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Washii Ponderings

Eh-heh, Whoops

So, over a year since I've last blogged. Heh, whoops.

Decided to get back into it, as I set up WordPress for the department I'm working for. I'm not sure which I like better. I'm kind of tempted to make my own server and host my own WordPress blog, but, I guess we'll see. Have to wait until I'll have some always-on connection after I leave school, I'm sure.

Harvest Moon! More Please!

So, if you looked over my previous post, you might have noticed (at the very end) a discrete mentioning of Harvest Moon: Magical Melody.

Harvest Moon is a farm-simulation game: grow crops, work on your husbandry with cows, goats and sheep (the latter two in later games) or with chickens. However, in the console-based incarnations of the game, you also woo a potential spouse (which is required in atleast two/three of the games) and get a child. Before HM: A Wonderful Life for the GameCube, you couldn't really do much at all with your child. He'd just stay basically as a toddler.

But, with A Wonderful Life, you got the ability to begin influencing your child's future among quite a few possibilities. The drawback with A Wonderful Life (and Another Wonderful Life, the version that lets you play as a girl) is how restricting it is. You -must- marry in your first year or your game ends. Also, the original edition of AWL had a very short number of years for you to play, along with the horrible other things taken out of the line (proper festivals, 30 day seasons, some other things).

Magical Melody? Ahh, boy oh boy did Marvelous Interactive [mmv-i.net, Japanese] and Natsume [natsume.com, English, Flash Heavy] make up for A(nother) Wonderful Life! It is very cel-shaded and very toony looking, but having proper village festivals back along with the ability to now raise and train multiple horses for racing has made it more than worth it. Plus, much to my happiness, many characters from past games have been brought back, including Nina, one of my favorite potential wives from essentially the first two-ish console-based versions of Harvest Moon (HM SNES and HM64). Plus, they finally incorporated playing both the boy and girl player characters into the game, so you no longer have to buy a second console game if you want to play the girl's side of the story (which..I will...undoubtedly...try at some point)

Now, here is the list of consoles that Harvest Moon has been on:
SNES, Nintendo 64, PSx/PSOne, PS2 (twice), GameCube (thrice), and soon to be Revolution/Wii, if I remember correctly.

On handheld:
Original GameBoy (twice?), GameBoy Color, GameBoy Advance (twice), Nintendo DS (soon, if not out by time of this post).

So, as you can tell, it has quite a good line of previous versions going for it. I've played the SNES, N64, one of the PS2 versions, and two of the GameCube versions along with Harvest Moon GB2, though I'd have to check my cart collection to confirm that.

And just because I'm strange, here are the names, in order to what I posted for console and handheld:
Console: Harvest Moon (SNES), Harvest Moon 64 (N64), Harvest Moon: Back to Nature (PSx), Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland (PS2), Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life SE (Special Edition) (PS2), Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life (GC), Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life (GC), Harvest Moon: Magical Melody (GC)

Handheld: Harvest Moon GB (GameBoy), Harvest Moon GB2 (GameBoy), Harvest Moon GBC (GameBoy Color), Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town (GameBoy Advance), Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town (GameBoy Advance), Harvest Moon DS (Nintendo DS)(soon!)


Yeah..so I'm a Harvest Moon fanatic. I remember playing the SNES version, I was really emotional after I played the game to the end...it didn't allow continuing past the end of the game and I had probably been obsessed with the game for about a week before completing it. I don't have a destructive obsession like that anymore, but the HM games definately have a special place in my heart. Now ridicule me if you like, but it won't matter because I play what I like. I'm not about to pretend that I only play bloody slaughtering games. There isn't much engaging behind most of those.



...And just as I was doing some research for this post (just before this sentence here), I found out that the next-gen HM game will be Harvest Moon Online...Oh My God, thank you. Goosebumps all the frick over. It'll probably be on PC, with the possibility of Xbox360, PS3 and Nintendo Revolution/Wii. I'm going to go spaz in the corner now..eee, HMO..

Notes: The original house behind Harvest Moon was Victor Interactive, which begot Marvelous Entertainment, which begot Marvelous Interactive.

Hyperactivity Disorder? I think so!

So, I'm sorry to all of those that keep up with my blog for the consistent lack of updates. This'll probably be an inconsistent dealie, but please keep with me..! Anyway, all none of you that read my blog, thanks for your patience.

