Chuck SMITH

Dvorak keyboard, morning day 2

2008-04-26T06:30:15Z

So, now I know the home row and can touch most keys without too much thought. In the long run, I know this will be much better on my hands and I will type faster, but in the meantime it is quite frustrating. It is especially difficult to type German, because I have to concentrate on German at the same time. At least with my customized layout, I can now type in English, Esperanto, German, and Spanish without changing keyboard layouts. ...and yes this post has been typed entirely in Dvorak, mostly without looking at the keyboard!

how to make Windows run more like a Mac :)

2008-04-25T13:30:34Z

I use a Mac, but today I seem to be finding lots of nice apps for Windows:

E Text Editor - a very nice text editor similar to TextMate for Mac

Launchy - fast search/application launching like on a Mac, open source too

AVG Free Anti-Virus - exactly what it says, I'll be installing this on my Windows that I run sometimes parallel to Mac with VMWare (#1 security app by C|NET)

testing Flock

2008-04-25T09:25:07Z

I just downloaded the Flock web browser and I'm trying it out. Anyone else have any experiences with it? I'm now posting to LiveJournal using its built-in blog post compose feature...

Blogged with the Flock Browser

busy in Berlin, follow me on Twitter

2008-04-19T06:38:54Z

Hi everyone, I've been completely swamped the last couple of weeks working at my new job in Berlin. We really hope to be fully live by mid-May. Wish us luck!

In the meantime, I discovered that I don't really do livejournal anymore. I like it, just don't have time anymore for it. So, now I'm going for the super-short version of Twitter. Yeah, I know what you're thinking, why Twitter? Well, I like that I can send an IM to just share a quick thought I have and don't need to write a long entry nor pull up my web browser.

Anyway, if you use Twitter, feel free to follow me at http://twitter.com/amuzulo.

However, when I have really important news, I will probably still use LiveJournal to keep you all up to date with major changes in my life. In the meantime, if you want to visit Berlin, let me know and I'll see if we can put you up. We have a nice apartment in the center city. :) Oh, and I'm quite happy here. Great girlfriend, great apartment, great location, great job. What more can one ask for?

Corect me!

2008-01-21T19:17:21Z

I just ran across this new site where you can post foreign language texts for others to correct and you can correct others at Corect Me. Anyway, I posted a letter I wrote in German there and I would encourage you to post any texts you need corrected too! You can see texts that need corrections on the correct others page. Pretty cool, eh? :)

Who got the biggest flag, yo?

2007-11-25T21:38:46Z

Yeah, that's right, we do! Go us. Check out this group photo from ExpoLingua Berlin:

Oh, and I'll be in Japan from Nov 29 - Dec 9, so if you live there, let me know. :)

Super Mario War

2007-10-11T22:53:04Z

Wow, wow, wow. I just discovered this game tonight. It's basically a Super Mario four-player deathmatch. What could be cooler than that? It uses all the same images, sound and music of the Super Mario Bros series and has over 200 maps. ...and it's open source and runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. I hear it also can run on PSP and XBox, but haven't seen these rumors confirmed. Anyway, download it, give it a try and let me know what you think. :)

subtitle my short Eo films on dotsub

2007-07-25T07:34:26Z

I just found this awesome new site called dotsub where you can upload a video and then anyone can translate its subtitles into other languages. How cool is that? So, I noticed there weren't many films there originally in Esperanto, so I uploaded a few which can be seen at my profile page on dotsub. They all have English subtitles, so you can understand them, although they're not particularly deep or meaningful. I was mostly just playing around with the site to see how it works.

video game frenzy continues...

