Chances are, you probably have speakers or maybe a set of headphones hooked up to your computer. Well, my situation is.. complicated.

I salvaged an old stereo and disassembled it. The speaker portion is sitting behind my monitor while the controls are underneath my desk. Speakers are connected to the controls, controls connected to the computer.

In short:
Speakers > Controls > Computer

The detached speakers behind my (big) monitor.

So it all works out well. I just poke the On/Off button underneath the desk whenever I need to turn the speakers on or off.

The sound quality is good and the volume is fine. The only problem is, adjusting the volume.

There’s a volume knob on the stereo, but it’s hard to turn a knob with your feet.

Windows 7 gives me a nice looking volume control thing on the taskbar, but using that is inconvenient and slow. So, I had to find another solution.

What I found was a little program called Volumouse. I’ve been using Volumouse for over a year now, and I’ve had no problems with it.

The extremely complex and elaborate interface of Volumouse.

Instead of using a knob or a desktop gadget to change the volume, all you need is your mouse. Volumouse lets you change the volume by pressing a key and rolling that wheel on your mouse.

I set my Volumouse up so that to change the volume, I need to:

• Hold SHIFT key
  

• Scroll up or down

That’s it. I can change the volume while doing homework, listening to music, or playing games. Yeahh, now go try it :)

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/volumouse.html

-Roger

If you’re wondering about the Mooosic player, it JW Player. I just tweaked it a little and put it into Boggert.

source

LOL :)
You can read more about Pandora on my post about Pandora.

I added FancyBox JS to RogerHub’s images.

Enjoy
-Roger

Yeahh.. Waterbending :)

Over thanksgiving, I went to Monterey with my small group! During my trip I took a lot of panoramic pictures with my new samsung solstice.

(Click on picture for full size)

So first, we met up at Burger King and then we left for Monterey. It was cool how all our cars (we had 5 of em) were in a line driving down the freeway.

On the way, I ate McDonalds.. just because they’re easy to find.

In Monterey, half of our group lived in a hotel and the other half lived in this house that we rented out.

The hotel was really nice. We lived on the top floor, so we got these huge rooms that actually had a separate living room and bedroom.

(Hotel Hallway)

(The view from our hotel room)

The hotel served breakfast every day so that the retarded tourists could avoid buying a real breakfast.

The house was even nicer. It was really big and had a lot of weird furniture things.

(Panoramic of the House)

(Weird pillow that looks like a giant olive.)

(Chair... well it’s supposed to be a chair. It’s a lot greener IRL than it looks in the picture.)

Angie playing DS next to a very tall lamp :)

In the afternoon, we would all go to the rented house. The adults would cook and we would go do stupid things.. Yeah, I’m not even gonna bother talking about that.

(Abstract picture of the coast. It doesn’t really look like anything, but I kept it just for the weird colors.)

So there’s a lot of water everywhere in Monterey. There’s random reservoirs beside the streets and there are rivers everywhere. It has a really long coastline that you can see on the 17-Mile Drive.

Yeah, we went to the 17 Mile Drive because that’s one of the only 2 attractions in Monterey.

The coastlines typically look like this. There’s water > sand > seaweed > rocks. Half of the stops in 17 Mile Drive look identical to this. So, instead of posting 10 pictures, I’m just going to leave you with one.

This looks like something out of a magazine. There was this one stop where there were a lot birds flying around. I was lucky enough to get close to one of them.

Although you can’t tell from this picture, this bird was literally 3 feet above my Solstice when I took this picture.

Golf course at Pebble Beach. The stitching is kinda messed up..

This picture almost looks fake.. But it’s not.

More pretty water.. and bridge.

Yeahh.. boats. This was at Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey.

Me standing in front of a random body of water wearing my triangular backpack.. Whenever the tide comes in, you’re supposed to run to shore just before it hits you right? Well when you’re 5’9" and a half-inch of water is creeping towards you slowly, you’re not supposed to fear drowning or anything.

