Hey guys, I know this post isn't really technology related but I thought I'd have some fun with a post originally written by CherryBlossmGrl , be sure to check out her blog its one of my favorites, really good.

General Questions

What is your name, and what does it mean?
Justin - usage: English/French, Origin: Hebrew
Meaning: just, true

Are you male or female?
Male

In what region do you live?
Melbourne, Australia

Are you married, have a girlfriend/boyfriend, have children, etc?
Single

How old are you?
20

What do you do?
3rd yr Computer Science Major - Programmer

What do you enjoy, or what are your hobbies? (Be specific. If you like music, what type of music do you like, for example.)
I like listening to Rock, metal, Alternative, some stuff from the 80's. Favourite band/s: Nightwish, Dream Theater. I love playing games (Fav: Metal Gear Solid series, God of War & the Gran Turismo Series - PS2). I have an interest in photography, Computing, Science & Technology and love watching movies (StarWars 1/2/3/4/5/6 all my fav's) and I love intelligent movies - drama's, comedy's whatever, as long as it gets you thinking. I also love hanging out with friends.

What do you hate?
I hate shallow, bitter and stuck-up people. I hate listening to crap music, people complaining & I hate when you're doing long division and have a remainder left over (Thank you Milhouse).

------------------------
Character Questions:

You see someone getting mugged in the street. You don’t know if the perpetrator is armed, and you have your cell phone with you. What do you do?
I would call the police, help the person who got mugged if they were thrown to the ground after the perpetrator left,then try track where the perp was going.

Your car broke down in your driveway, and you don’t have the slightest idea how to fix it. What would you do?
I would call a mechanic to come help. Maybe David Putty knows!

You’re married with children, and you just got a job offer that gives you a large raise–but you have to move across the country. Everybody is okay with it, except your oldest child who has two years left of school and doesn’t want to move. What do you do?
If the pay rise was worth it, I would move bringing up the option that my oldest could stay and finish school and stay with family, then move back with us when he/she finishes if that's what they wanted. If the pay wasn't worth it, I would sacrifice extra $$$ for the happiness of my family.

Your best friend gets in a fight and kills someone. You weren’t there, but your friend is running from the police and says he/she was defending him/herself. Your friend comes to you for help. What do you do?
I would try and defend them as best I could, possibly hiring a good defence lawyer to help. If my friend was truely innocent, I believe we could work through it and prove it.

You’re in college and you’re failing a class. You can still withdraw without getting a failing grade, but you won’t get your money back. What do you do?
I would try my best to get those grades up, possibly some extra curricular stuff, but I would withdraw if I was definately going to fail. Who cares about the money when you'll loose the money anyway along with a fail also. Then again........How could I be failing? lol

You’re walking with someone you love and hold dear when another person walks near and starts making lewd or insulting remarks toward your loved one. You don’t recognize this person. What do you do?
We would just keep walking by and if they continued, I'd walk up to this person and say "What the hell is your problem?" try to diffuse the situation without resorting to violence, but then again if this guy was just pissing me off, i'd probably take a swing at him.

You and the one you love get into an argument. He/she says that you are hurting their feelings, but you don't think that their having hurt feelings over this makes sense. How do you react?
If my loved one was making a big deal out of nothing, I would sit down with them and talk through things. Otherwise, i'd probably do the same thing. I would change what i was doing to make them feel hurt if I could. Then again, im a nice guy, how could I hurt my loved one's feelings.
 

If you wanna see CherryBlossmGrl's responses to these questions, be sure to check out her post here.

Thanks guys, and be sure to check back tomorrow for Monday TechQuestions #12.

Russian Energy officials were quoted saying at an academic conference that Russia is planning to build a full scale moonbase mine by 2015 to mine and deliver the rare Helium-3 isotope to Earth for use in Nuclear Fusion.