Recently, several of my CS friends have accused me of having ADD. That's nowhere near right, as I'm sure my years of excellent grades could well attest. However, I am damn near always bored.

Of course, they were saying I had ADD (them having had ADD through elementary school and/or up until junior year of university or just being medicated for that long) because I've gotten this annoying habit of counting my steps between classes and having mentioned it, varying by counting in singles or pairs. God, please don't let me start counting in triplets or quadruplets!

Heck, when listening to my MP3 player, I can still follow along to the lyrics in my head and continue counting as I go along to Kingston Hall for Accounting, the most annoying of the walks (Home of the prestigious [I wonder..] Math Department). Something about the class being at 8AM may have something to do with it, but I'm not entirely sure yet. Anyway, after that absolute waste of time, I walk to Hargreaves and still count most of the way.

Finally, at the end of that 9AM class in Hargreaves, I make my way about 3/4 of the way across campus to the new Computer/Engineering Building, where I count between half and a quarter of the steps there. After that point, I tend not to count so much more during the day except when walking up the hill to my dorm.

Now, of course, if I'm talking to those same friends after our last class of the day (at noon), then I'm not counting as we walk off to lunch. I guess conversation is just engaging enough. Maybe I have the words to my MP3 player songs memorized too much..? Hmm.

Anywho, until earlier today I had to deny that I had any sort of hyperactivity disorder, but I changed my views once I realized what I was doing. Because it has been in the mid 90s the last two days, I'd been using my fan to suck air in from the hallway or blow air out my window with it securely wedged between the sill and the paneframing.

Usually, I just close my drapes to right up around the fan so that not too much effort is wasted in blowing the hot air out by wind blowing it straight back in. But, mid-afternoon, I decided that this solution wasn't nearly good enough. So, what did I come up with? ..Well, I had these two extra Amazon.com [amazon.com] carboard boxes..

Yes. I took apart one of the boxes, sliced it into two longwise halves and shored them until my fan could be held securely in place with the 'board sheets to either side of the thing. This involved a fair bit of slicing work with my Gerber, but all-in-all, it came out well. But what did I do afterwards, you ask? I closed the curtains back around the fan! Yeah. They're pretty heavy-duty though and help to keep out the light that would otherwise be heating my room.

Sigh. This must be why I feel somewhat forlorn during the afternoon here at school. I do next to nothing. Should probably start playing more rousing games of C&C: Generals or Tiberian Sun...or maybe Empire Earth or Total Annihilation.

Or start that term paper. Yeah.

Oh well. I pay attention just fine in all my classes, so I don't need any drugs (and I would outright refuse them too, since I don't have a serious debilitating condition).

Hyperactivity disorder? Yeah, I've got that!
Ooo..Harvest Moon: Magical Melody! [amazon.com]

Gooey Java in the Jar

So, this quarter at my university, I am learning how to make user-interfaces with the Java programming language's AWT (Abstract Windowing Toolkit) and Swing (AWT's excellent successor) libraries. The current formal name for the class is "Windows Programming," which drives my professor nuts.

Now, the name is a throwback to the time when they actually taught user-interface design in MFC for MS Windows. My professor raves about how horrible it was and I'd have to say I agree [based off a few code samples I have seen..ugh].

Anywho: Graphical User Interfaces are the 'Big Thing(TM)' of course. It is quite easy to set up your own interface in Java. Ah, and the joys that can be made from the stuff used. The nickname dubbed by prior students in this class is "Gooey Java," for the "Java GUI" name. GUI, for Graphical User Interface, is usually pronounced just like 'gooey,' so you can see how this works.

Now, the final tidbit: a .jar is the Java language special specification for a Zip archive. The .jar files can also be set up to allow running an entire program from inside of the 'jar.' Nice, huh? Now, our professor has us 'jar up' our 'gooey Java' code for posting to our online database for grading.

Can you say that you have Gooey Java in the Jar? I certainly can.

Day in the Life: 04-20-2006

So, not much to say about this evening besides my luck. See, I live on the fifth floor of my dorm and often leave the window open.

Because of my location, if there is a big engine relatively nearby, I will hear it. Anyway, it happened that last night, a firetruck pulled up just down the stree from my window, and I noticed. Got up and looked outside to see the truck parked on the side of the road, then looked directly down at the street to notice...Hello hello Mr. Police Officer in your car.

