After reading a text from this link:
http://www.computerlanguage.com/2020.pdf
I wondered of the possibilities that open source could offer. What surprised me the most is the amount of people that are developing software just for the fun of it. I was already aware that many programs were out there, many free, but just as many cost money to use. And yet, the free programs are sometimes just as good as those that we need to buy. In some cases the free program is better than the commercialized one. Not only that, but the free program has fewer bugs compared to the one that a company paid huge sums of money to produce.
One example of a program that is free and works well (according to my Computer Application teacher ^^):
http://kompozer.net/
Cost: Free - whatever other program you might want to use with it (a free drawing program such as paint.net, the internet to use the research engine google and various peripherals), open office to write things in and take notes and a free operating system that suits your needs and so on. (which in the end doesn't cost all that much, maybe a few hundred for the computer if you don't already have one)
Latest version: 0.7.10 (meaning the program isn't evaluated ready for professional use according to the person in charge of this program, though it does everything you need it to do none the less)
http://kompozer.net/about/ (check the mini-FAQ)
Who develops it: Dedicated people as well as a whole cummunity/forum that can even offer code to improve the program.
opposed to:
http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/
Cost: 399$ (Dreamweaver alone) - 2499$ (all the things that can bundle and contribute to making it better) (and this isn't adding to the cost of a computer capable of running all those programs and such)
Latest version: Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 - Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection
Who develops it: Paid people in a company, some client input is probably used to better the product, but having access freely to the source code is definitely out of the question, seeing as it costs so much just to ''own'' it.
Which website maker will you pick if you compare the price and the quality? Personally, unless I'm part of a medium or large company that needs to follow the edge of technology and have money to waste, I'd go with Kompozer.
Have a nice day!
Next up, me possibly being filmed at the Morrin Center....
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
University life
I participated for the first time in a secondary class as an assistant teacher and observer. It was a pleasant experience where I discovered a first glimpse of the daily life of a teacher and what he does to prepare for a class. I briefly met the team that surrounds the teacher, such as the director, the psychologist, the other teachers and the secretary. They were all very kind and were willing to answer all of my questions. I felt a bit lost with the freedom of direction at first, seeing as all was explained in a booklet and how I had to ask the questions myself to the teacher to have information and advance my future projects during the practicum. I hope that everything goes well.
In other news, I'm looking into myself to see how I've been so far and where I'm going. Let's see where that goes some other time.
Take care and till next I type,
+Maxime+
In other news, I'm looking into myself to see how I've been so far and where I'm going. Let's see where that goes some other time.
Take care and till next I type,
+Maxime+
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
My internet identity
Having discovered the internet back in 2001 and explored it greatly, my identity on the net is probably vast and impossible to hide. Luckily, on forums, we don't use our real names. Accounts may lead to e-mails, which in turn, will lead to me, if on another profile I have my real name and information to reach me on it. With google saving everything in its cache, everything I leave will probably remain up on the net until the day google dissapears and erases all of its database (which is just about impossible).
What would the net teach you about me?
If you type in my name and family name, you probably won't find me on the first pages. My name is fairly common. Even on Facebook, there are quite a few who have my name, so I'm safe from onlookers who aren't too persistent. Anyone who knows how to use google and has patience, will likely find me on various forums, websites and such. I won't name any to make my readers work just a bit harder to find me.
What would the net teach you about me?
If you type in my name and family name, you probably won't find me on the first pages. My name is fairly common. Even on Facebook, there are quite a few who have my name, so I'm safe from onlookers who aren't too persistent. Anyone who knows how to use google and has patience, will likely find me on various forums, websites and such. I won't name any to make my readers work just a bit harder to find me.
Response to videos seen in class
I have watched my share of inspirational videos on youtube, in school and in other places. What was presented to me this time made me think of Bill Gates and his attempt to bring the net in the lives of everyone. Seeing all the students in one of the videos write things from their laptops and on pieces of paper, it showed that some teachers believe that Bill is right. I think that our teacher in computer application I loves the net, seeing as he's been teaching about using computers, navigating on the net, promoting various programs and much more. I think that the videos were interesting, but wasn't wowed by them.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
My second blog (randomness beware)
Life is made up of many things. I create my universe through millions of questions and occasionally writing prose/poetry/writings/stuff.
