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.

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.

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.

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/

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.

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.

Care to explain how that got there, Google?

I’m sorry, Ubuntu, but I just can’t take it anymore. Linux Mint is my new bitch.

Actually, the real reason I’m switching is that I’ve managed to screw Ubuntu over again, and none of the solutions for the problem I’m having have worked (issues with locales). I just kept making it worse. And now I’ve pretty much crippled Ubuntu to be beyond useless.

I figured, eh, instead of doing a reinstall of Ubuntu (and hassling to set it up), why not switch for a while? I’m 5 minutes in with Linux Mint’s live CD, and I love it. It automatically detected my wireless card, which is to me one of the most amazing things a Linux distro can do for a person.

It really is elegant. So far anyway. And hey, it technically is Ubuntu, so growing pains shouldn’t be too bad.

I plan to install it later on today when I play with it a bit more and figure out how to repartition this @#$*& hard drive. I should just be able to format the Ubuntu partition and write over it, so yay.

After finding out Microsoft had released a free book for learning C++, I took them right up on it and downloaded it as soon as I could. The book is, well… not particularly well-proofread but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and say that the print edition is better.

Regardless, something about that book has led me to a new level of understanding.

I have officially programmed my first game on my own: TicTack. And I did most of it in one day. I just sat down yesterday, thought “I’m finally going to finish that damn thing”, and, somehow, here it is.

Literally years have gone by that I’ve wanted to create even a simple game on my own (barring research). Tic-tac-toe was one of those things I thought I’d never be able to accomplish. But something about that book unlocked a new door for me. Suddenly it all just fell into place. I’ve had the Visual C++ project sitting there for months, thinking “maybe someday..”

It isn’t the most complex or elegant solution to a tic-tac-toe game, nor does it have any AI, but I’m proud. It does have almost 200 lines (well..including some blank ones). This is the biggest program I’ve ever made.

It also has lots of bugs, specifically concerning user input. I’ve tried to fix some of them by limiting the input but it still will either infinite loop or otherwise mess up if you don’t put in what the program asks for. It’s not graceful at failing (like me).

Although I’m happy with TicTack, I have to mention that it’s pretty much spaghetti code. It has functions but they’re disorganized, and I’ve used magic numbers everywhere. I’m working on cleaning it up but I really think I’m just making it worse.

It’s officially my pet project. I’ll be tinkering with it for a while (and the source here will be updated accordingly).

My next big-huge-fun-OMG-look-I-can-actually-do-it project is probably going to be this with graphics, either in Win32 API (doubtful), or Python and Pygame. I’m stuck between the two because I don’t know Python but Win32 is above my level. Either way I have the logic already pretty much coded though.

But let’s try to conquer some of the rest of that book first. Pointers. Yay. Something I don’t think I’ll ever understand. Then again, haven’t I said that before?

Source code available after the jump:

Source:

//TODO: Arrange into functions because it sucks having to recode both instances of the board being outputted.
//TODO: Be less repetitive too. I mean really.. I can do better than this. Must think of cool math loops!
//TODO: Also also: lots of bugs. Lots.

#include <iostream>

void printBoard(char board[3][3]);
void playerMove(char board[3][3], char currentPlayer);
bool isDraw(char board[3][3]); // see if board is completely filled or not

char tictack[3][3] = {{ '1', '2', '3'},
						{'4', '5', '6'},
						{'7', '8', '9'}};

	int move = 0; // int which indexes position in the board

	bool isWon(char board[3][3], char currentPlayer);

	char player1;
	char player2;
	char currentPlayer; // current player's character 'X' or 'O'

	bool whoseTurn = 0; // index of turns to alternate in the loop

	int boardCount = 0; //number of spaces on the board that are filled in

int main(int argc, char *argv[]){

////Start game
	std::cout << "\t\t\t\t  ***TicTack***" << std::endl;

choose:
	std::cout << "Player 1, are you an X or an O?:";
	std::cin >> player1;

	switch(player1){
		case 'X': case 'x':
			player1 = 'X';
			player2 = 'O';
			std::cout << "Ok, so Player 2 is " << player2;
			break;
		case 'O': case 'o':
			player1 = 'O';
			player2 = 'X';
			std::cout << "Ok, so Player 2 is " << player2;
			break;
		default:
			std::cout << "Invalid choice" << std::endl;
			std::cin.clear();
			std::cin.ignore(1, '\n');
			goto choose;
	};

	std::cout << std::endl;
	std::cout << std::endl;

	//Print initial board
	printBoard(tictack);
	std::cout << std::endl; // Just so it leaves some room

	//Main loop until isWon or isDraw is true

	do{

		if(whoseTurn == 0) {currentPlayer = player1;} else if(whoseTurn == 1) {currentPlayer = player2;} //Alternating players on alternating turns
		playerMove(tictack, currentPlayer);
		std::cout << std::endl;

		printBoard(tictack);
		std::cout << std::endl;

		//Alternate players every loop iteration (bool... 0 = player1, 1 = player2)
		whoseTurn = !whoseTurn;

