Symphony X concert and Sakura-con coming up!

Sakura-con is quickly approaching in the next few days! I'm not much of an anime fan or an otaku, but I always find it so fascinating seeing people dress up to show off their cosplay costumes. I'll definently take tons of pictures of the cosplayers and maybe get a chance to hook up with them (maybe).
The event will be held at the Seattle Convention Center on the 22nd to the 24th of this month, and it will cost $65 at the door.

On a completely different note, I've never been to a metal or rock concert before -- well not a real one anyway. I've been a long time listener of Symphony X, a pretty wicked progressive symphonic (almost power) metal  band from the east coast. SX combines a unique metal sound with a almost Renaissance sounding prog-ness. They will be playing at the Showbox on May 11th!

I'm back (sorta).

Hello world, igen og igen og.

Is privacy dead?

I know this is a pretty heated topic, and it has been especially since the start of the millennium... But, is privacy dead?

With the rise of social-networking sites, such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, it seems like peoples' privacy is slowly dieing with every second passing by. At every moment, people make decisions to not draw a line between their personal and private lives, primarily due to the nature of these websites.

Blegh, I could write a 10-page long essay on this topic, but I'm currently fucking lazy and I don't want to.

Thoughts?

Perl.

I have never really fallen in love with a scripting language.

After using PHP for about a year, I decided to just test out other languages. I tend to prefer programming languages, like C or C++; but Perl is a amazing.

I don't know why, but Perl is so fucking easy; I'm pretty sure that it's even easier than PHP. Yeah, I've been using Perl for only about 10 minutes, but it's actually pretty fun to use it.

The fact that I can use a similar syntax to PHP makes me nearly orgasm. And, there's automatic typecasting just like PHP (I don't know the proper name to call it), like I can do:
$tmp = "123"
$tmp++;

and $tmp will be typecasted into an int as 124.

And... even more, there's for/foreach, arrays, and OOP, as well as namespaces (I KNOW, RIGHT!!) in Perl!

I REALLY want to start using mod_perl for Apache, and maybe start using OOP with perl, but I'm so tired and I'll probably do it tomorrow morning when I get a chance! I can just feel the requests per second increasing...


Then again, I want to try out using Python, but it's syntax looks really ugly... When I see a sample of Python, it makes me want to cringe. It just looks... bleh. It reminds me too much of the "older" languages. But, who knows; maybe I will get attached to Python one day.

Being a Tor exit node

Lately, I have been contemplating whether or not to become a Tor exit node. After using Tor for the last year or so, I've always wanted to give back to the Tor community and network, since it's currently dreadfully slow.

But, I've heard stories where people have had their servers or computers seized by the local police for accessing illegal content on the internet and I've been reluctant because of this... ( like: http://calumog.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/why-you-need-balls-of-steel-to-operate-a-tor-exit-node/ )

I really don't want this to happen. I've been wanted to get a separate IP address for my server alone (can't think of what it's called, but you get a separate modem), but I haven't had a response from my ISP yet. Hopefully, if I do get a visit from the partyvan, they can just take this single server linked to the IP (so they won't need to confiscate my personal computer). I don't know of any other pretensive measure that I can take though... meh.

My favorite GNU/Linux distros.

1. Debian
   I've been using Debian since Etch. It has been one of the EASIEST distributions out there to use. It has a low resource footprint (with GNOME & Xfce), and pretty easy to configure. I've been using Debian on a my server the last week or so (using Debian Lenny), and it has been a godsend. It's about 8x faster than using Windows Server 2k8, and supports Mono (for a game server). The package manager is just amazing. I love aptitude; it makes life so much easier. Also, the community for Debian is huge. I can get support within a matter of minutes, whether in IRC or on a forum.
2. Fedora
   As much as I love RH, I just had to put this in 2nd place. I haven't used Fedora that much, but for reason, it can be a pain in the ass to get something to work. I've used Fedora on my desktop for a year or so, and it took me about a week just to get sound working :/ (which is longer than I hoped for). But, oh well, it's pretty nice.
3. Ubuntu
   I'm sure there are going to be haters for posting this as #3, with all the hardcore GANOO LOONIX fanboys out there. But, Ubuntu is one of the easiest distros to use. Everything that's essential is already installed and configured, there is no work required; but, because of this, it tends to be a bit resource heavy. I used unetbootin so I could use it on a live flashdrive on my netbook. I tend to just use it for aircrack-ng whenever I'm away from home ;)

...

9001. Gentoo
      God, I hate Gentoo. If I wanted to compile everything, I would have been just using LFS. Everyone who wants to get work actually done should avoid this. I don't want to waste half my life trying to get something to work in Gentoo. It feels like I'm going to have a brain aneurysm whenever I start Gentoo, just because of the misery that goes along with compiling. *sigh*

I know there are going to be GNU/Haters for this list, but please fee free to comment and voice your opinion :3

Bitcoins!

I've recently heard of a new form of currency called Bitcoins. They are a P2P based currency that is mostly decentralized. It's actually surprisingly gaining hold recently, the value of a Bitcoin has jumped up quite a bit this year. Depending on your processor, you can gain some bitcoins everyday. The technology behind Bitcoins is pretty fascinating (although I don't really understand how parts of it work)! Oh, also, all transactions are anonymous and free! So you can give someone 10 bitcoins without having to pay 11 or so!

Here's a few links
The main site: http://www.bitcoin.org/
Sites that accept bitcoins: http://www.bitcoin.org/trade
Free 0.05 bitcoins per day: https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/

Cheers!

PS: Incase you want to give me some bitcoins, my address is: 1NqGRfG2JhgpYJX4vBh4rPAnaKimtznefp