Here is one for someone who is spamming the resfresh button to check my new blog (you know who you are):
Politeness
Looking up at the world,
Keeping a smile where all can see.
Some remain hidden behind masks,
Those live their lives with prejudice.
Life remains simple on the outside,
Deep inside nothing is further from the truth.
To show oneself bare without a doubt,
Desiring to show what really exists within.
Touching soul to soul in true comprehension,
Rather than loosing meaning in needless formalities.
Yearning for this unrealistic utopia,
Walking this path as resolved as ever.
Nothing more seems to persist,
Politeness and courtesy do not disappear.
Trying is not enough as change will not come,
Making a difference in this social world inexistent.
Conflicts do not always end well,
Words and actions are not beyond the human nature...
Whatever may come will come,
Life does not end in a breeze of stale air.
Resistance and comprehension used as tools,
Living is the only proof of change.
Gathering a whole of experiences,
Only this is worth the journey.
A single mind amongst the rest,
Attempting to reach out to others.
Using what's learned to its best of use,
Searching eternally those that will listen.
Personal goals seeming small to many,
The only reason of existence to others.
Bringing forth what makes you unique,
Showing the warm skin under that cold facade.
Breathing in the freshness of truth,
Not denying feelings from within.
Living what is your own without a doubt,
Letting everything come out...
This poem comes from a forum that I go to very often and that I am also a moderator:
http://www.animeonline.net/f60/personal-collection-17085/
My profile over there:
http://www.animeonline.net/members/soldat-of-life-19003.html
Oh, and if ever you want a looooooooong read:
My anime debut!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I probably answered this question more times than I could count in anime forums. I could easily answer this shortly, but I love writing, and if I’m to get better at it, why not use it to explain one of the things that I have loved for quite some time now. Here is a more detailed version of my past/present/future interest and its many twists and turns on how I discovered anime and why I’m still hooked. The main themes that guided me would be the world of video games, the almighty television, a nerd of the opposite gender, the slightly communist government, the infinitely vast internet, the good old forums and chat programs, the popular yet infamous peer to peer programs, various books and interests that surround the culture that describes Japan, the huge event which could only be described as a convention, and finally, my personal goals and interests in life. Simply press ‘’play’’ and enjoy the read.
This grand story begins with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It is probably the first place I noticed that a product had been ‘’Made in Japan’’. Video games often tend to cross over to anime material and the opposite happens just as much. I mostly played the games I had possession of at first, so the good old Mario was the only character I could knowingly compare to anything Japanese, even if he didn’t have much detail to show some form of anime like figure. I was around the age of 5 when the NES came into my life and I probably beat Super Mario Bros. more often than anything else I’ve ever had my hands on, except maybe Ninja Turtles 2, which was the other game I had that my father had bought Ô so long ago. Soon, I started meeting other friends who had various NES games and soon discovered many games that today have plenty of anime based upon them. To name a few: The legend of Zelda, Megaman, Final Fantasy, Kirby Dreamland and many more. At some point, video games didn’t really hint me greatly towards my path of anime loving and everything that goes along with loving this ‘’made in Japan’’ trend that I am far from being done with even today. The future still has many unopened doors that I am yet to explore. The next stage to getting me into anime was to be the good old TV.
Much more popular than video games in general, television brought about a mass amount of information for those who tuned in on it. There is a lot of what anyone could want to hear and see, so much actually that most those who watch it have to filter out what they don’t want to see and hopefully find something worth their time. More often than not, in my opinion, the TV has more and more of what I consider extremely annoying: commercials. I personally stopped watching it in 2001 partially because of this. Yet those ads pay for everything that is broadcasted, so I tolerated them, or so I did, way back then. I watched like many other eager kids the Saturday morning cartoons. The oldest cartoon I recall watching was ‘’Les Merveilleuses cites d’or’’ (The Mysterious Cities of Gold) and Astro Boy. I didn’t even know that those were actually made by Japanese people until I was told so by other people quite a few years later. Other titles like Dragon Ball (when he was a kid) and Sailor Moon also created some further pre-interest in a genre I could not name at the time. Then came the moment of no return of what would mould my future. People say that love can move mountains, well I say, it moved me towards anime.
