Loud
Yesterday was the second day of Neurotic Deathfest, a 2-day death metal festival in 013 here in Tilburg. I visited yesterday (didn’t go the first day though).
The tickets were not that cheap (~ 35 euros, not counting food and drinks), but considering the number of bands (16) and the duration of the whole thing (I was at 013 for about 8 hours, probably more) it’s good value for money. Even the merchanise – there was lots of that being sold – and the food were reasonably priced.
I mostly stayed near the main stage most of the time, where 6 bands played: Severe Torture, Aborted, Illdisposed, Brutal Truth, Entombed, and finally: Behemoth!
Except for Behemoth, I barely knew any of the bands that played so it was kind of a gamble for me there – but it turned out really well. I didn’t find Brutal Truth that great (their drummer was funny though, he sat there in his underwear and made really weird faces), other than that the stuff I didn’t know was at the very least enjoyable 
But then came Behemoth – a band which I’ve been wanting to see live for a long time – and it fucking kicked ass.
The songs they played included Slaves Shall Serve, At the Left Hand ov God, Prometheon, Demigod, From the Pagan Vastlands, Chant for E schaton 2000, Christians to the Lions, Antichristian Phenomenon, Decade of Therion, Slaying the Prophets ov Isa, and probably some others I forgot to mention. In other words, it REALLY kicked ass 
What’s more, in the end I was in reasonably good shape considering the circumstances: I could still hear pretty much normal, my head was still attached to my neck, and my voice was still where it’s supposed to be. Pretty good evening
I’ll see if I can get my hands on some pictures, and assuming I do, I’ll post the link here.
Unfortunately it doesn’t look like there’ll be a whole lot of stuff worth going to in 013 for a while… but two things I am considering to go to would be October 27th in Zwolle (Cannibal Corpse, Dying Fetus, Evocation, Obscura) and November 3rd in Enschede (Behemoth, Devildriver, Scar Symmetry, Arsis). But we shall see
French
This tweakers.net article tells about the French government having passed a law allowing them to cut people who download copyrighted content off from the Internet. This just proves again that the French are just plain weird.
Especially the clause stating that even when cut off those people will still have to pay their monthly fees to the internet provider is just ridiculous. As is the idea that the person who pays for the connection is responsible for what is done over it. Very few connections are used by only one person nowadays, and many of them are on insecure wireless networks.
And no, I do not think that not doing anything about the problem can be justified (and neither can the ridiculous salaries some people from music labels (etcetera) receive). People worked hard to create something, they expect to be paid for that, and they should be. But a ridiculous approach like this is not the way to go 
(For instance, just try making stuff less expensive… I have no objection against buying software and I regularly buy software if I think it is worth buying, but only so long as the price of the software is justified. Cost of development is no excuse, a lower price will lead to more sales and therefore provide at least as much income.)
A democratic government should represent the people. If it does, any decision the government makes can logically never be a controversial one, since the political ideas of the government and the people are the same. But that is clearly not what’s happening here. Apparantly the French government is no longer representing the people, and should step down right away because of that.
A similar issue I read about recently was a proposal to censor child porn websites. While in principle I have nothing against removing child porn from the Internet, it’s the censor – based on a non-disclosed list of blocked websites – that I don’t like. It is merely the first step towards blocking other content as well. The Internet is a free, open source of information and should always remain so
(And of course, the Chinese government could learn a lot from that… they say it’s to protect their citizens, but if everything on the internet is so damn bad for the Chinese, why don’t we just cut off all Internet connections with China? Then they no longer have any bad content to worry about, and the rest of the world won’t miss it either as most Chinese domains contain viruses/malware, or are written in a language that nobody outside China understands.)
Playing (part 3)
Wheee! Things are starting to take shape on my little PIC project here 
The code to control a character LCD is progressing nicely… it can now automatically align text on the screen and stuff like that. It’s also handling custom characters quite well. The nice thing with these screens is that you can display most ASCII characters on them, but also a number of customized characters (which are displayed by using the ASCII values that are normally non-printable characters, eg 0×00, 0×01, 0×02, etcetera).
