just a thought…

The only excuse I have for not blogging as much as I should is plurk. Plurk is a micro-blogging site, and I usually update it several times a day with my current doings, feelings, desirings, musings, rantings and other assorted “ings”. I encourage everyone who reads this to join if you haven’t already, and add me as a friend or fan.

Also, I believe that I am in my last semester at JCC, and this makes me extremely happy. Now, to figure out what I’m going to do next…

In case you haven’t heard, Wesley Snipes was sentenced to three years in prison today for not paying his taxes. On one hand, I want to say, “finally, a celebrity has been punished like any other normal U.S. citizen would have been.” But on the other hand, I am wondering why we allow other actors and actresses to get away with things that I see as much more detrimental to society–like drunk driving. The only reason I can think of, is that in this case, our government was owed money. Our government is a business, and as I see things, they are much more interested in making money than taking care of citizens. This is my opinion, and I do not present it as fact.

I could be very wrong, but I would assume that the number of people that drive drunk every year greatly outweighs the number of people that avoid paying their taxes every year. Because of his fame, the prosecutors wanted to make an example out of Mr. Snipes and I don’t know about you, but I think they have made their point. I personally would much rather be caught driving drunk several times, on a suspended license, and only serve twenty-two days in jail, than avoid paying my taxes and end up in the slammer for three years. Of course, I’m not planning on doing either, but I would rather see celebrities receive ‘the maximum term requested by prosecutors’ for something that has the potential to destroy human life, rather than denying our country more war-monies.

A quick note: I condone neither drunk driving, tax evasion, war nor Paris Hilton.

Version 0.1 of Recapture and WordPress 2.5 do not mix. I apologize for taking so long to announce this, and for being so slow to produce a remedy for this problem. For now, please use the development version of Recapture which seems to be working fine with WordPress 2.5.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/recapture/download/

After this semester ends (in three weeks) I will be able to devote more time to making a newer version. In the meantime, test out the development version and let me know if you discover any bugs. If there are any developers out there that would like to help out with making Recapture look prettier and / or function better, please let me know.

Also, parts of the current development version are courtesy of Josh Moles. Thanks Josh!

It has been a while.

On several occasions I have become inspired to blog about something, only to lose all inspiration once I sit down to do so. I have approximately six weeks of school left, inside of which I need to complete two programming projects and one eight-page term paper. This is in addition to working forty hours a week, keeping up with the regular scholastic demands of a twelve credit work-load, and fixing broken computers on the side for people that I care about (in order to spare them a financial raping at the hands of the geek squad).

I’m also doing Script Frenzy next month. Yes, I’m going to write a zombie movie. Expect frequent updates during this time, regarding my progress and unraveling mental state.

Welcome Jared to subparcitizens.net! He hasn’t had much to say yet, but I’m sure he’ll soon be enlightening all of us on the ways of the world. He’s also doing Script Frenzy next month, and yes, he’s also writing a zombie movie.

Also, Recapture has been downloaded 264 times as of now, and has blocked 112 (presumably) spammers from registering at my blog. Or maybe only one spammer, who has tried to register 112 times unsuccessfully. Now if I only had the time to get a new version around for WordPress 2.5 >_<

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome

“People with DSPS tend to be extreme night owls. They feel most alert and say they function best and are most creative in the evening and at night.”

I’ve been this way since I was a little kid and I always assumed I was just a freak.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/tgs12.html

All I want for Valentine’s Day is a new Teen Girl Squad.

I ate entirely too much candy today.

That is all.

Thanks to the lovely web-comic Questionable Content, and its creator Jeph Jacques, I am now addicted to the band This Will Destroy You. There is a good chance that you will not like them, because there is a good chance that you think instrumental music is somewhat unnatural and therefore not worthy of your time. Just to let you know, you are quite wrong. If you feel like checking them out though, I would highly recommend listening to “The World Is Our __” and “Threads”. I like them so much that I actually ordered their newest CD shortly after listening to them; it arrived today, along with an effort by a band called “Crimson Spectre” thrown in as I can only assume a bonus of some kind. If anyone would like this CD by Crimson Spectre, you are entitled to it, for I am not a fan.

I need to blog more. By ‘more’ I mean at least once every couple of days. School is keeping me busier than I would like to be, and what little free time I have is spent reading and playing the occasional video game. The thing that drives me crazy about my classes, is the fact that I’m going to learn very little in them. At least for my programming classes, I’ve already taught myself more than what I’m expected to learn. For instance, my php instructor asked me why I didn’t test out.