Yeah, so I was stupid and just stood there, so I got my shoes all wet and it was retarded..

One of those ocean drains. You know how a lot of street-side drains have those "No Dumping. This drain leads to the ocean." signs? Yeah, well some of them lead here. And water comes out. And yeah.

Someone shot all these poor seals so now they’re rotting on the beach shore.

I’m just kidding.. They’re still alive. But if you don’t look closely, they look dead. No?

A lot of people have houses on the 17 Mile Drive. They’re really big, but they’re really expensive too. They probably hate us retarded tourists wandering around in their front yards. But overall, that’s a cool place to live.

Funny sign.

Roger, the telephone pole... Yeahh

The most genius invention ever invented. Diagonal crosswalks!

So, these crosswalks look like a box (normal) with an X transcribed inside (abnormal). But when someone wants to walk diagonally across the street, all car-traffic has to stop.

Isn’t this the awesomest fountain you’ve ever seen?

Yeah, so a 6 hour car trip there and back.

So while I was gone, Google unveiled their Google Wave program. They want people to switch from email and Instant Messaging to a collaborative conversation that is saved online. You can watch their introduction video on Google Wave’s Website.

I think Google Wave is a good idea, especially because it’s meant to replace email. But, instant messaging can’t be replaced by such a complex tree-structure. Good luck to Google with this.

Lol...

-Roger

NONE of these pictures have been edited/photoshopped.

RogerHub feels so deserted... Scroll down and leave a comment :)

I’ll be gone the next few days, so I guess it doesn’t really matter.

(Despite first impressions, this post is not about computers.)

EDIT: I made a THA-1 Solver where you can try out THA-1 hashing. Although, there’s no point to it because you cant visit RogerHub during a test...

Today, I will be authoring a new cryptography algorithm called THA-1 (Test Hashing Algorithm Version 1)

THA-1 is a very simple method of verifying your (school) test answers so that you can compare with other people afterward :)

Instead of memorizing 1 is A, 2 is C, 3 is E, 4 is B... You can just memorize one big number (ex. 56)

The downside to this is that, you only know get two possible outcomes:

• Answers all match
  

• Answers don’t all match

But that’s the point of hashing right?

Requirements:
- Ability to Add
- Ability to Multiply (They’re small numbers, don’t worry)
- Understanding of Modular Arithmatic
- Ability to memorize a 2 or 3 digit number.

Here are the rules for THA-1:

1. THA-1 will accept only multiple-choice, matching, and true-false test questions. So, short answer, fill-in-the-blank(s), and free response will not work for this!

2. To start out, each answer is assigned a value.

A is 1, B is 2, C is 3.... Z is 26
True is 1 False is 2

Double letters will have their numbers added up.
For example: AC will turn into 1+3 = 4

3. Multiply each answer by it’s question number MOD 10. Meaning: for #14, if you get B, do 2(b) x 4(#14), not 2x14 because 2x14 is too hard :).. (not really)

Example:
1. A (1x1=1)
2. C (3x2=6)
3. D (3x4=12)
4. D (4x4=16)
5. B (2x5=10)
6. C (3x6=18)

If any of these products are more than 20, take the modular remainder by 20.

Ex:
23 => 3
57 => 17

4. Add up all the sums! Don’t forget to take the remainder of any of the sums are more than 20.

Example:
1. A (1x1=1)
2. C (3x2=6)
3. D (3x4=12)
4. D (4x4=16)
5. B (2x5=10)
6. C (3x6=18)

1+6+12+16+10+18 = 63

(Seriously, if that took you more than 15 seconds, this method will not work for you...)

That’s it! You’re done. After the very-short 6 question test, tell people "69" (it was a coincidence, i swear). If other people get answers that are different from yours, then one of you missed at least one question. (Either that or one of you did your math wrong.)

