Like most of the other people I know who used C (for the uninitiated, C is a programming language), they probably started programming using the Turbo C IDE from Borland. And why not, It was fast, full featured and easy to use. The interface was quite boxy but then, so was every other MS-DOS program there was at that time.
My first encounter was during high school. Surprisingly, I still used it during college as well which was nearly a full decade after the first release of Turbo C/C++.
These days, the languages in the limelight are a dime a dozen, the major ones being Java or .NET ones. I'm thinking Borland has something up their sleeves again this time because in just a few more hours (as of writing) they will be releasing all new version of their Turbo products. Most notably, Turbo C#. Borland will have the customary Professional editions (a.k.a comes with a pricetag) as well as the free Explorer editions.
Will this be another runaway hit for new and old C# users? Will I, ten years later, be able to see budding young programmers compile their first C# program (Hello World hahaha) on Turbo C# ver.xxx. Only time will tell.
For now, you can go to the Turbo Explorer homepage and see the countdown of the release.
Have a nice day! : )
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Monday, August 28, 2006
Who you gonna call?
The Ghostbusters of course.
And I wish I could right now.
I just had the most creepy afternoon ever.
We've all heard about ghost stories and paranormal experiences and usually, we take it with a grain of salt.
However,I for one can now attest to the fact that "You ain't seen nothing yet" until you have seen it for yourself.
My story starts at about 1:20 pm of today (08-28-2006). I was in room with my mother and father watching tv. We have this old-fashioned cuckoo clock ( a souvenir from Switzerland) that needs it's chains to be pulled every few hours or so to keep on running. Kind of like old wristwatches and clocks that need to be winded every so often. This clock is more or less positioned near the top right corner of a door to the toilet. I'm seated and facing the opposite of where the toilet door and the clock is.
All of a sudden, I hear the sound of the clock chains being pulled. Now, this was not a very common occurrence since we all usually forget to pull the chains on the clock so I looked to see who did it. To my surprise, there was no one there. Then, at about the same time, the door to toilet slams close, as if somebody was there and did not want me to see who it was. This creeped me out since both my parents were asleep and there could not have been anybody else who would pull the chain or slam the door but it did not register in my mind yet as a paranormal occurrence. I just sort of explained it as an overactive imagination on my part.
The next occurrence happened about an hour or so later. I was in a stock room on the second floor of our house and sorting stuff when I felt a cold chill. I looked around and I saw a black wispy thing floating just above my face. It kind of looked like a dirty cobweb but then cobwebs are usually stuck on a wall, not floating in mid-air and it seemed to be following me, albeit very, very slowly. As quietly as I could, I slowly walked out making sure the black wisp was not behind me until I reached the end of the stock room and ran down to the first floor.
On the first floor, I thought about it for a few minutes and gathered my courage to go back and take a picture of the black wisp with my camera-phone. TO my dismay the black wisp was gone when I entered the stock room. I kept on looking for it, at least until I heard the crashing sound. It seems a blank picture frame fell on the floor. However, I remembered that this particular frame was not hanging on a wall but lay on top of a flat table. Suffice it to say, that I ran back down, once again, as I had to proper explanation of how a frame lying flat in the center of a table could have fallen down due to physical causes.
I tried to forget that scary experience all throughout the afternoon until early evening when I had to pass the door to the stock room again on the way up to our house on the the fourth floor. Thankfully, nothing supernatural happened this time but the eerie chill was still there.
Hopefully in the morning when I wake up, all things should be beck to normal. This has been the first time I ever encountered what I think is a ghostly, paranormal occurrence. In fact, this is the reason I am chronicling it now. I'm hoping that this would be the first and last time I would have to live through something like that. My sleep tonight would most likely be troubled due to this : P *sigh* (as if I don't have enough trouble getting to sleep as it is)
Night all : )
And I wish I could right now.
I just had the most creepy afternoon ever.
We've all heard about ghost stories and paranormal experiences and usually, we take it with a grain of salt.
However,I for one can now attest to the fact that "You ain't seen nothing yet" until you have seen it for yourself.
My story starts at about 1:20 pm of today (08-28-2006). I was in room with my mother and father watching tv. We have this old-fashioned cuckoo clock ( a souvenir from Switzerland) that needs it's chains to be pulled every few hours or so to keep on running. Kind of like old wristwatches and clocks that need to be winded every so often. This clock is more or less positioned near the top right corner of a door to the toilet. I'm seated and facing the opposite of where the toilet door and the clock is.
