Apple earned $13.06 billion dollars on $46.33 billion dollars of revenue in the 4th quarter of 2011. It was a very Apple Christmas. People all over the internet are livid with Apple’s success.

The internets is saying Apple is greedy because they use labor based in China to build their products. Well everyone does, they could not be compeditive in anyway without using the highly agile and responsive manufactures that just happen to be located in China. Apple has a very public policy that has been made just for these suppliers.

These same loudmouths are sighting the use of Open Source Software (OSS) in OS X and iOS as a bad thing. They are acting like Apple does not give back, well they need to spend some time looking though http://opensource.apple.com I’m sure it will be all Greek to these pretentious jerks. The 1% of this group will be the hardcore *BSD or Linux users, you have to wonder why they are whining as Apple has made their OSs of choice so much better though the countless lines of code & testing given back to OSS projects.

I’m not an Apple fanboi, I use the best tool for the job and currently OS X is the best tool for *NIX based web services development. It is the best for content creation. It is the best for everyday computing (no viruses or malware). It took Apple moving to x86 for me to make the switch.

Apple is not evil, they are not greedy, Apple is doing what any company dreams of. They are designing products that a two year old can pickup and just use without help. They are entering enterprise computing not by the loading dock but carried in under the arms of their executives and knowledge workers. They are replacing the $1500 notebook computer with a $500 tablet and a bluetooth keyboard for millions of students.

People complain Apple has closed ecosystems that force you to be locked in. This is the company that forced the recording industry to remove the requirements of DRM on music files. This the company that has released the kernel of their OS open source. These people whine that they can’t make their iPhone look like ass. The reason why Apple made $13.06 billon dollars is because of these ecosystems and the way their products work. Of course they are going to protect what makes them special.

I’m done ranting about stupid people, I do fear that if my startup is a quarter as successful as I hope I’ll gain my own haters.

Someone want to try to explain this to me? (Taken with Instagram at Shandong)

I am constantly banging my head on a few things when it comes to ruby and I think a lot of other people have the same issues but have not quite put their finger on it. The whole multiple versions of the language and user-land gem sets along with server software being tied to this pile of spaghetti is just wrong.

1. RVM sucks. There is no reason why a user should have a different version of a ruby than the system. We live in a world of mass virtualization if you need a different version of ruby for a different app, then virtualize it. RVM makes a huge mess of production deployments of code.

2. RBENV is almost there. I think the author, Sam Stephenson, father of prototype and many other very important projects over the last decade saw the same mess and fixed it. However the fix is still too developer-y. It also assumes you want more than one version of the ruby compiler on the system for some reason.

3. Passanger does not belong in some user’s directory. This is a major part of the server setup, it is what makes ruby go with apache. It needs to be installed into the system not user land.

I know you’re going to say “but you don’t need to install four versions of ruby, just use one” and “use sudo to install passenger and it’s not in the user land” these are options and very hackish, these should be the defaults not the hacks.

All of this should not be in my way, JBOSS, Tomcat, hell even PHP does not cause any of these installation / configuration / setup issues.

I can’t wait for the emails and tweets from neckbeards telling me L2P or RTFM. The priorities are wrong, big should be the target not touchy feely dev cuddles.

cnnmoneytech:

Proving yet again that elected politics and Twitter are a dangerous mix (Exhibit A: Anthony “terrible mistakes” Weiner), Senator Chuck Grassley is fending off a Twitter hijack this morning. The attacker took a few shots at the PIPA/SOPA mess — Grassley co-sponsored PIPA…

That’s right all you non sellwood people you pay what you’re worth extra scratch cause you’re not lucky enough to love in the bestest ‘hood in portland. (Taken with Instagram at Sellwood)

I hope that this sticks (lots of water, I doubt it) till morning and geek can go out and play. I really do think out of our family he misses snow the most. He will always be a puppy in snow. I guess when you raise a dog in the great white north it is a given. (Taken with instagram)

I am not a great speller, at times my grammar is juvenile at best. However when communicating with the general public in a business setting I am succinct and true to my message. The creator of this permanent sign must have flunked their ESL class. This is offensive that Target cares so little that their snide sign has such poor grammar. (Taken with Instagram at Target - Jantzen Beach)

Equipment in Star Wars: The Old Republic is not what MMO players or RPG players would expect. Yes there are the typical different levels of items that are ranked based on quality and level but BioWare got tricksy with their take on “orange” level items. Each orange can be upgraded indefinitely. Once you find items that you like the look of you can, by changing the modification slot items upgrade the item to your current level. Another benefit is you can change the stats of an item so it will work for different specs. For instance a tank item can be made to work for a damage dealer. With this system you can conceivably wear the same clothes from the start of the game into and through end-game raiding. World of Warcraft has something like this in their latest patch, magical items can be, for gold, made to look like another magical item. This enables a player to dress the way they want. I like the The Old Republic way much better.

This however is not true when it comes to pvp gear (to a certain extent, raid gear as well*) and it has thrown a lot of people. It does not help that BioWare has created a very convoluted token / reward system for pvp rewards. To be successful at end-game world pvp on Ilum or in warzones players will need the pvp items, they are the only items that provide the pvp specific stat of expertise. The other pvp only stat is a players valor level, this is earned by participating in pvp.

Centurions, Champions & Battle Masters Oh My

By participating in warzones (instanced battlegrounds), world pvp, pvp missions and battle on Ilum players are awarded Valor. This is the experience bar for pvp. Currently there are 100 levels of Valor and gaining levels is very grindish. You have to play the pvp game heavily to gain ranks and rewards.

