digg ringtone

w00t! DiggNation ringtone!

Using Audacity I 'trimmed' the excess podcast off the latest episode of DiggNation (episode 79) leaving only the introductory music. I have a Motorola RAZR v3c through Canada's Telus Mobility which kind of sucks ass.
It sucks ass not due to the phone itself because I'm having a great time playing with it. The situation Telus puts you in sucks ass.

The idea behind getting a new cell phone is that you want to put your own custom ringtones and wallpapers on there and be able to transfer off the images you snap with the digital camera. The idea Telus has is that they want to make that as difficult for you as possible. Using the tools mentioned in the next paragraph you are able to upload the "ringtones" you like (but Telus makes sure they go to the "audio" folder and not the ringtone folder). But when you go to assign the uploaded audio file as a ringtone, you can only play it! There's no option to set it as a ringtone.

Well! Thanks to the forward-thinking people at Motorola (Phone Tools) and the beautiful minds behind BitPIM we can finally stick it to Telus.

Want to know how to get those audio files out of the audio folder and instead being read as a ringtone? I found these instructions (1, 2) which I will paraphrase here:

Note)) The following instructions can be followed with the phone plugged in to the computer via a USB cable the entire time, until specifically stated. The USB cable I used was the same cable that came with my SanDisk Sansa m240 1gb MP3 player. The following are instructions for WindowsXP when using Motorola Phone Tools and either Windows or Linux for BitPIM (though I tested on my windows partition).

1))
Using the Motorola Phone Tools (MPT for short) that you purchased from Motorola you can upload as many mp3 or wav (possibly midi but I haven't tested that) as you like. This is done from the "Multimedia Studio" tab, and then inside there from within the "Melody Studio" tab.

2))
After you have transferred the audio files you want to eventually use as ringtones, close the MPT.

3))
Open up BitPIM and follow these very important steps for the Motorola RAZR v3c.

4))
You may have noticed your phone was auto-recognized. Forget that. Open up the phone profile settings "Edit -> Settings" and change the phone type from v3c to "Other CDMA phone".

5))
Click the Com Port "Browse ..." button from within the "Edit -> Settings" menu and select the "(*) Motorola USB Modem" (which should have been installed when you plugged your v3c into your computer the first time. The Motorola USB Modem drivers install off the MPT install cd. The warnings from WinXP during that install are normal).

6))
Click "OK" to finish the manual setup of the v3c in BitPIM. You should now be back at the BitPIM screen.

7))
Select that you want to view the file system on the phone by clicking "View -> View Filesystem" or hot-keys "Alt-V F".

8))
Click "Filesystem" in the very left browse window and expand the root directory "+/" in the second browse window by clicking the plus beside the directory. (As a reminder, we are still inside BitPIM. We closed MPT long ago).

9))
Another directory will appear under the root directory that says "retrieving". This will happen for a few seconds while BitPIM reads the content on the v3c.

10))
In the last browse window on the very right of the BitPIM screen will be a long list of files. You want to locate "MyToneDB.db" and "TmpTneDB.db" and delete them. Yes, delete them. This worked for me when following the instructions on the previously mentioned site. If you are sceptical, I'll note my phone's firmware version right now. It worked for me when using firmware version GATW_06.08.00R and you can find your firmware version by clicking "Edit -> Phone Info".

11))
After you have right clicked the two .db files mentioned above and selected "delete" for each of them, you can then close BitPIM and then unplug your phone.

12))
Before browsing to look for your ringtones, turn off your phone (press and hold the red phone button on the right side of the v3c's keypad).

13))
Turn on your phone by pressing and holding the red phone button on your v3c. The phone will restart and generate new "MyToneDB" and "TmpTneDB" .db files which will include your audio files as ringtones.

14))
Now you can browse to assign your ringtones. If you look in the "Media Gallery -> Sounds" you'll notice there is still no option to assign the audio file as a ringtone. Instead, go to "Settings -> Ring Styles" and then "-> {whatever} Detail" and from there you can change the ringtone to your own audio files.

Note)) Your ringtones can be found at the bottom of the list, regardless of alphabetization. They are easily found by immediately browsing "up" the list rather than scanning down through the entire list.

Enjoy your new ringtones!

-Hopefully helping the community

christmas time presents

Christmas and the meaning

I just deleted a post about the various presents I unwrapped (early) for Christmas. I had an early Christmas with family and friends as I am away for the holidays. I'm in Calgary, Alberta, Canada right now. I deleted the description of the cool gifts I got because that is not what Christmas is about. I was spoiled this Christmas, and to those who spoiled me (everyone who got me a present, honestly!) I thank you very much. I know you didn't gift me with the expectation to be gifted back this year or any time in the future when I can afford it. My Dad told me so, it's not about expecting in return. And he's right. But I really do want to make it up to you guys whenever I can. Be it giving my girlfriend 75 massages over the course of the next year (and not just sissy ones because that's just a waste of 5 minutes and don't count) or even getting my Mom and Dad a killer entertainment system 5 years from now or buying my Dad a remote vehicle starter when I can finally afford presents greater than $30 in value. I appreciate that you all put so much effort into making these holidays great. Dinner was awesome. The time spent together afterward was memorable. Christmas is about relationships and giving.

-I thank each of you. Merry Christmas

sexy geeks

I found this site listing the person's top 10 sexiest geeks

I didn't make the list. Not even an honourable mention.

-Maybe next year

gamestuff

Good times

I have finished writing my exams for the semester, 12:30pm Saturday was my last exam. My grades are in, I'm pleased to announce I have passed all my courses this semester. Saturday's exam was a redo, because I'd taken and failed that class last year. My final grade was a 22% increase over my final grade for that class last year. I exceeded my expectations for the course and the others as well.

So now I have time for games. I've been playing Bookworm Adventures which consumed two hours of my life tonight. It's a great game that will easily distract you from the other things in your life that you might want to do, such as working out kinks in your website or playing Neverwinter Nights or Paper Mario for the Gamecube.

To relax, after my last final, I went to a christmas play on ice. It was a figure skating thinger, whatever those are called... ballet on ice? titled "If you just believe" which consisted of 200+ figure skaters dressed up in costumes telling a story. It was pretty cool, and an awesome christmas present to my girlfriend and I from my Dad. So I took them out for dinner afterward. My girlfriend and I spent the night at friends' house in Sicamous (a town an hour from here). That was a good night, I hadn't hung out with them in almost a year. The next day consisted of bowling with those friends, and shopping at the Vernon mall. Good times.

Now it's 2:37am and I've got to get myself to sleep. How am I going to wake up early enough to work on my website before the primal urge to entertain myself sets into motion?

-Hoping this made sense as I'm getting pretty tired here

exam time crunch time

Much ado about nothing?

Here's to hoping so. In 80 minutes I write my second of three exams for this semester's course load. I'm going into it with 61.36 out of 75 (which is 81.81%) for the course, currently. That 61.36% is my current grade for the course, meaning even without writing the exam (which is worth 25% of the total grade) I've already passed the course. But in the pit of my stomach I'm still getting that eerie feeling of dread and stress. I passed my first exam, I had 70.71% and after writing the exam I finished the course with 67.32% (the exam brought me down because I scored 58.5% on it).

It's Saturday's exam that has me worried most. I failed that course last year. I ended up with 42% (magical number, w00t). But there is a glimmer of hope, I'm at 36 out of 60 at the moment, being 60% for the current grade. I need only 14 out of 40 on the final exam to pass the course. I think I can do it this time around, I had 52% the first midterm, 62% the second midterm... maybe this time around I can get 72% on the final exam :) Ok, it's time for me to go. It'll take an hour to drive there and I now only have 72 minutes until the exam starts.

What a pointless post... I suppose it has helped a little to get it off my chest.