All of a sudden, I hear the sound of the clock chains being pulled. Now, this was not a very common occurrence since we all usually forget to pull the chains on the clock so I looked to see who did it. To my surprise, there was no one there. Then, at about the same time, the door to toilet slams close, as if somebody was there and did not want me to see who it was. This creeped me out since both my parents were asleep and there could not have been anybody else who would pull the chain or slam the door but it did not register in my mind yet as a paranormal occurrence. I just sort of explained it as an overactive imagination on my part.
The next occurrence happened about an hour or so later. I was in a stock room on the second floor of our house and sorting stuff when I felt a cold chill. I looked around and I saw a black wispy thing floating just above my face. It kind of looked like a dirty cobweb but then cobwebs are usually stuck on a wall, not floating in mid-air and it seemed to be following me, albeit very, very slowly. As quietly as I could, I slowly walked out making sure the black wisp was not behind me until I reached the end of the stock room and ran down to the first floor.
On the first floor, I thought about it for a few minutes and gathered my courage to go back and take a picture of the black wisp with my camera-phone. TO my dismay the black wisp was gone when I entered the stock room. I kept on looking for it, at least until I heard the crashing sound. It seems a blank picture frame fell on the floor. However, I remembered that this particular frame was not hanging on a wall but lay on top of a flat table. Suffice it to say, that I ran back down, once again, as I had to proper explanation of how a frame lying flat in the center of a table could have fallen down due to physical causes.
I tried to forget that scary experience all throughout the afternoon until early evening when I had to pass the door to the stock room again on the way up to our house on the the fourth floor. Thankfully, nothing supernatural happened this time but the eerie chill was still there.
Hopefully in the morning when I wake up, all things should be beck to normal. This has been the first time I ever encountered what I think is a ghostly, paranormal occurrence. In fact, this is the reason I am chronicling it now. I'm hoping that this would be the first and last time I would have to live through something like that. My sleep tonight would most likely be troubled due to this : P *sigh* (as if I don't have enough trouble getting to sleep as it is)
Night all : )
Friday, August 25, 2006
Mother-!@#$%^& snakes on the mother&^%$#@! plane
I guess everyone has heard of by now Samuel L. Jackson's informative exclamation on his new movie, the aptly titled "Snakes on a plane".
But have you ever wondered... what if... Samuel L. Jackson starred on completely different movie or show for that matter and used the same line?
A quick search on IMDB proves fruitful for similar sounding titles:
1. Snakes on a train (2006) (what the? is there no end to these creative sounding titles?)
2. The man in the iron mask (1998)
3. Babe: Pig in the city (1998)
4. Lady in the water (2006)
5. The cat in the hat (2003)
What about tv shows? Just imagine Mr. Jackson adapting that line for "Sex in the city" or that old tv show "Little house on the prairie"
It probably won't elicit that same hype and effect as it did for SoaP as it's fans sometimes calls it. But, you never know LoL
Have a nice day : )
But have you ever wondered... what if... Samuel L. Jackson starred on completely different movie or show for that matter and used the same line?
A quick search on IMDB proves fruitful for similar sounding titles:
1. Snakes on a train (2006) (what the? is there no end to these creative sounding titles?)
2. The man in the iron mask (1998)
3. Babe: Pig in the city (1998)
4. Lady in the water (2006)
5. The cat in the hat (2003)
What about tv shows? Just imagine Mr. Jackson adapting that line for "Sex in the city" or that old tv show "Little house on the prairie"
It probably won't elicit that same hype and effect as it did for SoaP as it's fans sometimes calls it. But, you never know LoL
Have a nice day : )
Monday, June 19, 2006
All is Lost
Due to some unforeseen situation, my old template got deleted.
I dunno what happened :(
i guess I have to start making backups somehow.
Anyway this is as far as I have managed to remember from my old one.
I dunno what happened :(
i guess I have to start making backups somehow.
Anyway this is as far as I have managed to remember from my old one.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Star Wars Ep. IV in ASCII-mation
For the die-hard Star Wars fan
The first Movie, Episode IV (A New Hope) in uncensored ASCII.
You're gonna need telnet for this.
Instructions for Windows Machines
1. run command prompt (or in XP, type cmd in the Run dialog)
2. start telnet (type telnet under command prompt)
3. type o towel.blinkenlights.nl
4. prepare to be ASCII-fied
I suppose any other telnet client should work as well. Just connect to the same server.
Have a Nice Day!
The first Movie, Episode IV (A New Hope) in uncensored ASCII.
You're gonna need telnet for this.
Instructions for Windows Machines
1. run command prompt (or in XP, type cmd in the Run dialog)
2. start telnet (type telnet under command prompt)
3. type o towel.blinkenlights.nl
4. prepare to be ASCII-fied
I suppose any other telnet client should work as well. Just connect to the same server.