Yeahh... there might be some resonance (lol) or even a better way to hash test problems. That’s why this is only Version 1. If you have any classes with me, we should try this out sometime :)

Another example:

1. True (1x1=1)
2. False (2x2=4)
3. True (1x3=3)
4. True (1x4=4)
5. A (1x5=5)
6. B (2x6=12)
7. D (4x7=28 = 8 Mod 20) <<So, use 8 instead of 28 on this one.
8. C (3x8=24 => 4) << same thing here
9. E (5x9=45 => 5)
10. AB ((1+2)x0=0 => 0) <<Remember, AB turns into 1+2, which equals 3. Also, because 10%10=0, you use 0 instead of 10.
11. AD ((1+4)x1=5)
12. AC ((1+3)x2=8)
13. AE ((1+5)x3=18)
14. BC ((2+3)x4=20 => 0) << 20 remainder 20 equals 0, not 20.

So, 1+4+3+4+5+12+8+4+5+0+5+8+18+0 = 77

Your THA-1 Hash is 77!
Yay!

Yeahh. Extra math.. Not fun. But, if you’re really anxious about your test score, this is a fool-proof way to remember your test answers. Granted that you didn’t do the math wrong.

If you’re a strait-B student, don’t even bother using this. This is meant for Asians that get 100%’s frequently.

Wait, so did you get 77? If not you got one of the problems wrong :)

And Happy Thanksgiving again...

-Roger

In other news... I broke the shelf thing that was in my locker today. I was trying to get it out and the hinge came off. SO, i just threw it away..

Now that i think of it, I should have recycled.

Thanksgiving is coming up. Well, more specifically, Thanksgiving Break is coming up. A whole 5 days from school.. what to do.

Whatever you’re doing. Have fun with it, because you can. Yeahh, you already know there are people that don’t get all the nice things you get.

So be happy about whatever you’re doing, even if you think it sucks.

(Changes the topic)

You wouldn’t believe how often people skip words when writing sentences.

In their head:
"I am one of your students."

From their hand:
"I am one of students."

Yeahh, that exact thing happened in first period today.

source

Yeahh. haha. So read over your writing before you turn it in.

(Changes the topic again)

Smokers. They suck. Instead of "No Smoking", signs should say "No Smokers". Just because someone isn’t smoking doesn’t mean they don’t smell disgusting.

Especially in Asian restaurants, there’s always the guy right outside the door smoking because he’s not allowed to smoke indoors. Yeahh those extra ten feet make that much of a difference. I hope nobody I know ever starts smoking....

From the day I upgraded to Windows 7, I haven’t found a single wallpaper that fits my desktop just right. So I’ve been using the default one.. >.>

But this one’s actually not bad:

(Other than the retarded blur, this one’s very pretty )

(This one’s pretty cool too. I use it as my wallpaper)

Yeahh. there’s usually a lot of great wallpapers at InterfaceLIFT (get the pun?). If you’re looking for a good quality wallpaper, check there first. They have alot of different resolutions and trust me: A sharp professionally-resized wallpaper is incomparably superior to a system-resized one.

So make sure you choose the right resolution when you’re downloading their wallpapers.

Yeahh.. so Happy Thanksgiving :)

-Roger

I couldn’t think of a title, so I’ll just leave it blank. Whenever I see "Untitled" in MS Word Documents, I always think "Utilited". I don’t even know how that word got in my head. It’s not even a real word.

A random number between 0 (inclusive) and 1 (exclusive) is chosen. What is the probability that the number is 0?

Yeahh.. this question is retarded. It’s like trying to find the area of a line. You can’t.

Programming approach to this problem:

javascript:var output = 0; for (var i=0;i<10000000;i++){if (Math.random() == 0){ output++;}} alert(output);

Clear the address bar of your web browser and type that in. Basically, it’ll generate 10000000 random numbers (between 0 and 1) and check if each one is equal to 0.

You should get a alert that says "0". Meaning: Out of 10000000 attempts, 0 was generated 0 times.

That’s just it. Your chances of getting a 0 are so infinitesimally small that most people just accept that the probability is 0%.

Now, by some freak-of-nature coincidence, your computer might actually generate the full floating-point value of absolute 0, but that’s pretty unlikely.

