Game of Life

It's been some time since my last post. Since then many things happened. Well in fact just one serious thing: my laptop's HD has been fried... :-( At the same time I fell in love with Ubuntu Live CD which I've been using for the past 5 days...

I went to some stores but I couldn't find any IDE HD with more than 80GB capacity, so I'll wait one more day for their supplies to arrive. One of the salesmen told me that they "might" get some IDEs for laptops this Friday. >:-(

Anyway. Today I made a nice little prog that calculates a possible state in Game of Life that will evolve into a specific state after one step. I'm too tired to explain more about the Game of Life so try wikipedia. :-)

Here's what I made with it:

 # ## ## #      #     #                                         
           #            #                                       
  #### ####   ##### ####             ###########  ###########   
 ##   #   #   #  # # #  #                 #            #        
 ###  # # ## ####  #  #   #               #            #        
  #####  ## ##  ## #######                #            #        
#  #  # ##  ######   #  ###               #            #        
   #   # #  ##  ##  ##   ##               #            #        
       ## ###  # ### #####                #   #   ##   #        
    # # # # ##  ##   # ##  #              #   #  #     #        
    # ## #  #    #  # # ## #              #   # #      #        
   ###  # #  ##### ### ###                #   ##       #        
   ##   ## # ## ###  # ### #              #   ##       #        
 ###  ###   #    #   ## #  #              #   #        #        
   #### # # ### #  ## #  #                #   #        #        
    #   ### ######## ######                                     
  #  # # #####  ####### ## # 

To the left is the first state which evolves into what you see to the right. (TrT stands for Tritonio). I simply gave the right state to the program and it calculated the left one. The script uses an algorithm similar to the one I used while making my keyboard.

I am trying to make an "INSHAME" logo right now but, if at all possible, it will take much time due to it's size.

If you are really curious you can find the Lua source code of the program here but it's undocumented, written in the past three hours, and geek-only. ;-)

UPDATE:

Finally the Logo has finished!!!!!!! Here it is!!!

# #     ##  ##    #  #     # #  ##  # #   #  #  ## 
   #            #  #  #            #         #     
  ###   ###    ### #####    ##      ##  ##  # # #  
 ## # ####  # #### # # #    ###    #   # #  ####   
 #  # # #    # ##   #      # ###   # # ##     #   #
  ##   # ##   # ## # ###  #      # ## #  #  #  #   
  ##    # #     ###    #   #####   #  #  ####  ##  
  ##    ##   #   ##       #     #  #  ## #  # ###  
 #  #     #        #   ####  #  #### ###      ##   
  # ###  #  #  ## #    ###    # #  # ### #### ## # 
#   #    #    #     #           #     #  ## #  ##  
#  #       #  #    #   # ## #  #   ##  #          #

This evolves into INSHAME! :-D
I am still improving the algorithm.

Isn't it ironic?

People cry for 21 students that died in an accident.
People cry for the 80 that died from the fires in Greece.
People cry for the 2948 people that died in the WTC.

But people don't cry for her...

What's more tragic? Her and the other 9.7 millions kids per year (1 death per 3.25 seconds)? Or the 21 students? Don't tell me that tragedy cannot be measured. Because it can! Dying from starvation is not the same thing with dying in an accident... And 1 million kids are more than 100 kids.

People don't cry for the thousands of impending deaths because of the huge natural disaster that the fires caused. 2.600.000 acres burned leaving nothing but our future diseases... We will die of cancer, floods or even wars for water, but we mostly care about the 80 that died.

Every single death is a tragedy. I don't expect from someone who lost a friend or a relative not to mourn him because some kids in Africa die. But I expect from everyone else to stop being a hypocrite or illogical (whatever is the case).

If you feel like crying after seeing about the death of 21 kids on the TV and you don't cry about the hundreds that die at the same time, just because the TV didn't report it then you are really illogical. If you don't fell like crying but you still do then you are a hypocrite.

Next time don't cry when hearing about a tragedy on the TV, instead try to understand it logically. Because if you only confront it emotionally it will last very shortly and you will gain nothing from it.

Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04

The new version of Ubuntu has been released! I installed it one day after it got released. Like Gutsy Gibbon, Hardy Heron is really nice and has lots of new features and additions.

Story 1:

Installation:
I made a fresh install on my Acer Aspire 9420. Not a single problem! All of the devices were installed automatically and worked almost perfectly!


Customization:
The first thing I was going to do with Hardy was to install the programs that I used with Gutsy. I was really pleased to see some of them (Emesene, Qlandkarte*, Infon) included in the new repositories, as this meant more time to explore the new release. So I went on and added extra repositories: Ubuntu Satanic Edition (wonderful theme!), Medibuntu, Wine.

Satanic Edition Theme:


After that I started installing Add-Ons for Firefox. Hardy comes with Firefox 3 beta 5 installed. Although it feels much better than version 2, many of my favourite Add-Ons are not compatible with the new beta (yet...).

Firefox 3 beta 5:


I also found a very nice bittorrent client called Deluge. Well, in fact I already knew about Deluge but it's the first time that I actually use it. ;-)

Deluge:


I was amused by how easily accessible are encryption and digital signing capabilities in Hardy. Well in fact you have to run seahorse to create your public-private keypair but after that you can simply use the right-click context menu and the Clipboard encryption panel add on.

How to add the Clipboard Encryption panel add on:


Seahorse is in the background, a digital signature in the foreground:


Finally I had to setup all the Compiz plugins once again because for some reason the backup of my old settings didn't seem to work with Hardy... :-( But the result is nevertheless rewarding. :-)

The four desktops as seen with the Expo plugin:

Story 2:

Installation:
I also decided to install Hardy on my father's PC. I had a serious problem that didn't allow me to run the live CD. After reading about it I managed to solve it by adding the all_generic_ide boot option. It seems that there a major bug in the Live CD but luckily it doesn't affect all PCs. After installing Ubuntu everything worked just fine.


Anyway. Well done to everybody that worked on Hardy! :-)

*(I am not sure if Qlandkarte wasn't available on Gutsy's repos)