2007-07-16T08:42:27Z

So, now we see what happens to me when the girlfriend doesn't visit. ;) I get all nostalgic on arcade games. At least I'm not as nostalgic as this guy who bought a Galaxian 3 Theater. Whoa. I've always wanted to have a stand-up arcade game in my apartment/house, but this is a bit over the edge. But, I want to find out where he moves it, so I can visit... ;-)

I wanted to get a paddle controller or spinner to play Arkanoid. I'm not good at building electronics, so I just want something pre-built. Searched the net, couldn't find anything. So, eventually I came across the Mame Spinner Roundup, but they are all unfortunately built for actual arcade cabinets. I still love this sentence: "To evaluate each of these spinners, I ran them through a number of grueling (fun) and exhausting (very fun) play-tests. I also tried to rank each spinner on a number of different criteria, including ease of installation, design, ease of use, spinner sensitivity, and more." So, I decided he must be the expert to write about this. He replied that I might want to try out the PowerMate which is a USB volume control, but from what I read online, it's not gonna cut it for gaming. I'm waiting for a reply from the company though. :)

Yesterday played my first Scorched 3D online and I couldn't believe what a n00b I was. Haven't played "modern" games in so long... I even forgot to buy parachutes... how stupid of me! Also, I learned you can follow the shot camera by pressing c. So high tech... I like my gaming old school. hah! I also learned that Space Invaders didn't originally have sound, ... or color! It was in fact the first popular arcade game after Pong. Also, did you know that Pong only ran on analog? ... no digital parts! So, you can't emulate it, you would have to simulate it.

To finish it off, I just got The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon--The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World which is amazingly cheap (15 EUR) for a 624 page book of such importance. All five star reviews. Well, almost all. So, I guess now I should shower and clean up the apartment for Judith's visit on Tuesday. Also, I think I'll work half a day today, so I can take off Thursday.

Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be... Oh, anyone know of any decent arcades in Europe? From playing in the Hersheypark arcades when I was young, I guess I'm spoiled. I read somewhere that they have some of best arcades in the entire world...

Scorched3D - Float On

2007-07-15T12:11:56Z



"Scorched3D - Float On" on Google Video
Yeah, Scorched Earth rocks. But, even when I was playing it in high school, I thought it would be cool to play it in 3D. So, I saw Scorched 3D was the SourceForge Project of the Month and was like, yeah right, a fun open-source game. Then, I downloaded it and was amazed! Wow! It really captures the feel of the original while also putting it in 3D. Wow...

Openmoko 8

2007-07-15T09:24:23Z

Free your mind? Free your phone! :)

The European iPhone madness

2007-07-04T13:16:36Z

Yes, I am a lemming who wants an iPhone too, but I live in Europe, so I will be waiting til November for mine. It appears that T-Mobile will be providing exclusive coverage for Europe, so I will have to soon decide whether my love for the iPhone or my hatred for T-Mobile is greater... ugh. Maybe I'll just get an OpenMoko instead. heh

Anyway, some interesting articles:

Creole 1.0 - a common wiki markup

2007-07-04T12:30:12Z

After a year of diligent effort, a group of nearly 50 dedicated users and developers are proud to release WikiCreole 1.0. Creole is designed to be a common wiki markup language which augments existing markup to enable wiki users to transfer content seamlessly across wikis, a boon to novice and expert users alike.

Creole, taking its name from the field of linguistics, a stable language that originated from a combination of two or more languages. As every wiki software has its own markup definitions, the differences can make them difficult for novices to learn and experts to remember, thus a common wiki markup lays the foundation for development of cross-engine wiki software.

Full Press Release: http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/WikiCreolePressRelease
Digg Story: http://digg.com/software/WikiCreole_1_0_a_common_wiki_markup

English in Poker German

2007-04-30T18:53:01Z

I find it amusing how many English terms are in poker when discussed in German:

Rebuy Phase gut überstanden mit nur einem Rebuy und ein Add on, Durchschnitt an Chips. Gesamtstartgeld somit 320 €. Nach dem Add on im Limit 150 – 300 folgende Hand: Ich am Small Blind mit einem Paar 7, 6 Spieler bezahlen bis zu mir, ich entscheide mich für einen call. Flop: K87 mit 2 Treff, gefährlicher Flop bei 6 Spielern mit vielen Möglichkeiten für die nächsten 2 Karten. Ich spiele sofort 2000, 2 Spieler weg, nächster All-in mit 6300, letzten 3 ebenfalls weg. Ich bezahle, Showdown 77 gg KQ. Eine Traumhafte Begegnung mit keine direkten outs für den angereisten Skandinavier. Turn Treff 9, River Treff 5…..... Die Antwort ist nein, er hatte keinen Treff K oder Q. 7 Treff und 7 Karo gewinnt mit Flush. Chipstand: 19750.

