Anxiously Awaiting

First, I won a 30GB iPod in iMovie fest. Now, the ante has been upped.

I am now the proud owner of a G&L Legacy HB Custom. This guitar retails for over $2000. How did I get it? Atlanta Discount Music puts on a anniversary shindig every year, and they always give away quite a load of gear. This year, prizes included a set of Lindy Frailin pickups, a Radial Tone Bone, an Epiphone signed by Nickleback, and lots of other awesome stuff. Two friends and I rocked the free wings and the Matchless amps until the give aways with high hopes. Not only did I get the grand prize, but I came away with the motherload of free swag from Project 96.1 (the best hard rock local radio station here in Atlanta) and ADM. I would like to personally thank ADM for being the coolest music store in Atlanta. They have definately won my loyalty, and got some cash off me for a case for this beautiful new lady.

Some photos taken with my other recent freebie, a new brand Sidekick 3 (click on them for full size):

I’m currently slammed with finals week stuff–my last finals week ever I must add–so I haven’t had a chance to write anything substantial as of late. I had a drive go out recently =(. Luckily–and luck seems to be the theme of the week, I had just reinstalled SuSE 10.2 and set up a RAID 1 mirror for all my data. W00t!

As a result of todays hardware mishaps, I just wrote a little script that copies some stuff from my home directory to a default directory or the directory of my choice. As a result, I figure it should be a great chance to educate some newbie Linux users in the ways of bash shell scripting. Consider:

#!/bin/sh
 
default_dir="/storage/array0/backups"
timestamp=`date +%m-%d-%Y_%H%M`
 
if(test -z "$1") then
    path=$default_dir
else
    # 2>dev/null; black magic supresses output from cd
    if cd $1 2>/dev/null; then
        path=$1
    else
        echo "Bad Directory"
        exit
    fi
fi
 
cd ~
tar cf dev.tar dev
bzip2 dev.tar
mv dev.tar.bz2 ${path}/${timestamp}_dev.tar.bz2
echo "Created backup: ${path}/${timestamp}_dev.tar.bz2"
 
cp "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" .
tar cf config.tar .Xresources .bashrc .emacs xorg.conf
bzip2 config.tar
mv config.tar.bz2 ${path}/${timestamp}_config.tar.bz2
rm xorg.conf
echo "Created backup: ${path}/${timestamp}_config.tar.bz2"

This script is very basic. It simply compresses and copies a single directory called dev and some customized config files from my home directory to another directory of my choice; or a default one given no arguments. It illustrates that you can use any command in a script that you can use in everyday terminal use. The first line of any interest is this one:

timestamp=`date +%m-%d-%Y_%H%M`

Notice the backwards ticks–the little guy on your tilde key; no no, upper left hand side of the keyboard. You need those around any command you wish to evaluate and stick inside a variable or echo. All we do here is call the date command with some format strings. This will result in a timestamp that goes little like: mm-dd-yyyy_hm. Primitive, yet satisfying. The next part is a little more confusing:

if(test -z "$1") then
    path=$default_dir
else
    # 2>dev/null; black magic supresses output from cd
    if cd $1 2>/dev/null; then
        path=$1
    else
        echo "Bad Directory"
        exit
    fi
fi

I’m going to assume that you are at least familiar with basic control structure like if…then…else. If you aren’t, then take a gander over here for a good basic tutorial. Anywho, the usage for our script allows us to pass in a directory that the backups will be copied to if we want too. Our first conditional if(test -z "$1") then will check to see if our script has a parameter passed into it. If not, then we simply assign the path variable to be our default path. If we do have a directory passed in, we need to make sure that it exists before copying anything there. Our nested conditional will handle that problem by trying to cd into the directory. If it fails, we print “Bad Directory” to the console and exit.

The rest of the script is pretty bland. It just tars and bzips a directory and some customized config files, moves them to our target directory, and renames them appending the timestamp we collected earlier to the front. It’s not a robust script, and not a substitute for real backups. Nevertheless, it is fun, educational, and quite useful. Feel free to modify it to your liking.

