1.25.2011

Tron

So yeah.  As amazing as I thought this movie was, I'm only surprised I haven't reviewed and/or given my take on it yet!  :D
Basically, Tron is my new favorite movie, for several different reasons.  
First off, let's just get this out of the way, Sam Flynn is like, an uber cutie.  He has sweet computer skills, can think clearly on his feet, and has amazing hair.
Quorra and Kevin Flynn are awesome characters with actual substance to their characters and awesomeness!
Okay, next up, the soundtrack was AMAZING.  It was this awesome blend of almost calm sounds, but then it would sound totally technological and quirky and THEN it'd be calm, technologically quirky, and get your adrenaline pumping all at once, with a side of intense.  Coolest thing I think I've ever heard!
And the Linux commands used to access the Grid...  I was so excited when I saw him use the whoami and history commands!!!!  And there were a few others, something that used a -l or something, and I was freaking out I was so excited.
STORY!  I really REALLY liked the story!  Some may argue there wasn't one, but there was, and it was awesome.  The best I can summarize the story is that Kevin Flynn the Dad disappeared, leaving his son, Sam Flynn ( <3 <3 <3 ) scarred and not wanting much to do with his father's super awesome computer company, except to pull an annual prank or two.  This all changes when Kevin's old colleague gets a page from Kevin on his pager, and Sam goes to investigate at the old arcade.  Having found his father's secret office behind the TRON arcade game, Sam accesses the history (through Linux commands XDD) and gets technologically transferred into the Grid.
THE GRID LOOKS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!  All shiny, and everyone has spiffy glow in the dark outfits, except for some, who have all white outfits with blueish glowy stripes. Anyways, another favorite thing of mine.  And then Sam finds CLU, a replica of his Dad, who unfortunately is kinda evil.  He wants the Grid to be perfect, and as a computer program can't progress and learn unless reprogrammed to do so.  So his idea of perfection is kinda warped.  Programs do exactly what you expect them to do, because they were programmed that way.  Kevin unfortunately can't reprogram CLU, because CLU wants to kill him.  It's awkward like that.
When a special kind of race comes into existence because conditions were right, causing a miracle, Kevin Flynn got a new idea of perfection, but because these ISOs were unexpected and more human than a program, CLU decided they were imperfections that should be exterminated.  So the ISOs were all killed.  Kevin fought CLU at first, but quit when he figured out CLU fed off his resistance. So he proceeded to do nothing.  Now I can't tell anything else, or I'll spoil it.
I love the life lessons learned too, like when we stop learning, we can make much bigger mistakes.  When we decide we know it all, we afflict the people around us and can't see their worth and potential.
Another one I learned, sometimes it's best to wait.  Apathy is different than caring a lot but not rushing into something sword waving and bungee jump cord in tow.  You can care deeply, and still wait, and it's can be the best path to take.
There were more life lessons, but I'm listening to Drupal videos and should probably concentrate.
Favorite quotes:
"You're really messing with my Zen thing!"

"Made it."

"We're always on the same team." (I especially like that one when playing Mariocart with Jiggers)

P.S. I think this is blog post 42.  TRON is the answer to the meaning of life!!!!

1.08.2011

*Phew*

So watching these training videos seems to give me extra time to play with the settings on my blog.  haha enjoy the new format!

And other than that, Drupal training from the videos seems to be going well.  Somehow the training is improving my overall understanding of computers and their workings, as well as website workings.  It's all connected...  cool...

But I've discovered something about myself.  I seem to have issues just staying in one place and finishing out videos.  See, I get this sort of bubbly excitement.  "WHAT!!!!  THAT'S POSSIBLE??!?!?!!!?!?!  I WANNA TRY IT!!!!!!!"  So I pause the video and get onto my LocalHost site where I mess with settings, download modules, and then after I get really REALLY excited, I download LOTS of modules, and then I enable them all, then I submit my changes.  That's when I find out several modules that are dependent on each other have installation issues or something, and so a lot of the ones I installed aren't working.
Lesson learned?  Install and test one module at a time.

So then I'm like "Awwwwwwww MAN that didn't work...  I guess I'll go watch the video again..."
Yeah, good choice, since they know what they're talking about...  haha
Second lesson learned: FINISH WATCHING THE VIDEO.  The nice thing about QuickTime too is that they have this nice summary of the chapters if you click on the arrow on the right of the time status bar.  That was uber handy to find.  I have the sneaking suspicion that when I get into actually developing this stuff for real, I may forget a lot of the things I watched.  So being able to quickly reference the videos will be a great thing.

Third thing I've found out, is that sleep is really important.  Especially when learning stuff from rather dry videos.  Don't get me wrong, my geeky mentors are hilarious, but turn on a video, and I seem to have a huge temptation to just kinda drop off for a little while.  Perhaps that's like, my brain stating that it's learning a lot and wants a break for a bit.  At any rate, sleep is good, and I ought to take advantage of it.

Fourth thing?  You know the Dad in Tron: Legacy?  WELL he was the original actor in the first Tron!!!!  Is that sweet or what?  So Kevin Flynn in Tron is Kevin Flynn in Tron: Legacy!  And Sam Flynn is still adorable.  And the soundtrack is amazing.  And the movie is amazing.  And I think it's the coolest thing ever to be able to learn more about computers and have a movie that actually makes geekiness uber cool.  Oh, and Allen, the guy who talks to Sam and is Kevin's friend, he was originally Tron in the first one, which I also thought was cool, because Kevin referenced Allen as the creator of Tron.