Nach diesem Pot konnte ich endlich ein bisschen Druck machen und erhöhte meinen Stack in den nächsten 2 Stunden auf 22250, relativ risikolos.

Now I understand why it's so easy to play poker in German. It's not quite all German...

The Amero - common currency for North America?

2007-04-25T06:27:43Z

I got a spam today with the following:

The media has deliberately kept its citizens in the dark about the plan to make The United States, Canada and Mexico into one country and to change our dollar to the Amero. It's called the SPP (Security and Prosperity Partnership, http://www.spp.gov). Look up Lou Dobbs and Amero on Google Video and see.

While I normally ignore spam, this one proved to be a bit more interesting than the average. It's also interesting that he emailed me through my LJ email address. But anyway, does anyone else know anything about the proposal for an amero? Living in Europe, the euro has made my life a lot easier... Also, I found an article on the American currency union on Wikipedia and this CNN footage on youtube...

I posted the following message to one youtube video:

Well, I'm an American who has lived in the Netherlands, Canada and now Germany, and I have to say using the euro over in Europe has made life so much more convenient, and I only wish I could have had a similar experience in Canada and the USA. But, first of all the USA should add some color and size to their bills... Why is such a popular currency so easy to counterfeit and so hard for the blind to use? :(

I already got the following replies:

amuzulo - is your post a joke? This is hardly about the currency. It's about the destruction of the USA as we know it. The North American Union is the issue here and if you don't know what that is yet I recommend you find out. If you're American and willing to trade in our Constitution for currency convenience you need to start paying some ATTENTION!!!

SHUT UP YOU DUMB PERSON.

interesting poker hand...

2007-03-26T21:16:39Z

Well, tonight I got second place in a Poker After Dark qualifier (top 2 seats of 180 players move on) which means I will have a seat at the second round tournament of which the top 9 positions move on to the final which wins a seat on the Poker After Dark TV show which has $120,000 in prizes. No, I don't think I'll be in the top 9, but it's cool anyway. Unfortunately the tournament will be at 4:05 am my time. ugh.

In any case, I want to show a crazy hand I played tonight. I still can't believe it...

Well, the bets were up high before the flop and I only had 3-6 unsuited, so, of course I can't call with that. Boy was I ever shocked when I saw the flop...

I would've had the straight on the flop and gained a monster lead in the tournament! Unfortunately I could never have known that and I did play the hand correctly pre-flop. But, boy was I shocked. Look at those hands! Pocket aces, kings, queens and nines. Unbelieveable! BTW, if you want a special 100% bonus on deposits up to $600 on www.fulltiltpoker.com, use the registration code ESPERANTO.

Here's the full run-down for those who care:

