So over the Valentines Day weekend, my GF visited and we messed around for the three days from Saturday from Sunday. Saturday was spent in my tiny outskirts-of-town area (Canadian outskirts means 30min to 1hr drive outside of the immediate city), Sunday was spent in the big city (still small by American/European standards,) and the third day was spent at a board game cafe killing time until she had to catch her bus and go home.

Some backstory:
Before she came over, we were planning out how to organize all our 'dates,' like which general areas we would spend time in, try to put everything in similar areas together, and just in general find stuff to do. My town has almost nothing fun to offer and the 'big city' has a total of two clubs. Not that I club at all, but just to give you an idea of how boring this place is for anyone 18-25. After a while, she suggested an escape room and then I remembered an article I read a while back.

Quote:

USE THE BADGE OF HONOUR UNTIL GNOME KEYS FIRST READING

Your task is to find a ten letter Latin word hidden in this message. 
Use it as a password to your host after the experience.

I have a $50 tablet (Kindle Fire HD 8, the larger version that I found on sale). And it runs circles around most computers from 15 years ago. I started programming on one of those computers. It was powered by a 600 mhz Pentium 3. Let's just say that it was slow enough that it would take ten seconds just to load an image. You'd see a progress bar pop up showing you how much time it had left to load an image. 

That said, that old Pentium 3 box was very, very responsive for what it was. It didn't feel slow until you tried to do anything with it. It'd load up a web browser or respond to the UI like it was a modern machine. 

Tablets have kinda changed the landscape a bit. They are easy. You can carry them with you easily, have a little keyboard attached, and call it a day. They last a week on a single charge, and can do almost anything a computer could do. 

People are already using iPads for this. Would you use a modern tablet to replace your laptop? If not yet, do you think the answer will be yes in five years? 

Oh, and in five years, the iPad will probably steal a lot of market share from laptops, I'm sure... iOS is still lacking compared to Mac OS, however. It's getting there, but it's still a tablet, not a computer OS, and that is something android is ahead of Apple on currently. 

When people say hacker, the majority think of it synonymous with terrorist, Criminal, a scary existence who's only goal is to perform digital breaking and entering and steal from you like some common hoodlum.
this is because over the last 30 years Hollywood, TV, radio, newspapers, the media... they've worked to build that image, one of malevolence and uncaring, who's only goal is to destroy and cause pain to others.
however this was not it's original meaning.

Originally to hack something was to break or chop up something, to "hack" away at it however in the early 1960's at the dawn of early computing a new meaning was brought to light.
A hacker in the original terms is someone who studies, explores, tinkers with, and occasionally alters something for it's own sake, for personal enjoyment and curiosity alone.
this in it's self is not actively malicious... in fact many people who uphold the original term frown on what is considered hacking in the modern day, primarily because they have their own word for it, Cracker, someone who cracks code, breaks into stuff.

In an effort to undo the damage Hollywood did the terms white had and black hat were created in an effort to take back their term, unfortunately the media continues to this day to refer to crackers as hackers and continue this negative and mostly false view of hacking.
Some of the earliest hackers were more like cowboys, explorers finding the edges of a new frontier that had opened up in the digital age, they didn't have a fence and most malware and viruses were light hearted pranks which didn't cause permanent damage or to explore and see how something can be destroyed in a controlled environment in an effort to find ways to prevent it/secure it.
We do a lot of the same sorts of research in biology, genetics, physics, and other fields, but when it comes to electronics it's demonized the same way religious groups demonize genetics research as being against god, full of fear mongering and hate.
that's why Biohacking and doing independent research in DIY lab spaces is becoming prominent in the 21st century, the cost to do things has become affordable (much like in the mid to late 80's with computers), and people who would not otherwise know about or have an interest in it are suddenly able to explore new concepts and ideas.