-Two days to go and I'm all done this semester

Dentistry

Dentistry

So I finally visited the dentist. I haven't been there since before I had my tongue pierced (last visit was December 2004, the piercing was at the end of that December).

I asked the hygienist a few questions.

1) Who requires flossing more often: tightly spaced teeth or those with gaps? The answer, people with no gaps between their teeth should be using floss on a more regular basis (though it's recommended everyone flosses daily. [Editor: But who does anyway?])

2) Plaque, what is it? I'll try not to bastardize what she told me... The answer is that it is calcified sediment. Loose food particles are floating around in your mouth and stick to your teeth. The food calcifies within 10 to 48 hours, which is why it is recommended you brush at least twice a day. Your tooth brush can rub off the sediment that is soft and not yet calcified, but when it finally hardens then odds are it's not coming off until you visit a dentist.

3) What does mouthwash do for you? Is it just for the prevention of bad breath? The answer, the hygienist says it's mostly for making your breath smell pretty. She recommends "anti-bacterial" mouthwash which helps to kill bacteria and prevent disease in your mouth. Gingevitis being one of those things it kills.

So there you have it. Brush your teeth and floss. Use mouthwash if you like, it makes your breath stink less.

-An apple a day keeps the doctor away. What keeps dentists away? Bad breath.

snowing snowing like a dwarf

So it's snowing outside

It has been snowing since yesterday. There's some 6 inches on the ground right now and more coming. On the way out from my house this morning I saw a car in a ditch rested up against a fence. My girlfriend asked that I spend the night at her place tonight so I don't have to drive home in the snow.

Here's to hoping the roads are clear enough tomorrow so I can drive to school. It's already a 50 minute drive from my place and I'll be in grandma mode tomorrow I'm sure.

Only 5 days of school left before the end of the semester! 5 days in which 3 projects are due and 2 homework assignments as well. Oh what fun! I'm looking forward to a nice break. A break in which I can finally find time to finish "Paper Mario 64" and start and finish "Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door" and play through "Metroid Prime" again and possibly buy and play through "Metroid Prime Hunters". And, you know, keep working on my website a little bit, too.

-Not enough hours in this week

my site

Oh!

Have I mentioned my website WaggSoft ?

-I almost forgot

Find some aspect that is your own

Find some aspect that is your own

That is the message I got from my professor tonight. I'm one part of two 7 person teams working on a weather/radar system for some researchers in Iowa. I haven't yet found my niche in my group, where I belong. The 6 other people all seem to know what it is they want to do with it and they do just that. They do their part. I guess I'm just not as excited about this project as other people are.

I'm a Computer Science student. This is my 5th year in University. I've attended a total of 43 months of instruction within everything from English and Japanese to Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, Philosophy and yes, Computer Science. I've spent no more than 3 weeks away from this institution in the last 3 and a half years of the 4 years and three months I've been attending.

I'm not a great student. In fact, my grades haven't really mattered to me all too much the whole time I've attended. I've failed 3 courses. Since then, I've successfully completed two of those three my second time around. The third course I'm currently taking again and doing well enough. Why do my grades not matter? I feel I'm getting as much from my post secondary education that I could hope for. Which brings me back to my lack of interest in this weather/radar project...

My professor last week presented a lecture on the aspect of a human resource person within a company. One of his questions was something of the following: Who would you rather hire...

a) A veteran professional in the industry who has zero knowledge of the system he would be responsible for working on and the programming language it is maintained in.
b) A new graduate who may not have the best grades. He does have some idea of what the system does and has dabbled with the programming language the system is written in. His grades are lower than nominal but only because he spent his class and free time working on his own projects. He educated himself.
c) A new graduate who may or may not know what your company or your product does and who may or may not have any previous experience with the programming language the system uses. But he had top grades in his class.

I think it went something like that. If I can't recall correctly it's because my nose was buried in my laptop while I was teaching myself PHP and JSP. When posed with the question of who I would hire as an HR manager I chose the second guy. I guess the consensus of the class (and the professor) say the grad with the top marks is the best choice. I suppose I might be in trouble if that's the case.

I digress again. Back to the project at hand and my lack of enthusiasm for it. I've spent no more than three weeks (Christmas break) away from this University since the beginning of my second year here. Why? I'm not only a student. I'm also a research assistant. I know what it's like to work on a big project and I know the difficulties in managing time. And frankly, to quote one of my Professors, Dr Alan Paeth, "The smart programmer is a lazy programmer". So I've adopted that philosophy but replaced "programmer" with "student". I don't want to write myself into a corner here for the off-chance a future employer might find this blog and query me on it. I have two other class projects (an Amazon.com clone and a web-based multi (2+) player battleship game) to take care of. I'm not the only one who's getting burnt out with the sheer volume of project time that must be dedicated to the projects.

I wish I had a conclusion to put in here. As I write this I imagine I'm writing for Wired magazine and thousands of people would read this. I'm just tired. I have to find my place in this group and show the professor I can do something when it comes to working with a team. On the bright side, I'm developing a pretty kick-ass website for a first time around. Here it is at waggy.is-a-geek.org for all to see. I develope it Monday through Friday between the hours of 8am and 4pm. Always more to come...

-Educating myself

Lurv

I love you

I have said it and it has been said in return. Wow, that's an awesome thing to hear. To think, in a previous relationship I put up with not hearing a mutual "I love you" for three and a half years. To be fair, I heard it twice before this relationship, but she played it off like it was a joke I tricked her into. This time it just feels right, like I'm not the only one who's making an attempt. She's sweet! An awesome girl.

-Not just a computer virus any more

Ghetto

Broken glass

That's what I had waiting for me Wednesday morning as I went to my car to drive to school. The night before, someone had smashed my drivers-side window. There was still a lot of glass hanging from the frame, evidence that they were not attempting to break in. Nothing was taken, the door was still locked. Someone must have decided it would be fun to smash some glass and disappear.

-Boo-urns

Alternate Reality

On a lighter note, I've been messing around with an old computer that was given to me this summer. I've turned it into a webserver which can be found HERE, complete with a blog and forums. I'm still working on it, my next goal is to get the mailserver set up so I can operate emails out of it from addresses such as kyle@waggy.is-a-geek.org

-Wouldn't that be fun

two months later

Two months later...

Yes, there's been a temporary hiatus. I finished up my summer research (at least for the year) and took a little vacation. My girlfriend, her sister, and I went to Edmonton where I visited with my sister and her husband. It was nice to see the two of them again. While we were in Edmonton we made a visit to the West Edmonton Mall. Unfortunately while I was there I did not stop in at the BioWare studio. Most of the vacation was spent in Lloydminster, a city that exists on the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

School's been going well. I failed a class last year, Algorithm Analysis. Thus far I have passed the midterm and done very well on the homework. The other classes are going great, too. But wow! I get a lot of homework this year, I've never been so busy. I do have plenty to keep me occupied outside of school.

My girlfriend is great. We're going to a gym together to work out. I'll attempt to get buff, she'll look even hotter.

I bought a Nintendo DS and a couple games. "New Super Mario Bros" is a great game. Since I've beaten it I can't say I've felt like replaying it. "Super Mario 64 DS" is a whole different game in itself. There are enough things changed between the Nintendo 64 version and the DS for even experts of the 64 version to want to play.

And I've been messing with an old computer I was given. You can find it at waggy.is-a-geek.org where I've got another blog going there. Not much in it though.

-Busy computer scientist

Stay off the sidewalk...

... I have my motorcycle license. I passed my road test yesterday and now hold my class 5 and 6 licenses. I celebrated by taking my girlfriend out for a cruise beside both Okanagan and Kalamalka lakes last night. I can finally take passengers with me.

My relationship is going awesome. My work is getting boring, frustrating, stale.