So, no matter how bad your situation looks, your chances are never 0. So don’t give up!

(Thinks about Spanish grade..)

-Roger

source
Yeah.. it’s really retarded how they take away your water bottles...

Updates:
Server problems have been fixed. RogerHub should load fine now :)

Issues : My web host says that they’re having some server troubles. You might get some "500 Internal Server Error"’s while you’re on RogerHub. Just hit the F5 button to refresh till it works.

-Roger

If you haven’t watched this already, watch it.

Ahh.. interesting..

More technical version:

My interpretation:
Google is making their own Operating System called "Chrome OS". It is based off of the free, open-source Linux OS, which now holds about 4% of the market share.

Good luck to Google with this...

EDIT: Here’s a picture of RogerHub as viewed from Google Chrome OS

Yeahhh.. there :)

Out with the old, in with the new. FM Radio has been around forever. The same old repetitive songs, half of which you hate, are the embodiment of someone else’s music tastes that you’ve struggled to adapt to.

Seriously, that gets old after a while. iPods are great. You buy (or download) music off the internet and store them indefinitely on your handheld noise-producing device and listen for hours on end. It’s great to have music that suits your choices, but no matter how many songs you collect, it never feels enough.

Now, there’s a music service called Pandora. Pandora has been around for many years now, but not many people know about it/use it. Pandora is essentially, one big music collection. They have thousands of music titles for you to listen to. But best of all, it’s completely legal.

Pandora understands your radio and iPod woes and is determined to do something about it. Pandora doesn’t just separate songs by genre, but they also assign "attributes" (almost 400) to songs depending on the individual song’s qualities.

All of Pandora’s songs are available to you through their radio station. Oh wait, radio? Not that again... Well Pandora provides radio that’s different than the kind you get over the airwaves.

Pandora lets you create your own radio stations based on your own personal music choices. You can set different "seed" songs that tell Pandora what kind of music should play on that particular station.

But Pandora usually doesn’t get it right on the first try. As your customized radio station plays out songs for you, you can either give the song a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. Through this careful refinement, Pandora adapts to the kind of music you like.

Getting started is unbelievably easy. All you need is a Web Browser with Adobe Flash. (If you can watch YouTube videos, you’re all set.)

Visit Pandora.com and you should get a page like this:

Just type in a song. Any song that you’ve been humming in your head whilst you were reading this. Press Listen Now and you’ll get this screen:

In a few seconds, your brand-new music station will be setup and you can start listening. You can create more stations (up to 100) if you want a wider variety of music. Click on the "thumbs-up" icon if you like the song that’s playing and the "thumbs-down" icon if you don’t.

If you start hearing more and more "thumbs-up" quality songs, then Pandora’s ESP music-taste-detection is working.

Yeah. But Pandora places a lot of restrictions on your music-listening to keep their service free. First off, you can’t rewind through a song. You can skip to the next song, but keep pressing the next button and you’ll get a nasty little message.

Pandora also limits the number of hours per day/month that you can listen to their radio. But that’s okay. Just come to RogerHub and listen to some Mooosic! Finally, Pandora doesn’t let you explicitly choose which songs to play.

Final tip:
If you’ve been listening to Pandora non-stop and your hours have all been used up, you can continue listening with these simple steps:

1. On your computer, go to "%APPDATA%/Macromedia/Flash Player/#SharedObjects"

2. There will be a single randomly named folder. Open it up.

3. A list of a bunch of website names should come up. Look for the one that’s titled "Pandora.com"

4. Delete the two files in there, and BAM. You’re done. You’ll have to login again afterwards.

Yeahh. So, have fun listening to Pandora Radio!

(I took this while I was walking home today. It doesn’t look as good on the computer as it does on my phone. )

-Roger

It’s naturally fun to help people. Whether it’s recognition, respect, or moral satisfaction, helping people just makes us feel good. But there’s one thing that ticks me off.