Current isotopes used in Nuclear fission/fusion include Uranium which has significant amounts of radioactive by-product namely plutonium 239. It is this man-made by product of current nuclear technology that is so dangerous and becoming very difficult to store and maintain. It is this radioactive metal that is used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

If Russian agencies do establish a mine on the moon and begin extraction of Helium-3 for transportation back to earth, this would mean that the rare H3 isotope can be used in nuclear reactors with no (or minimal) radioactive by product.

"Rare on earth but plentiful on the moon, it is seen by some experts as an ideal fuel because it is powerful, non-polluting and generates almost no radioactive by-product" - news.com.au: Russia to open moonbase mine.

This could be a very big deal for the planet's energy sources for probably the next thousand years but just reading through this article, one must think that establishing a mine on the moon could become highly controversial and would probably require approval from other countries representatives and possibly the UN or similar organisation.

Back with another question, this time a Linux based question. I don't think I've ever had a Linux related question but here it is.

Q:
I'll shoot you a question. I've been using linux for a little while now, because I had to do a clean windows install, and when I did, I can no longer use the cdkey I used before(which is stupid.. I'm not buying ANOTHER copy of windows...)

So .. anyway .. I, like most fairly inexperienced linux users, am having trouble with sound. As of now, I can play one sound at a time, but can't figure out how to have more. Say I'm listening to music, I no longer hear the sound notifying me of new messages or whatever. How might I go about fixing this?

- userfriendly

A:
Thanks userfriendly for your question. I'll give u a quick idea of what the problem could be as it could be more complex.
You say you can only play one sound at a time which sounds like a sound provider issue. Linux uses 3 major sound providers namely GStreamer, Xine and ALSA. Your system will be configured to use one of these three providers for audio in/out. I think ALSA has this issue with only 1 audio output channel while Xine and GStreamer can process many origins of sound. I myself used to use Linux all the time and only just got back into using it late last year but im sure your problem is related to this.

If there are any Linux guru's out there who want to add to this, please feel free and comment the post.

Microsoft word has fast become one of the most widely used word processing applications over both Windows and Mac. I remember when not only MS Word was avaliable, but also great word processors such as Word Perfect and Lotus Word Pro. so what's happened to the rest? I went to find out.

Other great word processors are still around but get overshadowed by the grunt of Microsoft Word and the whole Microsoft Office suite. Don't get me wrong the MS Office suite is a great set of applications and I use word and Excel all the time, but wouldn't it be great to have the same functionality of Microsoft Word in an application that's say.....free?

OpenOffice
- Great set of features
- Compatible with MS Office file formats
- Free

Well friends, we can. I'm going to start off with a great open source office suite called OpenOffice. Linux users have been aware of OpenOffice for quite sometime as its the default productivity package installed with practically every linux distribution, but now the folks at OpenOffice have finally written the application for Windows. OpenOffice not only includes a premier word processor (Write) it also contains practically everything you need to make the complete switch from MS Office to OpenOffice. These features include a spreasheet, presentation app (powerpoint), project management application etc. For a free download, you can't go past OpenOffice.
Even though it is free, that doesn't mean that its Word's sub par equivalent, no sir. OpenOffice has the same functionality as word and even more so, and for free you can't go wrong.


Corel Word Perfect
- Very powerful application
- Fairly easy to use
- Not free, USD$159.99 for WP Office X3

Word perfect has been around for quite sometime and in the mid 90's (i think) Word Perfect was bought by Corel who are most well known for their imaging and graphics applications namely Corel Draw. Word Perfect is a great MS Word alternative but unfortunately is not free and at a hefty USD$159.99 for the Word Perfect Office Suite its probably not much cheaper than Microsoft's product. A substantial application nonetheless.


AbiWord
- Free Application
- Cross Platform over Windows, Mac and Linux
- Useful features

AbiWord is an open source project licenced under the GPL which means free, free, free. The team working on this word processor have done a remarkable job at implementing some of the features into their program that made Word such a popular tool. The interface is fairly streamlined and easy to find what your looking for (very OpenOffice'ish) and would be a great MS Word replacement for no cost at all.