For the second time this month I must extend my condolences. This time, it’s to all the families of the students at Virginia Tech. Today, according to news sources, a Chinese national in his mid 20’s in this country on a visa opened fire in a residence hall and the engineering building on VA Tech’s campus.

Campus safety is not predictable. I have never witnessed a crime on Georgia Tech campus, but I have heard of some. Just like learning the streets to avoid in a new city, it’s something you learn. But, an event of this caliber implies that something more than a campus police force needs to be considered.

I don’t think that gun laws would solve this problem–which is inevitably going to be the big debate after all the smoke clears and the families have had their chance to mourn. Something like this, however, sparks my interest in getting a concealed weapon permit. As illustrated in this situation, law enforcement can’t be everywhere all the time, and regardless if blame can be placed on them or not, one brave student, professor, or TA with brains and a concealed weapon could have possibly stopped this whole situation from escalating further. The question currently is: what would the reaction be to someone breaking campus law by bringing a concealed weapon on campus and actually being able to stop this massacre? I submit that the story would get minimal coverage, and that brave student would have been crucified.

I like video games. Ever since I nagged my Dad to death for that $80 Chrono Trigger cart I was destined to be a gamer. Video games are glorified in our society, and somewhat in the Computer Science field. Everywhere I turned in my undergraduate classes there was always that kid who wanted to be a game developer. That courageous geek may or may not have any idea of sweatshop like mentality of large game houses, but that ultimately didn’t matter. The allure of designing the next big blockbuster MMO, RPG, or FPS has so much gravity that it often clouds one’s ability to make rational judgements.

Over the years the gaming industry has become a core part of American culture. Whether your a Warcrack addict, a wannabe rockstar, or you love fragging your friends in Quake, gaming culture leaves no mind uncaptivated. Advances in technology have honed our ability to generate realistic 3D models and enhance our gaming experience. The advent of the internet, and then the application of social networking to games has created a subculture that is permanant and possibly more interconnected than “IRL” social networks.

Inside the game culture there appears to be an interesting rift. When among avid gamers, you may even find yourself asked the question: “Which are you?” Your friend is of course referring to the current division of gaming into console gamers and PC gamers. I would like to explore the charateristics of each type of gaming, and possibly come up with an answer to the controversial question: “Which is better?”

So, let us begin by outlining the three characteristics common to both worlds.

1. Hardware: Every game has to run on a platform. Here I will be exploring concepts like ease of development, capabilities, cost to power ratios, and other interesting metrics.

2. Experience: Quite possibly the most important part of a game is the experience. Here I will talk about the advantages and disadvantages of mice versus controllers, interaction techniques, and limitations set on each system.

3. Social Factors: The social implications of both systems are significant. There have been several research studies on the effects of social networks in gaming. I’ll explore the pros and cons of both systems given these parameters.

Those three should be enough for us to crown our winner of the gaming arena. Stay tuned!

Last Wednesday I flew out to San Francisco California for a job interview. We lifted off from Hartsfield-Jackson a bit later than scheduled, and the plane arrived at San Francisco International at around 9:00pm Pacific time. Since I was used to Georgia time and slightly nocturnal–less than I used to be–I was able to get to the rental car center and drive to my hotel relatively easily.

The green arrow is my hotel =)

I wish I had a camera when I was flying over San Francisco. This was only the second time that I had ever flown (I was a bit nervous on takeoff) and it was a wonderful experience. The city looks really amazing at night from 30,000 feet.

I spent most of the day on Thursday interviewing, and most of the night running or driving around California. Around 7:00pm I decided to go running, and trekked over to Stanford University for a looksee. After my run I drove back into San Francisco and switched into tourist mode. I cruised around the city for a while, and drove over the Golden Gate bridge. It was around 11:00pm when I had finished my rounds of this vast new city, so I drove back to my hotel for a good nights sleep before my flight.

I woke up the next morning at 8:00am (12:00pm Eastern time) and gathered my stuff together. I drove back to the airport, and while I was on the terminal train I received a phone call from the company that I was interviewing with. They gave me an offer!

California was a wonderful experience (again), and I think that everyone should go there at least once in their lifetime. I know I will be going back as much as I can =). The weather was a perfect 72 degrees with a slight breeze–despite being slightly overcast . No complaints here.