Just a simple collection of what I read on net for this special day.

• Google Australia - gBall
• IGN: Grand Theft Auto: Harbour City Leaked
• iTWire - Linux beware: Microsoft acquires Novell, become UNIX copyright owner
• Smashing Magazine - Breaking: Internet Explorer 8.1 Eagle Eyes Leaked
  
• The Pirate Bay via TorrentFreak - Warner Bros. Acquires The Pirate Bay
  

Not long ago, I read this entry on FriendFeed. Which is about this equation:

The discussions in that entry got my interest. Someone tries to find the limit of MAYBE when YES1 and NO0. That makes sense, you want YES, a good sign; you don't want NO, that hurts. So we need to find (mathematics is guite far away from me!):

For the second term, it's obviously 0, but for the first term, the limit is failed to exist because it's not continuous at YES=1 and NO=0.


From two equations above, the first one is like saying You got infinite possiblities! but the later is like saying You're doomed! Sorry!

I'd like to extend further, says Stay postitive, just a little, that's all you need!

Even you got nothing the zero, the only thing you need to have is the positive thought. No more, no less. Lean on positive side for just a little bit, that could be a way to be saved from difficult situations.

I just saw this Bullshit Generator Python script in usenet. This is perfectly making sense to create a such generator, maybe some people did use this way to write. Who knows?

Here is three sample paragraphs:

The bug-free operation is registered in an architecture. A client-side function is received by a toolkit. An aggregator identifier from an asynchronous entity integrates with the owner algorithm. The private customization from the aware object is generated by the end-point. Before all, an Internet is operational. The module triggers the approach entity. If needed, a service-oriented communication supersedes the object. The performant acknowledgment retrieves the respective event.

A native data scenario from an orchestration inherits from the asynchronous directory where a genericity subscribes to an AJAX value. A backbone overwrites an orchestration extracted from an application. The Web 2.0 is controlled by an ontology that aggregates the usage derivation rule. A major Internet is installed on a business-driven object. The OO approach registers a RSS feed. The available event is unaffected. The Web 2.0 cookie is installed on an approach. The source is controlled by the IP address that triggers the controller Internet.

The auto-regulated registry is populated by an availability. A next-generation granularity is collected by the operational object. Nevertheless, the logic leader is monitored by the Java work accessed by the official toolkit. A compatible server is responsible for the algorithm. The entity on top of a Web page globally relies on a service provider that is OO when an operational aggregator built from the schema is prime. The secondary end-point on top of the orchestration is authorized by the practice. An object look-and-feel is controlled by a thread. An open actor covers the Java-based encapsulation.

I have no idea what above they are about. :-)

About half a year ago, someone told me about MGS (Metal Gear Solid) and suggested me playing it, and I did it. In last few days, I watched complete game play for the series games after MGS1. I was quite enjoying them, though that did take lots of time.

I was never be a game-fan or anyone else, so I was lucky to watch it. While watching or playing, there are many things that you couldn't completely understand at first moment. You have to clean up your mind and re-run the whole story in your brain again, then you got the chance to figure out.

There are lots of cutscenes and that's all the points. They are really the things what caught my eyes, however, the gameplay is awesome, too, especially in MGS4, simply incredible.

MGS4 is possible the best one over all aspects, but I personally like the story in MGS3. Actually MGS4 contains all parts.

The only part that I don't like is sci-fiction, I'd like the story is more reality to close to our live, but that may be boring. The MGS is just too psychic. I saw many elements from different sources, they blended in well. There is another thing that MGS has done too much, it splashes too over on pseudo-camera. You know the blood, water drops, mud, etc. I guess it tries very hard to make us feel that it's a movie.

I don't want to write about the story, because you have to go through by yourself. Here is the playlist that I watched on YouTube:


MGS proves that game is the new movie, and could be even better one. For MGS, it is. There is another game, Resident Evil, you may also want to check it out.

movie-game?

By request of westius, BRPS now is able to append a small piece that may help your track if your visitor click on posts of related posts list.

