Quad’s World

Drop off & Vim Tip

Besides just being a little lazy, I have had a few reasons for neglecting the site. Being on vacation recently is one of the larger ones, but generally it doesn’t matter. In disgust with how non-productive i’ve been, i’m going to start working on random stuff and little projects. Before I do that though, i’m going to try to get my Vim to be set up the way I like my editors.

For quite a while, i have struggled to find the perfect editor. I heard people praise various editors, but I have a big problem: I’m very multiplatformed. I run Ubuntu linux, windows xp, and windows vista on my main desktop and Mac OS X on my laptop. I like things to stay similar between them all so I can be consistent. My editor is one of the big things. This made something like TextMate hard to even look at. It’s supposed to be a great reasonably priced (40 euros) text editor for mac and mac only. Vim runs on pretty much everything. The problem is, I like to be able to see directory layouts, nice open buffer displays and a few other things that Vim isn’t nice for out of the box. I can live without them, but it’s not nearly as nice as I would like. Lucky for me, Alex Young wrote up instructions on how to enable the textmate like features in vim. I am excited and will be trying this as soon as I’m done here.

The end result is a cross platform, comfortable text editor for my coding needs. I would encourage you to look into it if you are looking for a cross platform solution or just want a really nice text editor. You will probably want a customized vimrc for everything you do as well. I’ll post mine after I get all this set up in it. It’s rather crazy (and mostly written by one of my friends, Saleem Abdulrasool).

UPDATE: Success! All the plugins are awesome and work exactly as they should. I uploaded my current vimrc. *nix wants it to be named .vimrc in your home directory and windows looks for _vimrc (i think) in the vim directory. If that doesn’t work (i’m more skeptical about windows; i haven’t used vim in windows for a while), check the vim documentation. View my vimrc at http://quad341.com/projects/vim.rc

Cardamar – Where The Skys End

This is Cardamar’s latest full length album. I must say to start off that it is not simply more of what was seen in Steam. To give a perspective for the rest of the review, I liked Steam in so much as I thought it was good. Not great, but it was good. The sounds seemed a bit rough at times and it wasn’t as smooth as I tend to like my chillout, but overall it was good. I will also be making references to the style of Steam later, so I would suggest at least previewing the album.

The album starts off with a 2 track intro (of sorts). It is a very ambient introduction that seems to bring you to a dark and somewhat problematic location. It is another album that seems to want to take the listener on a trip, but this is a very different trip than what was seen in In Medias Res. In the second track, Distant Scenery, you get a bit of curiosity brimming in an otherwise desolate environment. The music become more interesting and much more chill than ambient. The same feeling gets much more intense as we enter Start, my personal favorite track of the album (though song 5, Stuck In a Loop, is very close). This takes in a lot move bass than a lot of chillout, but in a very cool way. I honestly was taken off guard by how cool this track really sounded to me. The two tracks really blended together well to give me a strong feeling. It seemed to calm down for a moment only to come rushing back again at full force. The track does conclude nicely before it seems that we move into Root Escape, the next track. Up to this point, you wouldn’t really know that Steam and Where The Skys End were done by the same artist easily. It is a very different starting feel. I really like this part.
Read the rest of this entry »

First Impressions: Cowon D2

As mentioned in my post earlier today, I just got my new media player, a Cowon D2. Let me clarify farther: I got this device yesterday. As such, some of my opinions might change with more use.
Read the rest of this entry »

Dreamhost List AJAX

I noticed that there was some interest on the Dreamhost forums for AJAX to register for lists. I thought this was a good idea, and upon finding no solution, I set out to make one.

I admit that both this is not terribly easy to set up nor is it terribly hard. You have to modify 1 php file and include the required components on your web page. There is a full readme enclosed to help you get it set up.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment!

Download the code

Internet Woes

I haven’t been able to get online at my house reliably for the past couple days. This is really causing problems with me finishing some stuff (such as uploading one completed project). I apologize for the delays and I’ll try to get one project uploaded and possibly write a review of Cardamar’s last album while I’m at it.

On a lighter note, I just got a new PMP: a Cowon D2. I also will give some feedback on that and give a link to the excellent review I read before purchasing (I need to get it out of my history at home). Hopefully all that tonight.

Tutorials will be delayed again

Somehow I am having a very bad time with electronics. A lot of them around me aren’t cooperating resulting in something breaking. As I try to stay on top of this, other things have been pushed back. I apologize again. I’m not going to give a target date so I don’t have to worry about writing delayed messages. Review of Cardamar’s cd should come in the near future though.

Also, Freefalling into Freedom (on chilloutmixes.com) is a great mix. The use of kettle was somewhat surprising but very well done. Check it out.

A little delayed…

Ok, so my ajax-foo is no where near where I wanted it to be (though a small error, it was still annoying…). This resulted in the update to chilloutmixes.com taking until earlier today. It is now done and you can subscribe to the list from the main page (the list I will be sending announcements whenever a new mix is available or site related news). I will not be emailing the updates by hand anymore, so anyone who is currently getting updates will no longer receive them unless you subscribe to that list.

The tutorials are coming later still. I hope to finish them … um.. maybe by tuesday. So just hang in there! I made the reward better in compensation for the delay and will make it easier to get even without doing the optional third demo. Sorry for the delay.

Also, there is a new mix from Cardamar available. Honestly, i haven’t even listened to the full thing yet, so head over to chilloutmixes.com and check it out.

Update!

The code to set up an announcement list for chilloutmixes.com is basically done. All I have to do it test it and copy and paste some default messages into it. That should be done and active tonight. If I have the time, I should be able to finish the 3rd cURL demo and write up the first tutorial. Hopefully I’ll post tonight with all the good news. Of course the source for everything will be made available.

Getting distracted again

Ok, so I’ve had a lot of other things to play with (Including a Sidekick 3 and a PS3) which has this tendency to take away my time. I’m also working on getting chilloutmixes.com set up better for announcing new mixes. All of this is taking up my time. The curl demos are done being created, but I haven’t had the time to set up the tutorial to solve them. Um… I’m getting to it. Sorry.

Also, I just got Cardamar’s latest CD. I need to write a review on that as well. There was a new mix released by Marco Torrance in the past couple weeks also, so be sure to check out chillout mixes if you haven’t recently.

That’s all i can say for now.

Free-time (n) – what I may be lacking

Ok, I haven’t forgotten about the cURL tutorial or updating the site. I just happen to be quite busy right now. This weekend I hope to have some time to finish up the cURL stuff (I am working on it, it’s just not done) and hopefully get back to my project. This is somewhat of a reminder to myself as well, so hopefully it works! I also promise to make all of the source code available of both the problems and solutions.

Random cool thing I found: tntnet. I had heard about C++ server pages before, but tntnet is the project that really makes them shine. They claim that it can serve c++ dynamic pages fast than traditional web servers (probably apache) can serve static pages because the c++ pages get compiled. Awesome for speed. The syntax looks pretty nice to for making the views (and you get the c++ goodness for all of the processing).