Hawk’s Babble-Log

Well now! This looks very interesting!

Recording Industry vs The People: Programmer Challenges RIAA “Investigation” in Court Papers Filed Dec. 28th to Vacate “Ex Parte” Order

I find it interesting that at the beginning of the year, I had 500 discs in my NetFlix queue. And now, near the end of the year, I have 500 discs in my queue. I guess I’m not really catching up, eh?

The year-end celibration is upon us! Shopping is rampant! Deals are hunted to extinction! It’s almost 2006!

And I’ve been getting lots of stuff in the mail. It’s gonna be a good christmas!

BTW, Christmas shopping was cake this year: gift cards. I got gift certs from Amazon.com, ThinkGeek.com, and Best Buy. There; done! What’s the big deal? I finished my Christmas shopping in about two days. Cake!

Now the real work begins: surviving the family get-together. Just kidding!

I’m going down to my older sister’s place with my mom and my younger sister. We’re going to do Christmas at her nice new big house. My dad is up in Oregon, but we’re going to hook up a webcam so that he can join in remotely to all the fun.

Wheeee!

No, I do not like console video game systems. Many people have asked me, “Hawk, you like video games so much, but you don’t have a [insert favorite console gaming system here]? What’s with that?” Let me explain: Console video game systems suck ass, and here’s why:

1) Video resolution. On a regular TV, NTSC here in this hemisphere, the resolution is approximately equivilant to 640×480. On my computer, I get 1024×768 *MINIMUM*. Even an HD signal would not beat that. I just picked up a sweet 19″ Samsung SyncMaster 910MP. This monitor/TV is *beautiful*! It’s big, sharp, bright, and puts my two CRTs to shame. It’s got an incredibly fast response time (something like 8 milliseconds) so it’s excellent for games. And you want me to use a regular NTSC TV signal to play games? HA! I wonder if I could even recognize the numbers on the HUD (Heads-Up Display).

2) Input devices. It’s true that you can hook up to a network now, and a headset, but this doesn’t beat the options available on a PC, specifically: keyboard and mouse. When playing a first-person shooter, such as Half-Life 2, it’s important to be able to slide from side to side. This is called strafing. When playing with a console controller, this is not possible. And if it were, using some kind of modification key, it’s difficult to turn and strafe at the same time. Also, when using my mouse to look around, I can zero in on a target at any speed, fast or slow. Using a console controller, you’ve got three speeds: stop, slow, and slower. Using a mouse, I can whip around to see who is shooting me and fire back while sliding into a doorway. Try that with a console controller. I dare you.

While I’m on a rant here, let me point out that Halo 2 has not been released for the PC yet. This sucks on so many levels. Thanks again, Micro$haft.

So, friend, no thanks. I’ll stick with my PC as it is the ultimate gaming platform. Plus, not having a console gaming system means that I’ve got a few less devices to dust.

Many people have been writing lots of words on why they think the music industry is not doing so well this year. So this seems like a good time to throw in my two cents. It’s my blog, after all.

The reasons I’ve seen lately are: 1) “online piracy”, 2) “CD burning”, 3) “high prices”, and 4) “competition from other entertainment sources such as video games and movies (DVDs)”.

Reasons 1 through 3: Horseshit. That’s a technical term: horse-shit. That means no friggin’ way. Back in the hayday of MP3s and CD-ripping, I noticed an INCREASE in CD sales. I believe this due to people listening to MP3s, thinking, “Hey, that’s not bad. I gotta get that CD!” And then buying that CD. At least, that’s what I did. I can name the last 8 or 10 CDs that I’ve bought, and I bought them *BECAUSE* I listened to the MP3 *FIRST*. I believe in rewarding the artist, and I will buy their CD if I like it. If I hear an MP3 that I don’t like, it goes into the bit bucket (meaning I delete it).

Reason 4: This is very plausable. However, if you look at past trends, the music industry has not been affected much in the past by virtually any other product, including general economy trends.

However, recently, my own music buying has gone way down. This is not due to new products of other kinds such as video games and cell phones. I’ve always bought video games and I’ve had a cell phone even before all this MP3 stuff.

I have not purchased many CDs lately because of one thing: The RIAA is sueing so many people.

This puts them on my bad side. And to top it off, it’s a war they’ll never win.

If they would like to get on my good side, they’ll stop with the senceless sueing, and make their products available for download online, along with an “Add-To-Cart” button. I would buy the stuff I like.

Hawk’s Law of Traffic 3: The amount of traffic is in direct proportion to how much you’re in a hurry (or, how badly you want to get there).

Hawk’s Law of Traffic 2: It doesn’t matter what route you take; they all suck equally.

Hawk’s Law of Traffic 1: The faster lane is the one next to you.

Starring Charlize Theron, Marton Csokas, Jonny Lee Miller, Sophie Okonedo, Frances McDormand, and Pete Postlethwaite.

This movie was much better than I expected it to be. I expected a non-stop action movie with Charlize dressed in sexy outfits kicking ass left and right. As it turns out, there is a good story behind it. I was pleasantly surprised, and I like the film much more than I thought I would.

The acting was excellent, the action was excellent, the special effects were top-notch and professional… in short: all good.

I don’t want to give too much of the story away, so I’ll shut up now.

I’m definately buying it when it comes out on DVD.

I ran into a problem the other day with our production machine running MySQL 4.1.11.

I have an automated system setup to make a backup of the entire database nightly. During this procedure, I got this error:

mysqldump: Got error: 1105: File '[filename]' not found
(Errcode: 24) when using LOCK TABLES

I didn’t know what to make of it, as the [filename] that it was looking for was right there on the disk, and it had correct permissions. I ran the mysqldump program manually and got the same error, but on a different file. Much more research later and… as it turns out, the problem is NOT that it can’t find the file, but that the system had run out of file handles. I added this line to /etc/my.cnf:

open_files_limit=8192

Then I restarted the database and all was well.

This is one of those rare cases where the error message is not entirely helpful. I hope this helps explain things.