Oh, and the fourth thing is totally important.  ;)  This is a result of me staying up late.  But I wanted to wrap all that up, it helps to write down what I learn so I don't have to relearn the next day.

1.04.2011

On a ROLL!

Okay so today I got an email from my boss asking me to bring my laptop along so I could get some howto Drupal videos on it.  I figured it'd be a good thing to have Drupal installed on my Windows machine too.
That was a whole different banana...  haha
So my biggest problem with Linux is that I had to keep giving MYSELF permission to access all the files, right?  I mean, besides the other problems...  and this time, I was thinking HURRAH I won't have any permissions to worry about!  
I went to this site for step by step: http://drupal.org/node/307956
So I copied the drupal files over to htdocs in XAMPP and tried to open up phpmyadmin, and got this error: #2003 - Can't connect to MySQL server on 'localhost' (10061)
Back to Google! After some research, I figured out the problem is with the Antivirus software blocking XAMPP.  Fabulous.  I fixed those settings, and it seems to be doing alright so far!
Dontcha just LOOOOOVE when the computer tells you what to do?  
Virus Protection: "NO YOU CAN'T OPEN XAMPP IT'S NOT APPROOOOOOVED!" 
Me: "Uh, yeah I can.  I opened it."
Virus Protection: "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING!  YOU'LL RUIN EVERYTHING!"
Me: "Whatever."
I like Linux.  Linux lets you do whatever.  Just don't type in rm -f *.* and you're golden.  ;)
Hey, speaking of Linux, check out this awesome list of cool commands!  http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/linuxcommands.html
It's done.  XDD  That was much better than yesterday, I think it would've been good on MICK too instead of my laptop.  I'm going to start playing with Drupal now, so have a great day, and if something earth shaking or whatever happens, I'll blog about it.  :D

1.03.2011

Drupal? Finally? AKA ADVENTURES Part 2!

So I have XAMPP, or LAMPP 'cuz it's for my Linux.  Good ol' MICK, I love my compy.  Anyways, what I did next is following this video:
However, I'm modifying it slightly, because I didn't want WAMP, I wanted XAMPP.  So far I've done it with exactly the same results.  I'll type if I run into a snag.
WOOO created a database!  Ooooh wow, this is sooo cool... 
kk, ran into a few snags.  The file didn't recognize that I was the root, so I couldn't get in to move the drupal files into the place I wanted it.  So I got in and changed permissions, but it didn't recognize me as an owner, even if I did have permissions.  So I used chown on it to give my username power to modify the LAMPP files.  I might need to log out and log in again, hang on...  Nope, I needed to changed the permissions lower down.  Man, this is all connected so amazingly...  wow.
Okay, got the permission changed, and I dropped Drupal into it.  Yehaw!  Now I wait to see what I'm supposed to do next...
Goodness, that was a TRIP!   Drupal is now installed, and tomorrow I think I'll start playing around with it.  What did I learn today?  Oh, a heck of a lot.
1. Permissions.  They're EVERYTHING with Linux.  So when Mr Bravo made us play with them so much in our Linux class, there was actually a really important point to it.
2. That would've been better to know before I started out installing XAMPP and Drupal
3. But it's okay, 'cuz I know now.
4. Documentation is rocking awesome!  Now I can review this!  YEAH!
5. Ahh, sweet success.  You just can't beat the feeling of successfully installing something using a Linux terminal.  And also the GUI stuff.  I just love it when things work.
6. Like I said in the previous post, know where the chocolate is.
7. Google is your best friend. So is sudo su.

Adventures in Drupal! Just kidding... ADVENTURES Part 1!

So I'm learning about Drupal, it's "open source social publishing software that empowers individuals, teams, and communities to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website."


Good to know, right?  I know you've been waiting your whole life to discover that.  I'm giving you a blow by blow as I learn about it.  Why?  Because this blog is a wonderful tool to help me remember what on EARTH I get up to in the cyber world, and I don't want to forget.  Right now, I'm doing something I haven't done since PRG 223 or something like unto that, I'm installing XAMPP for Linux on my Linux machine.  Drupal runs on XAMPP or WAMP if you're trying to run in locally.  And I'd definitely recommend playing with it locally first.  Blowing up a website = not that much fun.  
XAMPP for Linux was formerly known as LAMPP.  Now with that info, it's finally finished downloading, and time for me to play with the terminal.  I'm going off of http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-linux.html#374 for my instructions.


Well, what a peach.  I think I forgot my sudo login.  Excellent, especially since I seem to be needing that... Now I have to reboot into recovery mode and reset that...  I hope my compy doesn't get wiped and stuff, that would really be fun.  ;)
Rebooted, didn't get it, moved on, hung around the Linux forums, found this wonderful person who said:

You do not need to be in single user mode.
It is much MUCH simpler to reset this, I will tell you how.
Open a terminal program (command line, X terminal, whatever you want.)
type:
sudo su
You know are acting as 'root' of your system.
now type:
passwd
it will say: "Now changing password for root" or whatever. Just follow your computer's directions from here.
This person I now love.  Because it worked.  NOW let's see if we can install LAMPP
Okay, we need to be in the Downloads directory.  And remember, this is all case sensitive.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH YEAH BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!  THAT WORKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Remember folks, in situations where things aren't quite going the way they should, keep a cool head and remember where the nearest chocolate source is.
Beautiful, it passed.  I have XAMPP for Linux on my machine.  JOY AND CELEBRATION!!!!! NOW I CAN PLAY WITH DRUPAL!!!!!!!!!
Okay, I'm posting this as part 1.  Next up we'll play with Drupal!

Oh, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!