	} while(!isWon(tictack, currentPlayer) && !isDraw(tictack));

	if(isWon(tictack, currentPlayer)){
		std::cout << currentPlayer << " wins!" << std::endl;
	}
	if(isDraw(tictack)){
		std::cout << "Cat wins!" << std::endl;
	}

return 0;
}

void printBoard(char board[3][3]){

//// Print board
		for(int j = 0; j<=2; j++){
			for(int k = 0; k<=2; k++){
				if(k==0){ // Tab the first row over four times & space it
						std::cout << "\t\t\t\t  " << board [j][k] <<  "  |  ";
				}
				else if(k==2){
					std::cout << board [j][k]; // Beautify by not printing last divider line
				}
				else{
					std::cout << board[j][k] << "  |  "; //Arbitrary spacing.. just to make it an even square
				}
			}
			std::cout << std::endl; //Newline at the end of k (the across rows)
			if(j==2){
				;
			}
			else{
				std::cout << "\t\t\t\t-----------------" << std::endl; // Print bottom divider on all but the last row; also arbitrary spacing
			}
		}
}

void playerMove(char board[3][3], char currentPlayer){ // place the player's character on the board; check if location is already filled

	std::cout << currentPlayer << ", make your move:";

	std::cin >> move;

	//board is a char array
	//if position is already filled, set turn to the same player to retry a move until a valid one is made

	switch(move){
		case 1:
			if (board[0][0] == 'X' || board[0][0] == 'O'){whoseTurn = !whoseTurn; break;} else {board[0][0] = currentPlayer; break;} ;
			break;
		case 2:
			if (board[0][1] == 'X' || board[0][1] == 'O'){whoseTurn = !whoseTurn; break;} else {board[0][1] = currentPlayer; break;} ;
		case 3:
			if (board[0][2] == 'X' || board[0][2] == 'O'){whoseTurn = !whoseTurn; break;} else {board[0][2] = currentPlayer; break;} ;

		case 4:
			if (board[1][0] == 'X' || board[1][0] == 'O'){whoseTurn = !whoseTurn; break;} else {board[1][0] = currentPlayer; break;} ;
		case 5:
			if (board[1][1] == 'X' || board[1][1] == 'O'){whoseTurn = !whoseTurn; break;} else {board[1][1] = currentPlayer; break;} ;
		case 6:
			if (board[1][2] == 'X' || board[1][2] == 'O'){whoseTurn = !whoseTurn; break;} else {board[1][2] = currentPlayer; break;} ;
		case 7:
			if (board[2][0] == 'X' || board[2][0] == 'O'){whoseTurn = !whoseTurn; break;} else {board[2][0] = currentPlayer; break;} ;
		case 8:
			if (board[2][1] == 'X' || board[2][1] == 'O'){whoseTurn = !whoseTurn; break;} else {board[2][1] = currentPlayer; break;} ;
		case 9:
			if (board[2][2] == 'X' || board[2][2] == 'O'){whoseTurn = !whoseTurn; break;} else {board[2][2] = currentPlayer; break;} ;

		default:
			std::cout << "Invalid choice" << std::endl;
			std::cin.clear();
			std::cin.ignore(1, '\n');
			playerMove(board, currentPlayer); //Probably a bad idea to recurse here. Oh well.

	};
}

//Check for winning conditions
bool isWon(char board[3][3], char currentPlayer){

		//The board looks like this:
		//00 01 02
		//10 11 12
		//20 21 22

		//The straight across wins
		if(board[0][0] == currentPlayer && board[0][1] == currentPlayer && board[0][2] == currentPlayer) {return true;}
		if(board[1][0] == currentPlayer && board[1][1] == currentPlayer && board[1][2] == currentPlayer) {return true;}
		if(board[2][0] == currentPlayer && board[2][1] == currentPlayer && board[2][2] == currentPlayer) {return true;}

		//The top-to-bottom wins
		if(board[0][0] == currentPlayer && board[1][0] == currentPlayer && board[2][0] == currentPlayer) {return true;}
		if(board[0][1] == currentPlayer && board[1][1] == currentPlayer && board[2][1] == currentPlayer) {return true;}
		if(board[0][2] == currentPlayer && board[1][2] == currentPlayer && board[2][2] == currentPlayer) {return true;}

		//The diagonal wins
		if(board[1][1] == currentPlayer && board[0][0] == currentPlayer && board[2][2] == currentPlayer) {return true;}
		if(board[1][1] == currentPlayer && board[2][0] == currentPlayer && board[0][2] == currentPlayer) {return true;}
return false;
}

//Is there a draw? (Cat wins)
//Solved with an iterative loop.. if all 9 squares are X or O then it's a draw
//because if someone wins then the count will never reach 9.. the highest will be 8
bool isDraw(char board[3][3]){
	int count = 0;

	for(int i = 0; i<=2; i++){
		for(int j = 0; j<=2; j++){
			if(board[i][j] == 'X' || board[i][j] == 'O'){
				count++;
			}
			else continue;
		}
	}
	if (count == 9) return true;
return false;
}

Oh hey cool, WordPress *does* have syntax highlighting. Dammit, it’s only now that I find out.

see more Political Pictures

You know that’s right. Those ads have annoyed me for a while now. Logical fallacy! Abort! Abort! Um..kill process?