Oh how things change

I haven’t posted on this blog in nearly 3 years. I have migrated it from running on my Mac Mini at my home, onto a real VPS in a datacenter, but I just haven’t posted on it.

So what is the point of this blog now? Truth be told, I don’t know. I just don’t have a strong desire to blog anymore.

I spend my time mostly playing Dota 2 and other multiplayer games these days. I hang out in IRC channels, even one on my own small network made of my server at home, and the VPS that runs this blog. Sometimes I make a small cool application, but I’m just not that creative, nor am I confident in what I make.

I suppose one thing I can share is my Stargate Episode Randomizer, which suggests a random Stargate episode to watch. It is very simple and programmed using the very light Camping web framework for Ruby.

I know this post isn’t much, but maybe you’ll be inspired to develop some application of your own.

I won at CUPS

This seemed to work in compiling CUPS on OS X Leopard.

./configure --enable-pie --disable-pap --with-archflags="-arch x86_64 -arch i386" --with-ldarchflags="-arch x86_64 -arch i386" --with-adminkey="system.print.admin" --with-operkey="system.print.operator" --with-pam-module=opendirectory --disable-bannertops --disable-pdftops --disable-texttops

Sometimes a post appears

Oh look. A post.

So, I got an Arduino Mega 2560 for Christmas, and recently I bought a Raspberry Pi. My Raspberry Pi was of the new ones built in Wales.

I don’t have any pictures of either, but I’ve done a few interesting/fun things with my Arduino Mega 2560. I’ve read SNES and N64 controllers’ statuses, and it’s really cool.

I haven’t done any of the electronics stuff with my Raspberry Pi (using the IO pins), but I’ve used it for like XBMC, and a bit of programming. I’d like to try out RiscOS, but I don’t have a large SD card I can use for flashing OS’ for the Raspberry Pi.

So, that’s all for now I guess..

A Post? What?!

Well, it’s been far too long since I’ve posted here. I just changed the theme here, and enabled some snow, for the fun of it.

Things have been kind of slow for me in life, but I’m doing well. I’ve had friends over the past few days which has been quite fun. This Christmas I’m getting an Arduino Mega 2560, and I might publish the fun things I end up doing with that here.

I hope everyone has a great winter break, and hopefully you’ll get to see some snow (in person)!

Kindle Fire Somewhat Review

So, I bought myself a Kindle Fire from Amazon.

Quite simply put, I quite enjoy the tablet. It’s just the right size, and isn’t skimpy on computation power.

I haven’t done a fair comparison of having accelerated browsing on vs off however, but I did notice that it does not like CloudFlare’s IPv6, but then again, most things don’t.

In general, it is a nice tablet with good battery life.

My only complaints are that it doesn’t include all the Google stuff, and there’s no 24-hour clock option.

So while this is just a quick review, feel free to ask questions in the comments, and I will answer.

(This is so short because I did it on my Kindle Fire.)

A Time of Rememberance

You probably already know, but as I write this, it is the day of the 10th anniversary of the attacks on the United States by terrorists. September 11th, 2001 was a day that changed all of America, for the rest of time.

What prides me about this country is that as a country, we did not strike back with the same violence that struck us. We instead did something good for the countries that were home to the terrorists. We sewed the seeds of democracy, in hopes that their lives would improve. Many people would have simply dropped bombs on the Middle East, but we took this approach of inducing peace.

This year as well, we found and killed Osama bin Landen, founder of the extremist group, Al Qaeda. While many people applauded his death, with many shouting “USA!! USA!!” in D.C. after news arrived of Osama’s death.

I’m glad I live in such a proud country, and I’d like to pay my respects to the soldiers that worked to defend our freedoms, those who just were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and killed by the plane crashes, as well as the families who lost loved ones 10 years ago.

We will never forget.

Animated flag image by 3DFlags.com

Well Here We Are Again

Lots has happened for OKS since I last wrote. The things that have happened have been good and bad, but where we are at now is a place I am content with.

Comcast began blocking port 25 TCP, and that was very greedy of them. They want my family to, during this economic downturn, pay more for that, and that just ain’t happening.  However, those nice people at Google gave me a good deal, and now I am using Google Apps for mail at no charge. Aren’t they nice?

On brighter news, the OKS Minecraft server has become a beautiful place. It isn’t exactly stock, but people like it. The latest and coolest addition is the Dynamic Map. The Dynamic Map lets you see what is on the server right now. As the world updates, the Dynamic Map does as well. Hence the name, Dynamic. Right now, an Amazon EC2 instance is hard at work preparing a new static map render, and when it completes, the link will be shown here on this page.

UPDATE: The render that was taking place is long since done, and it is available at http://ec2.theoks.tk/mczoomable_new/.

Thanks, and have fun!

A post? They have those on blogs?

I load the front page of my blog nearly every day. I just can’t seem to create a post that has enough value that it’s worth posting at all. However, now I will.

That aside, I have been looking at CloudFlare, and I’ve implemented it in some areas. WordPress is locked to a domain, so this blog isn’t behind CloudFlare. Most sections of theoks.net can be viewed behind CloudFlare by replacing theoks.net with theoks.tk.

What CloudFlare does for you is that it caches static resources like CSS, Javascript, and images, closer to you, resulting in faster load of images and styles. Especially on the image board, and the zoomable Minecraft map render this can be advantageous.

I have also added Google’s +1 button to post pages, as well as the home page, and moved the Tweet button with it to below the post content.

In related news I got into Google+, which is pretty exciting. You may ask me for an invite, but I cannot guarantee that you will be allowed to join.