Robots Will Be Our Superiors

The game downloading service Steam offers a convenient product.  Instead of buying physical media at a store (which can be lost, damaged, and creates more waste), Steam allows you to download games directly to your hard drive while offering a robust user community, cloud saving, and many other handy services.

The drawback is that writing all of the game files to the primary hard disk can take up gobs of space in a hurry.  This problem can easily be alleviated if the user has a separate hard drive installed.  My own setup consists of a smaller hard drive for my operating system and application files and a much larger hard drive for media and projects.  With Steam games taking up more and more space on my OS drive, I decided to move them to a new location on my larger drive.  A simple copy and paste won’t do the trick, however.

This tutorial explains how to create a link between the main hard drive with Windows 7 installed on it to the larger hard drive with more space.  It will involve deleting folders and using the command prompt, so if you’re not comfortable with either I would recommend exploring other options.  That said, the process is fairly straightforward and easy to do.  (The good news is that Steam allows unlimited downloads of purchased content.  If you truly manage to bugger things, simply reinstall the Steam client and re-download all your games.)

1. Copy the “Steam” folder from your primary hard drive (located in either “C:\Program Files (x86)” or just “C:\Program Files”) and paste it to your new hard drive.  I put it in the root directory of the new hard drive.
2. Delete the “Steam” directory on your original hard drive.
3. From the Windows Start Menu, go to Accessories and right click on Command Prompt.  Select “Run as Administrator”.
4. Enter the following command, inserting the original and destination directories to fit your computer.  The quote marks are necessary:

   mklink /J "old directory" "new directory"

For example, on my computer I used the following command:

mklink /J "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam" "E:\Steam"

The mklink command creates a symbolic link between one directory and another.  Whenever Windows goes to look for the original directory it will be redirected to the new directory on your second hard drive.  You will know the command is successful when you see what looks like a shortcut in the original Program Files directory.  If you ever want to remove this link, simply delete this shortcut.

The good news is that because Windows is simply redirecting itself, your original shortcuts will all still be functional.  Steam and all the games it monitors will continue to function as normal.  If you download a new game in the future, the symbolic link will send the new games to their proper destination.

Why, you might ask?

Whenever someone asks me what the day is today, I can reply: “10-4, good buddy!”

…yeah.

Unexpected figure of not-fully-explained authority: “We’re very interested in your son who gets in trouble at school because he’s misunderstood/adopted child/kid who was in a car accident and ever since draws pictures of things you write off as ‘weird but harmless’.”

Disbelieving mother/father: “I don’t understand – we’ve all led completely unremarkable lives, and come from a humble background in which we are made to believe that none of us are special.”

Guy: “Be that as it may, your little {name here} is very, very important.”

Mother/father: “Why?”

Guy, possibly removing glasses: “… because he might be the savior of the world as we know it.”
—

STOP. JUST STOP.

“You haven’t had chocolate covered bacon?  Here, have a piece.  You might like it.”

“Ugh, no.  That’s so incredibly bad for you.”

“Sure, if you eat the whole plate.  I’m talking about having one piece.  Try some!”

“I can hear my arteries hardening already.  That’s gross.”

“Really?  You want to go that route?  Here’s a question for you: Do you know what’s even worse for you than a piece of chocolate covered bacon?  Two pieces of normal bacon. It’s true.  If you were to separate the two principal ingredients and put a piece of bacon in one hand and the five chocolate chips that constitute the coating in the other, you’d have more sugar than two pieces of bacon, but a lot less fat and sodium than if you had two pieces of bacon.

And let’s be honest with ourselves.  Have you ever had a plate of bacon in front of you and eaten just one piece of bacon?  No, of course not.  But don’t feel bad, nobody in the history of the world has.  You’ve had no qualms eating three, four, five pieces of bacon in one sitting.  Do you know how much fat is in bacon?  Don’t look, you might not eat it anymore.

Similarly, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you eat a cheeseburger plenty of times in your life.  What’s the thought process here that says eating a quarter pound of ground animal meat and fat topped with melted animal fat is somehow a green light, while 1 oz. of bacon and 1/2 oz. of chocolate is going to send you into cardiac arrest?  Let’s get some perspective here.”

“But why would you do that?  What possessed you to combine the two?”