LyX
- Free Open Source Application
- Nice features
- Different

LyX is another open source free word processor avaliable for the Windows and Mac platforms and is interestingly different from other word processors out there. Sure, LyX still looks like any other word processor but the focus behind Lyx is behind the structure of your document and not the appearance itself. A quote taken straight from the LyX website sums up the application great: "LyX is for people that write and want their writing to look great, right out of the box. No more endless tinkering with formatting details, 'finger painting' font attributes or futzing around with page boundaries. You just write. In the background, Prof. Knuth's legendary TeX typesetting engine makes you look good".

Updates are readily avaliable and are released at regular intervals and support is also great. The customizable interface is also a bonus aswell.

There are heaps of other alternatives to Word out there but there are just so many to list so I'll post links to a few others below and let you make up your own mind about them.

OpenOffice
AbiWord
ThinkFree
Writely - Online word processor
Lyx - Free opensource word processor - Windows / Mac
Atlantis
Kword - Linux
Appleworks - Commercial Software MacOSX
TextShield

Anybody stuck using Microsoft Word and wants a change should definately check out some of these free open source alternatives to using Microsoft Word. Microsoft WNextord is a great program, but if you want a change, there's always an answer.

 Well here we are with another post of Monday TechQuestions. Have finally reached 10 TechQuestion's posts but unfortunately this may be the end of an era for my beloved Monday TechQuestions posts due to lack of public enthusiasm for the idea.

Don't get me wrong, I have recieved some great feedback and praise on the idea I started now 10 weeks ago but Monday TechQuestion's (MTQ) is dependant on public feedback which unfortunately has faded in the last few weeks. I am very greatful for the responses I have had and some of the questions I have received over these 10 weeks have been truely awsome.

What I will do is I won't kill MTQ for good as yet, i'm thinking of keeping it going for this week and see what kind of a response it gets and what questions I recieve, but if public opinion or lack of interest becomes more apparent, Monady Tech Question's will be no more.

If I do decide to take out MTQ for good, I am thinking about replacing it with something similar such as a weekly post just talking about how to do something or cover some topics that would have otherwise been covered in Monday TechQuestions.

Thanks guys, I do appreciated the support I recieve for Monday TechQuestion's and support for my blog in general. My blog's visitor stats have never been stronger and I encourage you to keep coming back as there is always something new and interesting to read here.

Until next time...

Q:
I'm new to programming but don't really know where to start. Which languages are good to learn when starting out and is there a good language thats both easy to learn and useful (used alot in industry)?
Adam, Huntfield Heights, South Australia

A:
Thanks Adam for your question, don't think I've had a programming related question so far. Learning a new programming language is alot like learning a spoken language, its all just a matter of understanding the basics and working from there. You can't learn a new language over night, it can take a few months to learn, even a few years to truely become fluent in a given language.

For beginners, there are a few languages I'd personally recommend for their simplicity and relatively easy to understand syntax.

- JAVA
- Visual Basic / Visual Basic.NET

I believe these two languages are a great starting point for programming beginners as they are both widely used languages, but still easier to learn than some more visually complicated languages such as C/C++.

There are heaps and heaps of places you can start learning programming from, resources are everywhere: Internet, books, friends, etc. One really great place to check out is a site set up by a man called Sean Greasley who is a Software Engineering graduate from the Sheffield Hallam University in England. He knows his stuff and makes some really great video tutorials on various programming languages.

If you are serious about learning computer programming, I can't recommend strongly enough that enrolling in a course at University will definately help you further your programming skills quite dramatically (I know from experience - 3rd yr Computer Science Major myself).

I hope that helped Adam and good luck on your new found love of programming.

For months have I been telling friends how Sony will completely die (in my opinion) if they keep their existing 'boomerang' design of a controller for the PS3. Now, my suspicions of Sony thinking about changing the design haven't been more true.

According to an article at punchjump.com, The concept PS3 controller was absent from the PS3 booth at CES 2006 were the console was proudly displayed in a glass case. The current PS3 controller design has recieved critical reviews from people in the know in the industry and I myself wasn't a fan of the design. It would be so unconfortable to hold and just wouldn't work as a gaming controller.

