New forums, buggy WordPress, fixed Trac, and a whole lot more!

I installed some new forums which are powered by forum software called bbPress. They are integrated with the blog meaning that if you login here, you’re logged in there. Also, you can login there with your login for our blog.

On a lower note, our WordPress has a problem. Look at the bottom of this page. There’s a nasty PHP warning. I am upset with it too. I’ll just keep on doing svn up until it fixes itself.

On a higher note, our Trac is fixed. It also moved to /trac instead of /cgi-bin/trac. It also is running 0.12dev. 

 

UPDATE: WordPress was fixed. Wasn’t that fast?

A command-line MP3 player

I’ve been looking for a command line MP3 player. Now i’ve found one that compiles on OS X Leopard.

mp3blaster works great. My build only does mp3 / wav, but when compiled on a different machine it can also play ogg and sid.

I am satisfied with mp3blaster’s performance. It runs nicely and can also use SDL for audio (a very good thing in my case).

Summer is almost here!

Summer is almost here, and summer is an excellent time to work on coding projects.

I have a project that was just kickstarted into actual development.

ScriptBot was originally by AMcBain, and was pushed into our subversion repository, and development started.

If you feel that you could help this project, catch me in #bots.

My review of the Infiniti 95mW

Note: I should have pictures soon.

This thing is about 20 times as powerful as the cheap $1 laser you would buy in a store, and it is 532nm ( green) so it is much more visible than a red pointer.
Here’s the features: (* means it is advertised to do this, but I haven’t gotten around to trying this, and in some cases, don’t have something to try it on.)

  • Beam is visible in a medium-light room.
  • Stings bare skin. *
  • Makes rubber smoke and leaves the rubber scorched.
  • Lights matches. *
  • Goes for miles. *
  • Pops balloons. *
  • Etches plastic. (with lenses)
  • Looks damn cool!

More to come later

Final Chess Championship Game: A Battle of Wits

Friday, May 29 2008: Two of the best chess players at our school battle each other in the first-ever school chess tournament for the trophy.

On Friday, May 29th, 2008 at our school in Washington, two of the best chess players faced off. Both had successfully made it through a test of skill in the first ever double-elimination chess tournament held at the school. The details of the second game of this championship battle were recorded by the author of this article.

Note: The champions’ names will remain undisclosed until further notice. We will refer to the winner of the winner’s bracket as Player 1 and the winner of the loser’s bracket as Player 2.

In the first game, Player 2 beat Player 1, and because this was Player 1’s first loss, the two had to battle each other again. This, as Player 2 would say, would be “a battle to the death”. After the game, we weren’t so sure if that final game really was.

In the opening of the second game, Player 1 was white and Player 2 was black. Player 1 opened by moving a pawn two spaces forward. Player 2 mirrored the move, so to speak. This continued with a few other moves. The knights were out, taking pawns and anything in their zigzag path. Then, Player 1 mobilizes his queen, and brings it out. Player 2 starts moving his pawns out, forming a discontinuous line of pawns. This lead to Player 2 being put in check by the opponent’s queen. By this time, both players have most of their pawns out. Player 2 sets up a queen-for-queen trade, quite a risky move. All of a sudden out of nowhere, Player 1 realizes he has a pawn at the other end of the board and promotes that pawn to a second queen. Despite the unexpected pawn promotion, Player 1 keeps walking his pawns. By this time, all of Player 2’s pieces are huddled in a corner (except for an out lier pawn), while Player 1’s pieces cover the whole board. The game suddenly ends when Player 1 puts Player 2 in checkmate with two queens and a bishop. There wasn’t even much of an endgame.