“First, because I saw it on the internet.  That’ s pretty good reason to do anything.  Second, because it’s awesome.  It’s taking two awesome things and putting them together.  Doing something completely ridiculous for the sake of doing it is a completely valid reason.  That’s what makes it fun.  It’s like playing football with jetpacks.  Sure, it doesn’t make any sense, but how sweet would that be?”

“What’s it taste like?”

“Kind of like a chocolate covered pretzel.  You get salty and sweet together.”

“Isn’t it gross?”

“No, just make sure you cook the bacon to the crispy state.  Soggy bacon makes it kind of chewy, which is less appetizing.”

“Why are you yelling at me?”

“Because I spent two fucking hours last night making this stuff, and if you’re not going to at least try a piece, don’t be the douche at the party loudly proclaiming how something I made as a novelty is the end of Western Civilization as we know it.”

Chocolate Covered Bacon:

Ingredients

• One pound of your favorite bacon
• Bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips
• Bag of white chocolate chips

1) Cook the bacon.  You can fry it in a pan, or bake it, or microwave it.  Whatever you want.  As I said above, though, just make sure it’s crispy.  Let it cool and/or dry before dunking it.

2) Melt the chocolate.  I like using the microwave, because dinking around with boiling water is a pain.  Put the chips in a microwave safe bowl, and microwave on half power for about a minute, stir, and repeat.  Do it as often as you need until the chips are melted.

3) Dunk the bacon in the chocolate.  I use tongs.  Shake off the excess chocolate.

4) Optional: Melt some white chocolate (which isn’t really chocolate) and drizzle it over the bacon.  This is an aesthetic touch.

I like living in Milwaukee, for the most part.  Being a native Illinoisan, though, keeping up on Chicago sports can be a pain in the keester.  Things that stand in my way:

• The newspaper is fairly useless I certainly don’t blame the Journal-Sentinel for being biased towards the Packers/Brewers/Badgers/Teabags.  That’s their job.  We don’t get the JS on weekdays anyway, so the paper is not a viable solution.
• We don’t have cable This one I can’t really complain about because obviously it’s my own choice.  Even if I did, however, I would either have to watch the WGN news or a half hour of Sports Center on ESPN to see the highlights of Chicago teams.
• AM radio is only so helpful When I’m in the car with AM on, 9 times out of 10 I’m listening to a Chicago station.  AM radio in Milwaukee is somewhat lacking, as the only station moderately worth tuning into is 620.  Their news coverage is okay, and they have the Brewers games.  (Some baseball is better than no baseball.)  Typically, though, I’m listening to 720 WGN (Cubs!) or 780 WBBM (the best news around, and, of course, the Bears).  This means that 1) I am extremely up to speed on the traffic conditions of the greater Chicago area and 2) I occasionally get blips about Chicago sports.  That is, unless the Bears or Cubs are being broadcast, coverage on those stations is few and far between.

So what’s a displaced flatlander to do, besides whine on his blog about the unfairness of it all?

I’ll tell you what, it’s go to ESPN.com.  Why?  Because all I have to do is put a little “/chicago” at the end of the URL and I get a page that seems like it was written specifically for me.

ESPN’s Chicago site has all of the scores, headlines, and articles for all of the Chicago teams aggregated into one spot, which is outstanding.  Not only that, but they have a specially-recorded ESPN.com Chicago Sports Center reel that gives me a high-quality five minute broadcast of highlight reels and scores for Chicago.  It’s like having Sports Center on, whenever I want, with only the content I want sifted out.

Which makes me so, so happy.  The video update is ad-free, so I don’t even have to sit through any mildly annoying Hulu-esque “This video was brought to you by Snuggies” advertisements.  I would be happy to, though, as I think that the experience ESPN.com is offering is extremely useful.

End result: One Happy Hermes.

This video is awesome, but only slightly more awesome is the song.  You can download the full version of it here.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMp4JKcz5kE

Here’s something that’s been stuck in my craw for a while: software version numbers.  They’re completely arbitrary, something I’m well aware of.  Just numbers that are thrown out there at the discretion of the developers.

But come one – Chrome came out one year ago and we’re on version 3.0?  The changes from one version to the next have been incremental at best, and one can only assume that Google is attempting to gain credibility through higher version numbers.  I saw more changes in Firefox from version 3.0 to 3.5 than I’ve seen from Chrome 2.0 to 3.0.  Firefox 4.0 is a loong way off, and at this rate we’ll see Chrome 6.0 before that.