This absence of the controller points to the idea that Sony are redeveloping their controller to be more user friendly and easier to use. Without a doubt, Sony's DualShock2 controller (currently used on the PS2) has remained one of the BEST designed controllers of any time period in gaming history as cited by many industry leaders.

In the next 2-3 months, I'll be expecting Sony to hold a press conference outlining their plans and reporting on the status of the revampt PS3 controller. Whether they do this is entirely another matter, but I hope they do for all the legions of Playstation fans sake (including me).

We'd like you to be among the first to try a new beta version of Messenger.

If you use MSN® Messenger now, we think you're really going to enjoy Windows Live^TM Messenger. It's as fun and reliable as the Messenger you already know, and you won't lose your contact list or any other personal information when you try this new version.

Some of the new stuff it will let you do:

• Get it just the way you want it-choose your colours and more. The new Windows Live Messenger is more customisable than ever.
  
• Change your status to appear offline and still instant message with your contacts-a great way to hide from your coworker and still chat with your friends!

That last point being able to set your status to offline and still be able to chat is a really great addition to the program. There have been times when somebody comes online and you don't really want to talk to them, but still wanna chat with other friends, you really needed a way to hide yourself from them, and now you can which is really cool.

Customizing the Messenger interface is easier than ever now. Its cool how you can change interface colors and they get reflected (kind of like a theme) across the entire application.

Search is heavily integrated into the new version allowing you to quickly search through large contact lists to search for a particular contact, regardless of their email address, screen name, or real name. You can just type in their name, phone number, email address, screen name and find them quickly.

Well yet another Microsoft related post, but I just can't help it. Normally I don't really have anything to say about Microsoft. Heaps of people are more than frustrated with Windows XP among other annoyances, but I think 2006 definately could be a turning point for Microsoft.

I am very interested (and almost excited) about the upcoming release of Windows Vista (well Q3 anyway) as it addresses some of the really annoying things about Windows XP very well, mainly security flaws and GUI tweaks.

Microsoft have recently updated their Windows Vista website aswell and I must say it's looking so much better than their previous site. The site relflects the simplicity and ease of use that Windows Vista im sure (hopefully) will be renouned for.

From the many features it will boast, I am particularly impressed and interested in something they call 'Flip 3D' which takes over the functionality of the ALT+TAB command to switch between open windows.

Microsoft's implementation of Flip 3D (not sure if they will stick with the name though)

Interesting things they are doing up at Redmond these days, and I don't give praise to Microsoft often, those who know me will really understand my standpoint on Microsoft. I really am interested to see Vista as a finished product sometime this year.

I among millions of computer users use Google as my search engine of choice. They are usually changing up their logo reflecting holidays or periods of the year, and yesterday they were celebrating the birthday of Braille. Thought it looked cool.

Good old Google, this looks really cool I think. This was their logo yesterday (Jan 5th, 2006).

For anybody who has a large digital music playlist will really appreciate MediaMonkey. MediaMonkey is a music organisational program with close iTunes integration which is perfect for any iPod owner or even if you just like using iTunes to play your music.

What I REALLY REALLY love about this program is that you can automatically update your ID3 tags on your songs to update metadata such as artist, title, album and even grab the album art for that particular song off amazon. This really comes in handy if you have just ripped a music CD of yours to your computer but you don't have the proper track names or album art attached to the song.

Excerpt taken from mediamonkey.com:
Organize music and edit tags in your audio library with a powerful, intuitive interface
Automatically lookup and tag Album Art and other metadata
Manage 50,000+ files in your music collection without bogging down
Play MP3s and other audio formats, and never again worry about varying volume
Record CDs into OGG, MP3, FLAC and WMA files
Convert MP3s, OGG, FLAC and WMA files into other formats with the Audio Converter
Create playlists and music mixes quickly and easily to suit any occasion
Synchronize with iPods / MP3 players effortlessly and convert tracks on-the-fly 

This program is so cool, any digital music lover should really check this one out. I'll stop blabbering about it and read up on its many features at mediamonkey.com.