The new option is append_src:

<script type="text/javascript">
window.brps_options = {
  "append_src": true
  }
</script>

The the links in related posts list will look like

http://example.blogspot.com/2009/03/post-title.html?src=brps

I haven't been tagged before and still not. I just want to start one tagging game. So if you are not visiting via search engine, you must be that lucky person, or not so lucky. :)

First, my lists:

1. Firefox Do I need to explain about this?
   
2. Amarok I used to use Rhythmbox, but I found Amarok is better for me. It's the only KDE/Qt program that I constantly use.
   
3. GnuCash Keep my poor money flow clearly. SHOW ME THE MONEY!
   
4. gmplayer You always need a media player. Totem is not so good for me, it's just too GTK'ish.
   
5. Gimp A place let my inner child out.
   

1. GNU/Screen The first command that I type into terminal. Tabbing FTW!
2. Vim My favorite editor. Sometimes, I still open gedit, but I try to save by typing :wq, and that also happened in Firefox before I using Vimperator extension.
3. Yum It's yum and gets my system up-to-date!
4. rTorrent My torrents downloader, I don't like GUI programs for downloading torrents, they are just resources waster, sorry!
5. g Technically, it's not a program, it's just a Bash script. It helps me switch directory quickly, and I am shameless to put it in list, because it's written by me.

Now about the tagging game:


If you are tagged, I'm sorry for that. I meant wow! great! You need to

• List 5 GUI programs that you can't live without.
• List 5 Command-line programs that you can't live without.
• Report the damage your blog posting to your tagger.
  
• Tag some victims, I meant some people who use Linux.
• Maintain a list of whom you tag.

If you just happened to read this posting and want to try, go ahead. Don't forget to leave a link to your post.

• ardsrk
  
• I am tagging and waiting from them.
  

Months ago, I watched a live of I Don't Know [MV] by Lisa Hannigan [@LisaHBand, YouTube, Wikipedia]:


Then I watch Lille MV (I like those huge books):


There is another video:


You can download the MP3 of Lille on SXSW '09 website.

These two songs are my favorites from the album Sea Sew. They seem to have connection to happiness and to sadness, respectively, but it's not so strong. They are soft, light, and easy. This will sound strange, but I seemed to gain peace from these songs.

I picked few songs from Sea Sew:


By the way, you might also want to check out songs with Damien Rice.

Who would ever think an insurance investigator becomes a thief? But think longer, that makes sense. He knows the tricks well and he can also use them well.

The main character, Nathan Ford, lost his job, family, everything after his son died because his employer rejected paying the medical expense. How ironic, isn't?



In the first episode, a team is assembled for stealing back a plane design and the amazing show starts. Team leader, Nathan, knows everything they need. Sophie is good at people, Alec knows technology, Eliot can kick anyone's ass quickly, Parker can get into any space.

Then, they start to provide Leverage [IMDb, Wikipedia]. They don't steal for money, but for helping people solve their situation. Each member has own slightly problems revealed throughout the first season.

This show is different then current TV shows, though is similar to Mission Impossible or The-A-Team if you change all settings but leave the backbone. They all try to help people with help from specialized team members.

It's definitely worth watching.

Knowing [IMDb, Wikipedia] is rated 7.3 on IMDb, that is too high seriously. Screenplay isn't amazing me anyway, it's average. So is acting. But, the visual effects are really great.



Spoiler Warning

Poor Manhattan, is flooded many times The Day After Tomorrow, Deep Impact (and frozen), or attacked by alien Independence Day. This time, it gets burnt heavily.

The film is really nothing special to talk about. Somehow it reminds me of Mercury Rising. The little boy is gifted to solve puzzle or to decrypt easily. In Knowing, they are gifted to understand alien's communication.

In the end, everyone on Earth is died. Only some children are saved by aliens, but how the hell to live without adults? It's not like Garden of Eden or fairytale.

Unless you like effects, don't waste your time.

I happened to read a tweet about this song. It was live performed (has a 320k bps MP3 download) at SXSW 2009. Fallout is performed by Alyssa Suede [YouTube]. I can't find a video for the live at SXSW, but there is another one live performance:


I like her voice very much. Very clear and attractive. Here is the audio, if you don't want to download that MP3:


Hope you would enjoy as I do.

Milkberryland is a blog about Japanese art, food/cooking, music, crafts and probably anything about Japan, which is written in English by @milkberry. You can see many cute drawing on this blog. Pink FTW!