Have a Nice Day!
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Combatron
(It's Nostalgia time...)
Whilst trying to sleep (unsuccessfully) last night due to my sister's incessant and equally idiotic ramblings. I all of a sudden happened to think about megaman/rockman which in turn made me think about a local comic series I read a long, long time ago in a galaxy far away...
"COMBATRON"
The main hero there is somewhat based on the classic blue megaman hence the connection between my musings. I distinctinctly remember the start of it happening ala Green Lantern. We have an injured and near-death alien robotic life form who crashed in Earth who in turn is being chased by his evil alien robotic arch-nemesis named Alkhenato or something like that. An innocent Earthling finds this alien and before dying, the alien bestows upon the unsuspecting kid his uber-combat suit and names him the new "Combatron", defender of the known universe. Just in time because an evil henchman lands and begins wrecking havoc.
Oh, did I mention that along with the combat suit comes a robotic man's best friend named "Rush", oops... I meant "Askal". This Askal can also turn into a jet board, submarine, drill tank the same as Rush of Megaman fame.
In due course, the combat suit gets upgraded a few times. Surprises abound with cool new weapons being discovered here and there. Combatron also happens to revive some old friends of the original Combatron in the course of the story. One is the Yo-yo wielding warrior, Axel. Another is the the robotic she-warrior, Metallica. I also distinctly remember them having a sort of headquarters ala Metroplex of Transformers fame that can be also used as a spaceship.
Unfortunately, I can't seem to remember anything more about their arch-enemies aside from that Alkh...whatever has a purple combat suit with matching Darth Vader-esque helmet.
I distinctly remember enjoying this series. I even actually collected the comic covers and the comic pages themselves but I can't seem to remember where I stored them. I think I might have thrown them away some time ago. I also remember being disappointed when the series ended abruptly. Ah well... all good things come to end.
(End of Nostalgia time...)
Whilst trying to sleep (unsuccessfully) last night due to my sister's incessant and equally idiotic ramblings. I all of a sudden happened to think about megaman/rockman which in turn made me think about a local comic series I read a long, long time ago in a galaxy far away...
"COMBATRON"
The main hero there is somewhat based on the classic blue megaman hence the connection between my musings. I distinctinctly remember the start of it happening ala Green Lantern. We have an injured and near-death alien robotic life form who crashed in Earth who in turn is being chased by his evil alien robotic arch-nemesis named Alkhenato or something like that. An innocent Earthling finds this alien and before dying, the alien bestows upon the unsuspecting kid his uber-combat suit and names him the new "Combatron", defender of the known universe. Just in time because an evil henchman lands and begins wrecking havoc.
Oh, did I mention that along with the combat suit comes a robotic man's best friend named "Rush", oops... I meant "Askal". This Askal can also turn into a jet board, submarine, drill tank the same as Rush of Megaman fame.
In due course, the combat suit gets upgraded a few times. Surprises abound with cool new weapons being discovered here and there. Combatron also happens to revive some old friends of the original Combatron in the course of the story. One is the Yo-yo wielding warrior, Axel. Another is the the robotic she-warrior, Metallica. I also distinctly remember them having a sort of headquarters ala Metroplex of Transformers fame that can be also used as a spaceship.
Unfortunately, I can't seem to remember anything more about their arch-enemies aside from that Alkh...whatever has a purple combat suit with matching Darth Vader-esque helmet.
I distinctly remember enjoying this series. I even actually collected the comic covers and the comic pages themselves but I can't seem to remember where I stored them. I think I might have thrown them away some time ago. I also remember being disappointed when the series ended abruptly. Ah well... all good things come to end.
(End of Nostalgia time...)
Thursday, March 09, 2006
The State of the Nation from a jeepney
Last night, I happened to come across a very interesting jeepney (also called PUJ) while on my way home.
Typical of other Filipino jeepneys, this one is as flashy as can be. There is the customary blinking lights. A 20 watt flourescent lamp keeps everything as bright as day inside. The usual boom box blasting incoherent tunes. The difference would be a fully functioning portable dvd player inside.
It was a quite weird yet humbling experience considering the car I was in only had a casette/radio player. No CD playing knicknacks. No MP3, DVD, VCD or any other D's there are. Not to mention that the system itself has seen better days with some of the buttons not working anymore. To illustrate the situation better, I am usually stuck at the AM band because of a certain unworking button and I can only tune the radio backwards, again because of a certain uncooperable button.