It seems to me that my life goes through cycles. While there are things that do not effect the cycle so much, there are others that definitely come and go in waves. CounterStrike, for example... I'll play it for a month at a time, and then won't touch it again for anywhere between 8 to 12 months, at which time I'll play it again for a month straight. Occasionaly I'll get caught up in work where my effort is noticed to great effect, but that's only for a month of a four month summer. Video games, that's a more frequent occurance. I'll play my games for a couple weeks, then drop them for a month or two then I'll pick them up again.

There's probably other cycles that I could call attention to but they aren't coming to me off the top of my head. A month ago I was looking forward to school starting, now I just don't know. I'm really looking forward to my work ending, but it's just dragging on so long. It's not that I don't like working, or even the project(s) that I'm working on. It's that my attention is being split between completing one project and getting another started and it's a different sensation.

My professor wants me to finish our codling moth project so we can get our paper into pre-publishing. On the other hand she had me start another project this summer, to do with honey bees and a transgenic apple gene. She wants that one completed so we can start running experiments so as to get another paper written. That's what is frustrating. I can't focus on any one project so I forget what it is I'm doing and then I play a video game (Super Mario RPG which I just finished 30 minutes ago. Next up is Paper Mario for the n64). If I don't have anything to show for, I feel my professor will be disappointed with me. And of course she will be. So I can spend the next two hours of my time filtering data and coming up with results for our codling moth project or I can spend that time programming bee/flower/hive behaviour and have something to show for the bee project. Ack!

Sorry, that's off topic, I just went on a bit of a rant. I'm going to get back to work here, probably just filtering data because it's monotanous and easy to fall into a groove.

-Taking the easy way out today

crystal clear

Looking back

The last few posts I've made over the last few months (starting at the beginning of May?) have much referred to a tight group of friends. Those included Adam, Jenn, Crystal and I. Adam is a friend of mine from University who is in the same degree/year that I am in. Have I told you the story of how we all came to hang out this summer?

I got a phone call from Del, my 'other mom'. She knew I didn't know too many people where I'm living. She gave me the number to a friend of hers who was my age who had given her permission to tell me to call her some time to go party. I called that girl, Stephanie, that night. She invited me to a party at her place and a bush party to follow later, for the next night. Steph said I could bring a friend if I liked. So I called Adam.

Adam and I show up, we're the first there. You learn :-p don't show up too early. Later that night while people are showing up, two girls arrive together. Two gorgeous girls, one brown haired with brown eyes and a pretty face and another tall bombshell of a blonde. These were Jenn and Crystal respectively.

Now, I didn't know anyone at this party before I showed up to it. Not even Stephanie. Adam didn't know anyone either, so we were there and relying on Stephanie to keep us entertained. It turns out Jenn and Adam worked together a couple summers before, which had them talking. Crystal and I didn't really talk to each other at the house. Later that night we're at the bush party and I'm kind of hanging out with Stephanie, but she informs me she's leaving. So Adam and I are left to our own devices, which in the end turns out to be a blessing. Adam, Jenn, Crystal and I spend the rest of the night until 4am talking. Once in a while we're harassed by a guy named Mike who doesn't drop the subject of "Labia" and "juices flowing". It almost got physical a few times as Adam and I did what we could to have him stop bothering the girls. That would be another story all together.

I would later learn that Crystal might not have even showed up to the party at all. She just happened to see Jenn walking passed her house that same day. Jenn asked Crystal if she'd like to go to a party. Crystal hummed and hawed and was finally convinced to go. Upon arrival at the party, they picked out the two guys they *might* like to get to know. Adam and I were the ones they picked out. Jenn knew no one at the party before-hand except Stephanie, and then Adam. Crystal knew no one at the party except Jenn. When Stephanie left later that night, we were brought together by necessity and a few social ties. The rest is history.

What history? Since meeting the girls we have played pool together. Gone camping. Walked Kal Lake park during the day and night. Had our fair share of scares along the Kal Lake Park trails at night without a flashlight. Built a fire along the beach at Cosin's Bay. We have made up stories one word at a time between the four of us. Enjoyed frappuchinos and slurpees and icecream blizzards. Gone out for dinner countless times across the Okanagan and Shuswap Valleys. Danced too many nights to count, weekend or weekday. Gone ten pin bowling in Kelowna. Watched more movies than I dare remember. Enjoyed each others company at the cinema and drive-in theatre. We've done coffee at a lot of the coffee shops around here. We've watched the "Teen Girl Squad." Gone floating down the river in Enderby on tubes we bought and blew up the same day. We all went together when I got my ears pierced. We've done barbeques and family get togethers. Roasted marshmallows and made smores in my back yard, and movie nights on the big screen.

That's all I can remember off the top of my head. That is the history. We did this for two months, Crystal and I paying special attention to one another. We finally made it official. We've been together for almost two weeks now, July 9 being a date for us to remember. We have more plans for the rest of the summer.

-Best summer ever!

the living living

I am alive

What has happened in the last month? I went to a conference at the University of Notre Dame in Southbend, Indiana. So I got to see some of Chicago, and most of the Notre Dame campus. I was there from June 21 to June 25.

My ears are doing well. They are well on their way healing.

My Mom is visiting, so I got to see her for the first time in 4 years.

The clutch on my motorcycle died, so I've replaced it.

I went cliff-jumping all last weekend during Canada Day long weekend. I am now a nice tan colour.

-Still living

pierced times 4 times

Metal person

I now have a total of seven piercings. This last Saturday (two days ago) I brought out my friends Adam, Jenn and Crystal to my 'hometown' I grew up in. I went to the piercing shop my friend from highschool works at. She ran a needle through my ears four times, twice in each lobe. Now I'm set up for orbitals, where one ring sits within two piercings. At the moment I'm wearing four rings as the swelling goes down within the next few days, and soon after I'll be good to go with my orbitals.

Motorpickle

I've insured my motorcycle, a Yamaha Virago 750cc all cherry red with flame tints. I've been riding that around the last week, save for the days it rains (3 of them, today included because it's rainy).

People

I've still been keeping busy. I got kicked out of a bar two weekends ago, I think because I was too drunk and stumbling when I walked. Not very proud of that, but it was my first time getting kicked out.

Likewise, there have been lots of movies to watch and beaches to walk and frappuchinos to drink and lakes to swim and sun to soak up and floors to dance on. This is still an awesome summer, and only 1/4 started.

-I've seen the ex around, maybe she's seen me too

Frappuchino on the lake

Frappuchino on the lake

For my own records; Frappuchinos on Kal Lake, at the end of the dock. Laying on our backs, pointing out constellations and realizing no one else can see where you're pointing. Getting cold then getting someone else to warm you up. Game of Questions. Long drive. This blog sounding like a yearbook writeup.

-How many times...

beach and movies

Learning so much

I've been busy this entire last week and a half. I've been trying to maintain a decent amount of sleep and it has been tough. Take yesterday for instance; I wake up early in the morning so I can stop in Summerland to visit a friend at her work before meeting my other friends for a hike and barbeque. She's a hostess at a vineyard and looks very nice in her work uniform. She sets up a little-wine tasting for me and we visit for a short time.

I finally get to Penticton to visit my other friends as we're all supposed to be going for a hike and then back to their place for a barbeque. Seven of us do our hike, and between the 7 of us we find a total of 20 ticks (lime-disease carrying pests that burrow into your skin) on ourselves. As far as I know, no one has found one buried into their skin, so we must have found them all.

We do the barbeque, have a water fight, chill out for a while then gradually all leave. I left at 5:30pm so I could make it back home to Vernon for 7 or 7:30, giving me enough time to get myself showered and ready for that night. I stop at my Grandma's before heading over to yet another friend's house in town, so I can give her her Mother's Day card a little early.

I arrive at my friend's place at quarter to 9 and find she knows another friend of mine from University, Kevin. So they all partied it up there for a couple hours. Steph didn't like that I wasn't drinking before heading out, so she fixed that problem.

