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I've been working on a new project titled Play Smear. It's a site to play the card game Smear online. You can play against the computer and against other people. The front-end is written in Angular2, and the backend is written in Python. Check it out, play a few games here:  http://www.playsmear.com If you want to see how it's implemented, visit the github page:  https://github.com/mkokotovich/play_smear

I've been getting a few spam comments recently, so I guess it's time to enable the captcha option. I hope it won't be too much of a hindrance for anyone leaving real comments.

Update! I have upload the firmware files on FileDen (never used it before, someone suggested it though - thanks Alex!). The firmware can be found at: http://www.fileden.com/files/2009/10/26/2621437/lgdr787tupdatefile.zip . Happy downloading, and I hope your player has a longer life than mine! For those following the LG DR787T saga , I have recently thrown my unit away. It wouldn't read anything, so I decided to go buy a $30 DVD player (which, by the way, is working wonderfully). Yes, I still have the firmware files. For those of you who want to try to fix your units and need the files, feel free to send me an email. I am thinking about uploading them to a free hosting site somewhere, but unless the demand increases it just wouldn't be worth the time to set it up. I have set up an account, see the above update for a link! It amazes me that a DVD player would work one day, and the next day stop working. Why? Poor manufacturing? Bad luck? My dog peed on it without me noticing? ...

Update 2: I have uploaded a copy of the LG firmware files to fileden; they can be downloaded from http://www.fileden.com/files/2009/10/26/2621437/lgdr787tupdatefile.zip Update: I have thrown away my dvd player . So if you read my last post , you would know that I was having problems playing The Dark Knight DVD on my new (used) LG DR787T DVD Recorder/Player. I would put the disc in and the player wouldn't load. After talking to tech support and hearing that they don't know what is wrong and they can't help me, I decided to try the firmware upgrade that LG had on their support website. It was listed as adding Parental Control capabilities, but I figured maybe they threw in some other fixes as well. Sure enough, after I installed the new firmware, The Dark Knight was playing perfectly! Here is what to do: Go to LG's support website Enter the model number DR787T Next to "[USA Only] Parental Update for RC797T & DR787T Video Players", download "2_Software...

UPDATE: I found a solution to this problem So I talk to an LG representative today about my new (new-to-me) LG DR787T DVD recorder. I just got it (for only $20 on ebay, what a steal!) and was going to test it out by watching The Dark Knight. Pop in the disc, and it doesn't work. Won't load. I look around, and it seems other people are having similar issues, so I decide to do my civic duty and let LG know they have a problem to deal with. Bria : Hello Matt Kokotovich . Welcome to LG Electronics! How may I provide you with excellent service today? Matt Kokotovich : I have the LG DR787t and it won't play The Dark Knight DVD. Are you aware of this issue and is there a fix being planned? (long gap here) Matt Kokotovich : Hello? Bria : I would like to please place you on a brief hold while I research that for you, will that be alright? Matt Kokotovich : Sure, thanks Bria : Hello....yes one moment Bria : Thank you for holding. Are you playing blu ray or HD in the player? (I be...

So recently my girlfriend opened US Bank savings and checking accounts, and as part of the deal received a free flash drive. The representative told her it has some promotional files on it, but they can just be deleted. Not quite. When I plugged the flash drive in, two drives appeared on my desktop (Ubuntu). One was what I expected, a USB mass storage device. The other was a CDROM drive. I looked at what was on it, and it was just a bunch of promotional files and programs. Well obviously this cdrom popping up every time you plug in the drive isn't very nice, so I tried to remove it. Reformatting the device didn't work, it just cleared out the USB mass storage device. I ran dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb to zero out the entire drive, in case reformatting somehow missed something. This destroyed the MBR, partition table, everything. But when I plugged the device back in, the CDROM was still alive and kicking. So this wasn't a hidden partition on the drive, this had to b...

Google talk has recently added a groupchat feature to their talk gadget. This allows multiple users to join a common channel, like IRC or a chatroom on AIM. This is a great feature, and I have personally used it a few times now for working on homework assignments with a small group. However, it is currently only supported (AFAIK) on Google's Flash-based talk gadget. This is alright because of its compatibility with anything that can run flash, but a flash-based client can only do so much. I use Pidgin as my chat client. Formally known as Gaim, this open source program can connect to all major protocols, including the Jabber network, which is what gtalk is on. So when I heard Google was supporting groupchats, I was eager to see if I would be able to connect to the server using pidgin, like I would be able to on any other Jabber server. Well, unfortunately, that isn't available (yet, I hope). It looked like I would be stuck using the flash client. However, there is a way...

