Closing of my WordPress blog

I have loss my domain mapping for this blog and, combined with the fact that I have a posterous account, have decided to let this blog go. I will not close it down for archival reasons, but I will not post to it again.

My Hiatus

I've been on the internet in various capacities for over 10 years. During that time I've not only created many websites, but also joined many. I have been fragmented all over the internet and a search for the various names I go by turns up thousands of results. I will, after this post is written be removing my accounts on many of those websites. The only things I'm leaving open are my Google Account(s) and the domains that I have paid for. SlashMyZeros.com will continue to be my posterous account, kamisamanou.com will continue to exist as my wordpress blog, and kamisamanou.net will redirect to http://profiles.google.com/kamisamanou. I intend to come back, to some websites, in the future, but which and when have yet to be determined.

Sayonara,

Kamisamanou Burgess
http://www.google.com/profiles/kamisamanou

http://www.slashmyzeros.com
http://www.kamisamanou.net

http://www.kamisamanou.com

March Update 1

Here I am, for the first time since I moved from home, sitting at a desk and typing a post up for the world to read. I bought the Silverio Chair and mobiletech personal computer workstation from Staples and now, 4 hours later, I am using them. Both are pretty nice aesthetically, but the desk is 99% particle board and at least 3 of the wood screws used to hold it together spin freely. Thankfully, there are enough cam-locks and wood pins to hold it together pretty well. However, regardless of whether it is sturdy or not, I have a 3 year warranty on it which will be more than enough to take care of the time I have left in college.

Today I did something new, I went out of my way to help another student. I know that after 4 years of college that doing so should be something I am used to, but frankly I've never felt the need. Today was different. The professor was explaining functions in C++ to a student who had ask a question about arguments and return types. I listened to both the explanation and question and decided the former wasn't sufficient enough to answer the latter and spent the rest of the class writing function examples with slight variations that represented how the lack of arguments or presence thereof affected what was needed in the function to produce the same practical result. I also alternated between the void and double return types for each function to show how that affected the code. In the end, I had something I didn't expect from myself: Something that looked like a page right out of a textbook. The student I handed it to realized the same thing and thanked me for it, something I am very happy about.

In contrast, another thing that is making me happy is the arrival of spring break. I will be cycling back home to see family and friends, some of them for the first time since I left. The cycling thing is going to be a new experience for me, and if I make it all the way home, I'll definitely be letting the world know how I feel because that will be by far the longest I've ever ridden I bicycle. Beyond socializing, I also plan on installing Fedora 14 while I can utilize my parents 11mbps internet connection, taking care of a few things I left undone, and probably getting some homework done. I'll come back a week from today and finish off Spring Break with video games. I'll probably play Final Fantasy on my NES the most, but I might also run through Legendary on Halo and Halo 2 on my Xbox. Of course I could also play Super Mario RPG on my SNES, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on my Genesis, Rise to Honor on my PS2, Super Mario 64 on my N64, but either way, I'll probably kill a little time playing Donkey Kong on my Mattel Intellivision. No matter what, I expect this will be my best spring break to date for one reason: I won't be pulling 40 hours at Burger King.

Oh, one more thing. I have decided to kill Kamisamanou.net. My day to day life doesn't allow for the upkeep of a website, blog, microblog(s), and the other things I get my hands on. Starting in the future sometime, http://www.kamisamanou.net will begin to point to my Google Profile at http://profiles.google.com/kamisamanou First, however, I am going to do a bit of an overhaul on my Google Profile. That should bother anyone out of my small group of readers since the important websites: kamisamanou.com(WordPress blog) and slashmyzeros.com(my posterous site) will both remain. By the way, if you are reading this at kamisamanou.com, I just wanted to let you know that this is a post on my posterous account that has been automatically cross-posted to my WordPress blog.

Sayonara,

->-

http://profiles.google.com/kamisamanou

http://www.kamisamanou.com

http://www.slashmyzeros.com

Slash My Zeros is Live

Just as I said in the title, Slash My Zeros is live and running. What is Slash My Zeros? My posterous site located at www.slashmyzeros.com. What is posterous? Essentially, it is social blogging by email.

So what would this mean? It means that when I email a post to posterous from my email account, it will get posted as a blog post at slashmyzeros.com, kamisamanou.com, and kamisamanou.blogspot.com. Then, notifications of the post will be sent to Twitter, identi.ca, Googe Buzz, Jaiku, and Facebook. In addition to that, any photos attached to my email will end up in Picasa Web and get displayed on the post. Furthermore, any video or audio files I attach will be embedded in a player in the post and videos. This is a huge time saver as I won't have to do the leg work of updating all of those accounts myself, which is good since I haven't even used some of them because they weren't worth all the time to update them.

And the last question: Slash My Zeros? The title really has no relevance to the website. Rather, I got tired of trying to distinguish between 0 and O on certain devices and primarily, in my own handwriting, so I have adopted the practice of slashing my zeros. I hope to one day have all of my 0s on my computer slashed, but that is something that will require a font search and time, something I don't have right now.

So, there it is.