Adam shows up, after I talked him into it. Steph calls Jenn, on Adam's behalf, for her to come out. I call Crystal, but she didn't have the opportunity to go out. So our group all went out, we drank, we danced. I don't think I ever drank so much while out in town before. Even after the night was over and I was back at Stephanie's place, we talked until 5am, the sun was coming up and I was still feeling the alcohol. When I drove home, I still hadn't slept and the sun was shining in my eyes.

I woke to the sound of the phone ringing at 11am. So today I hung out at the beach all day, followed by dinner elsewhere and hours worth of movies. We watched "Zoolander", "8 Crazy Nights", and "Anchorman", all of which I had never seen before. Adam missed out on the fun at the beach and the movies so I rented "The Machinist" and watched that at Adam's place.

Now I'm home and I work in 6 hours. You can see the problem... so many things to do and not enough hours in the night to do it. It has been like that the last 11 days. I've done coffee, chilled at the beach, shot pool, cooked dinner, walked, partied in a gravel pit, fed ducks, more coffee, gone clubbing, gone hiking, tasted wine, barbequed, gone to Karaoke, hung out in a pub, partied at a house, played Nintendo64, played GameCube, watched the above mentioned movies as well as "The Family Stone", "Donnie Darko", and "Austin Powers 3: Goldmember", and stayed up all night watching infomercials and cooking shows; I've probably forgotten what else might have been done, and all of the above has been done with at least one member of the opposite sex.

-Shaping up to be the best summer ever

ex bleh

Too Awesome!

This shirt is dedicated to the one ex-girlfriend every guy has in his life that makes a man wonder, "What the hell was I thinking?" Sure, your buddies knew she was the devil from the beginning and they did try to warn you, but did you listen? Of course not. Were you blind? Were you just too stupid? Nope. You were just going through a Rite of Passage every man must make in his life. Like those National Geographic specials where the young male villagers must go wrestle a crocodile to be declared a man. Well, think of that crazy ex-girlfriend as that crocodile. Just be happy that you didn't put a ring on that crocodile's finger and decide that you wanted to wrestle it for the rest of your life. Because there are those poor, unfortunate bastards out there. I mean, who the hell would want to do that forever? Well, there are some guys who just plain like to wrestle crocodiles. Or how does this sound, "Sorry guys, can't go out tonight and have fun, have to stay home and wrestle the crocodile." You see where this is going? So to the young bucks who are just coming up, don't worry, your crocodile is out there and you will get to wrestle her soon enough. To the veterans, I raise my beer to you and say, "When going through hell, keep going."

-Had I the money, I'd buy that shirt

entertain me

Michael Shantz

I'd like to take up some space here on my blog to bring your attention to a very talented artist and good friend of mine, Mike Shantz. If you know of anyone needing some original art done in a unique style, contact him through his myspace account or email me and I'll pass the message along to him. He's particularly interested in album art for musicians. He does posters too, as well as water colour, acrylics and designs for clothing.

-Check him out

Summer time is here

Everyone has moved home for the summer break. Motorcycles are on the road. People are getting out during the day to enjoy the sun.

I went for a hike Friday afternoon throughout Kalamalka Lake Park. That was a good walk. I didn't see any rattlesnakes or marmots or really anything else of interest. Not that I really really want to come across a rattlesnake anyway, but I'm the typical wide-eyed boy about strange creatures. I guess I'm just curious.

-Slow update season

school is almost out now

What can I say here?

I don't really know what to write here. I want to write about all the cool things that have been happening to me lately, but at the same time I know there is the remote possibility that Melissa is reading this. I don't want to rub salt into any wounds that may be present. I currently have a scar, which is why I'm able to continue living with all these great people and have a good time doing it. I'm sure one day that scar may open and I'll be left with a big ugly wound again, but nothing that won't make me tougher the next time around.

And with that, if She doesn't want to be hurt reading my stuff then she doesn't have to read my stuff. And if She wants to read so she can see I've moved along and am having a good life, so be it.

Black Nails

I had black fingernails all day long yesterday. I felt pretty damned good about it, too. One girl told me she thought it was hot for a guy to be comfortable enough with his 'feminine side' to wear black nail polish and feel good about it. Another girl offered to help me out with my right hand next time :-/ I'm no lefty. She also offered her nail polish, seeing how I don't have any and had to use a black sharpie marker.

Hmm, what else? I spent two hours in the school weight room last night. I feel pretty good about that. I went there with a friend of mine from residence here (Did I mention I've moved into residence on campus?) I've got Aikido tonight but unfortunately it is year-end and all my classes are asking for the class projects to be completed.

I have met some great people up here in residence. One is the little sister to a girl I went to school with/lived in residence with three years ago. The girl who offered her assistance with my finger nails is from Salmon Arm (it's about an hour from here) which is cool because she went to/graduated from the same school I went to while I lived there (as some may recall, I moved away from there at the end of my grade 11 year to graduate in Georgia for my grade 12 year).

I can stay up waaay late :) which is what I did last night. I've been working on an "Artificial Intelligence" class project. I finally got my intelligence working in my Minesweeper program. So my Minesweeper can partially solve a board. I just have to tell the program what not to do, because some times it picks blatantly wrong choices that no human would choose.

There's my quick update. I was up until 4am last night. It is currently 9:48am and I have class in 12 minutes.

-Busy school life

Teh Funny

Teh Funny Cyanide and Happiness

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net
-Hooray for theme parks

lit happy

"Lit - Happy In The Meantime"

It's just another reason why
It all comes down to you and I
Just have another drink
Waste some time with me
We're happy in the meantime

I've gotta make up for losin' time
Cuz I've been spinnin' my wheels all night
And I can't wait
Can't hardly wait to see you
Things seem better off now
I think I'm better off now

[CHORUS:]
It's just another reason why
It all comes down to you and I
Just have another drink
Waste some time with me
We're happy in the meantime

I guess the rain's gonna follow me
Cuz it's been droppin' in minor D.
And I can't wait
Can't hardly wait to see if
Things seem better off now
I think I'm better off now

[CHORUS]

Well save a little rain
And wash away the pain
I'll try and keep it clean
I'll show you what I mean
I don't wanna keep you holdin' on
Cuz in the morning I'll be gone

-So long.

great people

Great people did not become great by following others.

Mahatma Gandhi gained independence for India through civil disobedience.

And there is that Che Gueverra guy.

The little engine that could never gave up when the others expected him to fail.

The ugly duckling didn't drown himself in a pond.

Ok, so I ran out of real world examples. The point being, great things happen when people follow their own path and listen to their heart, figuratively speaking. So do what you feel is right to do. If you follow others, either through advice or opinion, you may regret it later. Blaze your own trail and you may one day become a great person who has touched the life of many people.

-It all starts with touching the life of one person.

falling out here

It's tough.

My exgirlfriend and I had a bit of a fight yesterday. She came home with waffles, a nice gesture because she doesn't eat waffles, I do. There were a lot of waffles. Then I found out she had done something that upset me. I should not have been upset. At least, I wouldn't have been upset had I moved out of our apartment two months ago. As was written previously in my blog, I had decided to live with her as a room mate, and if I had it my way, a friend. Things were good, until I got upset.

I apologized sincerely soon after my words were done. She invited me to go with her into town for errands, nice enough, but she said she would not talk any more of what had upset me. I agreed; my exact words were, "I won't ask, you won't tell. What I don't know can't hurt me." To which she replied, "Then maybe I should tell you everything so it hurts you."

Ouch. How uncalled for was that. I hurt, I was really hurt. I told her she could leave without me, that I'd do what I needed to do without her, later. When she left, I locked my computer with a password. I also password protected the screensaver. I was more upset at what she had said than what I inquired her about earlier that hour. I reacted, I removed her access to the social aspects of the internet.