At this point, I got out of my lounging clothes and back into that day's clothes (slacks and a t-shirt). Also put my socks on and readied my slip-on shoes at the door. Then I just stood at the window and watched outside as I waited.

Sure enough, 5 minutes later..."An emergency has been declared in the building"
Fire alarm went off. So, off I go, well prepared for the alarm.

Maybe from now on, if I see a firetruck parked out on the street like that, I'll begin running around my floor to warn others of the drill. But..then again. Maybe not.

Duke Nukem Forever, anybody?

So. Get this.

---Slashdot:
Duke Nukem Forever Update [Slashdot]

About time, I say! Hey, (possibly) released sometime this decade? Excellent! Now that they have decided to say that the underlying tech is all stable, maybe we could..like...Get a tech demo?

Awww, who am I kidding. I'd certainly like to play Duke Nukem Forever, although considering I have yet to play the full version of Duke 3D..meh, oh well. I'll go back to playing Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, thank you very much.

---Other link of interest:
List of Fictional Cities, A-M [WikiPedia]

Now this list is seriously cool. It is amazing to see how many fictional cities have been dreamed up for various things. And yes, there is even one or more Final Fantasy cities listed, among others. When you look through just the 'A' portion of the list, you notice that quite a few are based off real places. There is even one in there that is located exactly 14 miles from another author's fictional city.

Awesome creativity, I say.

---Slashdot:
Boot Camp and You: Mac OS Don't Boot No Mores?! [Slashdot]

So...it seems quite a few Apple users are up in arms over a piece of software that Apple told them would be unsupported, and that was beta software.

Forgive me for not feeling sorry for you, Apple-ites. There was a reason that Apple told you to create a Firmware Restoration Disk and to backup all yo' data. It is what you are supposed to do under MS Windows as well (with the exception of the Firmware Restore, of course..).

There have been some jokes going around about how everybody should blame Google, seeing as how most of their current products are still. Well. BETA products. If you actually think you should blame Google for this, go read about software in development> [Wikipedia]. That link points directly to the 'Beta' portion of the article.

Now, it so far seems that this problem isn't a big one, but enough people are clamoring to set off other geek's attentions. And most of us will just laugh, telling them to use this for a reminder as to what 'beta' and 'no support' mean in the future. Apple is releasing Boot Camp because they want to make it easier for their people, not because they have to.

Slashdot:
400 Year Old British Law and You: Signatures? [Slashdot]

You've probably noticed my titles have been following a pattern. It may be clichéd, but I do rather like it.

Anyway: A British court has supposedly ruled that an e-mail signature that says any information is confidential must be followed, by virtue of the 1677 Statute of Frauds. And, because the United States' legal system is based quite extensively around British Common Law, the same may hold in our courts. Who woulda thunk it?

Now, the signatures that are being mentioned are those along the lines of "This e-mail is only intended for the recipient, any copying or dissemination of the information herein is a blah blah blah." Most people's memories are jogged by half of what I have typed, but putting most of it down is still nice to have (for you cut and paste jockeys out there).

I find this ruling rather interesting, as it implies that a disclaimer of that sort means you must be entering into a contract without your consent. Now, that doesn't seem quite right...of course, the actual case is over the fact that, as no signature was included in the e-mail in the case, it can not be definitively pinned down on who would be hoped to be the writer under prosecution. But the Manchester High Court judge made a statement that could apply for other things.

How can one be forced into a contract in such a manner? I don't believe that can hold up. The only way I can see such happening is the event where a relay system was set up. The originating system sends an e-mail saying "Do you agree not to blah blah blah, no dissemination, blah blah blah." You reply back with a 'yes' as the message body with the message title left intact, and then the system can finally forward on the e-mail. Is there such a system in use for that type of thing? This would be consenting to enter a contract, but the fact that you are receiving an e-mail: does that legally make you part a binding contract without consent?

I doubt receiving e-mail counts as your legal assent to the 'contract.' Ah well, IANAL.

See this post for help with the acronyms.


Until next time
~Washii

What do all these acronyms mean?!?1?!

Being from a Computer Science background, I may often go over acronyms unfamiliar to many people. I will try to link back to this post whenever I play with a lot of acronyms in any new posts. I'll begin new entries after an 'Edited' date for each time something is added.

