Happy snow-filled holidays

We got caught in that snowstorm last week and we’ve been without phone, Internet, and power for four days. Although we have landline phone service and Internet connectivity now, we have no running water. It’s getting better but I don’t really expect us to be back to normal until Christmas, if not later.

So I should take the opportunity while I get it to wish everyone happy holidays.

Self-documentation project

Ever since I started more actively pursuing and attacking my anxiety, I’ve read a lot of advice, one piece of which stuck with me. I was just too demotivated to follow it.

That advice, which comes from The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook, was to keep a journal. Or rather, to log thoughts and feelings of anxiety over a period of weeks and months and keep track of patterns of feelings and behavior. Patterns which may otherwise go unnoticed because they’re never viewed in a big span at once, but only acted out day by day.

But my problem was that I felt these patterns were blindingly obvious. I never wanted to start writing because I had the audacity about myself to assume I knew who I was very well. I knew my weak points. I knew how I would act in certain situations. I knew I’d be happy one day and sad the next. It’s just nature’s natural ebb and flow.

The funny thing about all this though is that once I did start writing, I did see patterns I’d never noticed before. I tend to use the word “impossible” a lot in the entries. I tend to write about positive things in one entry with the next being completely focused on how my positive thoughts were misdirected (I knew this, but it’s interesting to see it played out).

For a few weeks now–since mid-November–I’ve been keeping this journal on an almost steady basis of two times a week. And I plan on keeping it for quite a while.

Essentially, whenever I catch myself with a moment of free time, especially at school (which is an environment I find much easier to write in), I just start writing. How my day was, what people said to me, what I think I’m feeling.

No matter how much difficulty I find in putting that first word down to start the first sentence of an entry, I rarely hold myself back. I try to find a suitable starting point quickly so as not to lose my entire train of thought. Once I’m able to run with my feelings, I write pages. Every sentence becomes less viscous. Every paragraph becomes more in-depth. Every page sheds more light on my inner demons I can’t seem to settle with.

The first time I wrote an entry it was purely out of spite. Spite for the world, spite for other people, and spite from my inner self who couldn’t seem to have his selfish desires satisfied no matter what he did. I was exceedingly mad when I first started writing; the beginning of that first entry is rife with anger. I quickly grew more passive, though, which shows my short-term tolerance for staying angry.

Most of my entries since then have been relatively free of spite, but they’re still almost completely full of remorse. Remorse, and more painfully, longing.

Keeping a journal is much different from keeping a blog. You may well wonder why I just don’t slap what I write up here. Truthfully, it’s not so much that I don’t want to. I’m not afraid to share a lot of things with people. I just find it much easier to physically interact with my words via a pencil and paper. I can’t stand to write on the computer, especially whenever I feel like I do when I write these journal entries. I end up feeling disconnected from my head and losing motivation.

The more I write in this journal, the more I find myself trying to turn what I write into a piece of art. I am relatively unrestrained in what I write about, but I get a fair amount of joy from trying to maintain standards of writing and reading the entries back to myself. I am, pretty much, indirectly writing an autobiography.

I find it to be a successful therapy as well. I always thought I wouldn’t ever be able to express my problems and feelings to nothing but a piece of paper. I felt like I needed other people at the other end to hear me. I needed other people to respond to me and to validate me. A friend told me once that he relieved anger by writing it out, and I distinctly remember telling him that I’d never be able to release any of my feelings without someone to listen.

But truthfully, that feeling largely has gone away. When I realized how intimate I could get with my thoughts with just a pencil, paper, and a conducive environment to writing I felt a certain relief.

I can be a lot more comfortable with myself in writing than I could be with people responding to what I said. I suppose I always felt guilty about wasting someone else’s time when it was my problem to handle. At least with myself, I’m only consuming my own time.

This journal has pushed me forward by leaps and bounds in dealing with my emotional issues. It, combined with supportive and loving friends and the unshaking resolve of my parents to understand this problem has given me insight recently and made me realize what an amazing life lies before me right now.

And right now, I feel the best I’ve ever felt.

HOWTO: Smoothly restart a hard-frozen Linux system

You ever have one of those days where Linux freezes on you (cue gasps of horror — Yes, Linux actually does that), and the always useful Ctrl+Alt+Backspace key combination doesn’t do anything? Or perhaps you find out the hard way that it’s been disabled in your distro?

Say hello to the magic of the SysRq key. In essence, the SysRq key can, in combination with other keys, be used to control an otherwise frozen Linux system. It can issue commands to flush data, shut down a system, and the like.

The catch? Support for it has to be compiled into your distro’s kernel.