Full Tilt Poker Game #2074140522: .COM Poker After Dark Rd 1 (15560196), Table 3 - 150/300 - No Limit Hold'em - 13:55:22 ET - 2007/03/26
Seat 1: mongo1002 (2,500)
Seat 2: Dammn_Str8 (270), is sitting out
Seat 3: amuzulo (16,800)
Seat 5: myque (13,665)
Seat 6: BottomPairTerry (23,050)
Seat 7: BigMac08 (23,305)
Seat 8: bengals11x (18,618)
Seat 9: thestrayone (4,855)
myque posts the small blind of 150
BottomPairTerry posts the big blind of 300
The button is in seat #3
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to amuzulo [6s 3c]
BigMac08 calls 300
bengals11x raises to 600
thestrayone folds
mongo1002 raises to 2,500, and is all in
Dammn_Str8 folds
amuzulo folds
myque calls 2,350
BottomPairTerry calls 2,200
BigMac08 has 15 seconds left to act
BigMac08 folds
bengals11x calls 1,900
*** FLOP *** [4d 5h 7h]
myque checks
BottomPairTerry bets 6,300
bengals11x raises to 16,118, and is all in
myque calls 11,165, and is all in
BottomPairTerry calls 9,818
bengals11x shows [9d 9c]
mongo1002 shows [Ah Ad]
myque shows [Kd Ks]
BottomPairTerry shows [Qd Qc]
*** TURN *** [4d 5h 7h] [Ts]
*** RIVER *** [4d 5h 7h Ts] [Qs]
bengals11x shows a pair of Nines
BottomPairTerry shows three of a kind, Queens
BottomPairTerry wins side pot #2 (9,906) with three of a kind, Queens
myque shows a pair of Kings
BottomPairTerry wins side pot #1 (33,495) with three of a kind, Queens
mongo1002 shows a pair of Aces
BottomPairTerry wins the main pot (10,300) with three of a kind, Queens
BottomPairTerry: yay
mongo1002 stands up
myque stands up
bengals11x stands up
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 53,701 Main pot 10,300. Side pot 1 33,495. Side pot 2 9,906. | Rake 0
Board: [4d 5h 7h Ts Qs]
Seat 1: mongo1002 showed [Ah Ad] and lost with a pair of Aces
Seat 2: Dammn_Str8 didn't bet (folded)
Seat 3: amuzulo (button) didn't bet (folded)
Seat 5: myque (small blind) showed [Kd Ks] and lost with a pair of Kings
Seat 6: BottomPairTerry (big blind) showed [Qd Qc] and won (53,701) with three of a kind, Queens
Seat 7: BigMac08 folded before the Flop
Seat 8: bengals11x showed [9d 9c] and lost with a pair of Nines
Seat 9: thestrayone didn't bet (folded)

i3G Institute's wiki projects

2007-03-21T15:52:11Z

When I tell people that I'm a social software researcher specializing in wikis, that often leads to the question, "What do you do, anyway?" Today I was writing about our current projects to a documentary producer who is making a film about wikis. I decided that it so clearly states what we're doing that I'd stick it in my blog as well. Oh yeah, i3G stands for Interdisziplinäres Institut für intelligente Geschäftsprozesse (Business Processes) and has a nice website (powered by JSPWiki) which I've partially translated to English.

=== WikiCreole ===

A big problem with wikis is that each engine uses its own wiki syntax, which makes it hard for someone to edit a wiki running under one system and then another running under another system. So, we have been working for over a year with wiki developers around the world to create a new "creole" wiki syntax, not to replace a wiki's native syntax, but to be used alongside it. This way visitors of a new wiki would be able to edit using the creole syntax without having to learn its native syntax, thus being more welcome to new visitors. Already in this experimental stage, 9 wiki engines have added support for this with 9 more planning to add support in the future (http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/Engines). This project began as a workshop at WikiSym in Odense, Denmark last year being led by Christoph Sauer, Janne Jalkanen (head developer of JSPWiki), Ward Cunningham (inventor of wikis) and me. I would also invite you to visit the following pages for more information:

- an overview of the project
- the current stable spec
- people involved
- reasoning of specific elements

=== WikiWizard ===

One problem with a lot of document production today is that many users focus on the look rather than the content, because they use applications such as Microsoft Word to formulate their message. On the other end of the spectrum, wiki markup helps people focus on the content rather than presentation, but presents new difficulties for average computer users. An ideal approach would merge content-centered wiki markup with a visual feedback editor to give users the best of both worlds.

This is the approach we have taken developing WikiWizard. Beginning users can use its Word-like interface to produce formatted text, seeing the effects of their text as well as its code surrounding it (see the screencast demo linked below). Thus, if text is made bold using a double asterisk, the user will see the double asterisks around their text while seeing everything in bold. A side effect of this method is that beginning users will learn the wiki syntax naturally as they need it. On the other hand, it will not get in the way of advanced users, who will enjoy getting instant visual feedback as they just type their wiki syntax without using the special interface. It's a win-win situation for both beginning and advanced users.