So to reiterate, A hacker is someone who explores, tinkers with, and occasionally modifies something, be it technology, biology, whatever.
For it's own sake, to solve a puzzle, to answer questions, think, action scientist, or benevolent mad scientist.
This is the meaning of the word from the people who originated it, and I stand by that meaning.
because there are far more hackers doing good, either by securing systems, coming up with new technology and ideas, or working behind the scenes.
than there are crackers doing things for greed and hate and personal gain.
Crackers are the terrorists of cyberspace, and much like Isis and related groups are to Muslims, are extremists who in their actions lose the meaning of what they claim to be.

those are my thoughts on the subject, there's tons of stuff out there on it but I highly recommend reading the jargon file.
http://catb.org/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html
Also the introductory chapter of Hacking the Xbox by andrew Huang.

because both focus more on the original meaning instead of what it's become.

feel free to discuss.

“What hackers do is figure out technology and experiment with it in ways many people never imagined. They also have a strong desire to share this information with others and to explain it to people whose only qualification may be the desire to learn.”
― Emmanuel Goldstein, Dear Hacker: Letters to the Editor of 2600

What are your plans? I'll start.

Currently about 11AM, woke up nearly 30min ago and had a coffee

• Mom's birthday today, so I'm gonna prepare my gift and all that.
  
• Cook Purin (japanese pudding) before 2PM
  
• Meet up with Godfather at 2PM, shoot the shit for a couple hours.
  
• Meet up with Mom & Dad (along with Godfather), go to her fave restaurant (which I coincidentally used to work at and know all the staff so we get better service)
  
• Go home, give mom her gift/card
  
• Add final touches to Purin
  
• Wait a couple hours because GF is taking a bus to my town which is gonna be nearly 7hrs long
  
• Pick her up @ 10-11:20PM, drive home
  
• Give her the gift I got her as well, as well as some Purin because she loves both my cooking and sweets.
  
• Sleep @ 12am
  

We wrote an plugin many years back to manage profile comments. We ended up removing it when we upgraded our forum software (to MyBB 1.8, a pretty major upgrade), which broke the plugin. It was never finished and was always a little buggy, so we were happy to see it go at the time. It also was never released publicly, so there was little incentive to really fix it.

I rediscovered it today and realized that there was not much that needed to be changed in order to port this to the current version of our forum software. As such, I've brought it back, and it has some features that integrate pretty well with the current version of MyBB. It's still a work in progress, so I'm well aware of a few bugs that are pretty hard to miss. I'm working hard to get it working again!  

Anyway, you can see a status feed in the forum's footer. Try adding a new status. Watch it appear on your profile, in the footer, and under your avatar on your posts. If you reply to another user's status, they will get a notification!

Edit: The more I use it, the more I realize that it's hilariously buggy right now. I'll have it working better within about a week!

This is counting thread, revisited. 

The banner will attempt to keep along with the count in this thread. However, posting wrong numbers, numbers out of order, or otherwise doing confusing things will cause the banner to get completely lost. 

Game rules:

• You must post a number, similar to the counting thread. 
  
• You must post the banner's current count in your post.
  
• The banner's counter must be posted AFTER your count. Until I fix a bug in the banner, it won't work properly if you post the banner's number first. 
  
• If we discover that the banner's count completely changes, the next person will post "Banner Broken"
  
• You'll get a usergroup tag for this game from an admin until the next person breaks the banner.  
  

Please make your selection for the 2019 Makestation Project of the Year.

The poll is anonymous, and no one will see your vote.

Project of the Year candidates:

Lain's Cracking Hashes with Arduino
brian51's Transit Mania CJ
pierreh's United Cities of Talaran

Please make your selection for the 2019 Makestation Newcomer of the Year.

The poll is anonymous, and no one will see your vote.

Newcomer of the Year candidates:
Altair
Lain

Please make your selection for the 2019 Makestation Member of the Year.

The poll is anonymous, and no one will see your vote.

Member of the year candidates:
brian51
Thomas

This project is a series of around 4 books. They focus on Nuru Caldwel, a young man who was cursed from birth to be able to see curses. Being the only one known in the world to be able to detect a curse, Nuru and his sister run an occult detective agency for Nuru to use this skill to help people. And, through all this, he hopes to find someday the one who cursed him with this power.

That's just the basics, but the rest of this thread will be little notes about how certain things work, snippets as I write the books, etc. I'd love to hear your thoughts sometime.