I packed what I needed and left. When she came home, she was angry to find I had locked her out of the computer. To be fair, I had said she could continue to use the computer after our breakup and that should she find she still needed a computer after she and I moved out and went our separate ways that I would allow her to continue to use the same computer in her new home. She phoned me, pleading for me to grant her the password to the computer. She even said 'Please' which almost broke my heart to continue to deny her. I retaliated to her hurtful words when now I know I shouldn't have retaliated at all. At least that's how I feel.

I phoned her back soon after, getting her voicemail, and left her a message with the password. Later, still, I went back to our home and I unlocked the other password protection I had committed; the login screen. She wasn't home when I did this, but she walked in just as I was walking out. Again it hurt me so much to hear the anger in her voice. Nobody deserves to be yelled at, and nobody deserves hurtful words regardless of what another has done. And I expect, after hurtful words have been exchanged, the conscience comes around and that person feels it appropriate to apologize.

Here I am, I apologize in regard to my actions. I'm sorry I retaliated by locking her out of the computer I gave her permission to access. And as such, I think I am being an honourable person when I say (knowing that she has access to read this and I hope she does) that she need not apologize to me. Am I naive in seeing (or thinking I see) the good in all people? I forgive her for her harsh and unexpected words. I could very well just go home, but that would be me causing a thorn in her side. I've paid rent up to the end of this month, I'm entitled to be there. But if she really hates me and wants to cause me hurt like she said she did, I don't think I can go back there.

I want to make the best of the next few weeks. Maybe we'll agree to disagree and I will just move my stuff out next week. Either way, this issue needs to be resolved. I want to talk to her. I want to thank her for the waffles. I want to be comfortable in my own home.

-Story of a lonely guy

waggy lyrics

Blink-182 - Waggy

Watching your house shrink away in my rear-view mirror
As I drive away
Wishing that I could take back all those words
That meant nothing that I didn't say

I'm trying
To be what you want me to be
But it's so damn hard to keep playing the part
Of the fool, week after week

I think you need some time alone (I think you need some time alone)
You say you want someone to call your own
Open your eyes, you can suck in your pride
You can live your life all on your own

Is this all going to be just another time
That we play this game?
I've tried to convince you that things could be different
But somehow they end up the same

But what
Did you expect from me? What am I supposed to do?
You say that you're starting to feel like you're getting lost
Well, I do, too

I don't wanna live this lie again (I don't wanna live this lie again)
I know I'll get it right but I don't know when
I'll open my eyes, I've got something in side
I'll just jack off in my room until then

It's never over 'til it's done
And I don't think that you're the one
It's never over 'til it's done

-And I don't think that you're the one

much ado about sex

Much ado about sex

The title says it. But I'm thinking more along the lines of how to become a better lover. Back in my youth (ok, so I am still in my youth) my Dad gave me The Talk by giving me a book to read and telling me, "If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask."

So I've grown up (but still not that grown up) with that in mind. I ask questions when I want to know more about something. I can still call up my parents and strike up a conversation with them about things that would make others blush. We were not hedonists in any sense at all; there was still very much a sense of privacy in our home, while growing up. And look at me, I'm getting off topic here. Point being, I'm looking to better myself and I'm expanding my resources.

The aforementioned book is titled "Sex: A Mans Guide" by Mens Health Magazine. It's some 600 pages long and covers most anything a 15 year old boy could want to know about sex. I read it cover to cover, appreciating what my Dad did for me in providing me with this book. It was his book, so I returned it to him when I was through reading it. This is the point where I'm supposed to tell you the words of wisdom he imparted on me that day, but I really can't recall if he said anything. Years later (two years ago) I came across the same edition of the book in a used book store. Needless to say, I purchased it.

That about covers my book experience, short of "Penthouse Letters" and the various porn magazines bought for me as practical (and how practical!) jokes over the years. Have you ever heard of Sue Johanson? She's this wonderful lady (at least she comes across as a wonderful lady on TV) who plays host on the television show "The Sunday Night Sex Show", though now I think it has been renamed "Talk Sex with Sue Johanson". Well, almost every year she comes to the University I attend, and every year I've missed her appearance. She'll be visiting here March 3 and I intend to attend. I don't know if it'll be a taped (for TV) event, or if it's just a seminar with a question/answer period at the end. Jeez, wouldn't that be scary? asking questions about your (failed?) sex life in front of a forum of people. I love the lady, and I hope she's as pleasing in person as she is through the CRT.

I've ordered the "Kama Sutra" by Anne Hooper. It's another text to study. You can't by this book used. Well, you physically can because it is possible to. But it's a sex guide, people. Do you really want to order someone else's used sex guide? I didn't think so.

-I'm blessed to have such open minded parents.

peph and myspace

Afterthought: I'm on MySpace

Yeah, after reading Pephemie's most recent post on her blog, it appears she's got a MySpace profile as well. And that brought to my attention that I don't know where hers is on MySpace... which led me to the "Aha!" moment that no one knows where my profile is either. So here it is.

-I don't blog on MySpace... that's what this is for.

wisdom of cliffy

Some advice from Cliffy B

I would have asked his permission to post this on my blog but the guy never responds to my emails so I can never be sure he even gets them in the first place.

-----
Find someone that makes you feel like a king/queen. Hang on to them.

The second they stop looking at you "that way" it's time to leave.

Relationships are like cell phone providers. None are perfect. You just find one that works most of the time and doesn't flake out on you when you need it most.

Spooning is fun... until you wake up with a numb arm.

Clumsy is the new sexy.
-----

Excellent words of wisdom, thanks CliffyB.

-Back to studying for my Artificial Intelligence midterm

upkeep of me

Philosophy

Sitting here in philosophy class, Phil 121. It's a first year course and doesn't ask much work of me. That's kind of a good thing, as I don't really want to work to get a grade here. One of my computer science professors tells me 'The smart programmer is a lazy programmer' so why not extend that to first year classes? The smart student is a lazy student. So study when you need to and have fun otherwise... maybe.

-Don't take this advice if it is your first year of post-highschool education

just a bad time of my life

Was busy for a while

My girlfriend and I, of the last 3 years and 4 months, have seperated. It's not an easy thing to do, but she wanted to go through with it. I loved her, and indeed still do, so it is really tough for me. How do you get over something like that? I'm doing my best to keep myself busy. I've joined my University's Aikido club. I get out to visit my friends more. I sleep in more than I used to. I don't want to have to keep myself busy, but it helps to alleviate the hurt. I hope I never get good at things like this.

So in honour of our lost relationship, I present to you Craig's Brother and their song "Set Free".

Craig's Brother - "Set Free"

I guess there's only one place to go from here
I think the options are clear anyway
I'm sure you're tired of waiting for me
To figure out where you fit in
I guess I'm afraid of what we could be
Cause I don't want to sell you short of your dreams
I'm sorry for making you wait for me
Cause I don't want to hold you down
But I don't want to set you free
I don't want to make you run from me

I guess it's hard to believe that I
Could make myself give up
After all this time you and me
Trying hard to make sense of our differences
Pretending we both had everything
I guess I believed in our fantasy
You only loved the one you wanted me to be
I'm sorry for breaking your faith in me
I don't want to hold you down

But what if you're more than I could please
Could you accept apologies?
I don't want to squander all your time
I don't want to mislead you
I think we both knew that it was done
Sorry I had to be the one
Sometimes I wish it were the other way around

-I wish you weren't supposed to be set free

deck of cards

Ace of Spades

I got this cool Bicycle magic card set. Two packs of Bicycle cards, red and blue, with 20-something card tricks inclusive. This is mostly for my own record, as I'm programming a deck of cards for use in a future game of mine. I want to be able to find this post and look back on it as a sort of guideline for myself. Here's what I need in the future:

Deck order:

With the deck face up (face of cards facing me) the order is
Joker one.
Joker two with the Bicycle guarantee.
Ace of Spades followed by 2 of spades consecutively to the 10, Jack, Queen, King of Spades.
Followed by the same order of the Diamond suit.
Now the order changes to the King of Clubs followed by Queen, Jack, 10 down to 2 then Ace of Clubs.
Followed by the same King, Queen, down to Ace order for the Heart suit.
The last two cards, face up, are a Special Mail-In Offer for Official Rules of Card Games with instructions on the back of the card.
Then a card with an offer to join the American Contract Bridge League. This card has the normal blue back on it, the only card without the blue back is the Mail-In offer card.

