Fix my blog

Now I remember the other reason I quit blogging. My fucking layout is so screwed. I just spend the last two and a half hours tweaking it, and it still isn't right, and I give up. At least you can read it. Unless, of course, you're using Internet Explorer, in which case the sidebar doesn't show up. I don't know why. Maybe it's because your browser sucks? You're missing out. If you can fix it, let me know how, because I'm not willing to relearn all this crap right now. Hell, I never really learned it in the first place. I have no idea where some of the crap in my CSS code came from, honestly. Once upon a time, it just fucking worked, by some act of god. Maybe it's blogger's fault? Who cares.

Hello! Umm...hello?

OK, before you say anything, I know it's been a long time. A really, really long time. I don't know what you expect me to say, but I've had other shit on my mind lately. The truth is, I should have been blogging all along. The reason I quit was because someone that I didn't really want to read my blog stumbled across it "by accident" and humiliated me over it. It was wrong, and overall, I would say detrimental to my well being. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Even though I'm writing for an audience of one, myself, the fact that it is public for anyone else to see makes this therapeutic. I think maybe it's because when I'm writing for everyone(and no one), I'm not trying to fool myself. My agenda changes from focusing on the way something feels, to describing what that something is, and that often leads to me feeling a different way about it. For that reason, there are a lot of drafts that I will probably never post, because I can't write more than a couple of paragraphs before my whole perspective on that subject goes through some kind of shift and I'd have to start over for it to make any kind of sense. Does that make any sense? Oh well, who cares. I've wasted a lot of time lately.
I'd say a lot has changed since I last talked to ya, but in truth, I have no idea. A lot has happened, but whether any of it is significant or not will have to be the subject of another post. I don't even know if I have what it takes anymore. What if all my future posts come out as incoherent rants about some minor event in my life? I guess then I would know that nothing much has changed within me. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. I'll have to re-read my old posts and get back to you on that one. On second though, that sounds horrifying. I seem to recall some rather sophomoric posts about my political views and some acidic diatribes about my past. The past couple of years have mellowed me out a little. Or have they? How the fuck should I know. That's why I'm here. This is my chance at rediscovery, I suppose. Hope you like it. If you don't, suck my balls.

Happy Belated New Year, Everybody

It's 2006! Hope everyone is having a great year so far. I didn't even bother making a resolution. I probably should have, though, because my resolution from last year worked, more or less. 2005 was a year of getting my shit together. There is still shit to get together, but some order of contentedness has returned to my life. It's hard to believe the decade is half over already, but I'm optimistic about the rest of it, for some reason.

I have been really bad about posting, in case you didn't notice, which I'm quite sure you have, but, hey...fuck off. Sorry, I didn't mean that. I'm posting now, aren't I? Just because I forget sometimes that I have a blog doesn't mean that I've given up on it. I just don't have a whole lot to get off my chest these days. And my muse must have died(probably of boredom), because my inspiration to write seems to have flown the coop.

It's not that I'm uninspired...I'm just inspired in a different direction right now. My compass for that sort of thing is sort of wobbly, however, so it'll take me some time to figure out what it's trying to point to, I think.

I still haven't said anything, have I? Am I rambling? Do I always ramble? Am I doing it again? Is there a point to any of this?

I'm working on updating the Xbox modification article I wrote a few posts back. I recently went through a huge hassle of physically removing the hard drive from my xbox, and plugging into my PC. It's kind of cool that it's even possible to it, but I could have totally fried my Xbox if I wasn't careful. I'm not sure exactly what happened to cause my Xbox to crash, but it can be prevented with proper precautions. Read more about it in a little while on the updated "Build a media center PC for $150(or so)" post.

Just when things were getting good...

This has been, by far, the worst day of the year for me. I've been sitting home alone all day, with no one to talk to. My roommate is, shall we say, incapacitated for who knows how long. That is, unless I can come up with $50,000 to bail him out of jail, where he's being held for something, and I don't even know what!

This totally blows. Not only is he one of my best friends, but he's really the only person here in Louisville that I can count on. I miss him a lot, and I worry about him constantly. Who am I going to go out clubbing with now? Who's going to be my moral support? Who's going to send all the girls I think are cute my way? This dude has been there for me in a way that only a handful of people in my life have ever been there for me. I love him like a brother. I wouldn't be where I'm at today if it weren't for him, and right now I need him more than ever, and I can't even talk to him. I know his problems are way worse than mine right now, and that just makes it even harder. That fucker just made me lose a contact. Yes, I'm crying like a little bitch right now.