The “magic SysRq key” is enabled by holding down Alt+SysRq and typing another key or series of keys. You may also need to hold down Fn as well. I did, because trying to restart when the system’s not hard-frozen resulted in conflicts with GNOME’s screenshot app (It kept popping up since SysRq and PrtSc share a key).

While there are many uses of the magic SysRq key (see Wikipedia for a chart of letters and commands), the standard “Raising Elephants” method for a hard-frozen soft restart is as follows:

• Hold Alt+SysRq+(Fn, if necessary), type “REISUB“.

These letters correspond to commands issued to the kernel to prepare a smooth restart:

unRaw      (take control of keyboard back from X),
 tErminate (send SIGTERM to all processes, allowing them to terminate gracefully),
 kIll      (send SIGKILL to all processes, forcing them to terminate immediately),
  Sync     (flush data to disk),
  Unmount  (remount all filesystems read-only),
reBoot.

The system won’t restart until immediately after the “B” is typed, but the screen may blank. It is recommended to wait between each command to give processes time to end gracefully (if you have unsaved documents, for example), though I noticed no ill effects.

It’s also possible to emulate such a key with terminal commands. This could be especially useful for remote machines.

Microsoft Office 2010 Starter: A good idea?

I just caught wind a bit ago via this article (Japanese) from Lifehacker Japan and here from labnol.org that Microsoft is primed to release a beta version of Office 2010 dubbed “Starter” along with, but separate from, the other beta editions. While the other betas can be downloaded freely (available here from Microsoft), Starter must be applied for via a survey.

 

Starter is not a “real” version of Office, at least as I consider it. It includes Word Starter and Excel Starter, which are, naturally, reduced in functionality compared to even the Home and Student edition. Starter is much the same in spirit as Windows Vista Starter and Windows 7 Starter in this regard, which are low-end editions meant for low-income families and those in poor countries to be able to “get their feet wet” in using a computer.

Office Starter is to be bundled only with new PCs, and is the successor to Microsoft Works.

As displayed in this video released by Microsoft to publicize Office Starter, Word Starter has an “ad control” embedded in the new Task Pane, meaning, yes, you will be shown advertisements while working. Want to bet that they can’t be removed, hidden or unchecked? I’m assuming Excel Starter does too, but it wasn’t shown.

Do take notice of how they seem to place more emphasis on the user’s ability to upgrade than to use the product they have. It’s only mentioned in passing that “the user can continue to use the product until their needs exceed what is provided in Office Starter”.

But I digress. A lot.

I will agree with the video in that Works is old. Really old. Old and out-of-place. No matter how many times Microsoft has tried to rework Works (heh), to me, it’s always felt old. Even the later versions give off a musky odor. This was probably somewhat deliberate. Thankfully, development of Works has ceased.

But now, with OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, and even Google Docs and other online services, how relevant is Office Starter (or indeed, Office in general)?

Given a comment by “Devon” I just read from labnol.org, fairly relevant:

Yep, try Google Docs and get blind. Try OpenOffice and see your puter dying because this crap of software is taking 85% of your RAM.

If one was using the real office before, no way that person will ever switch to Google or Zoho or any other service. Look at Google Docs, looks like 1990. Features? Ha, even Word 2003 has more features.

Let’s consider the resource usage of OpenOffice and the feature limitations of online office work.

I can tell you firsthand that OpenOffice is, while an amazing release of free software, ugly and slow. The aesthetics just don’t seem to match (non-native widgets, etc. — which make it feel slow and stick out), and Java kills the execution speed leading to OO having an overall “fat” feel (you know these apps when you use them). It’s great at what it does, but it’s not particularly appealing to use.

Online services like Google Docs and Zoho are relatively lacking in features. And, besides, a user may not have Internet access in the first place, making primary use impossible. I do disagree however that such a service “looks like 1990″. Simplicity is good, especially in Web apps. In the case of Office Starter, it behaves as a Web app (by virtue of simplicity) without the Internet.

And what of Windows’ built-in apps? Windows 7’s new WordPad looks almost exactly like Word 2010 Starter, and though I have yet to install it, I’d probably be hard pressed to find any outstanding differences in functionality.

I think the best reason for bundling Office Starter is that novice users will finally have a way to open .doc, .docx, .xls, etc. files by default without having to download viewer programs, fiddle with settings, etc. Although alternative software exists, these file types are still extremely common, which makes you wonder why Microsoft hasn’t done something like this before now.

Having said that Office 2010 Starter will only be available on new OEM PCs, I hope they change their minds as they did with Visual Studio Express in 2005 (from initially free to permanently free). It should be available to everyone.