[Edit] I really should also note the following:
The One-Eyed Jacks are of Spade and Heart suit.
The Kings with swords are Spade, Club and Hearts.
The King of Hearts is stabbing himself in the head.
The King of Diamonds has an axe.
The King of Diamonds is the only King with one eye.
The King of Diamonds is not holding his axe, but has an open hand.
The Jack of Clubs is the only Jack to have a feather in his cap.
The Jack of Hearts isn't holding his axe, he is holding a flower.
All Queens have flowers, except the Queen of Spades is not holding hers in her hand.
All the Jacks and Kings have moustaches except the Jack of Diamonds and Clubs and the King of Hearts.


The back of the cards look like a standard blue back. Doesn't look like there's any indication as to what the card might be on the other side. I only mention this because my cousin once had a deck of cards that by looking in one specific corner, there was a set pattern that would dictate what the face and suit value on the other side of the card would be. Theoretically, if you learned the pattern, you could say, "I know what card this is,it's the Queen of Clubs," just by reading the pattern.

I wasn't expecting the order of cards to change have way through the brand new deck. Honestly, I was expecting Ace through King for all of Spade, Diamond, Club, Hearts. This order might be exclusive to Bicycle brand cards.

I've got a red deck as well, that came with the pack. When I say 'Blue' deck or 'Red' deck, I refer only to the back of the cards. I'm sure the face of the cards are the same for the Blue and Red deck. And as far as I can tell, the picture is the same for both decks, just a different colour. There are 4 winged cherubs that appear to have a fish bottom with a tail in the corners of the cards backs with two winged cherubs in the center on either half. These cherubs in the middle have legs and look to be riding bicycles in the direction of "out of the card" toward the viewer.

I'm not looking to rip-off Bicycle with any design of my cards for my game. I guess I'm just recording everything I see because that's the way I am... crazy.

I'm installing a Christmas present to my computer as I write this and study these cards. "Beyond Good and Evil" by Ubisoft, and it's playing some "Propaganda" song while I'm doing it. It's a catchy tune, and probably the main theme of the game. I've been looking forward to this game since its release, and 3 years later and a $12 price tag it's about time I give it a try.

[Edit] The book of tricks that came with the set says on the inside that the
"Blue deck is the 'trimmed deck'"
"Red deck is the 'standard deck'"
That means, the trimmed deck is physically cut differently at manufacture so that one end of the cards is slightly narrower than the other end. So when you are to, say, look for a certain card in the deck chosen by another person, you can flip the deck around and have the selected card put in 'backwards'. This allows you to easily feel for the card that was chosen by the other person.

-Time to learn some magic card tricks again!

dinner at the outlaws

Nothing bad to say today.

christmas tunes

Christmas Night Of The Zombies

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. I dreamt that there were zombies right outside my window Christmas night. Hungry for some flesh to eat, but I was hungry for a fight. The living dead they walk the earth, to bite on you where death do meet.

Christmas night of the living dead, my face is green and the snow is red.

Whoa. Whoa. I'm breaking bones with my bare hands, theres hundreds of them closing in. I'm running out of ammo now. I need to get the axe again to split some heads in two and by to see their bodies falling down. Struggle to survive the Christmas night when zombies came to town.

Christmas night of the living dead, my face is green and the snow is red.

I creeped in with the shotgun blast straight to the head. Bloody entrails, staring eyes. Now I'm the living dead.

Christmas night of the living dead, my face is green and the snow is red.
Christmas night of the living dead. We won't rest until your dead.

-I recommend the album: A Santa Cause - It's a Punk Rock Christmas

not long now

The end is near

Two weeks and regular classes are over. December 2 is the last day of classes for me and then it's time to study.

I'm waiting for DoomRPG to be released for my cell phone. Currently it's only offered by Rogers wireless and not for my carrier, so I'm forced to wait. I've been waiting for DoomRPG for a year now, it's still the last post in Carmack's blog (accessible from the links section to the left).

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire opens in (North American) theatres tonight. I'm thinking of maybe just spur-of-the-moment going to see it. Who knows, it depends what my girlfriend feels like doing later. Yeah, 3 years in and I'm still whipped :P

-Lord Voldemort is back

crossroad of life

Dropouts

School is starting to take its toll on me. I'm taking more classes now than I have in recent years. I'm enrolled in 5 courses, and I haven't done that since my first year... when I failed my first class ever: Intro Chemistry 1. There are currently four classes in which I'm enrolled that I can handle. The fifth isn't going too well. Previous posts in my blog point in the direction of that class, Algorithm Analysis. I've discussed it before. With a course-load of five classes I feel I've had to choose one that I must sacrifice. The smart thing to do would to have not taken the course at all and spared myself the failing grade. Instead, I'm enrolled in it, doing the best I can with the available resources. I'm learning in the class, don't get me wrong. I'm picking up enough information that in the case I need to repeat the class, I'll know enough to get that passing grade. But currently, it's too tough when compared to my other classes. Multivariable Calculus is tough, too, but I'm putting lots of effort in that class to ensure a pass. It's better to complete Calculus with a passing grade and fail Algorithms than to put as much effort into both classes and fail both of them, right? Neither class is a requisite to any other classes I'll be taking, so I'm aiming for a 55% or better. I say 55% because any average overall grade lower than that and the student is put on academic probation. Fail to bring your overall average higher than that at the next semester end and you're out of school for a semester. Do it again and you're out a year. Or something like that. Which brings me to my next topic of discussion. Dropouts.

Most well known of the worlds dropouts from school is this man, Bill Gates. Famous for not completing his degree at Harvard, and going on to develop the (unfortunately) most popular operating system for computers. Another you might have heard of is Steve Jobs, the guy who brought you the iPod, and many other Apple products. And how about Steve Wozniak? The brain and engineer behind the Apple computer.

There is a theme here, they are all figureheads in the computer technology world. I, in no way, am touting myself as a future figurehead in the world of computer technology. I'll be happy with a solid position in a game development company as design guy. I'm just tired of school now, it's weighing down on me. I've been going to school for 3 years already, I've failed two classes. I've repeated them and passed. I've covered computer science, english, philosophy, or at least the basics therein.

I have an Algorithms midterm this coming Monday. I have a 4-part (6 to 8 page) essay due in Philosophy by Wednesday. I have another test in Multivariable calculus on Thursday. Instead of studying for any of them or writing my essay I'd rather read game-design theory or flesh out the ground-work for my games. I'd rather spend an hour reading reviews for newly released games, on either PC, console or handheld/mobile, finding out what worked for them and what doesn't. This school hasn't taught me game design (well, maybe it has this semester with Dr. Allen Paeth's Modelling and Simulation class). Nobody here wants to teach me what I want to learn.

I'll get to my essay now. I've got the weekend to write it and study for my Algorithms class. I'll do the best I can for Algorithms, if that even means putting off the essay until Monday night. I'm in no way intentionally sabotaging any of my classes. Just with a course-load as I have, I'm having a hard time making time for everything that needs to be done and attention payed to. That last part refers to my girlfriend, whom I seem to be neglecting this semester as school has taken priority. I don't know how other people do it. I'm sure I'll know how by the end of the semester, though. I'm only enrolled in 4 classes next semester.