I feel like my life just got ripped out from under me. I'm gonna have to find a new roommate, but I don't think I'll be able to find anyone who can afford our place. I'm gonna have to move, and start over again, and that just fucking kills me. A week ago I was telling my Mom how I've never been happier with the way things were going for me. Everything felt like it was coming together, and I was so grateful! And now I just feel like I'm going to lose it all, and I'm miserable, and lonely. I need to talk to someone, and no one is answering their phone or calling me back. I'm always everyone elses shoulder to cry on, and now I need a fucking shoulder. It hurts me to the core to know that people I care about only think of me as a fairweather friend.

OK. That's all. This isn't helping.

OK. I'm gonna tell you something, but you've got to promise not to laugh. I just became a vegetarian. It's not a spiritual or moral thing, or me showing a more sensitive side. It's not a plea to save the animals, or the enviroment, or to stop world hunger, either. It's not that they are bad reasons, in fact they're a motivating factor for this decision of mine.

I've got a few vegetarian friends. I used to pick on them, saying "Humans are built to be omnivores," or worse, "If we're not supposed to eat meat, then how come this steak tastes so goddamned good?" Well, someone convinced me to give it a shot. I was planning on being kind of half-hearted about the whole thing, and eventually lapse back into eating meat.

I had all these preconceptions about vegetarians being treehugging wimps who couldn't handle the thought of an animal dying to feed them. I thought it couldn't possibly be as healthy as eating vegetables and meat. And, after all, aren't these animals bred specifically to feed us? I realized that I had opinions, but no evidence to back it up. I was ignorant on the matter. So, I read into it.

I read that it takes 17 pounds of edible plant material to produce one pound of meat. Meaning, if everyone were a vegetarian, we'd have 17 times the amount of food to eat, which would practically solve the world hunger problem on it's own. Not that I expect that to happen. I'm a realist, not a moron. I also read that 40% of South American rainforests have been destroyed in order to make pastures for cattle, and that 400 million acres of topsoil are lost each year due to erosion solely from livestock pastures. That's a lot of land lost forever, just for some fucking burgers.

I also found out that although we have the teeth of animals that ought to be omnivores, we don't have the digestive tract to match. Carnivorous and omnivorous animals typically have a short digestive tract, so that meat is expelled before it has the chance to putrify and release toxins into the blood stream. Well, as it turns out, we have a rather long digestive tract, which is intended to slowly absorb nutrients as food passes through the body, a system ordinarily found animals with strictly vegetarian diets.

But what got me the most was a list of famous vegetarians. Of course, it listed a lot of celebrities who are vegetarian, like Moby and Alicia Silverstone. It also listed a lot of people I wouldn't expect, such as Weird "Al" Yankovich, Hank Aaron, and Michael Jackson. I don't idolize celebrities. My idols are long dead: Socrates, Buddha, Da Vinci, the people we should really look up to. Well, guess who's names were on the list? Yup. All of the above. Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Edison, too. Virtually all of the minds that I respect the most were on the list of vegetarians. There has got to be something to that.

So, I'm going to give it a serious try. So far, it's been pretty easy. I hardly ever ate beef to begin with, except for an occasional hamburger. I never cared much for pork. I will definitely miss seafood, shrimp in particular, although it was a pretty occasional thing for me anyway. Chicken is going to the hardest, since it's always kind of been a staple for me.

Hehe...that's two things I've quit in a month. What's next?

It's my seventh day sober. I feel normal, or about as close to normal as I get. I really thought it would be worse than this. I thought I'd be moodier, but really I think I'm a bit more stable. I have a whole lot more energy, and feel more "in tune". My attention span seems broader, and my memory seems to be on its way back to normal. I'm surprised at how much it has affected my sleeping habits. I'm in bed earlier, and have been waking up without the help of an alarm clock, which has never happened before. I recall probably 5 times as much detail from my dreams as before, which is great, except I've been getting memories from my dreams mixed up with memories from real life. Sort of confusing.

On the negative side of things, I'm a lot more anxious these days. I'm hoping it will pass, but I dunno. I think a lot of it stems from boredom. I really need a new hobby, but I've been feeling sort of apathetic towards any potential prospects. The closest thing to a new hobby I have found is getting drunk more often, which is not exactly how I would like to resolve my problems. Maybe it's time for me to get a chick.

I've been thinking a lot about going back to school, and it's beginning to seem more and more appealing. It's something to do other than work and sit in this chair check slashdot.org umpteen times a day. I'm still pretty clueless as to what I want to go to school for. Maybe being sober will help me get back in touch with the things that I am good at. I guess we'll see.

Anyhow, I apologize for this remarkably dull and humorless post. Ah, who cares. I get about 2 hits a week on my blog these days, and I'm not surprised or concerned about it. But, if you're reading this far, I appreciate it and hope that you'll check out some of my higher-quality posts. LOL

Drugs Are Really Enticing - The Final Chapter?