Indeed, my small crush on a girl older than me, more nerd than me and not quite interested in me ended quite a bit in an out of touch relationship when she finally moved to cégep (between High School and University) and greater things. But, one thing remained, the spark that ignited the flame that would grow greater and greater for the following 10 years and beyond. This simple girl, who was learning Japanese and loved to draw manga like characters, started off by discussing about computer problems with my lunch time friends in high school. To make a rather long story short, she was a Megaman X lover, especially with the 4th version, especially fond of a character called Iris, that she used as a screen name everywhere she went on the net. Though I had not much knowledge then in what was the all encompassing internet. This girl talked about various anime and many aspects of Japan that she liked, mostly the video game/manga/anime part of it at least. I still didn’t quite get everything she tossed at me as she was basically light years ahead of what I knew then in terms of the country of the rising sun. Though one thing was solidified, my curiosity had been struck hard for what she taught me. I state that I am a very curious person. The next thing needed to get my interests acknowledged and defined, was a computer that could have the ability of handling internet.
The government clearly had a hand in helping me attain my goal. The main reason being that computers and internet was starting to be a useful tool for school projects made at home and for personal use, thus they created some kind of law that permitted families to have a hefty discount of buying brand new desktop computers to help modernise society. I saw the queue and showed this fact to my father. Lucky for me, he was greatly interested in new gadgets, and our very old and murky PC that couldn’t even have internet work on it (It had 4 megabytes of virtual memory, windows 3.11 and an 80 mb Hard Drive) was more than not out of date. I half dragged the one with monetary power to an electronics store, and we ended up with the second best PC that place had to offer. I was nearly set for my grand entrance upon the limitless world that links everyone together at some degree. A month or two later, we immediately went high speed, happily never having to experience dial up, which I consider this to be a blessing. The girl I met while we stayed in touch showed me the works, and I quickly got to find wallpapers inspired by anime, forums that discussed about anime and a place that had and still has more of anything in it than most places I’ve ever seen: mIRC. Though I didn’t really dwell that much in there and barely got the hang of it. Napster was the next step, while the girl was installing Megaman X4 on my hard drive, as she felt like listening to a good tune while working on getting my pc working and up to date. The first song from Japanese origin, besides my NES, that I ever heard (being that I never had much interest in music before hand much) was Electric Communication, a song from Rockman a.k.a. Megaman’s true title on Japanese soil, or something like that. Then everything went uphill, or downhill, depending on if you consider a positive thing watching lots of anime, while having a few school results not as high as usual. This greater power was called: Kazaa.
Various computer programs and ways to link to each other came to existence before my very eyes quickly in succession, and probably are still optimised, destroyed by various law suits, and re spawned in a blurr that comes and goes on in the world of the World Wide Web. I admit having used them quite a bit at first, but I have lately been atoning for my sins by buying what I really want, at least when I have the money to offer myself this luxury, as anime rarely comes cheap over here. I greatly went about watching whole series in fast succession and probably discovered that it was possible for the human body to stay up and not sleep for more than 24 hours, well, at least for my body to do so, even if it had a few disadvantages to do so. I could name quite a few anime that really got my attention then, but one that I will never forget is the anime series Noir. It mostly got to me because of its seriousness, the depth of mystery and how everything seemed much nicer in terms of quality compared to what I had seen before (and it was suggested by a certain girl). Programs were nice to get what I wanted, but to really find worthy stuff to watch, I needed to find people who knew what was out there. I soon joined an anime discussion forum and suggestions utterly poured in, faster than I could watch them. Eventually, I watched less and less anime, as I had watched most of what was out there in terms of worthy anime. That, studies and work took a good chunk of time away from my interest as well. Through all that, I played a few good RPG video games, the occasional sim date pc game and discovered the summit of where every anime loving person went to: conventions.