The Line [IMDb, Wikipedia] is a TV show mainly around cops (and nudity scenes and lots of f**k-word). I have never been a fan of cop things, and not for this one, either. But it does bring me up some interests.

After I watched the first episode, the 60-min runtime has given many. Cheating, drug deal, violence, alcoholic addiction, family problems, stress. The story is quite tight, one right after another, but not tense as if you might think. At least, it's not a mass shooting cop show.

Each role has strong personality, good's or bad's. None of them is perfect. They all get something missing or get something wrong with themselves. The amount of characters in this show is quite many, I haven't seen that many in a show and just in first episode.

The second episode is more intense and emotional, especially the stress on Carlos. Everyone has on own problem or some has same problem. Situation gets out of control, not going as their expectation.

This show is good but maybe a little bit of dark humanity. It also tried to put in some humor in episode 2, however, I don't think that's necessary.

You can watch it online on Movie Central (Channels Series J-R)

Preview:

When I first saw the title, Dollhouse [IMDb, Wikipedia], I wouldn't bother to check it out. Because I think it's some kind of scary TV show, myth, mysterious, thriller, or sort of. Maybe it's like Supernatural [IMDb], I was a fan of Supernatural for its first two seasons, but I lost my interest of it. But I heard that someone said it's a good TV show, so I checked it out.

Well, Dollhouse is scary, too, but in different way. Dollhouse is full of people who have only fundamental abilities/memories to live. They all look like idiots in my opinion. They don't have temper, probably no emotions, too. Oh, they don't sex for sure [episode 6], or say they don't have knowledge about it.

Each person is called Active, each mission is called Engagement. Yeah, you must use jargon. They are all volunteering to be in such state for 5 years contract. When preparing for engagement, they will be implant a special imprint for engagement, after engagement, the imprint will be wiped out and back to idiot.

When I say scary, I mean the actors and actresses act so immorally, especially Topher. He doesn't seem to be person at all. All actives are just his toys, programmable toys. Actives has guards, which is called Handler. Echo, the main character, has Handler, too, whose name is Boyd. He seems to have slightly more moral sense, but I still can't see it.

The other thing is scary is about the spirit of this show. This show's story is based on human's fantasy. We all have strange fantasies, some are too shame to be divulged. In episode six, it mentioned that it's not all about our fantasies, it has other purposes. That scares. Imagine that if you implant a imprint like a person/slave who only follows order and totally has no doubt to the order. You can build an army. You only need to kidnap one person, and give the order that lets the first one do the rest.

The FBI agent, Paul, and escaped active, Alpha, seem to be on the side of justice and morality, though Alpha killed a lot actives. So far, Paul is still just a chess piece in whole game of Dollhouse and Alpha.

Dollhouse is extraordinary show, a special story. It's not bad, just inhuman.

How are you feeling? Did I fall asleep? For a little while. Shall I go now? If you like.

I read a forum post (it has a .mov download) today, which is about a company called Digital Domain. They specialize in visual effects. I found the same video on YouTube:


Amazing, isn't?

For a long time, I always feel the official SEARCH BLOG button (at the top-left) is kind of confusion. Is that for searching a blog? or for searching a blog posting? or for searching a blog posting in this blog?

Though Blogger.com is one of the biggest blogging platform providers (Is it the biggest?), but that doesn't mean everyone understand each little part of Blogger. Some Blogger bloggers just add their own search box, which is obviously clearly. But why do we reinvent the wheel when there already is one search box?

I decided to make a simple background image to indicate where the search box is. The result looks like:

This background image used Inkscape to render the text, and GIMP to draw the arrow and to mix.

If you want to have same thing on your Blogger blog, you can go to your blog's Dashboard Layout Edit HTML, find body { in CSS section. Just right after that should be background:$bgcolor;, however, this may differ in different blog templates. Make it look like

  background:$bgcolor url(http://sites.google.com/site/livibetter/blog-files/searchthisblogbg-arrow-on-left.png?attredirects=0) top left no-repeat;

Save your template, this should be working now.

If your blog already has background image, then you will need to edit it on your own. This may look terrible in IE6, I only tried this on FF3.

Updated on 2009-10-24: Modified image to match new Blogger navigation bar's layout.