Obviously, since I’m working in C the 0×00 one can be a bit of a problem at times, because in C it’s also the string termination character (but I can still send a 0×00 manually to the screen… so no big deal).
Also, in addition to powering the LCD, I also have a flashing LED once again! Only this time, it’s flashing at a pretty accurate 1 second interval, and is doing so using timers and interrupts. Once every 50 000 microseconds, an interrupt tells a variable to go up by one; once it reaches 25, we know that a second has passed
(If you’re wondering what the hell an interrupt is: when certain events happen, such as a timer reaching its maximum value or the state of a pin changing, that may generate an interrupt, at which point the processor jumps to a certain location in the program to handle it. Basically it’s calling the processor’s attention away from whatever it’s doing to handle something that is urgent and which probably should be handled right now. Afterwards it’ll get back to what it was doing before the interrupt happened. It’s like you’re walking in the grocery store and your phone rings: you stop to pick it up, and when you’re done you continue shopping. It’s the same principle really (you’re the processor, and your phone just generated an interrupt to get your attention to the fact that someone’s calling you). Your PC also does this, but you don’t notice it normally.)
That may seem a bit elaborate, and well, erm, it is elaborate, really. It takes a good amount of code, as well as a bunch of calculations to make sure that the timer runs properly. But I’m learning the PIC to tell what time it is, and I’m just using the flashing LED to make it indicate to me that a second has passed. For some reason that remains unexplained sprintf() doesn’t seem to be working (and it’s a bigass function too… you’ll probably never notice it on a PC, but on a PIC the size of it is significant), so it’s going to be difficult making it actually show the time. But I’ll find a way
Playing (part 2)
As I mentioned in my post ‘Playing’, debugging PIC software is quite often not nearly as easy as debugging PC based software. My (current ) lack of experience with both PICs and C didn’t help a lot either. Though I have managed quite easily to pass the ‘hello world’ equivalent of blinking a LED on and off, the next step – actually displaying ‘Hello World!’ on an LCD – was less easy.
I had the basic code for writing instructions, and the actual instructions, to the LCD correct. It’s a standard 16×2 character LCD with a HD44780-compatible controller (you can control one of those using the parallel port on a PC actually). I have a great little simulation tool which has a module to simulate the display, but of course I couldn’t take the easy path for my actual hardware implementation.
My actual hardware implementation was a bit more tricky, because I wasn’t connecting the LCD directly to the PIC as the simulator assumes. I’m using a shift register for the data lines, which greatly reduces the number of pins needed on the PIC, which is good news because it doesn’t have a whole lot of I/O pins. I had a couple things wrong in sending data out of the shift register. (Basically, a shift register is a simple chip that accepts a serial input (2 lines) and translates that to a parallel output (8 lines).) It may have included sending the bits in the wrong order.
Obviously, because the instructions that did arrive at the LCD arrived in reverse order, they didn’t mean a whole lot and the most interesting thing I was able to do was blink the backlight on and off.
But a bunch of LEDs and some added delays allowed me to see exactly what was going on, and now finally, I have a display that shows ‘Hello World!’
I’ll take a picture later.
(And, further debugging should be relatively easy, because I now have a way to let the PIC tell me what it’s doing ).
And another thing… There’s a new menu item on the top, ‘PIC programming’. I’m writing a load of PIC-related stuff which could possibly be interesting to someone. Partially because even at this point, where there isn’t much actual content in it, it’s already gotten me up at least 5 ranks on WhatPulse (I’m 803rd of the world as I type this ^^). For the moment it remains inaccessible to anyone but me, but some day…
Fucking terrible
I am NEVER touching anything from Western Digital again.
Well, except maybe for the purpose of destroying it.
I have two of their wretched pieces of shit that they dare to call a hard drive, both roughly a year old. One has completely failed about a month ago and the other one seems close to doing exactly the same. I managed to rescue nearly all data from the first disk, and I’m evacuating the second one right now (to whatever spare disk space I can find; those two disks made up the bulk of my storage space).