I’ll concede a bit to their side: if they’re so keen on helping new users out, why not just release it for everyone? Not every novice user is going to buy a new PC just to have word processing software. And, moreover, there are a lot of other options for users. Why not compete a bit more, Microsoft? What do you have to lose? If you’re going to push upgrading (and show ads), then certainly not money.

But perhaps I’m too harsh. At least they’re offering an open beta.

Good idea? It could be better but it’s already leaps and bounds ahead of the pre-installed shovelware on new PCs. This software could actually be useful.

Freakin’ Cool App of the Week: MuseScore

I’ve had an interest in playing piano for a long time — a time mostly spent with wishful thinking that I could play rather than actually learning something. Though, over the course of trying to learn, I’ve had opportunity to try out a few computer-based music notation apps. I think I’ve finally found what I’ve been looking for in MuseScore.

NoteWorthy Composer, Mozart, Finale NotePad, all of these I’ve used to some extent or another. NoteWorthy’s fast and efficient, Mozart is elegantly designed, and NotePad (was) free and easy. But, of course, they all are for-pay, or, in the case of NotePad, limited in the feature department (now both).

But I just recently found out about MuseScore. Around since 2002, MuseScore in its purest form is a free, open-source clone of Finale (or, indeed, any other notation software). The mechanics are essentially the same: click to add and move notes and rests, etc.  and play back the notes straight from the sheet music (via SoundFonts — so it sounds better than straight MIDI).

It has many of the capabilities of Finale NotePad (last I checked), including MIDI input and multiple note layers, as well as features that only come with more upscale products, like time and key signature changes, clef changes and unlimited staves.

MuseScore provides an interface reminiscent of Finale

Of course, I wouldn’t be me without some negativity:

MuseScore has a tendency to misinterpret what I’m trying to do (or rather I’m doing something wrong). Sometimes the methods of selection don’t make sense. For instance, you have to enter a special “Note Input” mode in order to insert notes, but you have to exit it in order to move notes around.

Playback is difficult due to the lack of an “indication bar” in the status bar that has functionality for skipping forward and backward through measures. Although the current measure is displayed, the only “rewind” option I can find goes back to the first measure which is sometimes cumbersome when trying to scrub through a particular section.

This is remedied, however, by a keyboard shortcut to accomplish the same thing (Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right, although I prefer the mouse to do this) and a “Play Panel” that can set the start time.

My only other real complaint is the particularly noticeable load time. On Windows, when I timed it by running it for the first time after a cold boot, it took 38 seconds from icon click to main screen. Subsequent starts take about 13 seconds. I have yet to install it on Linux.

MuseScore is soon to release version 1.0. It’s licensed under the GPL and is available in the usual Windows, Mac, and Linux flavors.

MuseScore

Mind, though, that “the tools don’t make the talent” and all that. I still can’t play piano.

From now on, thanks to the miracle that is autopublish, Freakin’ Cool App of the Week will attempt to be updated on a regular basis — hopefully at least every other Friday.

WordPress diff Easter egg

I just found out by playing around that the proofreading tool on WordPress also works in HTML editor mode. I tried it. It didn’t work (or it took longer than I waited) but that was the least of my worries.

Self-destructing... hopefully not my post

HTML mode has a rather nasty tendency to strip out breaks between paragraphs (among messing up other things). Guess what? The visual editor didn’t add them back.

I worried but then I remembered I could use WordPress’s integrated diff viewer to restore from yesterday. I tried to find the last sane version, but me being idiotic me, I chose to compare the same revision to itself.

And something very strange happened (see screenshots). My post was self-destructing and I was thrown into the Matrix.

The Matrix has you... (it goes on like this)

I may have been about to lose my post but that led me to this which otherwise wouldn’t have been here to brighten my day. Think of the positives in life.

The fact that I’m using IE is not one of them.

Freakin’ Cool (kind of) App of the Week: Revealing Passwords with JavaScript

Old, yet useful. Works in numerous browsers, not just Firefox. Just copy and paste the provided JavaScript (available here) as the URL in a bookmark, and click the bookmark on a page with an asterisked password entry field. All shall be revealed.

They really need JavaScript to read minds..

Actually, since Firefox can reveal all your saved passwords at a button press (Preferences – Security – Saved Passwords – Show Passwords), I had another use for this.

You know how on some sites where you’re supposed to input your password and you haven’t registered an account or logged in, they’ll have a placeholder password and it’s just a bunch of asterisks or dots? Well, I want to know what they actually put in those fields. I figure somewhere, on some site, some genius has planted a joke in one of those. I’m assuming that since it’s just placeholder text, I could find it in plain text in the HTML but I’m too lazy.

