It’s Tuesday night and I’m as usual knackered – spent at least 5 hours talking today. So some procratination is bound to do me some good and what’s better than to try my Volito.
Shitty Weather
My first comic strip – “Shitty weather” (inspired by looking out through my window where I see only rain these days!), only images for now – not too complete but now i’m really dead – my bed is calling . . . .Someone remind me please, y the hell did i take this crappy 64K Nomad – 10 mins to upload this comic??? Oh yes it’s the cheapest!!!
Well, this might not sound like big news but it in fact is! The Volito 2 graphics tablet is supposed to be a solely Windows product – the system requirements on the box does not even mention Linux; the systems requirements says only Windows. However, i tried it on Dapper Drake Kubuntu and it works!!!
It does not work perfectly – the mapping is skewed and seems to get worse the longer you use it – but it is still usable. Perhaps with some fine tunings, it can perhaps work reasonably well; I’ll post a few things if i find out. The only thing I did was to install everything related to Wacom and graphics tablet from Adept.
So now I only have to get a software on Linux, that’s as nice as Flash on Windows to draw.
Also, I forgot that in my last post, I’d like to thank Anil (a lot a lot a lot) who looked for this graphics tablet in Malaysia and Hong-Kong before finally getting it in PC World in England. Shipping prices are crazy if u try to order something from Europe to Mauritius!!!
Yes, finally I got it. After months of longing, I finally finally finally got my graphics tablet. It’s not a professional one but I’m not a pro – just like to draw a bit. This graphics tablet is the perfect for beginners – it’s affordable and the quality that u get from it is downright good + it got fab reviews on Amazon.co.uk (Graphics tablet: Volito 2 – Wacom).
So this is my first drawing; guess I got to imporve a lot on that and hope I will .
On that Sunday, the 22nd of Febraury 1999, Joseph Reginald Topize – alias Kaya – “mysteriously” died in a police cell. The circumstances of his death are till today very unclear but there is a general feeling in Mauritius that there was some foul play and this sparked rioting in the country.
Will we ever know the true circumstances behind all these events? I remain skeptical.
In addition to mourning the death of a man, that day we mourned the death of an artist. Kaya had invented a new musical genre, a fusion between the Reggae of Bob Marley and the Mauritian Sega. Seggae he called it and many of his songs wearing the mark of a Mauritian Musical genius have stayed – sime la limiere, ras couyon,….
Since I started investigating Panda3D, I’ve delved a bit into Python (I’ve not been swallowed by the giant snake yet) – can’t dop otherwisem Python is the scripting language in use there! But it gave me the chance to learn a new language! So where can I get a decent editor?
So tried Cream – looked good (and it has a nice name ) but after a while was quite disappointed – compared to C++ and Java, the languages I kind of know, Python uses spaces to delimit end of selection and iteration statements and without a good editor, it becomes quite hard to delimit the end of such blocks! Cream was not helping me at all with that
Panda3D sort of recommends PyPE. So I said why not? To start with, PyPE doesn’t even has an installer – just copy and run it (quite weird for a “modern day” program)! But once this psychological shock overcome, I was pleasantly surprised. PyPE really helps with writing python codes: indentation is so easy to do-thence delimiting loops and selection statements is childplay, it’s not fussy at all to use – just the features u need to use, it comes with a python terminal and (oh delight) there’s even a command window to compile you code.
So if you are looking for a fit editor on Windows, try PyPE. On Linux, I have the cute Kate who just does whatever I ask her to (since Panda3D also runs on Linux).
The number of 3D movies coming out every year is on the rise and last year (2006) we’ve had our load. From Cars to monster house, we’ve had a whole range and it is beyond any doubt that the quality of the animation is improving! However storywise, I wasn’t too impressed – cars which was supposed to be good was far too predictable and I must admit that I’m quite disappointed.
However, 2007 seems to be promising. I’ve heard that Shrek 3 is coming out but I was also very impressed by Ratatouille – a rat who is looking for decent food. The trailer has wet my appetite and so I’m proposing it here.
Enjoy… and hope the movie holds all its promises!!!
The Computer Science & Engineering department – the place where I work – of the University of Mauritius has finally got it’s own website. The address is: http://cse.uom.ac.mu/
There’s still more work to be done on it but now we have a “window on the world” and now people should be able to find us and that include: future students, external examiners, . . . So do visit it coz we’ll try to provide up-to-date information as far as we can.
One more thing, the website is running on Drupal 5.1. It’s really a nice CMS and all that you can do with that is really great especially given that is is totally free (I’ve tried Mambo which is a nice too but I’ve think it’s more complex than Drupal).
Many people seem to treat Valentine’s day with a lot of disdain claiming that it’s only about spending money. Hold on, what festive celebration isn’t without money? Perhaps Christmas or Easter or mother’s day or birthdays or … . Come on, this is ridiculous! We live in material world and u want it or not, all celebrations are about buying gifts and eventually money. If u decide to make it all about money, then ur perception of valentine is skewed!!!
Claim number 2: why choose that specific day to tell to your valentine that u love him/her. Do u choose just mother’s day to tell ur mother that u care for her or is it simply a special day to remind her that she is there and u care abt her. Similarly valentine is just a day where love is especially celebrated and I don’t find anything wrong about that. If something is bad abt that, well stop mother’s day, birthdays, public holidays, international day of the woman, water,… and what not. Again if u choose just that day to tell the person that u luv that they are important to u, something is very in ur relationship.
So don’t take out your issues on others please!!! The especially funny people are those who dislike valentine just to be different. I’m just tempted to laugh or pity them(what a lame way to be different? – r u so desperately common that this is your only way to shine?). They try so hard to scorn at it in so many ways that they only end up making themselves ridiculous like a presenter I saw on TV on Friday that completely lost the plot – St Vas t’en loin!
I’ve started to learn Squeak and as a result Smalltalk sometime back and there is a feature in Smalltalk that I find absolutely amazing.
First of all, if you have heard of Smalltalk, what u’ve heard is probably the usual crap: Smalltalk is the grandfather of most modern OOprogramming languages. But believe me it’s more than that. First of all, grandfather would mean it’s old and near to death – it is old but certainly not dying. It’s not as big as Java is now but it is still well alive and it contains many nice things and what really got my attention is reflection
“In computer science reflection is the process by which a computer program of the appropriate type can be modified in the process of being executed, in a manner that depends on abstract features of its code and its runtime behavior.” – Wikipedia.
In Smalltalk, after you have created an object, you can modify the internal workings of that object’s class and the object remains alive. What more, it will even immediately react to the changes in its class and change its behaviour! This is something that neither Java nor my beloved C++ will do – simply amazing and imagine the consequnces: you have a big system to which thousands of people are connected and u need to patch it coz a major security issue has been discovered. Normally u’d have to log these users off, patch up and reopen everything but with a reflective programming language like Smalltalk, you can modify the code while all objects are alive without having any downtime!!! Awesome isn’t it.
Smalltalk is definitely worth investigating ifu have some time and going though Squeak for that is certainly a nice way to proceed.
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) but after a while was quite disappointed – compared to C++ and Java, the languages I kind of know, Python uses spaces to delimit end of selection and iteration statements and without a good editor, it becomes quite hard to delimit the end of such blocks! Cream was not helping me at all with that 