I have switched to Enlightment 0.16 for weeks, it has been my primary desktop environment. Earlier, I tried to use Compiz with Fusion Icon, but didn't get it worked. Therefore, I switched back to GNOME, same result.

After upgrading to 0.8.3 from 0.7.8 using Fusion repo (greatly thank leigh123@linux), I haven't run Compiz once. It didn't work anymore, I searched for answers on forum and I got the resolution in this page.

The error message I got is as follows when I tried to switch to Compiz window manager:

* Setting window manager to Compiz
 ... executing: compiz --replace --sm-disable --ignore-desktop-hints ccp --indirect-rendering
compiz (core) - Fatal: Root visual is not a double buffered GL visual
compiz (core) - Error: Failed to manage screen: 0
compiz (core) - Fatal: No manageable screens found on display :0.0

What I saw is windows without window decoration.

My xorg.conf has

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
    Driver      "fglrx"
    BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
    Option      "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
    Option      "VideoOverlay" "on"
EndSection

The OpenGLOverlay has already turned off but I don't have the following settings

Section "Files"
    ModulePath "/usr/lib64/xorg/modules/extensions/fglrx"
    ModulePath "/usr/lib64/xorg/modules"
EndSection

Once I added and restart X, Compiz is back on trail.

The label in Blogger is like the tag in WordPress. But it's not necessary to be that though. You can use label as anyway that you want to. However, since BRPS is fully based on label query. You must follow some rules in order to get the most related posts.

The following is the guidelines:

• Label you post with Category + Tag If you have a computer topic blog and you have a post about photo editing using GIMP on Windows. You may label with Windows, which is using in Category way. But it's not good enough. You may label with Windows, Howto. It's still not enough, try Windows, Howto, Photo editing. You can try more Windows, Howto, Photo editing, GIMP. Why not one more? Windows, Howto, Photo editing, GIMP, Filter. Now I believe that you got the idea, you can go on your own.
• As of writing, Blogger supports up to 20 labels to one blog posting. It won't cost you if you label with 20 labels, so why not just label as many as possible and get the most related posts. BRPS queries all 20 labels for you, don't waste the ability of BRPS!
  
• When you label a post, Photo editing give you more precise results than Photo, editing. Because the later may also match File, editing.
  

From today, this blog also serves as the blog of BRPS (Blogger Related Posts Service). Because I think there is no need to create a new blog for BRPS and this blog name brps has been occupied at blogspot.com I hate those name wasters and they don't leave a contact information.

The blog of BRPS is actually posts with label BRPS. So it's a sub-blog of The B Thing. In this sub-blog, I will try to write about how to use BRPS and giving you some tips. I also plan to introduce some nice active blogs to you.

A quick report about current status of BRPS. The daily requests reach nearly 20K and almost 100 active blogs.

Don't forget to checkout the wiki page and discussion group.

Thanks for using BRPS!

See by yourself!


They look like aliens from movies. Maybe some cats are not really cats? Beware of your cats! ;-)



This cat is absolutely adorable! I know human has possiblity to have six fingers, and I did see that and touched the sixth finger before. He or she too long ago to remember was my classmate at elementary school, we even knew the sixth finger thing before textbook tells whole class.

I wonder if cat has supernumerary toes and human is different than cat, what else animal can have supernumerary toes or fingers?

I happened to know this helpful program called PV (Pipe Viewer). Which can indicate the data in the piping. Most of Unix programs support piping, but may not all be giving you the progress of current process. When you send a huge file to a program, you might be wondering how long will it be taking to finish. Many programs do give you such information but there are some don't.

So, here comes the PV. I made a simple and short video using the following commands in it:

head -c 50m /dev/urandom | pv -s 50m > test.bin
pv test.bin | sha1sum
pv test.bin | openssl aes-256-cbc -out out.aes
( pv -n test.bin | openssl aes-256-cbc -pass pass:fj32fsk -out out.aes ) 2>&1 | dialog --gauge 'Progess' 7 60

The first one is to generate a 50MB test file. Second one to generate the SHA1 hash of the test file. Third one is to use OpenSSL to encrypt the test file. And the last one is doing the same thing as previous but using dialog utility to give a better UI.