By the time I heard about anime conventions, I had read at least three tourist guides of Japan, tried to learn by myself Japanese (which didn’t work due to my lack of personal motivation…sadly) and lurked and read through tons of sites that referred to Japanese culture of all kind. I wanted mostly visit Japan, but money wasn’t pouring down upon me, so I’d have to put that as a rain check of sorts for a future endeavour. Still to this day, I have not put my feet under Japanese soil, but I did end up going to Otakon 2007, and made a few friends that could be called most likely Otaku near where I live. I had heard of that place the first year I discovered anime forums, but never could attend, eternally bound with how much my bank account had stashed within. My studies along the way didn’t go to well, so I took a break in that domain and started earning my way to savings and my very first solo trip. Five months into my not very inspiring job, I finally saw a safe path set before me that lead me promptly, yet with a few bumps, to the second largest anime convention in the United States of America. I met up with anime fans of all kind and considered myself probably very sane and normal compared to a few that I discussed with. The cherry on the cake wasn’t all the anime that I could watch, it was the open minded atmosphere that was felt within all the 26,000 people or so that attended this event. Lots of things took place in the five days I left my home country, but those five days were equivalent to much more than a week of experience in life.
Over half a year went by without much growth in my interest, but I recently made a choice. As of now, I’m trying to enter university to eventually teach English as a second language and eventually attempt to use my acquired skills to direct my path to one particular place: Japan. Though I may not end up doing all that, my other interests and my future will be heightened as I motivate myself back to studying, and strangely, with the thing that first got my grades plummeting: anime, that and my love of writing. On a last note, I hope that one day, anime will be appreciated by the mass public as a medium that can be for all ages and minds, not simply a cartoon that’s made for kids. Thank you for reading.
I think this is enough for a random blog.
Here is one for someone who is spamming the resfresh button to check my new blog (you know who you are):
Politeness
Looking up at the world,
Keeping a smile where all can see.
Some remain hidden behind masks,
Those live their lives with prejudice.
Life remains simple on the outside,
Deep inside nothing is further from the truth.
To show oneself bare without a doubt,
Desiring to show what really exists within.
Touching soul to soul in true comprehension,
Rather than loosing meaning in needless formalities.
Yearning for this unrealistic utopia,
Walking this path as resolved as ever.
Nothing more seems to persist,
Politeness and courtesy do not disappear.
Trying is not enough as change will not come,
Making a difference in this social world inexistent.
Conflicts do not always end well,
Words and actions are not beyond the human nature...
Whatever may come will come,
Life does not end in a breeze of stale air.
Resistance and comprehension used as tools,
Living is the only proof of change.
Gathering a whole of experiences,
Only this is worth the journey.
A single mind amongst the rest,
Attempting to reach out to others.
Using what's learned to its best of use,
Searching eternally those that will listen.
Personal goals seeming small to many,
The only reason of existence to others.
Bringing forth what makes you unique,
Showing the warm skin under that cold facade.
Breathing in the freshness of truth,
Not denying feelings from within.
Living what is your own without a doubt,
Letting everything come out...
This poem comes from a forum that I go to very often and that I am also a moderator:
http://www.animeonline.net/f60/personal-collection-17085/
My profile over there:
http://www.animeonline.net/members/soldat-of-life-19003.html
Oh, and if ever you want a looooooooong read:
My anime debut!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I probably answered this question more times than I could count in anime forums. I could easily answer this shortly, but I love writing, and if I’m to get better at it, why not use it to explain one of the things that I have loved for quite some time now. Here is a more detailed version of my past/present/future interest and its many twists and turns on how I discovered anime and why I’m still hooked. The main themes that guided me would be the world of video games, the almighty television, a nerd of the opposite gender, the slightly communist government, the infinitely vast internet, the good old forums and chat programs, the popular yet infamous peer to peer programs, various books and interests that surround the culture that describes Japan, the huge event which could only be described as a convention, and finally, my personal goals and interests in life. Simply press ‘’play’’ and enjoy the read.