If we are basing the current State of the Philippine nation based on this certain jeepney, all I can say is that we are not in a bad state at all, but my living experience here tells me the truth better :P
Typical of other Filipino jeepneys, this one is as flashy as can be. There is the customary blinking lights. A 20 watt flourescent lamp keeps everything as bright as day inside. The usual boom box blasting incoherent tunes. The difference would be a fully functioning portable dvd player inside.
It was a quite weird yet humbling experience considering the car I was in only had a casette/radio player. No CD playing knicknacks. No MP3, DVD, VCD or any other D's there are. Not to mention that the system itself has seen better days with some of the buttons not working anymore. To illustrate the situation better, I am usually stuck at the AM band because of a certain unworking button and I can only tune the radio backwards, again because of a certain uncooperable button.
If we are basing the current State of the Philippine nation based on this certain jeepney, all I can say is that we are not in a bad state at all, but my living experience here tells me the truth better :P
Monday, February 27, 2006
Of Eye Infections and Knee Surgeries
For those in the Philippines only...
Have you noticed that whenever the current government tries to arrest some (so-called) opposition member or whomever, that that person suddenly develops some kind of "Eye Infection" or for some strange reason suddenly need some "Knee Surgery" such that they need to be confined in a hospital here or suddenly need to go to HongKong or USA for treatment.
Case in point, please see the recent medical histories of Imelda Marcos or Joseph Estrada, or some of those military commanders involved in the recent EDSA anniversary rebellions.
Why Eye Infection and/or Knee Surgery? Who knows? What weird country I live live in :P
Have you noticed that whenever the current government tries to arrest some (so-called) opposition member or whomever, that that person suddenly develops some kind of "Eye Infection" or for some strange reason suddenly need some "Knee Surgery" such that they need to be confined in a hospital here or suddenly need to go to HongKong or USA for treatment.
Case in point, please see the recent medical histories of Imelda Marcos or Joseph Estrada, or some of those military commanders involved in the recent EDSA anniversary rebellions.
Why Eye Infection and/or Knee Surgery? Who knows? What weird country I live live in :P
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Its the End of the Philippines
Its two days after the 2006 anniversary of EDSA revolution and not only is the situation worse but there is faction against faction against another faction.
Innumerable numbers of coup attempts, vigils, rallies, protests and what-not pop-up from equally innumerable places. While the loyal troops and city-gendarmes run around trying to catch long-dead ghosts and spirits, the President on the other hand is just sitting safely ensconced in her heavily secured Palace. What's more annoying is that there is no central opposition with each faction fighting supposedly for the Filipino people while veiling their true intent of self-satisfaction.
What a nice country I am living at right now. No wonder we don't progress as much as our neighbor countries. I am hoping that things will get better when I wake up but we all know that it's just wishful thinking.
Good Night for now Philippines. Have a Nice Day :P
Innumerable numbers of coup attempts, vigils, rallies, protests and what-not pop-up from equally innumerable places. While the loyal troops and city-gendarmes run around trying to catch long-dead ghosts and spirits, the President on the other hand is just sitting safely ensconced in her heavily secured Palace. What's more annoying is that there is no central opposition with each faction fighting supposedly for the Filipino people while veiling their true intent of self-satisfaction.
What a nice country I am living at right now. No wonder we don't progress as much as our neighbor countries. I am hoping that things will get better when I wake up but we all know that it's just wishful thinking.
Good Night for now Philippines. Have a Nice Day :P
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
To be or not to be ... Dead?
I recently found out about an online game called Urban Dead. It's a fairly simple web based mmorpg game. No fancy graphics, just cgi. From the website itself
Now, I'm a valiant zombie crusader hell-bent on hunting the choicest brain... Well, not really, in actuality, I'm still a level 0 n00b zombie named wirubi hehe. But still, in time, I will become the best zombie evar. Scourge of the Living. Plague of the Puny. So if ever any of you happened to stop by the quarantined city of Malton, be sure to look me up and maybe we can share a brain or two. Mrh?
"Urban Dead is a low-tech massively-multiplayer zombie apocalypse game where survivors and zombies battle for the control of a quarantined city.
If you're a new player and would like to help the evacuation effort, join in the looting or swell the ranks of the zombies"
Now, I'm a valiant zombie crusader hell-bent on hunting the choicest brain... Well, not really, in actuality, I'm still a level 0 n00b zombie named wirubi hehe. But still, in time, I will become the best zombie evar. Scourge of the Living. Plague of the Puny. So if ever any of you happened to stop by the quarantined city of Malton, be sure to look me up and maybe we can share a brain or two. Mrh?
Friday, January 27, 2006
BitTorrent 3 years later
Can you still remember a time when BitTorrent was just a simple download dialog with a few extra information about download/upload and seeds/peers and nothing else? When Azureus and the like were just mere imagination?