Here is the video (Download OGG):


You can check out the online manual, PV is available on Fedora and Debian already.

When you are using big program like Firefox yes, it's big, some of memory usages may go into swap. However, if your harddisk's performance is like mine, it's totally in pain. One word only can describe slow.

There is a way to move the content in swap back to main memory, run the following as root:

swapoff -a
swapon -a

Doesn't look genius to me, but I don't know if there is any way else. If it is, please leave a comment.

You may also want to change the system setting, so reduce the chance of moving back. On my Fedora 10, the default vm.swappiness is 60. You can change it on-the-fly as root:

sysctl vm.swappiness=10

And edit the /etc/sysctl.conf as root:

vm.swappiness = 10

If you don't want to use swap anymore, after you swapoff, then to remove the swap partition by removing from /etc/fstab and fdisk'd.

I watched it when it just aired, but soon I got lost of interest of it. Because that's another sad story that I couldn't take. Weeks ago, I noticed that season four is the last season, so I tried to watch it again. In about 12 hours remaining, the last episode will probably show us the fate of human race and partial Cylons.

So far, I still don't have whole picture of the entire story of BSG. Even though I don't want to the miss the ending, but I am afraid that is not a concrete ending.

When Admiral Adama decided to abandan Galatica, I thought I would be seeing they fly the Basestar, but I think I won't be seeing that happening since only last episode left. However, I heard that there will be a movie of BSG (The Plan) in this summer, but this might be the story after TV series' end.

The following is the final five theme song:

If you happen in depression mood, you might be better not to see Watchmen. It's not the images are dark but the screenplay, the whole story really make me sad. I am kind of repenting of seeing it at this moment, it's not a bad movie, but too dark for me.

The nuclear age and situation between USA and Soviet Union is the main timeline. You know either side hits the red button, the entire world goes down or to hell. At the end, someone else did hit, but motion behinds that is really freaking me out. I totally can't agree that, though Dr. Manhattan agrees and result seems to peace. It's overwhelmingly sad, I was speechless at that moment. What if that really happened to us? to this real world?

Roschach is my favorite character in this movie. Chasing the truth so hard, but his ending is tragic. I still can't accept that. Dr. Manhattan is like an emotionless person or robot? He seems to be perfect with logic and beauty of mathematics, but if it involves human, that would be a disaster, sort of.

It's a good movie but a rated R⁺⁺ one not really have such rating. But it might not be a good time to watch it when you already feel gloom.

pastebinit, a small Python script helper to paste text/code to pastebin.com, which is really handy. You don't need to open editor/select all/paste. You only need to run this script with filename or type in and hit CTRL+D.



Since it's written in Python, I guess it should be having no problems with all systems that Python lives on.

I Thank is my lastest creation. It's created for everyone to thank. A place to let you show your gratitudes about someone or something.


Life is chaos, you never know when is the right time. The fact is that any time is perfect time to do it if you do want. You can wait for the timing, but time will not wait for you!

I created it and started to thank, just in case, I run out of my time.

Don't wait, just do it!

Last of February, I started a new project I Thank. It's built on Google App Engine. I put a lot of things on it, which I haven't done before. Such as

• Google Account authentication,
• sharding counters for calculating all entities,
• Django's i18n, custom template tag and feed generator,
  
• pagination,
• unittest using GAEUnit,
  
• and other small bits.

You can access the code (BSD'ed) at Google Code hosting. Believe it or not, this is my most prettiest project in terms of style. It's nearly Pink! There are also many things that I didn't take care of, e.g. I think it looks ugly in IE and maybe others non-Firefox web browsers.

It's still under development stage, hope I can get some feedback from you, and you can go checking it out and thank someone!

I have to say that I was misled by the paid-feature of WordPress.com. I wasn't aware that is needed to buy credits.

At first, I created a new blog on Blogger, but I didn't like it because I couldn't get perfect URL of that blog. Many people registered blog and awfully only posted one time. On WordPress.com, I still can get a nice URL. I decided to use WordPress.com at the moment, because I saw there is a Edit CSS.

When the time to configure the blog, I then realized that is a paid-feature. It's like most of commericials, you hardly notice the important messages.

However, I have started on it, I wouldn't like to move back to Blogger. I will live without custom CSS.