-Not dropping out, I'm not smart enough for that.

hallowseve

Happy Halloween
It's Halloween again, and with it comes the feeling of having to dress up. My girlfriend is a devil this year, she was a cow last year. And with the cow, she won first place in the costume contest at her work, which won her $50 in gift certificates to the theatre in town.

We drove all over town last night looking for devil horns she could wear. Almost two hours of looking we finally found some, only 2 blocks from where we started. And yes, we drove all over town. Along the way we found a mask for myself, so I'm here typing this blog while wearing a $0.94 mask, a devil mask.

We're not doing much tonight. We'll set up our pumpkins in the back patio, because that's the entrance to the basement suite in which we live. We're probably not getting any trick-or-treat'ers tonight, but we'll be ready if there are any.

Halloween festivities going on in Medievia today, as well. I've already donned my costume and walked through the Gods offices begging for treats. Unfortunately they are all no-rent treats, which means when I'm done with the game today, the treats disappear, which is very disappointing.

Animal Crossing is celebrating Halloween today as well, so I'll be trick or treating there later tonight.

-Trick or treat, smell my feet. Give me something good to eat

upon a highschool day

Bad Attitude

I mouthed off one of my professors today. He didn't like me already, and I didn't like him already because I knew he didn't like me. In fact, I believe he just doesn't like standing in front of a classroom full of what he believes to be challenged individuals, teaching a subject he believes a highschool student should be able to catch onto in 5 minutes or less.

I seem to be falling into my highschool habits. I had a few teachers who thought I had a chip on my shoulder (and I never really quite got that idiom). But that's not a bad thing; I never failed a highschool subject. Maybe I was angry back then. Maybe I'm getting angry now. It really seems to work for some people whom I know to be angry and quite intelligent.

This one professor said to the class, "Judging by the blank stares on your faces I may as well be speaking French to you" (this guy is from France and has the horrible guy-french accent). I responded with, "You're just speaking Math to me," which didn't really seem to be a problem.

Later he comes hovering over my shoulder as I'm supposed to be working out the proof for some algorithm complexity. He waits, I keep my pencil still. He waits longer, I pretend to be thinking hard. I'm thinking this guy is wasting valuable class time that I'm not going to be able to make up. I'm thinking he should be going over the example on the board and doing it slowly so the class can grasp the concept. Instead, over the course of a 80 minute lecture, he covers three examples by leaving it for the student to work out (by himself so as not to plageurize) and then he quickly goes over the proof on the board. Anyway the professor hovers over my shoulder and waits. Waits longer. Sees I'm not doing anything. He turns to walk away, I relax. He sees that I moved and begins hovering over my shoulder again, apperantly thinking I've discovered the solution.

Now when he waits and sees that I've still not solved anything he says to me, "You really have no idea where to start, do you?"

I could have taken that to mean, "Let me give you a hint" but the past has proven he's not here to help. And the pompousness carried over in his accent. So I simply told him, "I really don't understand why we're doing this," because I was taught to always ask questions. Always ask why. And I don't find too many opportunities when I get to ask the question why.

Why can go on a long time, and I don't believe one can really understand the whole picture until that why comes down to the fundamentals.

"I really don't undertstand why we're doing this. How is this going to help me in my profession?"

He replies, "You want to be able to find out the complexity of your algorithms, don't you?"... Uh, no! I don't. If I was interested in that sort of thing, I sure would. But why do I need to express interest in complexities? So I tell him, "If I wanted to know the complexity of an algorithm I'd look it up on Google."

I didn't mean to offend. I don't think he was offended. But apperantly other students thought it was a big deal.

-Bring back the highschool habits

Leaving on a prop plane

Oh Brother, where art thou

My brother has arrived, visited and left. One whole month, and it really feels like it came and went so quickly. We played computer games, gamecube games, mind games. It was great fun, and it won't be for another 2 years probably that I'll get to see him again.

Classes

I'm kinda sucking with school right now. My classes are tough and I hardly find enough time to get everything done on time. Except today, yesterday was the end of my mad dash to complete an Algorithms assignment, a two-part Philosophy essay and write a Multi-Variable Calculus midterm. So, naturally, it is Friday and I get to play. Except I haven't had a chance to play (except for two hours this morning after driving my brother to the airport at which time I was doing some MAD Dungeon Siege 2 adventuring.

Oooh, and I made time (1.5 hours) to work on my moth simulation. I haven't done that in a while.

-Back to lecture and then working on another class project

Of knapsacks and ceiling wax

Of Knapsacks and feeding cats, broccoli and queens

This year is tough. This Algorithm Analysis course I am in is being taught by a know-it-all math wizard who expects nothing less than perfection from his students. And since I am far less than perfect I'm a prime candidate for his French snobbery. By now, however, he realizes how poorly his entire class is doing so out of the kindness of his heart (or something like that) he is awarding a standard point on the last test for keeping your booklet neat and readable. 24 out of 25 of those marks are legitimate knowledge testing questions, and that last grade is actually counted toward your final grade. It's a 'question' on the test. You can get less than a perfect score if you answered 100% of the questions correctly but failed to do it in a tidy way.

The Knapsack algorithm has proven to be kind of fun. I can say the same for the (N) 8-Queens problem as well. I think I'll post the algorithms so they are available on the interweb. It turns out that good algorithms that are easy to understand are so hard to find on here. Maybe the thought police force people to take them down so the students of the future don't have a source to plageurize from.

Dungeon Siege
My brother bought Dungeon Siege II on the weekend. It came at a bad time, seeing how I had 3 assignments, one essay and a test to study for. Never-the-less we played. And it was fun. At this moment I can find nothing more satisfying than beating the crap out of a big unique monster holding my breath hoping he drops the next item to the set I'm collecting (night).

-Car battery died, been riding my motorcycle all week.

bugged eyes

Least I could do

I just spent the last two hours with my eyes glued to the computer monitor reading through a years worth of LICD archives. It's an entertaining strip.

I get cable internet and TV today. w00t, I finally have another way to waste time at home.

-To class now

the struggle

Disgruntled Professors

I don't know if this is common only to French people or if it's a magical force that insists at least one of your professors must be a complete jackass. I'm registered for Algorithm Analysis in the computer science degree here at UBC. Well, I was under the impression that I might not have met the prerequisite to the class so I requested a waiver. The professor gave me the "I doubt I'll let you in. To satisfy you, I'll ask my colleagues" speech. He emails me his reply, "No, because of two things. 1) You'll be an extra paper to grade and 2) I'll have to slow the class down and explain everything to you twice". So I politely replied through email asking him to reconsider. His answer, "No".

Well, I checked the calendar and I didn't need a minimum grade in any of the three requisite classes. Just to have passed all three. So I apologized to him in his office. "Let me check. Hrm, you're right. You are in my class. Unfortunately there is nothing I can do about it." Then he went on about some issue with plaguerizing my homework. I straightened that out by showing him where I quoted my source. He's out to get me.

-French or disgruntled. Same thing, right?

blecketybleck

Nothing Really

Done the school thing for a few days, went to some classes.

Algorithm Analysis
Could be an alright class. I figure anything that teaches you how to do something better is worth while. Though my first lecture left me feeling like I know nothing about computer science at all. If I apply myself (I spent the last 3 hours refreshing myself with sorting algorithms) then I can pull a good grade.

Introduction to Philosophy Term 1
I've always enjoyed philosophy and am glad to be taking another. This is my first philosophy class since my first year of university (three years ago, Logic and Critical Thinking) and think I can really perform well in it. Our first lecture was a 'field trip' to the gymnasium where the Presidents from the universities of Ritsumeikan (Japan), Mexico, Korea, Singapore, and British Columbia were assembled to discuss the term 'Global Citizen' and how each of their universities was doing their part to contribute to the world. Our goal was to decide if the colloquium could come up with a solid definition of 'global citizen' or if it was just a bunch of crap. (Crap).

