Kevin Becker dot net

I’ve been meaning to do something like this… someone beat me to it. A robot that plays guitar hero.

This week on eBay are three excellent items at super low starting prices. This week includes: Powerman 5000 - Backstage and Beyond the Infinite DVD, Tony Hawk’s Underground (PS2) and Team America: World Police Unrated and Uncensored DVD (Widescreen).

This week on eBay, two excellent PS3 games, Spider-Man 3 and Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom, plus an OXM demo disc that is special because it has 3 Rock Band downloadable songs, normally $3 on Xbox Live.

The latest eBay sales are up, Genji: Days of the Blade for PS3 and X-Men Legends for PS2. X-Men Legends is predecessor to the style of the recent Marvel: Ultimate Alliance game. I haven’t played Genji because it was one of the games that came with the PS3 I got used recently, meaning that the game is in close to perfect condition since it was hardly played by the previous owner.

This week on eBay are two great RPGs for PS3, Enchanted Arms and Oblivion. Both are excellent values for the length of gameplay they provide.

This week on eBay are two classic PS2 games, Okami and SSX 3. Okami is new and sealed (I decided to wait for the Wii version soon after receiving the PS2 version as a gift last year) and SSX 3 is used but in good condition. Both are excellent games, some of the best the PS2’s library has to offer. As always check the eBay page to see what else I’m selling.

I just wanted to let everyone I know that I’m not dead. I’ve just been busy with life. Things are going great in my life so I’m going to try and get back into writing on the website again. One thing that will keep me coming back here often is that I just started to sell on eBay. I currently have one item up, Virtua Fighter 5 for PS3. Consider buying if you’re interested. I will be selling various movies, games and books over the next month so check back for what I’m currently selling. I created an eBay page to track the current sales. Also, I have linked my eBay account with my facebook account so you can check my profile to see what I’m selling as well. That’s all for now. Hopefully I’ll write more soon!

Ars Technica reports that Microsoft will be bringing a functional programming lanaguage to Visual Studio, called F#. The language is a functional langugage that is based on OCaml and will of course link in with .Net.

I find this very interesting. Learning different programming paradigms (like procedural, object-oriented, functional, structured, logic and so on) is a good thing for programmers to do. I see this as a good thing that Microsoft is encouraging functional programming. My favorite lesser-known programming language is Scheme, another functional programming language.

One of the problems with less popular programming lanaguages (the popular ones are usually only procedural, structural or object-oriented languages) is that there are few libraries to support them so its hard to actually do something useful. Microsoft linking F# to .Net will be benefitial to the Windows world by bringing the power of .Net (and Mono, in a way) to functional programming. I have a feeling that Microsoft Live Labs has something to do with this and did it so they can do cool projects that take advantage of functional programming paradigms.

This news just shows yet again how unpredictable Microsoft is because of its size. Some parts of it are making blunder after blunder while others keep doing tons of amazing things like this.

Blogged with Flock

As many of you know, Ubuntu 7.10 was released last week. I wrote up a little guide for Jonathan on some things I recommend setting up post-install and he thought I should post it here. If you’re unfamiliar with Ubuntu, read this review of the operating system. So here’s the guide, modified slightly:

Ubuntu 7.10 Post-Install Guide v1.1

Do This First — Enable All Software Repositories:
1. Open up Synaptic Package Manager (System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager).
2. Go to Settings->Repositories.
3. Check all boxes under “Downloadable from the Internet” in the “Ubuntu Software” tab and under “Ubuntu Updates” in the “Updates” tabs, then press Close.

4. Press Reload button to reload the repository cache.

Recommended Software Packages to Install, In No Particular Order:
ubuntu-restricted-extras — A collection of common “non-free” software, like flash, mp3, dvd playback, java, rar, microsoft fonts and lots of codecs.
gnome-themes-extra — More themes for gnome
nvidia-glx-new — The latest, greatest nvidia driver for the 8000 series of cards. Ubuntu may prompt you to add this during the install, which takes care of this for you.
amarok — An excellent music-library-based music player similar to iTunes (except that it doesn’t suck like iTunes).
audacious — A simple winamp-style music player.
jokosher — An excellent audio editor.
ardour-i686 — An excellent audio editor, optimized for i686.
armagetronad — Tron light cycles in 3D!
vlc — A simple and effective video player just like the windows version.
mplayer-nogui — A GUI-less video player. uses the keyboard for controls. very 1337.
warsow — You already know what this is!
kate — The text editor of choice (though GNOME’s text editor “gedit” is of comparable quality these days)
k3b — A CD/DVD burner similar to Nero that’s better than the one installed by default.
emacs — Just kidding! I’d never recommend that!
katapult — A keystroke application launcher, similar to Launchy on Windows or Quicksilver on OS X. Add it to the startup items by going to “System->Preferences->Startup Items” and adding the command “katapult” after installing it.
deluge — Excellent bittorrent client, comparable to uTorrent on windows

Notes:
1. I’ve never used jokosher or ardour, but they’re supposed to be the best out there for creating/mixing audio on Linux. Ardour is the more powerful and complex of the two. Give them a try for making your music. Check out http://ardour.org and http://jokosher.org for help using them.
2. If these packages prompt you that dependencies need to be installed, just ok it.

Compiz Fusion in 5 Easy Steps:
1. First you need the nvidia driver installed, as recommended above. So install nvidia-glx-new and reboot. As mentioned above, Ubuntu may prompt you to add this during the install, which takes care of this step for you.
2. Some of compiz will already be installed, so just install compizconfig-settings-manager and emerald from Synaptic Package Manager (System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager)
3. Go to the Appearance Settings (System->Preferences->Appearance) and go to the Desktop Effects tab to enable compiz.
4. Run the Compizconfig Settings Manager to configure compiz.
5. Enjoy!

Common Things to Explore and Tweak:

Desktop Theme Options — found in System->Preferences->Appearance
Display Options — found in “System->Administration->Screens and Graphics” (only needed if it didn’t autodetect the right resolution/refresh rate)
Firefox extension browser and install wizard — in Firefox, go to Tools->Add-Ons, go to the Extensions tab and click on the “Install Ubuntu Add-ons” link on the bottom right.

Install some programs — either via the “Applications->Add/Remove Programs” fancy user-friendly interface or the “System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager” powerful list interface.
Changing default program for a file type — right click on file, go to Properties, go to the “Open With” tab in the window that pops up and select the program.

Installing a printer — Just plug it in! That’s all!

More Information:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org — Excellent user forums
http://www.ubuntuguide.org — A huge how-to for everything.
http://screencasts.ubuntu.com — Screencasts that give how-to’s for various linux tasks.

This just made my day, week, month, maybe even year. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones are reuniting. I’d heard rumblings of this around the net for the last year but figured it was too good to be true. Fortunately, their new website tells all. They’re kicking it off with a five day tour at the end of the year in Boston. I’d love to go, but the tickets sold out in minutes and are now going for $300-1000 and above each. I see they are going to be scheduling another one on New Years Eve and apparently haven’t started selling tickets yet. If I somehow manage to check the ticketmaster website at the right time, I’m gonna get two tickets and figure out how to get there afterwards. I already plan on taking off from work between Christmas and New Year, so there’s no problem there. Even if I don’t go to the concert, the Bosstones are back. That’s enough by itself. Too bad I don’t think I currently own any plaid.

Edit: On second thought, I do own some plaid pajama pants.