This grand story begins with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It is probably the first place I noticed that a product had been ‘’Made in Japan’’. Video games often tend to cross over to anime material and the opposite happens just as much. I mostly played the games I had possession of at first, so the good old Mario was the only character I could knowingly compare to anything Japanese, even if he didn’t have much detail to show some form of anime like figure. I was around the age of 5 when the NES came into my life and I probably beat Super Mario Bros. more often than anything else I’ve ever had my hands on, except maybe Ninja Turtles 2, which was the other game I had that my father had bought Ô so long ago. Soon, I started meeting other friends who had various NES games and soon discovered many games that today have plenty of anime based upon them. To name a few: The legend of Zelda, Megaman, Final Fantasy, Kirby Dreamland and many more. At some point, video games didn’t really hint me greatly towards my path of anime loving and everything that goes along with loving this ‘’made in Japan’’ trend that I am far from being done with even today. The future still has many unopened doors that I am yet to explore. The next stage to getting me into anime was to be the good old TV.
Much more popular than video games in general, television brought about a mass amount of information for those who tuned in on it. There is a lot of what anyone could want to hear and see, so much actually that most those who watch it have to filter out what they don’t want to see and hopefully find something worth their time. More often than not, in my opinion, the TV has more and more of what I consider extremely annoying: commercials. I personally stopped watching it in 2001 partially because of this. Yet those ads pay for everything that is broadcasted, so I tolerated them, or so I did, way back then. I watched like many other eager kids the Saturday morning cartoons. The oldest cartoon I recall watching was ‘’Les Merveilleuses cites d’or’’ (The Mysterious Cities of Gold) and Astro Boy. I didn’t even know that those were actually made by Japanese people until I was told so by other people quite a few years later. Other titles like Dragon Ball (when he was a kid) and Sailor Moon also created some further pre-interest in a genre I could not name at the time. Then came the moment of no return of what would mould my future. People say that love can move mountains, well I say, it moved me towards anime.
Indeed, my small crush on a girl older than me, more nerd than me and not quite interested in me ended quite a bit in an out of touch relationship when she finally moved to cégep (between High School and University) and greater things. But, one thing remained, the spark that ignited the flame that would grow greater and greater for the following 10 years and beyond. This simple girl, who was learning Japanese and loved to draw manga like characters, started off by discussing about computer problems with my lunch time friends in high school. To make a rather long story short, she was a Megaman X lover, especially with the 4th version, especially fond of a character called Iris, that she used as a screen name everywhere she went on the net. Though I had not much knowledge then in what was the all encompassing internet. This girl talked about various anime and many aspects of Japan that she liked, mostly the video game/manga/anime part of it at least. I still didn’t quite get everything she tossed at me as she was basically light years ahead of what I knew then in terms of the country of the rising sun. Though one thing was solidified, my curiosity had been struck hard for what she taught me. I state that I am a very curious person. The next thing needed to get my interests acknowledged and defined, was a computer that could have the ability of handling internet.
The government clearly had a hand in helping me attain my goal. The main reason being that computers and internet was starting to be a useful tool for school projects made at home and for personal use, thus they created some kind of law that permitted families to have a hefty discount of buying brand new desktop computers to help modernise society. I saw the queue and showed this fact to my father. Lucky for me, he was greatly interested in new gadgets, and our very old and murky PC that couldn’t even have internet work on it (It had 4 megabytes of virtual memory, windows 3.11 and an 80 mb Hard Drive) was more than not out of date. I half dragged the one with monetary power to an electronics store, and we ended up with the second best PC that place had to offer. I was nearly set for my grand entrance upon the limitless world that links everyone together at some degree. A month or two later, we immediately went high speed, happily never having to experience dial up, which I consider this to be a blessing. The girl I met while we stayed in touch showed me the works, and I quickly got to find wallpapers inspired by anime, forums that discussed about anime and a place that had and still has more of anything in it than most places I’ve ever seen: mIRC. Though I didn’t really dwell that much in there and barely got the hang of it. Napster was the next step, while the girl was installing Megaman X4 on my hard drive, as she felt like listening to a good tune while working on getting my pc working and up to date. The first song from Japanese origin, besides my NES, that I ever heard (being that I never had much interest in music before hand much) was Electric Communication, a song from Rockman a.k.a. Megaman’s true title on Japanese soil, or something like that. Then everything went uphill, or downhill, depending on if you consider a positive thing watching lots of anime, while having a few school results not as high as usual. This greater power was called: Kazaa.