Using these pathetic excuses for a piece of hardware is utterly impossible without getting a very strong urge to throw them out a window from the top floor of the highest building you can find.
Die, WD. Die the most slow and painful death you could possibly imagine. Then come back from the grave and die the same death again. Repeat until the end of time.
Theme
I’ve been playing around with the theme of the site a bit. I felt that the previous theme, while not looking bad at all, was too difficult to read (and too difficult to make stuff appear how I want it to appear). Also, since it was intended for a much older version of the blogging software, things didn’t really work 100% anymore. I’m almost satisfied with this one now, and will probably stick to it
Also, don’t forget the post(s) below this one!
Edit (27-04): I’ve tweaked the template a bit further and upgraded the software as well. I’m going to stick with how it is for now
Towels
Omg! Two posts in a very short time!
I would just like to make you aware of the fact that, at the time of writing, there are 38 days left until Towel Day (which will be on May 25th). Towel Day is a tribute to, and memorial for, Douglas Adams, the author of (amongst others) the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which, if you handn’t noticed yet, is one of the more brilliant five-part trilogies this world has to offer.
If you hadn’t, I strongly encourage you to read it 
(Also, I recently watched the original 1981 TV series, which unfortunately is only 6 episodes. As you can expect from a TV programme from that time, the quality isn’t really what people are used to nowadays, and the books are infinitely much better, but if you liked the books (in particular the first two, because the series more or less covers those) it’s worth checking out.)
Progress
Article about Windows 7 on Tweakers.net (Dutch)
I (sort of) read the article, and one sentence immediately stood out from the rest:
“De werkbalk is door de Microsoft-ontwikkelaars flink onder handen genomen en het resultaat kan gezien worden als een van de belangrijkste vernieuwingen van Windows.”
English: “The task bar has been drastically overhauled by the Microsoft-developers and the result can be considered one of the most important innovations in Windows.”
Great. A whole new OS release, and the most important new feature is a task bar that looks a little different.
When will Microsoft learn that people are not willing to spend money on a product that only makes progress for the sake of making progress? I mean, if the taskbar image is the most important thing you can change, you should really consider just not making a new version for a while because apparantly what you have is good as it is.
Just look at Microsoft Office. Personally I’m using Office XP, partly because I can’t be bothered to get a newer version, but also because the one I have works just fine for me. I’m used to how this version works, I can generally find what I need quickly, and it’s easily got all the features I’d ever need to use. Upgrading would mean having to get used to a different interface, having to learn how things have changed since previous versions – not to mention the pricetag – and what do I get in return? A couple new features that I didn’t want anyway? The .docx file format? I don’t even want .docx, .doc is doing what it’s designed for perfectly well, and is in much more widespread use.
The same basic thing goes for Windows Vista or Windows 7. I just can’t see any reason why I’d want to use those over XP. Again, it’d only be a lot of effort to get used to those systems while I’m used to XP and I like working with XP. The only reasonably valid argument I can find for “up”grading is that XP is (relatively) old, but however old it may be, it’s working fine (well – usually – but that goes for any Windows version). And having more of my PC’s resources used up by the OS isn’t really a selling point either (Microsoft advertises that Windows 7 is lightweight and can also run on netbooks – but why does a lightweight OS need to take up 16 gigabytes of hard drive space? XP fits on a single CD for fuck sake, and I can think of a thousand more interesting things to fill my hard drives with).
Other applications are pretty much the same for me. I don’t usually bother installing a patch for a minor upgrade or fix (as long as it’s not a bug or whatever that has been bothering me). If I see there’s a new version I usually check out the changelog first, so that I know if it’s worth bothering to upgrade, and if it is, I know what has actually changed.
Oh well, maybe I’ll just switch to Linux some day. I’m already strongly considering making a dual-boot thingy, partly because some things are just easier to do in Linux. And until then, I ain’t upgrading anything unless it’s of at least some advantage to me to do so.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
00, 06
A recent TV show that mentioned something about efficient use of energy – I don’t recall exactly which, but there’s lots of those nowadays – once again made me think about the subject.