I remember reading in a textbook during D.A.R.E. classes in elementary school that marijuana is not an addictive drug, and that it has no withdrawal symptoms. And for the last ten years or so, I've never seen marijuana as a threat to my health, and have smoked it accordingly. No...I have smoked it in more than just mere accordance. I smoked it with reverence. I smoked it with passion. I smoked it a lot.

I bring this up because it has been about 21 hours since I last smoked, and I am definitely feeling withdrawal symptoms. It was all I could do to get off the couch and walk all of 10 feet to the computer. I'm tense. I'm irritable. I'm tired. I'm restless. And, as enthusiastic as I was about quitting when I took my last hit, now I'm fighting this internal war over whether it was a mistake or not.

What the hell am I supposed to do? I've been stoned for so long that I forgot what it was like to go through a whole day sober. It has proved to suck. I try to think about how much money I'll save by not smoking, then I think to myself "What else are you going to do with that $50 in your wallet? Besides, you get paid on Friday." Part of me says that's absurd, and the rest of me thinks I should do it just to spite the lamer part.

Fucking sobriety...

So anyway...expect more lucid(and hopefully less pissy) posts from me in the coming days.

Build a Media Center PC for $150(or so)

This is gonna be a more technical post, to those of you who may have read my blog before. But, if you have an XBox, or want a media center PC for your home theater setup, and don't want to spend a ton of cash, keep reading.

You won't find the killer application for the XBox at EBGames, or Best Buy. You won't find it at your local import shop, either. In fact, I'm pretty sure it crosses a lot of legal boundaries. But man, is it amazing! And it's totally free. Well, sort of.

It's called XBox Media Center, or XBMC for short. It's an open source program with a TON of features. It can play your DVDs(with or without the Xbox remote control), your CD's, your Picture CD's, and is capable of accessing all of the Samba shares on your home network, so you don't fill up the measley 8GB Xbox hard drive.

The only downside to the program is that it requires a modified Xbox in order to run the program. There are basically two routes you can take in order to accomplish this. You can buy what is called a modchip, which requires taking apart your Xbox, and adding a chip to the motherboard that will bypass the Microsoft proprietary BIOS, and thus allowing you to run an alternative BIOS that won't require programs to be "signed". The newest generation of modchips are feature packed and supposedly a cinch to install. You do however risk totally frying your XBox.

However, there is a simpler, not to mention cheaper, method of modifying your XBox. It's called softmodding, and it's really pretty ingenious how it works. There are a few XBox games out there that have bugs in them that will allow you run arbitrary code with a properly designed game save file. In my case, I used 007 - Agent Under Fire. It is a horrible game, fortunately, so you should be able to find it used and very cheap. You want to get the original version, not the XBox Classics version(or whatever it's called). If it's unavailabe, try MechAssault or Splinter Cell. I haven't used either, but there is information out there that will get you to step 2. While you're at the game store, pick up an Action Replay for the XBox. I got one for $20, and the game for $10 at EBGames about a year ago, so I doubt it's any more expensive or any cheaper now. You might want to pick up a second XBox while you're at it. Just in case =) I've heard that it's possible to make a USB pen drive function like a memory card, but I haven't tried that yet, but I did get a pen drive for Christmas. So, if I try it out, I'll let you know how it's done.

Step 1-
Download a good FTP client(I hear FlashFXP works well for you Windows users), and a good IRC Client(mIRC is probably the most popular for windows). Start up mIRC(or whatever client floats your boat. I recommend BitchX), and connect to an EFNet server, such as irc.efnet.net, and join the #xbins channel. Now, go ahead and start up FlashFXP. We only have a limited time to connect to the FTP server, so go ahead and have it ready to go. You're going to be connecting to ftp://distributions.xbins.org, with your IRC nickname as the username and the password is emulation. Don't hit the connect button just yet, though. Go back to the #xbins channel and type "/msg xbins !list", and it will send you back a message telling you all the connection details I just described, so just go back to your FTP Client and connect.

Navigate to the /XBOX/exploits/_Packages/UXE Auto Installer 007-MA-SC/ directory, and download the UXE_Installer_007_FINAL_Adoubeur.rar. Go ahead and browse around, if you like, and download whatever sounds cool. There are a ton of emulators for various consoles, and some cool applications like a web browser for your XBox. You can play with all that later, though. The 007 file your downloaded is basically a file that's structured just like an XBox save game, in particular one designed in order to exploit a glitch in the way that 007 reads save game files, boots a fake bios, and allows you to run unsigned programs, in our case, a pseudo-dashboard which will allow us to install UnleashX as a more permanent dashboard. You'll need to have your action replay plugged in(with the memory card, of course), and have the software for it installed on your PC and ready to go. You're basically just transferring the handcrafted fake save game to the card, which you will in turn insert into your Xbox controller. Unrar the file you downloaded from xbins, and drag and drop the AgentUnder_BONDAUF.zip

