Followers

Friday, May 25, 2007

Earth: Our Home

Here is a simple guideline you can use in your daily life in working together in harmony with the planet.

* Recycle
recycle as much as you can, it's easy. the only payment you make is temporary room for items before they get shipped out to the appropriate retainer.

More than likely it's usually a choice between (everyday wear and tear):

* Cardboard (includes paper)
* Plastic

I find that while consuming these two materials are most prevelant.
Cardboard is from tree pulp, Plastic has the lifetime of thousands of years, when it finally degrades it'll be in the form of small pellets (nondecomposable)


Unusually you'll be dealing with:
* Electronics
* Metal
* Styroform
* Clothing
* Wood

things such as wood and cloth degenerate, so no need to worry about them till the last. the clothing should be used as rags before throwing out.

www.earth911.org is a good place to start for salvaging
everything from paint to computers/electronics/monitors.

If you only have a phone: 1-800-CLEANUP.

* drive less (think ahead). If you notice all the people out driving during working hours and haven't asked yourself the question why, it's because we are all consuming. By this we are denegrating our planet. Think about your planet. We are the stewards and have the responsibilty of protecting it.

* See if it's possible with your company to telecommute (i know this may be hard but if your invested or with more years onboard it's alot easier. Many jobs are applicable in this form. This especially holds true if you commute 1 1/2 hours to work and don't talk to anyone there. (Otherwise known as common Information Technology work.)
* If you can, try to move close to your work, while unrealistic it's a small goal, that if you can make will help out tremendously.

* be ware of the elements, it's a good idea to get a container for oil if your changing it and . That mean's not dumping it vacariously.

* use less: the more you use the more you abuse, try to make sure the appropriate amount of material is used for the job, not any more. that includes just about ever resource you can think of.

* Electricity may be seemingly ubiquitus, but it still puts strain on the carrying equipment, not to mention your wallet. Use only what you need. A good habit is to turn off the lights everytime you leave a room.

* Computer use up many watts, especially the new models, the more components you have the more electricity is used. If it recommended that you use power saving capabilities of the computer and always shut it off at night.

* buy less: A majority of the stuff which is bought can last longer if one . Earth is not a fad. If it works use it, if you don't have enough to make yourself optimal buy it, but make it last.


* Portable devices: These are good if you have a disability and you cannot retain information! They usually wind up in the dump and typically you'll loose the information because the batteries go dead!


Contact the email address below if you want more information on how to get rid of those portable machines and their batteries for good. (And yes, for many the computer is just a crutch)

* Dining. If you like playing russion roulette with what you consume physically then you like to dine out! If available ask for a content chart(taco bell and mcdonald's have these suprisingly). A good suggestion is just to buy from the supermarket. It's also wise to become a vegatarian. Many famous people like Einstein and Leonardo De Vinci supported vegetarianism. Many of the meat that you eat will make you become sluggish and add health problems (apart from smoking and taking drugs, eating meat is the one thing that new Doctors ask you when you first sign up with them). Vegatables and fruits get there energy from the primary source; the Sun. Be wise with what you injest. A majority of the meat raising and milk cuddling is from harsh and violent environments that leave our animals in terror. which you eventually injest. If you do buy milk, buy organic. Same with eggs too.



If you would like to add to this guideline sheet or help inform others on conververation for the planet , then by all means do so. (c) copyright 2007 John Lutz. If you have any questions or would just like to talk please contact me at: JohnnyLutz[[at]]gmail.com


"By helping the Earth, you help yourself."








Assembler:Into the {heart} of the machine

Taking a look at software almost everywhere from the desktop to the server I see that most of it's origin's come from the C compiler. From Microsoft to Macs, to Sparcs and Linux. It's everywhere I also read an article that c programming is one of the things currently being phased out. I highly disagree with this dangerous and rather myopic view of the industry.

I think there still is alot to be said about the simplicity, completeness and versatility of this language. I haven't looked really hard, but I rarely see libraries for assembler. Two reason why this is 1) different platforms - implementations of commands 2) syntax - one character off and the programmer has to look at it. 3) integration - one could use functions or not use them and also have strange argument configurations. These 3 things are the reason why it hasn't taken off yet. But in the source code itself you can simulate every language thats out there. I hold it in high regards and feel thats it's highly overlooked.

I have been reading ProgrammingGroundUp (google if you will). It's a linux tutorial for writing assembler code. I like it. The examples are quite complete and if covers all the essentials.

