April 05, 2003

Kurt

Wow 9 years since Kurt Cobain died and 3 days before we all found out about it. I can't believe its been that long, but it also feels like forever ago. I had no idea what lied ahead of me I was 17 in april '94 and finishing my senior year of high school, on the day in particular his body was found I was heading back from visiting a potential college when I heard the news on the radio. It hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks.

Now 9 years later I'm 26 going on 27 about a year younger than Kurt when he died, which is just impossibly unreal to imagine. Age is really bugging me out these days. When I think about it that is. When I was writing this entry I almost freaked out for a minute because I thought maybe I'm 27 going on 28 before I realized I was thinking 10 years when its only 9. I don't keep track of my age so much anymore, it's weird that I almost have to think about how old I am if somebody asks me. Its as if as soon as I remember I try to forget again.

Back to Kurt, for some reason I can't explain, you'll just have to take my word for it, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana were special to me, they mattered a lot more than any other band of my time and I really do feel losing him was a devastating event to a shit-load of people who are and were just like me.

Kurt inspired me, his style of composing song and lyric were very powerful. I am or was a songwriter, I played guitar and sang with a band for the better part of my late teens / early twenties that sounded nothing like nirvana, more like blur and superchunk rolled up into a pretty indie package but the subtle influence was always there. I certainly always felt it. These days I don't pick up my guitars so much, I probably touch one for about a minute every 3 or 4 months. I still love them, but I've lost my passion for writing and playing music. I think I channel all that into code now, which is fine I guess.

After realizing what today was from flipping through the TV, MTV is doing a some weekend long tribute or something. I decided to dig out my fender blues deville amp (god I love that amp, tubes rock) and my gibson les paul custom (god I love that guitar, it just has a presence unmatched) and play around for a bit for all those who can't play anymore and then write this entry.

Rest In Peace Kurt, I feel like I knew you and in a few minuscule ways I probably do.

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 06:16 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

April 01, 2003

Make your own classic

Ok so some of my fondest childhood memories are of playing kings quest 2 and 3, the black cauldron, etc...back in the day.

Somehow I stumbled across these game builders and wow are they cool. You can make new games or even modify old ones!

SCI Studio
Game Maker
Adventure Game Studio

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 12:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 31, 2003

If my life was a game of Jeopardy!

The first round opening board would be:

Transformers, GI Joe and He-Man Trivia of the 80's

Quotes from the movie "Dream a little Dream"

Comic Books of the early 90's

Star Trek Movies and TV Shows of the 80's and 90's

Name that Java Package

Poirot (David Suchet) Episodes or Why Captain Hastings is so cool.

Sierra Games of the 80's

here's some more because its just too much fun:

Ignatius Reilly Quotables or why my valve has closed.

Shark Week or What is the greatest annual week of TV ever devised

The Sopranos, News Radio and Northern Exposure oh my

The Black Adder or What is the inherent value of a turnip

Everquest Game Mechanics and Strategies from Ex-Junkies

Name that cool new open source project

Name that Slash Solo (Guns n' Roses)

Nintendo Console Systems

Indie Rock bands of the mid to late 90's

Afterstep/WindowMaker tricks and themes

This Old SGI Box

This Old Sun Box

FoodTV Programs and Hosts

Blur Songs from the mid to late 90's

24 or why Kim Bauer is a Retard

Windows XP tricks and themes

Confessions of Book Buying Addict or Why exactly did I buy this book on how to survive in any environment, Government issue circa 1965 reprint?

What would be yours? Blog it up and send me a Trackback or just reply!

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 10:00 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (2)

March 28, 2003

serious flashbacks

Check it out old school sierra mmorpg! Its pretty funny, now they just have to add NPC's (non player characters).

I played most of these games back in the 80's as a kid, I still play them once in a while.

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 10:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 27, 2003

A Time-Traveller !

What a cool story ! I wonder if his "time-craft" is a Delorean.

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 01:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 24, 2003

haha this made me laugh

"You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, The Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the US of arrogance, and Germany doesn't want to go to war." - Chris Rock

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 08:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 23, 2003

Listen.

To this excerpt of a conversation between an Iraqi-American immigrant with an obviously clueless anti-war drone...

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 11:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 22, 2003

more c++

ok continuing down the path of some weird syntax, this is just plain disturbing.

void(int*&);

A reference to a pointer,hrm. My mind is reeeeling with the awkward kludginess of this!

Why do we need to pass a reference to a pointer? if a pointer accesses the same object as a reference to that object would I'm not sure I see the need for this.

int i1;
int* i2=&i1;
int& i3=i1;

i1=11; or *i2=11; and i3=11;

All do the same thing right? I must be missing something here, big time, hrm.

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 03:36 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

March 20, 2003

Another Funny link for this day in history

This guy is my hero. Now if only Saddam changed his name to Unicron!

In other news, if you have to ask its not shock and awe.