I remember my first meeting with BitTorrent. I was just an innocent guy looking for some new chapters of Naruto manga in ToriyamaWorld.com (back then, Naruto was practically unknown yet and its Anime counterpart is still non-existent). Behold, one day they started trial for a new distrubution method called BitTorrent made by a guy called Bram Cohen. They said it would help relieve some of the traffic from their file servers. Being the nice guy I was, I downloaded the client and tried it out. Performance was terrible at first, since only a few people tried it out. Back then, the concept of a bigger swarm giving out better download speeds was totally lost on most of the people. The forums abounded with complaints on the speed. They wanted their direct-download http links back.
Fast-forward a year or so. More people have embraced the practically new technology. New clients with additional functionality have surfaced. Now you can queue multiple torrents. You can limit your download/upload speeds. Blah Blah Blah. About this time, I have switched as well to a visual client called Personal Torrent Collector (PTC). It wasn't the most full-featured client then and it still isn't. What I liked about it was its simplicity. It is now sadly a dead project.
I have since used a lot of different clients.
1) Azureus which is probably the most famous one. I never really liked it. Too many features maybe. And it seemed like a resource hog.
2) BitComet - Currently in controversy. It first catched my attention when I saw that it was written in C++. At the time, most clients were either in Java or Python. True-to-form, it had a faster performance because of its C++ internals. Currently taboo with some private trackers due to some DHT issues. DHT was a new feature added in vesion 4 of the BitTorrent protocol which enabled trackerless torrents and peer-searching.
3) ABC - one of the more popular clients around. I liked it when I found out it didn't pre-allocate files on the hard-disk. So even if you are downloading a 1 gigabyte file, only what you have downloaded is used in the hard disk.
4) μTorrent - my latest find and latest love. It's a full featured client with a clean and easy-to-use and simple interface. Its written in C++ as well so it's responds quicker compared to Java or Python clients. And all of that for a mere 130Kb executable. Yep, you saw correctly thats in Kilobytes. You don't even have to install anything. My current memory usage for it is a mere 2320K. Compare that to some of the resource hogging clients out there.
BitTorrent is here to stay even with all the complaints from RIAA and MPAA. It is merely a tool used for distribution of files. The author didn't set out to create a tool for pirating licensed files but for efficient distribution. What it's users do with it can't be the fault of the author.
I remember my first meeting with BitTorrent. I was just an innocent guy looking for some new chapters of Naruto manga in ToriyamaWorld.com (back then, Naruto was practically unknown yet and its Anime counterpart is still non-existent). Behold, one day they started trial for a new distrubution method called BitTorrent made by a guy called Bram Cohen. They said it would help relieve some of the traffic from their file servers. Being the nice guy I was, I downloaded the client and tried it out. Performance was terrible at first, since only a few people tried it out. Back then, the concept of a bigger swarm giving out better download speeds was totally lost on most of the people. The forums abounded with complaints on the speed. They wanted their direct-download http links back.
Fast-forward a year or so. More people have embraced the practically new technology. New clients with additional functionality have surfaced. Now you can queue multiple torrents. You can limit your download/upload speeds. Blah Blah Blah. About this time, I have switched as well to a visual client called Personal Torrent Collector (PTC). It wasn't the most full-featured client then and it still isn't. What I liked about it was its simplicity. It is now sadly a dead project.
I have since used a lot of different clients.
1) Azureus which is probably the most famous one. I never really liked it. Too many features maybe. And it seemed like a resource hog.
2) BitComet - Currently in controversy. It first catched my attention when I saw that it was written in C++. At the time, most clients were either in Java or Python. True-to-form, it had a faster performance because of its C++ internals. Currently taboo with some private trackers due to some DHT issues. DHT was a new feature added in vesion 4 of the BitTorrent protocol which enabled trackerless torrents and peer-searching.
3) ABC - one of the more popular clients around. I liked it when I found out it didn't pre-allocate files on the hard-disk. So even if you are downloading a 1 gigabyte file, only what you have downloaded is used in the hard disk.
4) μTorrent - my latest find and latest love. It's a full featured client with a clean and easy-to-use and simple interface. Its written in C++ as well so it's responds quicker compared to Java or Python clients. And all of that for a mere 130Kb executable. Yep, you saw correctly thats in Kilobytes. You don't even have to install anything. My current memory usage for it is a mere 2320K. Compare that to some of the resource hogging clients out there.
BitTorrent is here to stay even with all the complaints from RIAA and MPAA. It is merely a tool used for distribution of files. The author didn't set out to create a tool for pirating licensed files but for efficient distribution. What it's users do with it can't be the fault of the author.
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