When I was a kid I wanted to program. But I got tired of BASIC which didn't appeal to me that well. I learned it but rarely wrote. I had no idea about assembler language back then, it was almost magical. There was no references or knowledge of it available to me at the time (which was why I went from Amiga to PC (an NECV20) because the PC had Turbo Pascal). I had asked The Silicon Pirate from T.O.P.P.S. cracking group how he did his border period animations and he simply said 'Exclusive Or'. I had no idea what that was.

Once you go through all of the essential mnemonics you can get a grip on to what you can do with it.So 2 1/2 years ago I got into 6510. I programmed a little editor with the commodore 64's kernel and did it very quickly I was surprised at the similarities in all of the languages I'm familiar with (except Haskell mostly still eludes me). I was making up for what I missed out when I was a kid. It was fun programming at it, because it is the essence of optimization.

A good programming tip is to program bottom up as well as top down and the same time. That is you create your stubs then you create small utilitity functions at the same time, meeting in the middle. (This is the kind of stuff you are not taught in college).

Still though the operations are pretty equivalent from the 6502/6510 52 commands and the 70 or so essential commands from Intel's 386.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Seperatedness & Bloat

A Limited Convenience:
Ever notice how bash or command prompt looks nothing or acts like very little of the rest of the operating system? There is a serious disconnect between context sensitive programming languages and the scripting environments meant to organize, run and communicate with them. Personally I have avoided bash and other script languages because I am disinterested in learning it and know that it won't help me to know it for outside or inside jobs. If the language was the same across the board I'd have no problem with it.
I like the new microsoft shell. It combines shell, sql and pipes and a few other nifty features that make it seem like microsoft is going in the right direction. Since I don't have a Windows box of my own anymore (I did *buy* 95,XP, NT) I'm too satisfied without it, it seems.

Bloat
Let's look at Java. It's a very deep chasm into a protected verbosity of the c language. C too is much like java in the way it stores methods/functions with similar but not fully unique calls. Each line of code with at least one parameter off is basically storing each line as a separate address without any reuse on the similar parameter order and non-uniqueness. Is this the reason for bloat of todays operating systems? Next time I'll talk about Java Libraries.

That is all!

Saturday, May 19, 2007

GNU, Free Software, Open source

How can you not love these things? All 3 of them? When I was aware of linux in 1995 I thought that it wouldn't be able to compete with NT. NT having a superior kernel design. But by 1999 had blown me away completly. I went to a borders books and looked at a SuSE box. Hmmm, c64 emulation? I have to get it! Then as time went on I again became familiar with a Un*x clone. Needless to say I have been using it ever since, Only last year was when I completely converted to Linux. I am using SuSE as we speak. It can do much, even on a 64 bit version. All my software is compiled for 64 bit. And problems? Very rare to speak of. I can't think of any offhand. I can leave it on for like 2 weeks and everything still works fine. Oh thats right, SuSE does expand to how much ram you have. Which is a feature I dislike because it's not very smart in what it does. On the other hand I have never had so much reliability on my computer since I used the Commodore 64 (I Adore my C64).

No one learns from closed source (unless you want to waste time reverse engineering megabytes of assembler source.) Free Software will eventually prevail and then we will wonder what we ever did without it.

On the c64 basic was open source. (everything old is new again). Assembler was a bit of open source too, you just had to create the labels based on the algorithm in the assembler dump from a disassembler. With C, you have lot's a this crufty support code that is usually not the most effiecient in the world. But I'm not sure who the ad-wizards who programmed Visual Basic where doing (I used to be a VB programmer in another life) I wrote some code in VB which would have taken several days to complete nonstop (it was a 20 meg file processor). In c optimized it took 3 seconds.

I enjoyed programming in C at this time. Wishing I had more work to do in that languages, but dozens of LI IT companies have basically said they didn't need my talent. What sort of personality where they looking for? Would I have broken them up by sharing in the wonders of life and liberty or where they looking for someone who would ask no questions. I'm not sure at all. But do you see where I am going with this, companies distrust and are in fear, that was my impression of them. The best jobs in the closed source industry is the ones where you don't need an interview. Others put shackles on you and expect you to behave at their wim. too bad, because that model is overdone and outdated. Again, open source and Free software will eventually prevail because of this behaviour.

Most mportantly we have to stick together as a communinity. Things like LILUG.org are the best thing in the word for the software industry. Part of it reminds me when I was a kid on my c64 and we would have game parties. There was almost nothing in the world better than this. Let's continues to create together for the future looks bright!

John

About Me

I am a programmer who enjoys the simple things in life.