Ubuntu, the wunderkind of the Linux world, didn’t even try to rapidly advance their version number: they started at 4.  Each calendar year is a full version increase, with one incremental in between.  Mint, a derivative of Ubuntu, does a full version increase at every incremental Ubuntu release, so a someone new distribution will eclipse the system it’s based upon in a few years.

You know what deserves a high version number?  Slackware Linux.  13.0 just came out, after debuting in 1993.  At 16, it’s the oldest currently maintained Linux distribution.  Sweet.

I’m not the only one that has noticed this.  Seen recently on the blog Lifehacker:

Google continues its rather speedy version number jumping here—having dropped three “major” releases in just over a year. It may seem a little silly that it’s now on the same version number as Firefox and looks like it’ll easily beat Firefox to 4.0, but keep in mind that version numbers are largely arbitrary, so while Google may well hit Chrome 10 in another year or two, it has little bearing on how it compares to other browsers.

They are correct.  It has little (to no) bearing on how the browsers compare.  I, for one, am far too petty to let that slide by, however.

I can’t claim to remember what my thought process was when I asked myself, “If operating systems were video game characters, which attributes would they have?”

As I started writing these ideas down down, I realized that my task was, for the most part, already completed.  The three main operating systems, Linux, OSX, and Windows (sorry, BSD & Solaris, nobody loves you) can easily and with eerie accuracy be compared to… the races from Starcraft.  With Starcraft II looming, I though the comparison would be appropriate.

Terrans = Linux

The terrains represent scrappy, factional do-it-yourselfers that use a hodgepodge of highly configurable technology to get the job done.  Their buildings can be expanded upon and even moved, offering a flexibility that does not exist with the other races.  I bet the Terrans are all about open source; they probably need all the code sharing they can, because if they’re not on top of their game, something will eat their faces off.  Nothing encourages sharing like self preservation.

Most of the Terran technology looks jury-rigged, held together mostly by zip ties and good intentions.  It works, but probably not without a lot of cursing and checking the documentation.  Again… just like Linux.

Protoss = OSX

Much like Apple, the Protoss have developed a robust, sleek hardware and software experience.  There’s nothing low-tech about the Protoss operation; while one can imagine Terrans hunched over keyboards and going at it with the command line, the Protoss are probably out there using touch screens and shit.  I bet their UI is easy to use and consistent across all machines of war. 

An obvious parallel would be price.  The early-game unit for the Protoss, the aptly (for the sake of my comparison) named Zealot, costs much more than the early-game units for the other two races.  Following the “you get what you pay for” theory, the Zealots are also more durable in combat than the other early units.

Like the Protoss Dragoons, all Macs are inhabited by the soul of a warrior that was crushed in combat.

If I were a more cynical, petty person, I would make a comparison between the Protoss’ force fields and the Mac user’s overwhelming smug sense of self-gratification that sometimes deflects common sense like a stray bullet, but I’m not, so I won’t.  Uh, yeah.

Zerg = Windows

The Zerg have the distinction of being the only completely biological race in Starcraft, not relying on any mechanical means of war.  As such, one can only assume that they are more susceptable to viruses than the other two races or operating systems.   Similarly, much like Microsoft, the Zerg can only exist on a biological carpet of living goo called The Creep, which spreads over time to encompass the landscape around it.  I’m… not sure exactly how that works out, but this is the last set and I’m just going with what I can.  Like Zerglings, Windows machines are omnipresent and cheap to buy.

The similarities between the hive mind that responds to the overlord control is a somewhat apt comparison to the relative stranglehold that Windows has in the computing market, though.  Also, the “bosses” on the Zerg team are the Overlords, which are floating, hot gas-filled bladders.  I can only assume Microsoft management fits the same description.  (Ba-zing!)

That’s all I have for now.  I won’t lie: I got distracted making Proto-Jobs.

Are you really bored and like programming?  That certainly describes me, but maybe it’s because I’m not a programmer by trade.  I just found Project Euler while looking for problems to hone my Python chops with and I’m enjoying the hell out of it.  Seeing a column of big, green check marks is very satisfying.

Expanding on Python tutorials.

#!/usr/bin/python
# Filename: exchange.py

class Person:
    def sayHi(self):
        print('Hello, how are you?')

class Robot:
    def respond(self):
        print('I have no emotions, thank you.')

Person().sayHi()

Robot().respond()