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?

Just saw an ad for a local nightly newscast. Nothing too atypical, though the usage of the word “believable” struck me as…odd. In paraphrase:

“We’re determined to be the most believable and trustworthy newscast.”

I can buy “trustworthy”, even though every other newscast ad ever probably says the exact same thing.

But about that other word… So the news they report is made up? (Quite possible actually…*ahem*) “Believable”, to me at least, carries extensive connotations that what’s being said appears to be true, but isn’t actually true. In other words, something believable is, under the surface, a very convincing lie.

The definitions (1) (2) I’ve been looking though, of course, say nothing about lying, but a few do lend themselves to faith and proofless conviction.

I don’t know; maybe I’m just weird. For some reason it feels like the word “believable” actually devalues the program. It reminds me of cheap plastic flowers that are “believably realistic” even though you can see the seams on the stems.

I just read this on WebPagesThatSuck:

Recently there was an article about how popular web sites looked in the late 1990’s. While it’s interesting to see what Adobe or Apple looked liked back then, there isn’t much you can learn from these sites.

And I curiously wrote something eerily similar to what he’s describing (even with the same examples). Mayhap you’re referring to me? Yay I got referenced! Negatively…

Either way, I still think there’s a certain value to be had in looking at out-of-date sites. It’s hardly practical though.

Ever since I wrote out that list back in June, I told myself I’d come back and do a recap of what I did and didn’t accomplish over the last two or three months. Here it is, copied directly from the list, with snazzy tick and cross icons. Comments are in italics.

• I will drive on a real, operating public road. - Got close, but never had the guts or much of a chance to.
• I will make it more than 5 miles from my house. - This was the big one. I managed to make it more than once too.
• I will overcome the pain that is a broken memory card (yes, GTA..again) - Started GTA over, got about halfway, didn’t feel motivation to finish. It’s still a check because I did start it over.
• I will consider thinking about looking for a job. If an opportunity presents itself, sure. Otherwise, this isn’t too likely. - Why a check? I did give it a lot of thought. I took some time to understand how this whole “job” thing works. I don’t have one, but now I think I can handle one.
• I will overcome more of my social phobia and be comfortable with people. I will also hopefully get people comfortable with me. I’ve lost too many friendships because I’m not social enough.- This was a toughie. While I think I managed to get some things straightened out, I don’t feel like I did enough.
• I will become more self-disciplined. - Big check here. I took on a lot more responsibility than I’ve ever had, and I managed to keep it up throughout the summer.
• I will learn more skills and metaskills that I should know by now. Mowing lawns, cooking, car maintenance, etc. - …Kind of. I can check the oil and tire pressure in a car and make burritos but that’s about all I managed to learn.
• I will be sexy by the time school starts. Oh wait I already am. A six pack would be a nice bonus though. - No six pack, but I am sexy. Like I said, I already was anyway.
• I will regain most of the Spanish I’ve lost since the class ended. I need to prepare for the third semester. I will also try to pick up more.- Nope. The most I managed to do was set my home page to Elpais.com and thumb through a book or two.
• I will hang out with a friend. I have only ever done something with someone from school over summer vacation once. - Didn’t happen. It was supposed to but things kind of fell through.
• I will (well, want to) finally send a reply to that postcard I got from Japan, probably 4 months ago. Which also entails learning how to send international mail. - No, but I have a better understanding of Japan’s postal system now. I still plan to reply.
• I will make my dad proud of me. - I can’t say for sure, but I tried really hard to finally do some things he’s wanted me to do.
• I will make the best of these 3 months. - I’d like to think I did, but in the face of everyone else, it’s hard to convince myself. Big fat バツ.

Judging the goals was kind of annoying. I did do a lot of these things, but not to a particularly satisfactory level. I consider some of them to be still in progress. Others are subjective and based on the viewpoint of someone else. To everyone else, I may not seem successful. But to me, I think I did all right.

Icons come from the amazing famfamfam “Silk” set.