Original Entries, 4:00PM, Wed Apr 12, 2006

• CS - also: CSC - Computer Science; often used as a catch-all for programming in general (note that most people do not consider this to be the case! (including me))
  


• AM - Applied Mathematics; rather than learning new methods, you apply what you've already learned to a problem (such as learning how to use and apply the Euclidean Algorithm [WikiPedia]). I know that this definition isn't correct (by really any stretch of the imagination), but it works, seeing as how I don't want to be too technical.

Edited: 3:00PM, Thur Apr 13, 2006

• IANAL - I Am Not A Lawyer; frequently seen on Slashdot for people giving their opinions (often on things FUBAR), but that aren't law professionals (haven't passed the bar).
  
• WP - Wikipedia; a shortening, probably won't be used often, but will be nice to have, referring to the Wikipedia 'Free Publicly-Editable Encyclopedia' (English version) initiative.
  
• /. - Slashdot; the extreme shortening for the Slashdot name, refers to the Slashdot.org website
  

CS + AM: Eratosthenes' Sieve

As mentioned earlier, I'm in an essentially Applied Math course through my Computer Science department, dealing with the history and applications of various algorithms.

On Tuesday, my class played (some more) with the Sieve of Eratosthenes, which is a quite interesting way to find prime numbers. There are two ways you can create the sieve. The first of which is starting from the number 2 above your second column. The second way, which is what my class was dealing with, is to only write odd numbers, starting at 1 and going to whatever threshold you'd like to stop at.

In class, we received a 15-column wide sieve, containing the odds from 1 to 1019, inclusive (we wanted to count the primes less than 1020). Now, by the definition in mathematics, 1 is not a prime. I won't explain that, since I don't know the details at the moment (I'll probably look at Wikipedia later for such things). Now, starting from the next number, 3, decide if it is a prime. As 3 is a prime, circle it and begin counting every n squares. Every third square will be divisible by this prime n. Cross out every one of these numbers.

So, after you have 3 circled, you should cross out 9, 15 and such before going down to the next row of numbers. But first, if you are using a number of columns divisible by 3, you should look at the squares directly below those which you have already circled and crossed out. If done correctly, every square in a straight line downwards will be divisible by three. You can cross out the rest of the column if this is the case. There will also be cases where you can have diagonal lines crossing squares out (which I believe happens with 7 on a 15-column sieve).

After you finish crossing out all those numbers divisible by 3, move on to the next number, 5. Five is a prime, so circle it and go to the square containing its square (the square containing n squared, or n^2). Cross this position out, then continue to cross out every nth item. Continue on through 7 and then look at 9. Note that we have already crossed it out, so go straight on to 11. This is a prime, so circle it and continue the process started with 3, 5 and 7. Continue this work until you reach a number whose square (^2) is greater than your last odd number. Once you get to that point, all 'composite' (i.e.- not prime) numbers should be crossed out. Now you can go through the Sieve to count up the number of primes in that set of numbers, then add 1.

The one is added because 2 is a prime, though it is not included in the Sieve because it is even. Interesting algorithm, no? If a current programmer, or have previous experience, think of how you could implement this algorithm in your language of choice (hint: try using a zero over each composite, rather than trying to use a blacklist).

Today's Slashdot Dosage

Alright, so I have four links I'd like to wander over, though really only three discussions. Ready for context-heavy chatter? No? Not waaaiiiting!

From the Slashdot bin:
'Government-aided Phishing'
Well, the name isn't quite correct, but it is much harder to term something worse on a Slashdot posting of this type. I absolutely can not believe what these Broward County, FL folks are doing though. Somehow, posting all these 'public' documents with -private- information on them just doesn't strike the auditors as inherently wrong.

On the County website, they are posting birth certificates, SSNs, banking records and a host of other personally-identifiable information (signatures!) which is basically completely accessible. And of course, by some twisted logic, the state of Florida requires this. That is entirely bollocksed. Of course, on January 1, 2007, they're required to redact (think of FBI documents with blackbars over 'sensitive information') the information out, but that hardly helps the people who will be undoubtedly screwed over by their public information being available to any curious felon looking for their next source of credit and cash.

You go Broward County and Florida! As one comment on the Slashdot post says, "Spain, you can take them back now." Please do.

Now, links related to the above Slashdot post:
Police Officers w/ Bones to Pick (Complaint Forms)
Retaliation of the Police Officers!

I'm really sorry about the second link's title, it sounds totally like a 'Revenge of the Nerds' title rip-off (which isn't what I was thinking of at the time, I swear!). Anywho, there are two videos to watch under the first link, the first of which is pretty disturbing.