Various computer programs and ways to link to each other came to existence before my very eyes quickly in succession, and probably are still optimised, destroyed by various law suits, and re spawned in a blurr that comes and goes on in the world of the World Wide Web. I admit having used them quite a bit at first, but I have lately been atoning for my sins by buying what I really want, at least when I have the money to offer myself this luxury, as anime rarely comes cheap over here. I greatly went about watching whole series in fast succession and probably discovered that it was possible for the human body to stay up and not sleep for more than 24 hours, well, at least for my body to do so, even if it had a few disadvantages to do so. I could name quite a few anime that really got my attention then, but one that I will never forget is the anime series Noir. It mostly got to me because of its seriousness, the depth of mystery and how everything seemed much nicer in terms of quality compared to what I had seen before (and it was suggested by a certain girl). Programs were nice to get what I wanted, but to really find worthy stuff to watch, I needed to find people who knew what was out there. I soon joined an anime discussion forum and suggestions utterly poured in, faster than I could watch them. Eventually, I watched less and less anime, as I had watched most of what was out there in terms of worthy anime. That, studies and work took a good chunk of time away from my interest as well. Through all that, I played a few good RPG video games, the occasional sim date pc game and discovered the summit of where every anime loving person went to: conventions.
By the time I heard about anime conventions, I had read at least three tourist guides of Japan, tried to learn by myself Japanese (which didn’t work due to my lack of personal motivation…sadly) and lurked and read through tons of sites that referred to Japanese culture of all kind. I wanted mostly visit Japan, but money wasn’t pouring down upon me, so I’d have to put that as a rain check of sorts for a future endeavour. Still to this day, I have not put my feet under Japanese soil, but I did end up going to Otakon 2007, and made a few friends that could be called most likely Otaku near where I live. I had heard of that place the first year I discovered anime forums, but never could attend, eternally bound with how much my bank account had stashed within. My studies along the way didn’t go to well, so I took a break in that domain and started earning my way to savings and my very first solo trip. Five months into my not very inspiring job, I finally saw a safe path set before me that lead me promptly, yet with a few bumps, to the second largest anime convention in the United States of America. I met up with anime fans of all kind and considered myself probably very sane and normal compared to a few that I discussed with. The cherry on the cake wasn’t all the anime that I could watch, it was the open minded atmosphere that was felt within all the 26,000 people or so that attended this event. Lots of things took place in the five days I left my home country, but those five days were equivalent to much more than a week of experience in life.
Over half a year went by without much growth in my interest, but I recently made a choice. As of now, I’m trying to enter university to eventually teach English as a second language and eventually attempt to use my acquired skills to direct my path to one particular place: Japan. Though I may not end up doing all that, my other interests and my future will be heightened as I motivate myself back to studying, and strangely, with the thing that first got my grades plummeting: anime, that and my love of writing. On a last note, I hope that one day, anime will be appreciated by the mass public as a medium that can be for all ages and minds, not simply a cartoon that’s made for kids. Thank you for reading.
I think this is enough for a random blog.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
My first blog
Would entail nothing special whatsoever. This is simply the first step towards a goal that may one day be attained. If you desire to be part of it, do so as you please, as I am not one to shy away from comments. Good night too all and till next I ''blog''.
+Maxime+
+Maxime+
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