The other thing that bugs me, is the number of people at my school that equate computers with money–this is far from the truth. Unless you become a super-genius in your area of study, or invent something so radical and useful, that everyone wants to use it. The people that sign up for computer classes at my college are mostly unemployed, middle-aged folk, that are looking to get in on what they perceive to be the greatest scam ever. In one of my classes, a student said these words, “if statements confuse me.” Now, you may not know what an “if” statement is, and I won’t hold it against you if you do not, because there is a good chance that you’re not a programmer, but if you are in a computer programming degree, and expect to use this degree to make your way in this world as a computer programmer, you should have mastered “if” statements by the end of the first week of your intro-level programming class. I consider myself a mediocre programmer; I would not feel comfortable being hired into a programming position higher than intern or junior, and the sad fact is that I know I am a better programmer than the majority of the people that will graduate with a degree in computer programming from my college.

At the time of this writing, Recapture has been downloaded 130 times. I have yet to receive any hate mail, and registration spam has virtual stopped on my blog (though an occasional one slips through the cracks). I would like to hear how it’s working for other people, if any of them would be kind enough to send me a note.

Can be the devil, depending on how your theme is configured and how good you are at CSS. Tonight, I struggled for longer than my geek-pride will let me admit, to get Jen’s blog to display centered images. Basically, if you have a section in your stylesheet that goes something like this:

.entry img {
border: 1px solid #888;
float: left;
margin: 5px 10px 5px 0;
}

Comment out the “float: left” like this:

.entry img {
border: 1px solid #888;
/*float: left;*/
margin: 5px 10px 5px 0;
}

Then you will be able to center images in the visual editor by clicking on an image and then the ‘align center’ button. Now, I will be the first to admit that there might be a better way of going about this, but what you see above worked for me, and will hopefully continue to work and not break something else. If anyone has a better solution / workaround, please let me know.

The above code is to make an image centered in the post, with text above and below the image. If you’re trying to center an image and wrap text around it, I cannot help you and I have not tested the above to see if that will work (wrapping text all the way around an image, is just silly in my opinion).

Degrees Fahrenheit is the current temperature outside as I switch on the second computer in my room. I close my air vents, because with them open, my room becomes unbearably warm and my computer which is always running, does a good job at keeping things at a livable temperature. Who knows, the electricity spent by using computers as a heat source might actually be cheaper than gas these days.

“So this is the new year, and I don’t feel any different.”

Does anyone have crazy resolutions for this year, beside the cliched “lose a billion pounds” or “take up yoga”? I’ve resolved to make an effort to practice my guitar more, write another novel this year (this might wait ’till NaNoWriMo), write another screenplay either independently or with a partner, read more, and blog more.

I should probably add ‘clean my room’, ‘play more video games’, ‘win the lottery’, ‘drink more water’, ‘take more pictures’, ‘become a better programmer’ and ‘go to bed earlier’ to the above list.

I wrote this post with Windows Live Writer, and so far, I’m liking it quite a bit. For novel writing, I would recommend checking out yWriter4, and for screenplays, celtx. The next novel that I write, will probably be written using yWriter, unless I come across a better alternative that is also free.

Yeah, it’s really cold outside right now. We got an insane amount of snow last Saturday and it looks as though we’re going to be getting more this weekend. I drove to work in an icy tomb this morning; this could have been prevented if I woke up in enough time to let my car idle for a few minutes, but I’m lazy and tired upon awakening. I’m also too lazy to get all bundled up to simply start a car, which means that my desire and motivation to exit the house at 7:50 AM when it’s 15 degrees Fahrenheit outside is next to nill.

In other news, Zelda – Phantom Hourglass is easily one of the best games for the DS. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is a reason to own a DS in the first place. I picked it up last weekend (along with a crimson and black DS Lite) and have been playing it whenever possible. Now if I could only find a Wii…

Also I ‘finished’ my first plugin for WordPress. I call it ‘Recapture’ for it shall save the bloggers from user registration spam, or something like that. That last sentence was not intended to make sense. I’ve had it running on this site for about a week now, and it has blocked six bad registration attempts. Some experts might tell you that the code is not that pretty (that’s why it’s beta!), but at least until WordPress comes with its own integrated solution (or bundled plugin) this will have to do. If anyone should stumble upon this and has any commentary on the plugin itself, please contact me. For my next feat, I may have to see about getting this to work on WordPress MU (which I have never used).