Sayonara,
Hossuru Kamisamanou

College

I came to college expecting new things, but a Science-Fiction club called Alpha Psi Phi throwing a nerf gun party was not one of those things.

That reminds me: I've joined the local Go club at school. If you don't know what Go is, google "Go board game," click on the Wikipedia link, and get informed.

More Than Just a New Year

I know that at this point the “New Year” posts our for the most part over and unwelcome, but I seem to doubt that this will be like most of the posts you’ve read.

So why so much new? I have moved from my lovely home in Argleton, West Lancashire, UK to Cookeville, TN(New Home). I had been looking at multiple colleges, but I decided on attending Tennessee Technological University(New School), and moving there seemed to be the best choice in order to save time and money. This is a huge change for me since the things I’ve focused on for most of my life are now miles away, and without a job(New Employment Status), my life now revolves around the life at Tennessee Tech.

Naturally, I have decided that my blog will endure some changes too. Immediately noticeable is the new theme accompanying this text and a little more subtle change would be the more personal side of my life occupying the content of this blog. I will still write about a lot of the same things I have since I will be immersed in computers(I am pursuing a B.S. in Computer Science, followed by an M.S. in Artificial Intelligence and Data Mining), and I can’t help but philosophy and get involved with various projects, but those things won’t be my focus. Furthermore, I will have a second domain name for my blog here soon, just in case kamisamanou.com is to hard to spread by word of mouth. Whether or not I will change the name of the blog I have yet to determine.

Well, I’m going over to the U.C. for some food and a few games of Go.

Sayonara,
Kamisamanou

24 Hours With the 8pen Input Method

Head over to the8pen.com and you will see an intriguing video introduction to the latest input method to hit the Android OS and, likely, the strangest one too.

As we all know, and the video states, the keyboard was never meant to be shrunk to a two inch wide area and used by thumbs on a touchscreen, but such has been the method of the default method of every smartphone released to date and the method of 3rd party Android keyboards Swype, ThickButtons, and Swiftkey. Even though everybody has done something different with their version of what I used to type out this review, none have managed to overcome the problems that remain with the tiny keyboard in such a way that it would prevent the creation of the 8pen input method.

If you’ve watched the video on their homepage, you have some idea of how 8pen works. If you haven’t watched it, then you’d better before you consider buying it at just over $1.50. The concept is new, and is worthy of even more praise than the iPod’s touch wheel. However, unlike the iPod’s touch wheel, 8pen has a steep learning curve.

The Good:

• Quick at composing in English, no txt speak allowed
• Words not in english, like passwords, can be achieved by dragging your finger off to one side
• Fun: I felt like I was in a Pringles commercial
• Once you know where everything is, you can compose quickly without looking.
• Gestures are extremely helpful. Could be used for passwords, if you lock your phone and don’t mind having a plain text copy of your password on your phone.

The Bad:

• Steep learning curve
• Your fingers become a visual obstruction as you learn how to use it
• The space for the gestures seems a bit small

Overall, I love it. I didn’t return 8pen for the refund, and I think I might stop flipping my phone over to landscape mode just to type once I get used to 8pen. After 24 hours my composition speed with 8pen is comparable to my composition speed in Android’s landscape keyboard. I expect I’ll be texting while driving, which is illegal where I live, by the weeks end.

I hereby by give 8pen a 4 out of 5.

8pen Android Input Application

8pen, a new application that seeks to abolish the standard keyboard for mobile devices has gone live. I have forked over the $1.58 required to get it, and by this time tomorrow, I’ll have a review for you.

GRITS in Quarantine

The ever-so-impressive christian hiphop/rap duo GRITS has just release their 11th album, “Quarantine.”

I first fell in love with their music back when Art of Translation was fresh, and have been tracking them ever since. COFFEE & BONAFIDE have been doing it right ever since. They took their style into both the club and pop music realms, and did good jobs of it, but since “The Art of Translation” they have yet to create another tidal wave like the track “Ooh Aah.” At this point in their career, the duo is set up to do that again, and maybe better. While the RevolutionArt(the label founded by the veteran duo) web page states that this is the end of the duo, I see plenty of reason why GRITS can continue bobbin’ and bouncin’ for quite some time.

Do yourself a favor and join me as one of thousands, maybe millions, who will be purchasing Quarantine.

School and Work, and Life as an Adult

I’ve been attending Roane State Community College since 2007 while working at the job I’ve had since 2005 and it makes me wonder, what will life be like after this? This winter I’ll be embarking on a new journey, living away from home and going to school. This bothers me since up until now, I’ve been able to pay the majority of my way though college. Then, I will be embarking on the search for a new job, and finding a place to live. While the aforementioned problems are all part of growing up as a college student in many cases, this is all compounded by the fact that I’ve never done this before and that it’s likely I’ll be 19-20 hours away from home. Still, I feel like I have to do this, no matter what it takes. I just… worry sometimes.

Anyways, I have schoolwork to do, and my battery from Level8Technologies isn’t in yet, so my computer’s about to hibernate.

Sayonara,
Kamisamanou