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 06:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 18, 2003

Fun links for this day in history

man these are fun:

Trogdor and Helicopter

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 11:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

hrm, c++

Ok, so i'm kind of doing this backwards, I've been programming java for about 3 years, and before that I was a solaris sys admin the only programming I really did being perl and shell with some very light c thrown in for good measure. I fundamentally understood C/C++ and I was always interested in programming, I just never could pick up c/c++ and get into it completely and since java came along I never really looked back. But for a lark I decided to really dig into c++ again to see if i could actually get it this time, I love java dearly, but I always kinda wanted to get a firm handle on c++, but over the years of casual interest/study I never really felt competent.

I was browsing at a bookstore last week and saw Ivor Horton's beginning visual c++ started leafing through it, and said wow, he's actually making sense to me and explaining things the way I always wanted them explained.

So the next day I ordered it on bookpool. Java always made sense to me, but whenever I looked at c++ it just looked ugly and weird, this book has helped me understand a lot better the ugly weird stuff.

So far it's been a pretty fun endeavor, there are some really interesting bits in c++ that are not in java, there are also a bunch of things I never had to do or think about before. One interesting new idea that I never really came across before was pointers to methods. More interestingly passing as part of a method signature a pointer to a method, That blew my mind a little. I'm not sure when and why you'd want that for an app, maybe some odd twist on the Command pattern.

Anyway here comes the newbie question I have on my mind at the moment to any of you c++ types out there. Pass by reference or passing a pointer, is one more preferable than the other in a certain situation.

for example:
void method(int&); versus void method(int*);

Is there an advantage or reason to use pass by reference other than the fact you don't have to dereference it? I noticed that pass by reference is used in an example about writing proper copy constructors but the reason is not apparent to me at this time.

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 12:07 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

February 19, 2003

hrm, i got re-indexed again, sorry.

I changed my moveable type settings to output php instead of html, and that caused it(javablogs) to see all my old entries that go rebuilt in php as new entries.

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 08:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 18, 2003

Imagine if Apple..

Hadn't killed the clone market, and let the natural course of a free market continue. We might see the $1500 apple entry level machine more in line with the $700 PC one.

oh well. I'm quite delighted with win xp, and I can always get the aqua look thanks to this guy.

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 08:12 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (2)

February 17, 2003

This blizzard is crazy.

For all you bloggers in the north east of the US, you know what I'm talking about. Here in NJ, we got about 2 feet of snow, and its still coming down. So much for global warming making my winters easier. Hello shovel, my old friend.

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 05:13 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

February 10, 2003

I'm Amiga OS =)

I guess, thats cool, right?

Which OS are You?

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 11:56 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

February 09, 2003

Finally easy win xp services

Finally I can set up my own services on windows, easily. The guys at firedaemon have made my life a lot happier. One of the only things I miss from my old linux on the desktop days, is how easy it was to hack up my own daemons.

The only catch, its not free, well its free for up to one service, but to have more than one service you have to buy the professinal version. oh well.

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 07:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 01, 2003

Godspeed, Columbia STS-107

A sad day in the history of space flight, but in context tragedy and exploration go hand in hand, as witnessed throughout history. If you embrace the idea of exploration you also must embrace the tragedy that can and will accompany such activities.

These seven brave individuals were explorers of this time. My only hope is that this tragedy does not lead to an even more weakened NASA than currently stands.

Look at their faces, and think of them the next time you stare into the night sky.

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 09:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

January 25, 2003

Project Prometheus: LETS DO IT!

So I heard that the President is thinking about announcing and going forward with a plan for Nuclear propelled space travel to Mars, and I also heard that in order for it to happen, there had to be a good deal of public support for it. In fact on Coast to Coast last night Richard C. Hoagland said it might come down the number of Emails recieved over this weekend. So I sent out a little email to president@whitehouse.gov and I encourage you to do the same, make sure to have the subject be "Project Prometheus" or some such variant. Let him know we want to go.

Mr. President,
I fully support project Prometheus and the use of nuclear propulsion in space to go to Mars. Please go forward with this mission for our country, and planet.

Regards,
-Andre Mermegas

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 02:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 11, 2003

Soundwaves are pretty!

So I was peaking through all those nifty manilla blog themes and I saw this one by Bryan Bell and said damn that is pretty spiffy. So I decided to see how hard it would be to template over to moveable type which is what I blog with. The result is what you see here. I think it worked out pretty good, though I cant seem to figure out where the template is for search results, oh well.

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 06:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 04, 2003

interesting read on database and development

Found this on Martin Fowler's website today.. pretty good stuff.

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 03:14 AM | Comments (0)

January 01, 2003

Goodbye Art =(

Well, last night was Art Bell's last show, very sad. I will definately be missing
him in the new year. Best of luck to his successor George Noory. I'll be listening,
for sure.

Coast to Coast AM

Posted by Andre Mermegas at 04:28 PM | Comments (0)