People keep searching for more efficient, more clean ways of getting energy. Obviously fossil fuels will only last so long and power needs to come from somewhere. All existing forms of ‘green’ power have their downsides – biogas and related methods still rely on burning stuff, wind power requires ugly structures, solar power is often not efficient enough, and nearly all known methods require so much energy produce that it won’y pay off for a good while to come. And in the meanwhile, the only viable solution we will have for the next 30 or so years, nuclear power, is falsely being regarded as dangerous by many. At the lack of an alternative everybody just sticks to what they know, and mankind happily keeps on consuming.
The real issue however is not energy production. The real issue is not the lack of decent food, water, health care and schooling in the so-called third world countries. The real issue is not the unwillingness of the modern man to reach out and help another man, nor is is it the economy or poor moral values in younger generations. The real issue is simply the source of all those problems: mankind itself.
The human being is above all a selfish creature that seeks nothing but its own pleasure. It will do so by indulging in food, engaging in activities it percieves as fun, and by pursuing the primary goal of any living thing: survival through procreation. In this process it keeps on consuming the natural resources of the planet it lives on without regard of the future, without regard of the ‘big picture’. The result? A heavily over-populated planet, that is in no way mentally prepared to face change.
Shortage of food is not created by a supply that is too small, but by a demand too large. Sickness does not spread due to the lack of a cure, but rather because it gets the perfect chance to do so in a densely populated environment. Lack of sufficient energy and natural resources comes not from a supply that is too small or inefficient, but from overuse of what is available. The problem behind every problem is simply that the human species is too large – but does anyone dare to face it?
No, instead we keep giving to so-called charity and search the cures for diseases, so that our numbers may grow even further and that we live even longer. The weakest aspects of the human mind, most notably morality and pointless fear of the inevitable end, has brought nature’s job of natural selection to a near standstill simply because we cannot stand to see another man die. For billions of years nature has kept a perfect balance on this planet, but at some point one species broke that circle in endless pursuit of larger numbers and longer life. Only a few hundred years ago a man would have been considered very old if he reached the age of 25, whereas if a single person of that age dies nowadays it gets proclaimed as a tragedy.
The solution is simple. I am not sure as to if it is still the case today, but at least once there was a Chinese law forbidding any couple to have more than a single child. Imagine that that would be the case once again, worldwide. In addition, allow anyone to end his or her life if he wishes so, do not attempt to treat an illness that will be fatal anyhow. Stop attempting to improve the duration of life and stop attempting to do so in so-called third-world countries, but let nature do what it is best at for a change.
In a matter of somewhere between 40 and 60 years the world’s human population will have been halved. Global energy usage is at a point where nuclear fusion and/or solar power will easily be capable of sustaining the relatively low needs, and there is no emission at all. Reduced need for space allows forests to recover as well as allow many kinds of animals to flourish once again. Yes, the economy will have “suffered” – but only because of a globally smaller demand – remember that growth for the sake of growth is pointless. Instead of spending 20 or so years waiting for the end a man just accepts his death as a natural part of existence, not as something to be feared; partly because of the realization that an individual who is unable to contribute to society is nothing but a burden to it. However smaller, the quality of life for the remaining human kind is much higher, no longer facing self-caused destruction.
At the present course, there may one day be more efficient forms of producing energy (or rather, obtaining it). Increased availabilty only stimulates use, and the population doubles every hundred or so years – in addition to living longer and longer. Natural resources and food will become scarce and it is only a matter of time before major issues – including war – arise. And it will be either war, harsh environmental conditions, or shortage of food that forcibly kills off most of the precious little planet.
For billions of years the sole purpose – if you can call it a purpose – of life has been nothing but survival and procreation. Finally, life has reached the point where, in order for it to survive, it must realize that endless survival may very well cause extinction, whereas death eventually makes way for survival.
It arrived
Well, I’ve finally got the parcel I mentioned in my previous post.
The box:
The actual content of the box (it was nearly impossible to get the picture sharper, the thing is very small):
For reference, I’ve added a pencil in this picture:
And then, I’m not even going to use it. I made a little mistake with the part number, giving me these instead of a slightly different one (which is the only one I can use).