"It doesn’t work"

Well, alright. That’s good to know. It doesn’t work. We need to try something else. But seriously, when somebody’s trying to help you, you should at least give them an intelligible response.

Instead of simply saying "It doesn’t work", you should be specific and give details on why you think it doesn’t work. Tell the helper what happens instead of "it" working. Simply hearing "It doesn’t work" gives the helper absolutely no leads for a solution. I don’t know if it’s just me, or if everyone feels like this, but I wish the world would stop responding with only "It doesn’t work".

An example:

potette007 5:50 pm
roger
whats wrong with this?
public boolean lessBy10(int a, int b, int c) {
int d = (a-b);
int e = (b-c);
int f = (a-c);
if(d<0)
{d=d*(-1);}
else if (e<0)
{e=e*(-1);}
else if (f<0)
{f=f*(-1);}
if(f>=10||e>=10||d>=10)
{return true;}
return false;
}
rogerphp 5:51 pm
what?
uhh
get rid of the () around a-b first of all
potette007 5:51 pm
mhm
rogerphp 5:52 pm
and d*(-1)
d*-1 is fine
same thing with e and f
otherwise, it should work
potette007 5:52 pm
still doesnt work
rogerphp 5:52 pm
o_o

Yeahh.. great. Thanks for all that useful information. Now I’m thinking: Does the answer come out wrong? Does the program give an error? If so, what does it say?

Yeahhh.. there’s my rant for today.

-Roger

Here’s my awesome picture for today:

People keep telling me to play FPS games. I’m against them not only because they glorify killing in a idiotic way, but because they give me headaches from all the motion and shaking involved.

I saw this video on The Onion and it reminded me of something creepy. If someone breaks into your house, what would be the first thing you’d do?

Call the cops? Get your bb-gun? Lock yourself in the restroom? Well, The Onion has a (satirical) news segment on how a boy shot a burglar with his dad’s gun and how he was praised for it. The video isn’t that interesting, but if you want, you can watch it below:

Seriously, the people that break into houses are probably in a much worse situation than you are. Their natural instinct is to take what they need from other people, seeing how they can’t obtain it themselves. So, a burglar is more concerned with your money and jewelery than shooting you down. Logically, hiding and pretending that nobody’s home would be the best course of action, after you call the cops (of course).

But taking a real gun and shooting someone? First off, you can’t even be sure if this person is armed. After all, it could be a drunk, thinking that your house was his own. The likelihood of this probably depends on your neighborhood.

Shooting a person without knowing what their intentions are would seem illogical to a normal person. But this kind of violence happens in FPS games all the time. In Halo, you’ll shoot anything that looks un-human just because its there. Sure, pixels don’t feel pain and ultimately, aren’t real, but repeatedly killing creatures, both armed and unarmed, can’t be good for your morals.

Alright, I’m changing the topic to something that isn’t about death and killing now.

I took this picture with my new phone. Yeahh, just stare at it for a while till all your malicious-thoughts fade away.

-Roger

For computer literate people:

There’s something about Asian parents that makes them think that taking pictures for any event is of paramount importance. Chances are, you have at least 20GB of pictures laying around on your computer. If your family has more than one computer (which they probably do), pictures and backups of pictures can get hard to manage.

You don’t want to wait for a harddrive failure to backup your all-important pictures.

If you’ve already setup a home network (complete with static internal IP’s) you can access remote drives using the hidden root drive directory (\\192.168.0.100\C$ for the C:\ drive). But copying and pasting pictures takes wayy to long. Especially since there’s a much easier way to do it.

In short:

XCOPY "Location1" "Location2" /D /E /C /R /K /I /S /Y

Replace Location1 and Location2 with your initial location and your final destination. (This only sync’s one way.)

So, if you want to sync 10.10.10.102’s Photos to your own computer, use

XCOPY "\\10.10.10.102\C$\directory\to\photos" "C:\photos\newphotos" /D /E /C /R /K /I /S /Y

Yeahh.. have fun with it.
source

-Roger