. Or, you can pay for the educational license for 3 years and pay the rest of the money up front.

At a first glance, SketchUp seems to be too simple to be worth anything. Upon further investigation, the simplicity seems to come from Google’s innovational perspective. Google has outdone themselves with SketchUp. It is amazingly easy to pick up and create simple objects. More complicated objects can be created with some practice. I have spent about an hour and a half working with the program. First, I watched the beginning tutorials. Then, I went straight into making objects and refining them. It’s amazingly simple. Just make a shape, pull it up to give it depth, draw other objects on it, and manipulate them. It’s amazingly simple.

In about twenty minutes, I was able to make the desk that I use here at school. Keep in mind that it isn’t 100% perfect, nor is it 100% to scale. I have never seen a program this simple. With an hour and a half of experience, I was easily able to make this (click to enlarge):

Here is the front of it:

From an angle:

From the side (notice the arches in the drawers):

And here it is next to a person:

The USA’s 2008 election is the first governmental election of any kind that I will have an opportunity to vote in. This is a very important election for everyone. We face major decisions about the war in Iraq and on many major issues. A lot is at stake in this year’s general election. I have followed this election more than any other. I have been involved in a lot of conversations with people who come from very different cultures and backgrounds. Many of these people support my viewpoints, many of them disagree, and many of them could not care less about politics.

I have been appalled at how little it takes for a certain candidate to obtain an undecided and unopinionated person’s vote. Those of us who are strong conservatives or liberals will not be swayed to vote the opposite way for anything in the world (although this is debatable). However, undecided people are swayed way too easily. I have heard at least ten people tell me that they will vote for Obama because he is “young” and relates to “the younger generation” more than any of the “old” people such as Clinton and McCain. I have had one person tell me that, although they are a liberal, they would not vote for McCain if they were conservative because he is “old” and that he will probably “die in office.”

People disregard the candidate’s actual views and opinions and focus in on the unimportant things. They decide to vote for candidates because they “seem like nice people.” I am not sure if it is the college students’ way or if the entire population is this way, but it’s atrocious. If I wanted to, I could run for President, take all of the “correct” views on all of the issues; that is, the ones that would get me elected. I could completely disagree with all of these views, but I could stand up there, smile, act friendly, cry when I hear a sad story, etc. I could be a complete phony and get some of these idiots to follow me just because I am a down-to-earth and likable character.

What has our country come to? Elect someone because they are honest and they agree with your issues. Elect them because they will lead our country in the right (or should I say correct?) direction. But do NOT elect them because they are nice people and they seem friendly. This is ridiculous. Does anyone want someone in office who is nice but leads our country to demise? I don’t think so.

Amendment: It seems that my post has sparked a large debate over at the Gentoo Forums. Check it out here. It looks like most people agree with my basic argument that people are ignorant. However, many people seem to have some insane (read: extreme socialistic / communistic) ideas on the Gentoo Forums.

Trevor Immelman is the 2008 Masters Champion! He shot 8 under par. Trevor is 3 shots away from Tiger Woods, who placed second. Congratulations to Trevor!

Next year, I will be at the Masters. I really missed it this year. This year was the first year of my life that I was unable to be at the tournament.

The Masters

No, I haven’t fooled you. However, I had someone attempt to fool me (successfully for about 5 seconds) and I fooled someone.

While I was in my Oral Communications class, giving a speech about how to improve your photography skills, I received a phone call and a voicemail from my dad. Later, I checked and he told me that he had put our house on the market so that we could downsize. Well, it sold and we are moving within 45 days. I was stunned. I hung up and called him and realized as I was calling that it is April Fools day. Turns out it was a joke.

Then, I decided that I had to fool my sisters. I have a VNC server set up on my desktop at home (700 miles away from here). (A VNC server allows me to remotely control my computer from anywhere in the world) It so turns out that the eldest of my two sisters (3 years younger than me) was on Wikipedia looking up something. (my dad helped me with the idea) Well, I thought and thought of what to search for and I couldn’t think of anything, so I searched wikipedia for Death. Immediately, I saw the mouse moving to close the window and all other Firefox windows open. A minute or so later, I logged back in and searched Wikipedia for April Fools. I called her, laughing and she ended up laughing about it too.

It’s been a good day so far.

P.S. I ordered a John McCain shirt.

Firefox 3 has been in the making for a while now. I have been using beta 4 (Windows). There are a lot of nice changes in Firefox 3. First of all, it’s memory footprint is actually smaller than that of Firefox 2.x (in my experience). It is also slightly faster at rendering pages, especially pages that use heavy JavaScript, which is the norm today.

The next thing that I noticed after opening Firefox 3 was the reformed address bar. When you start typing in an address (or tags, which I will cover later), it acts as a keyworded search rather than a simple address bar. Many people dislike this feature. I had to adjust to it and I am still unsure whether I like it or not. Below is an example of this keyword search. (Click to enlarge)

Firefox has finally added in tags for bookmarks. It seems that “tagging” is the “thing to do” today. Slashdot and Engadget recently added tags and it seems like everyone else is beginning to implement some sort of tagging system. Firefox now allows you to tag your bookmarks so that when you type in key words in the address bar, your tagged bookmarks are easier to find. (Click to enlarge)

Firefox has also made a change that I have been wanting for years. Now, you can close the download window without canceling downloads. They simply download in the background, as long as Firefox is kept open. A status message is displayed in the bottom taskbar of Firefox, telling the user how many downloads are active and an estimate of how long it will take for all of them to complete. (Click to enlarge)

The last major change that I have noticed in Firefox 3 is that it now allows you to save your tabs, so that when you open Firefox again, it restores all of the pages that you had open. This is also a much-wanted feature of mine. (Click to enlarge)

In summary, Firefox 3 has progressed a long ways. I have not noticed any major bugs in the beta version. I do not feel that Firefox 3 has added much bloat at all. All of the features that I have seen enhance the user experience.

Looking forward to Firefox 3 Beta 5.

Firefox 3 Beta 5 has progressed farther in complying with CSS and HTML standards. This is evident by its Acid 3 test results. Acid 3 is a test that tests for HTML and CSS compliance. For reference, the Acid 3 test page in Internet Explorer 7 is completely unreadable. There are 5-6 lines of text directly on top of each other.

At any rate, I have tried out the nightly build that will become Firefox 3 Beta 5 within a day or two (so it’s basically Beta 4.95) and it gets a 71/100 (Click to enlarge):

I have one last thing to add. The new betas of Opera and of Safari now display the Acid 3 test 100% correctly. Firefox is now playing catch-up.

Yesterday, I and many other people who have Apple products on their Windows installations (iTunes or QuickTime) received an “Apple Updates” popup. This is typical for me and I regularly install updates to iTunes + QuickTime. However, this update advocates to me that I should install Safari. It appears that Apple is now pushing its products Microsoft style. About a month ago, Microsoft sneaked its Silverlight package into Windows Updates. Microsoft has had a notorious reputation for forcing users to update. This is how it started with Microsoft. Is Apple beginning to go down the same path?Click to enlarge (full screenshot shows that I do not have Safari installed):

For those who are interested, I have my school schedule set up for the Fall 2008 semester, which begins in August.

Schedule (PDF)

How many five-year olds can you take on in a fight?

I can take on thirty. That was one odd quiz…
30

I would just like to quickly wish everyone a Merry Christmas!