Install BitTorrent if you aren't using it already. It allows you to download huge files pretty quickly. In this case, we're downloading a less than huge file, a precompiled version of XBox Media Center. Go to XBox-Sky and find a relatively recent copy of XBMC. I'm using the 10-12-05 version, but the project has been cranking out releases like mad lately. Get whatever is seeded best. It should amount to a pretty quick download, and will almost certainly be done by the time you have made it through the next step. Once it's done, go ahead and unzip it into it's own folder. XBMC would be a good folder name, but it's up to you. Open up the XboxMediaCenter.xml file in your text editor of choice, and make any appropriate changes. You'll be able to do this later, if you want.

Step 2-
If you don't already have your XBox hooked up to your home network, go ahead and do that. You do have a router, right? If not, you'll need an ethernet crossover cable. You can buy one, or sacrifice an old cable. Go ahead and pop in your memory card, with the fancy save game, and start up 007 - Agent Under Fire. Don't waste time playing the game- it is no GoldenEye. At least it was cheap. Tap buttons repeatedly, if you like, or wait patiently for the game to tell you to Press Start. Load a mission, and choose to load a game from your memory card. The screen will blank, but don't worry, because BAM! The screen should be showing the application embedded in your save game file. What's that? It's in French? Vous ne parlez pas francais? Damnit, do you want me to hold your hand? You could probably figure it out yourself, but OK. You should be seeing an oddly childish looking menu screen with the first option listed as "Backup fichiers system". Go ahead and do this. It will backup your xbox's c-drive to e:\Backup(on the xbox, not your PC). The next option should say "Backup de l'eeprom". Go ahead and do this too. I can tell you from experience that you won't regret it. This will take you to a different program, but it's still in French. Choose the "Backup de l'eeprom" option again. Look, you've made the program happy. Next, Choose the "Retour au menu principal." It means "return to the main menu", you dumbass. After a brief pause, you'll be back into the blue and purple ugly screen. Wait a second, and it ought to tell you what your Xbox version is right below the options(in black text). Burn that number into your brain, or just reference it again in a second. There are two options you can choose from. One says "Installer UXE sur Xbox 1.0a to 1.5", the other says "Installer UXE sur Xbox 1.6". Guess which you need based on the number you saw earlier. If you have a later version, I honestly don't know if you are shit out of luck or not. Sorry. Anyway, that will install UXE, and everything should be good to go.

Load up FlashFXP and connect to your Xbox. I believe the exploit defaults to 192.168.0.7, so connect to that with the username as xbox and password as xbox. Navigate to the E/Backup/ and download everything in there.

Take out the game, and restart your XBox. It should now start up with a new dashboard, instead of the old XBox one, which you won't miss, but are free to access at any time. Congratulations! Your XBox is now softmodded. But we're not done.

Now, go back to your PC and fire up your FTP client again. Connect to the IP address for your XBox, using xbox as the username AND the password.Navigate to the /E/ folder, and create a new folder called xbmc. Transfer the contents of the XBMC folder, you created earlier into the apps directory.

Restart your Xbox. You should now be able to open XBox Media Center through your dashboard. Sweet. Play around with it. Pop in a DVD or a real CD, not a burned one. It should play just fine. If you have the advanced or hidef a/v kits for the XBox, you should have surround sound enabled, and you are able to play around with your HDTV resolutions if applicable. It comes with some killer visualations, like MilkDrop, which you might have seen with WinAmp. XBMC is totally skinnable(as are most other homebrew XBox applications), but the new default skin is pretty sufficient.

Now, you can edit your XBoxMediaCenter.xml file to access and Windows shares you have, or you can install any XBMC compatible file server onto your PC and share files that way as well. I like to use BitTorrent to download entire albums or movies, and set my PC up to share those with my Xbox, and it works like a charm. XBMC can look up album reviews, movie reviews, download Album and DVD covers. You can install various scripts to access various ShoutCast stations, or to watch media on sites like iFilms. I can spend all day playing with it.

Step 3-
You can either leave XBMC as it is, or you can configure it to load up right away when you turn on your XBox without a disk in it. You'll need to back up the HackDash.xbe file in /E/Systeme/Dashboard/ folder folder, and so go ahead and download that. Now move the default.xbe file from your /E/xbmc/ folder to the /E/Systeme/Dashboard/ folder, and rename it to HackDash.xbe. Load up your XboxMediaCenter.xml file, and edit the tag to match the path to your XBMC folder, ie E/xbmc/, and move that file into the /E/Systeme/Dashboard/ folder. Restart your Xbox, and voila! You've got your very own Media Center PC.