You see, the first video is about how this operative for a national police complaint group that goes around various stations in Southern Florida, asking for a basic complaint form. Some officers respond nicely, though the majority of those shown aren't all that nice. The first officer to be shown (I believe it is), just after placing his hand on his gun, threatens the guy. It looks like the officer was readying the gun for quick withdrawal, but it can be sort of hard to see in the video.

Of course, this brings up the fact that Complaint Forms inside your local police stations aren't required by law, though a group of Police Chiefs (who you'll hear about several times) do advocate for every station across the country to have the forms available (and many do). The video states that, out of something like 39 stations visited, only 3 had forms available. I specifically like the Miami station that had the forms, they had it in: English, Spanish and Creole(/Kreole). That's what I call being aware of your citizens!

--Now, the second link: An association of police officers in Broward County, the Broward Police Benevolent Association, put up an item on their website (called a BOLO (Be on the Lookout)) against the reporter that broke the case on CBS 4, where the links refer to. Now, that is just unacceptable. A BOLO is meant for the purposes of looking out for alleged criminals, but this was entirely retaliatory. The original posting on the website had information from the reporter's drivers license listed, including his home address! That is just egregious.

Back to the Slashdot Bin:
Apple vs. Bloggers

Ah, lovey-dovey Apple in the news again...but wait, that's not a new size for the iPod nano announced! No, this is about a ZDnet reporter/blogger being sued for posting information he received from various sources back in 2004 about a possible product that Apple was developing, for which he wasn't told whether to be secretive about. Ah, but the catcher? It was a FireWire box for some GarageBand line. Can anybody say "Waaaaah!"? I think it should be said to Apple.

A paraphrased comment on the article from Slashdot, "The nice company isn't so nice now that it has lots of cash to burn from its iPod successes." I won't deny that Apple machines are nice, but they definately aren't my style. I'd much rather build my own machines and Apple just does not provide me with that choice (besides the fact that I'm an AMD64 fanboy). Of course, Apple machines are pricey as well, though I have been taken by their slick, pure white charms...at times...*slaps self*

What it comes down to is: The nice company can instantly become an evil company with a sudden influx of cash. With that said, lots of people have been pointing at Google in the same sort of way, what with the controversy in China. But, considering they resisted a subpoena from the US gov't to turn over lots and lots of search records, I'd rather give Google the benefit of the doubt. Afterall, they want to try and expand in China, and who knows how they'll make the PRC a better place; even with filtered searches.

General (CS) Information

So, nobody would probably really notice, but I dabble in a lot of things.

In Washington State's Running Start program, I took basically all the straight programming classes available at my community college (CC) along with earning my AAS (Associate of the Arts and Sciences) degree. I graduated with my AAS and high school diploma (the walk was actually the same night for both, heh) and transferred the AAS as a DTD (Direct Transfer Degree) to Eastern Washington University. With the AAS, I was automatically positioned as a Junior in class standing by time for registration of Winter '05-'06 classes.

But enough of that. On to my thoughts and such; I'm a programmer, interested in quite a lot really. Back at my CC, I got two quarters of C++ (CSC-201 & -202), two quarters of Java (-203 & -211), two quarters of VB.NET (-212 & -213). The final VB.NET class was intended as a group-based Applications Development class, so I've dabbled around with some interface and server design, which I greatly enjoyed.

At this moment, my computer science classes consist of GUI Programming (w/ Java Swing) and Discrete Structures (an applied math/CS class; experimental). You'll all have to hang on, at times this blog may get jargon-heavy. I've got my MSN posted in my profile however, so people might ask me stuff on there (I balk at posting my AIM because it is cluttered enough as it is).

I'm getting busy with stuff that doesn't matter again..bleh, I'll hold off on my discussions until the next post (in probably about 15 minutes, heh)

Inaugurative Post (or something)

So, I finally bowed to pressure; I'm a weakling.

Well, not really. I just decided that I really wanted something to have somewhere, share my (insignificant) thoughts, vent on the usual issues and play some more with my geek side.

I intend to post something most every other day while school is still in session, probably mostly my comments on SlashDot or TechDirt posts, though. Google Personalized Home (opens in new window or tab) has been a boon for that.
--I'll post about school life (as little of a life as I have) from time to time as well. I'm going to play with the Blogger settings a bit more before posting any sort of bio.