I thought I would dedicate an entire post to the comic xkcd. If you haven't checked it out already, I would strongly recommend doing so. In my humble opinion, this is the funniest comic on the internet. It describes itself as "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." I enjoy it because it often pulls computer science into its humor. If you have time, check it out. The first 75 or so comics aren't that great (different style) but most of the others are worth reading. Bonus info: each comic has a "tooltip" which appears when the mouse is held over the comic. This contains a short note from the author about the comic, often adding to the humor. I didn't realize this for a long time, and I wish I would have.

I realized I never completed the half.com saga. Well I never did get the books, but luckily half.com was nice and honest and gave me my money back. So will I buy from them again? Yes, but next time I'll pay more attention to the ratings of the sellers I buy from. No more buying from someone with only 8 feedbacks.

It has been a while since I've posted here. I really don't know why I have a blog. I never post to it. But it is now finals season, and rather than continue to study Gaussian elimination with scaled partial pivoting, I decided to make a new post. Softball is coming up soon. I'm excited. Cari and I have been planning and working on this since February, and now it looks like it is going to pay off. We have a team, we have sponsors, we have jerseys, and we are playing a week from tomorrow. How exciting! I hope I don't perform poorly. I have a feeling I am going to be a bit rusty, but lets hope I don't make a total fool of myself. Here is my prediction, actually: I am going to start off surprisingly well (beginner's luck) for the first few games. Then I am going to get into a slump. Now here is where my path forks. Depending if I have enough time/motivation to practice over the summer, I will either work my back and become better than I was with the beg...

Linux is going to replace Windows. For me, at least. No more crashes, no more slow load times, no more Windows. Moving on to better things. Like Fedora Core 5 - it rocks.

Okay, so I got screwed by half.com. Two of my books were sold to me by people who have since closed their accounts, and have not shipped books out to at least 5 or so people each (I know this by reading the feedback that started about September 1st or so, people saying "I haven't received my book yet"). Luckily, I should get my money back because half.com is owned by ebay, and they have a money back guarantee thing. Cause otherwise I would be very mad. I'm mad as it is, cause now I need to buy them again and I won't get them for another week. I went practically a month without having books. Stupid half.com.

So a followup on Half.com is necessary here. I am a little disgruntled right now, because I didn't realize until after I bought my books that the estimated shipping period is 7-21 days. I bought my books in the early 20s of August, and I still don't have half of them. School has started, I have reading assignments, and no books. I suppose a lesson to be learned is if you are going to buy books from Half.com you should order them in early August. No later than the 7th, pretty much. Can't beat the price, though.

Today I was blessed to be reminded why I am so happy I am not in the dorms. Don't get me wrong, I did like the dorms when I was there. However, today Cari (oh so foolishly) clicked on a link in a random IM sent to her. Sure enough, it wasn't really a picture of her that someone found; it was a virus! Now normally I wouldn't be too afraid, an IM virus can't be that dangerous, and sure enough, one reboot-into-safe-mode-and-scan later, as well as a system restore just for good measures, the computer showed no signs of illness. As soon as she got the virus, resnet made her try to log back in (not sure why or how it knew to make her do it) but when she did she was told her computer was 'infected' and she should fix it. Of course, they don't let you access the internet , so you need to fix it via other means. Luckily, we were able to fix it, and so we optimistically logged back into resnet , smuggly celebrating our superiority to the virus that tried to...

Today is my last day of work. And to clarify, that means I will be dropping off the computer I've been using, and that is all. So I am done for the summer, which means I am very happy. Now just a week and a half and I start school, which I am actually looking forward to. It should be a good year.

I recently bought my books for school on half.com, and it was a very pleasant operation. It was very easy to find the books I needed, and the prices really were at least half off what they were listed at. Yay for books bought from anywhere BUT the university bookstore.

I had a job at United Rentals lined up for this summer. A friend of mine worked there, and it would have been a lot of fun. Then that job fell through, so I was desperate for work. That prompted me to return to my last summer's job, which I wasn't too happy about at first. Then I got a raise and started doing really interesting work, which made the job very worthwhile. I worked all of June, which was fine with me. I actually didn't mind going to work everyday. Then my boss left for the west coast to do a start-up. He was supposed to be gone a couple of weeks, but he ran into troubles and was gone for five weeks. I didn't work at all during those five weeks. It was a very nice vacation, just sitting around having fun and enjoying the summer. Now he is back, and I am working again. I don't want to be working. That five week vacation killed my work ethic, and now I just don't want to work. I am burnt out. I want to be done! I would just quit now, but...

Is never very exciting, is it?