Links:
- general overview
- screencast showing a demo of WikiWizard in action
- proceedings page from Wikimania
- paper covering the WYSIWiki principle

Joost and Poker

2007-03-18T10:54:35Z

Well, I've been greatly enjoying Joost, thanks to osi. I find most of it is just as bad as regular American TV, except I like their anime, indy film and poker channels. But really, I find myself watching mostly Poker on there. Nice to be able to watch Poker whenever I want... I also ended up buying three cables (yes, three!) to connect my Macbook to my TV set. I had to buy a Mini-DVI to Video (20 EUR), Video to Video (4,50 EUR) and Headphones to Stereo (4,50 EUR). But, watching Internet TV and videos on my real TV is sooo nice. Being able to pause, rewind and fast forward TV is nice too... as well as only having a 30 second ad every 10 minutes or so... and ads at the beginning while it buffers. Smart design. My bandwidth is tolerable for it, so I generally just let a show buffer for 5-10 minutes before watching and then take breaks if it needs to buffer again in the middle. Probably what most amazes me is that it's almost real TV quality. [For those wanting to get on Joost, I don't have any invite codes yet, and already have two friends on my "waiting list".]

But, to fill my poker habit, I found one of the few good poker servers that runs on Mac, Full Tilt Poker. [Yes, it also runs on Windows.] They start you out with 1,000 points in play money which I have now accumulated around 15,000. :) Fun. Anyway, if you want to play there, type the bonus code ESPERANTO and get a nice bonus on your first real money deposit. I don't know if I'll ever play for money there, but I think I'd like to play in one of their tournaments sometime. Any other poker players reading this? I mostly play Texas Hold 'em...

Joost invitation please?

2007-03-09T19:00:03Z

Hey, I'd like to try out the new Joost service. Does anyone have an invite they're willing to give out to a friend? :) If so, please email it to chuckssmith (at) gmail.com. Thanks!!

Conservapedia

2007-03-07T12:51:47Z

Some things never cease to amaze me. Today I found the Conservapedia... i.e. the Wikipedia written from an American Conservative Christian point of view. Wow. The Guardian has a really nice piece on them. The article about Evolution is now named Theory of Evolution and the Abortion article only says negative things about abortion. Really interesting stuff. However, what really shocked me were the logo proposals which contain anything from the Republican symbol between double square brackets to an American flag with a cross in front of it. Wow. Really, wow.

I guess somehow I didn't associate the relationship with Conservative Christians, Republicans, and American Flags so closely... very interesting.

Oh yeah, I'm also guessing we won't see other language versions of the Conservapedia any time soon...

PC vs Mac ad spoofs

2007-02-23T20:54:45Z

These are truly amazing Mac ad spoofs. Oh, and I bought a new Macbook last week. Weeeee! :-)

http://tv.truenuff.com/mac/

Two must-hear IT podcasts

2007-01-31T10:03:05Z

If you're an IT professional, you really have to listen to these two podcasts to see where the future of software is heading:

In other news, our Esperanto social networking site, Amikumu is really picking up now with 350+ members in 60+ countries and 800+ photos (in less than one month of our public beta test). Really amazing watching people come and hearing about their experiences connecting that they would not have had otherwise. The positive comments from members really drives me to keep working on it...

favorite line in WikiCreole

2007-01-09T16:08:32Z

Due to the recent Christmas holidays, I now have to catch up on over two weeks of discussions about WikiCreole. Well, I just came across what I think to be the funniest response ever in WikiCreole discussions:

Welcome Daniel to Creole Wiki! Indeed, the Creole parser for JSPwiki is being developed, but slowly. In the mean time, we try the markup on a number of Wikis using Engines that already have (at least partial) Creole support. Obviously, having to convert all the pages every time there is a change in spec would be very uncomfortable. For now, we must bear with the non-standard syntax this wiki engine uses, and get even more motivated by it, so that our children don't have to suffer the same!

-- RadomirDopieralski, 2006-01-06

Got Lojban?

2006-12-20T22:56:31Z

Funny Lojban comic I took from http://xkcd.com/c191.html

LJ account expiring in 5 days

2006-12-18T11:49:04Z

Hmmm, my LJ account is expiring in 5 days and I'm wondering if it's worthwhile to renew it. I think the only paid feature I ever used was polls... hmmm. Considering that I'll only be making half a salary next year since I'll be working half-time, I'm not sure it's worth it.