What’s left to do now is for me to figure out how that damn code actually does what it does. It’s mind-blowing, but awesome.

Could be a fun learning experience. Or a not-so-fun aspirin experience.

References:

• http://www.mydigitallife.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10504&Itemid=43
• http://aksn1p3r.blogspot.com/2007/07/firefox-asterisk-revealer.html
• http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2007/07/13/easily-show-the-contents-of-password-fields/

Vergüenza ajena

I like to listen to The World’s World in Words podcast occasionally, and after going through the archives I found the above useful Spanish expression in this episode.

What does it mean? This (from here) is a solid definition:

es la verguenza que sientes tu cuando alguien relacionado contigo (pero que no eres tu) hace algo que te parece totalmente incorrecto, inoportuno, desafortunado… en tu presencia y de mas personas, momento en el que te gustaria poder desaparecer, salir corriendo, volando, volverte invisible, retroceder en el tiempo, etc…..

Google Translate + my tweaking (I learned a lot from this heh..yes my Spanish sucks):

It’s the shame you feel when someone associated with you (but not yourself) does something that seems to you as being totally incorrect, inappropriate, unfortunate… in your presence as well as others’, and a moment in which you want to be able to disappear, run away, fly, turn invisible, go back in time, etc…..

Essentially, the phrase is colloquial and means “shame for someone else”. It’s that feeling you get when someone else does something embarrassing and you dread the reaction other people are going to give to that person.

There seriously needs to be a word for this in English. I experience it almost daily.

It’s a great podcast.

Generalized vs. specific personalities (or: MySpace and social phobics)

Social networking. A new way to define yourself, right? What if you don’t know who you are?

On social networking sites like MySpace I’ve started to notice that there’re two main ways people present themselves on their profiles:  In-depth,  with large lists of interests, favorite shows, books, bands — complete with titles and band names — or very vague, with nonspecific information about genre and personality and very little in the way of actual identifying characteristics.

Take me for instance. My personal profile is desert-like in emptiness. I have things to describe me but they are mostly broad generalizations. I don’t say “I like this band, and this book”, but rather “I like this style of music, and this genre of books”.

For people who fill out profiles in depth, it seems that they either don’t have a life or they have highly specified interests. Even though it would seem that people who expand their online presence to the depth they do means they don’t have anything better to do with their time, this isn’t necessarily true. Since they have so many things they can write about themselves and their interests, they far outstrip the people who generalize. They have more of a life.

As  for people like me, who are less well-gifted in socialization, in order to feel more accepted, subconsciously I “dumb down” my interests and personality in order to reach as many people as I can in the hopes that I’ll meet them and be able to talk to them, so I don’t always feel unliked or alone.

Thus, I end up generalizing my personality.

The other reason I find that I don’t explicitly state these things is that I don’t see myself as very interesting. I don’t have a wide range of hobbies or interesting things to say, nor nothing I have experienced or watched or read seems likely to spark a conversation, and that’s the ultimate downfall of my social phobia.

Sometimes I feel incompetent because everyone looks so fleshed out in life. Swimming in a text wall of accomplishments and expansive life experiences loses me in my reading pattern physically as well as in feelings of jealousy emotionally.

I find that, at least if I generalize, it makes me feel like I’m a more approachable person. And I truly believe I am approachable. But I’m also very shy. It would then seem to me that social phobic people would generalize themselves more in order to reach the widest possible spread of people in order to feel a sense of belonging and to make connections with others.

A social phobic is not very well defined in the first place. They’re swimming in a mess of who they think they are, who they feel like they should be, what other people see them as, and so on. Though every person experiences this, the anxiety raising alarm in a social phobic’s mind can feel much worse than a usual case of stress or butterflies. Like teenage identity crises, social phobics are searching hard to find themselves. They begin generalizing, to see if they can befriend other people to “find themselves” with. The desire in a social phobic to belong somewhere is very strong. Having to question one’s identity on a daily basis can make someone go mad without companionship. The vicious cycle begins when trying and failing to find that companionship makes it harder to commit to finding it again. The very people one wants to befriend are the same people who may very well make one feel uncomfortable because of the phobia.

Specific people know who they are. They don’t kid themselves or anybody else. They don’t wait around for companionship in order to feel safe in the world. They are the type of people who can define themselves in one short sentence. They are not less complex (social phobics, don’t go getting a big head please), but they do have fewer complications, if that makes any sense.

Of course, this concept doesn’t always apply. Some shy people may be overzealous in creating their profile in order to get noticed, or  extroverted people may not fill out their profiles for lack of time or lack of need (because they’re so well-known anyway).

But this was just a thought.

Uuhhh

Care to explain how that got there, Google?