The most basic yet most visible reward is the pvp titles. They are rewarded every 10 levels. They are as follows:

• Skirmisher – Valor Rank 10
• Duelist – Valor Rank 20
• Gladiator – Valor Rank 30
• Centurion – Valor Rank 40
• Champion – Valor Rank 50
• Battlemaster – Valor Rank 60
• War Hero – Valor Rank 70
• Conquorer – Valor Rank 80
• Warlord – Valor Rank 90
• Elite Warlord – Valor Rank 100

Commendations

As players participate in warzones they are awarded warzone commendations. These can be earned as low as level 10 and you can only have 1000 at any one time. You will need to spend them as you get them so you don’t waste earned commendations. At lower levels you could buy the level 20 or 40 equipment but many including myself see this as a waste. This is the big difference between pve and pvp itemization in swtor. Currently there is no way to upgrade the lower level pvp items as you level up and maintain the expertise required to perform well in pvp situations. Back to commendations…

1. The first WTF is what you do first with your commendations. You make them another commendation type, you make them Mercenary Commendations. These in conjunction allow you to buy Champion Gear Bags.

   How To Do It You will have to go through the 18 different pvp vendors on your fleet space station to find the guy that has the title of <PVP Items>. You trade 30 Warzone Commendations for 10 Mercenary Commendations. Stop right now, don’t go trade every Warzone Commendation in as you will still need some.

   What You Get You need to gather up 200 Mercenary Commendation and 200 Warzone Commendations to trade for one Champion Gear Bag. Whats in the bag you ask? Another type of commendation. You’re right, again WTF.

2. This second WTF is called a Centurion Commendation you get these from the champion bag. There are either 1 or 3 depending on if you are lucky and get an Unassembled Champion whatever item in the bag. You can get one of the primary item slots item token. Its been said that the rate is around 10% for these to be in the bag.

   Remember the list of ranks above? Remember that Centurion is a rank before Champion? The Centurion equipment are the base pvp items. “But I just bought a Champion Bag?” you say. The Champion part is that 10% chance at getting a token. There is a second way to gain the Champion Bags, the PVP daily quest rewards one bad and the weekly rewards three. As you can see these repeatable quests are very much worth your time.

3. This brings us to the question, how do you gain Champion Commendations? Well from Battle Master Bags of course. Just like the Champion Bag the Battle Master Bag contains a 10% chance at a Battle Master equipment item token and one commendation (this time it’s a champion one) or three Champion Commendations. You gain these as mission rewards from pvp missions on Ilum. Special note, you must be level 50 and Valor level 60 to open a Battle Master bag. You can spend the Champion Commendations at your class <Champion PVP Gear> vendor. Each item costs 67 commendations.

(*) many end game raiding equipment items do not allow for the main upgrade item to be changed. For example in the case of a chest piece, the armor slot cannot be changed.

For Honor’s birthday she wanted white cake cupcakes with pink (did not care what flavor) frosting.

I decided that I’d experiment some and do everything from roots. This would make them gluten free as a byproduct.

I made the white cake with potato flour, did a small batch to taste test; they where more spongy than I expected but good texture and flavor. The butter creame on the other hand was a major pain. First try was with a concetate of strawberry. I could not get the consistency right, either very stiff, unspreadable or falling apart, the preserve and creame would seep rate.

Moved on to raspberry extract, I must have bought the lamest, weakest extract on the planet as it would not color nor add taste to the creame. I thought about adding some beet juice to get color but the irony of coloring bleached (only way I can find it) beet sugar was too much.

Back to the store and I found a cherry extract and another batch of butter creame. It turned out ok, stronger taste than I would have liked but the consistency was right, good color.

I’ll make these again and I’ll try to use the same batter recipe in a cake one day the pink frosting? Next time I need pink I’ll just do plain vanilla with beet juice for color.

Once I figure out what “a handful of x” is in cups I’ll post the recipe.

My girls and our Christmas dinner, a very French provincial four dish affair (Taken with instagram)

My girls got me things I really wanted for my birthday this year. Katrin chose the Klipsh 4si headphones, something I have needed since I gave her my stock set. Shorty chose a boardgame she not only likes but is good at. Poor Katrin the first few games. Off to dinner at a mystery place! (Taken with instagram)

There is nothing better than a shout out to Buffy and Blade, oh wait the rest of Takei’s monolog.

thomasqbrady:

In an interview about his recent biography Steve Jobs, author Walter Isaacson had this to say about the writing experience,

[Steve Jobs] gave me an enormous amount of material, and the book kind of just wrote itself.

Yes, it appears to have. It’s all too easy to tell that this book wrote…

chpwn:

Carrier IQ, the now infamous “rootkit” or “keylogger”, is not just for Android, Symbian, BlackBerry, and even webOS. Up through and including iOS 5, in fact, Apple has included a copy of Carrier IQ on the iPhone as well. However, it appears to be disabled unless the device has…

Even non-fans of the Star Wars universe like the music and instantaneously recognize the “sound of star wars”. It is as much part of the experience as the hum of a light saber or the zing of a blaster. Only a real Star Wars nerd can tell the differences in sound between a Blas Tech E-11 and a modified DL-44 but I’m willing to bet that just about anyone will enjoy a floppy drive rendition of the Imperial March.

Is there really any other sound from the original trilogy that is more iconic that this? Finally a use for a floppy drive in the new millennium!