Modelling and Simulation
Holy crap, this class seems to be made for me. That doesn't mean I'd have the best grade in the class but it does mean it'd do a better job than most of holding my attention. Since I've been working on my own simulation (ie Codling Moths) for the last year and a while I thought it was in my best interest to find out really what I've been doing wrong this whole time. The professor frowns on real-life situations encountered in every day life such as standing in line at a bank (queuing theory). Instead, he rather prefers to simulate things that can be turned into games (game theory). I think I like that last part. Sadly, I'm on a wait-list. Second on a waitlist, 6 others in line behind me. 20 people in the class. 18 of the registered students showed up to class, I took up seat 19. I hope I can get in.

Been reading TUX eZine. Nice read for casual Linux users.

-Wireless 'net working with my Linux partition. w00t

back at school

School has begun

Year 4 of my degree has just begun. I went to school today for the orientation, not because I felt I really needed to be oriented but because I need to win the tuition prize offered as a free raffle today. The free pizza lunch and rootbeer floats was a nice bonus, too. And seeing my friends and getting a hand finishing up my wireless setup in my Kubuntu partition.

I'd had the wireless setup 90% done. I just didn't know how to modprobe wlan0 and iwconfig, etc etc.

I'm performing my third motorcycle skills test tomorrow. Third because I failed it the first time and it expired a month after I passed it the second time. When I pass it tomorrow I'm good for 11 months from then (not a full year because I've waited a month since renewing my license already).

-No news, bye bye

naksup trip

Back from the vacation...

...and it really wasn't all too exciting. The drive took about 4 hours to get to our destination, and it wasn't a bad drive. But when you pay to stay a night at a hotel, or in our case a chalet, I guess it's nice to make the most of your time. But we got there just after 7pm and checkout was 11am. So it was pretty much just a place to stay before we moved on to the main accomodation.

That accomodation wasn't what I thought it would be, either. To stay at this inn we paid $30 more than the chalet, and a price increase like that tells me "Bed and Breakfast". But I was wrong. It was just an inn that charged more. Don't get me wrong, it was a nice place, but it would have been everything I was expecting I could leave there with a full stomache. At least this place didn't have checkout until noon.

The drive back was nice. What took us 4 hours on the way there took only 3 hours to get back. Now I get to sleep in "my own bed" and not have to worry about missing a checkout time. I can wander over to the cupboard and find some cereal when I'm ready and eat without having to drive into town to find somebody who will take my money in exchange for cooking me food.

-Always nice to be home

Oh, but wait. What's the deal with hotsprings anyway? It was just a small heated pool of water with another part of the pool blocked off, featuring hotter water. We didn't stay long because it didn't really hold our attention long enough. Next time we do a vacation, it's going to be some place with a beach-front and something to do at night.

-Good to be home.

pixelperfectilicious

Back from the dead

I don't know what caused it in the first place, but my dead pixel has fixed itself. It's functioning as normal, no more blue dot on dark backgrounds.

Homeless

I did the walkout with the landlord today and handed over the keys. I have no home any longer. For the next two weeks I'll be sharing the bottom bunk in my girlfriends brothers room. School starts some time between now and then. And finally, I'll be able to move into my new home.

-Vacation at the HotSprings for the next couple nights

dead pixel

THE HORROR!

My first dead pixel. My monitor on my laptop has its first dead pixel. Those of you who own a Sony PSP (Playstation Portable) know what I'm talking about. I've got one dead pixel in the upper left quadrant of my screen. It's a single blue pixel and it shows up on black and other dark colors. It's terrible. I just hope nothing more comes of this. I can think of no reason it should just appear like it did. It wasn't there 15 minutes ago. I just set the laptop down, made juice and came back and there it was.

-It's not going away.

burneded

Camp

You busy yourself preparing a campfire, lighting it expertly ... it ignites instantly. Orange and red flames shoot up from the timber.
Flames lick at your clothing and it begins to smolder.
OH NO! You have caught fire!

-crispy

basementsuite

Basement Suite

My girlfriend and I looked at a basement suite yesterday in the evening. We were scheduled to be the first people to look, but when we arrived it was clear we weren't the only ones there. 3 groups had been shown through by the time we arrived, one was still hanging around building raport with one half of the couple showing the suite. Another man arrived as we did and was shown the suite at the same time as us.

It was a great looking place, it has a natural gas fireplace (one that you can turn on and off) and nice carpet. A big(ger) bathroom (than the one we have here) and it was below the ground. That in itself should be enough for us, and hopefully it keeps cool without running up the electricity. Well, at least that was the plan. When we left we had the feeling the couple was telling everyone that "these are the people I told you I liked."

So we left there with a little hope, but only a little. It was nice to hear this morning when they called us back saying it was a choice between us and another young couple. And even better when they called back 6 hours later asking us if we were really serious about the suite and could pay an additional pet deposit. We have the suite and make plans tomorrow.

-Was starting to feel unlucky with the whole house-finding thing

Chemical Warfare

Acid Burn...

...in my lungs and eyes. Coming home from grocery shopping just now I was walking up the far steps, rather than taking the elevator in the middle of the building. I've got my grocery bags and they are all in one hand so I can open doors along the way. Coming up to the landing of the first flight of stairs I inhaled something I wish not to inhale again. My landlord is coming down from the third floor and asks me, "Do you smell something burning."

I try to reply, do the normal 'inhale so you have a breath to speak with' and all I come out with is a thought 'Ack, my lungs and nose are burning. Cough! COUGH!' and I manage to squeek out "no,butican'tbreath" *COUGH*COUGH* where I pick up my pace, try to keep my head low (in case it's like smoke, where there's a layer you can get under so you can still breath).

I managed to get into my apartment (on the top (third) floor) and set my bags down. I went to the balcony and inhaled clean air (while still coughing up my lungs) for a few minutes. I can breath in my apartment at the moment, mostly, but I can sense it creeping in here. Some breaths I inhale breath in a good plume of this shit, whatever it is. Probably cancer causing, if it's not somebody's suicidal idea of a sick joke.

And what am I still doing in my apartment blogging this when my eyes have become reddened and I've coughed so much I've almost thrown up twice. Like I said, I can still breath in my apartment, but when I poked my head out in the hall again I almost collapsed for my own safety looking for clean air to breath. And my landlord is walking around breathing in like he's immune to it. He thought it was from my apartment but I'd invite him in if he doesn't believe me. He's looking for the source as is. And I've got to get out of this place, so I'm holding my breath while running down three stories of this apartment building to the parking lot below. I have to get more boxes to pack with anyway.

-Now I've got this powdery texture in my mouth.

[Update]

Well shit, the fire department is here knocking on a door down the hall from me, it turns out that's the source. My neighbors across the hall have left their apartment, taking their cat with them. I've got two cats, and one carry case. If it comes down to it I'll take both cats away in the carry case. And my laptop.

I went out on my balcony again to breath and Diane, the managers wife, asked how I was doing. She was talking with the fire chief and they didn't seem to find it important to yell at me "Get the hell out of the building" so I guess I'll stay here (for the cats safety) until they tell me I've got to leave. Fuck it, I'm turning on my vents (over the stove and in the bathroom) right now and taking my cats downstairs. This sucks, I'm starting to cough again. My computer where I'm sitting is 20 feet from the door, it's still creeping in.

[Verdict]

Brian, the manager of the building, kicked some people out this morning soon after I left to drive my girlfriend to work. And a good thing she worked today, too, because Cystic Fibrosis and fucked up air do not mix. She's a tough girl but that stuff brought me to my knees.

Here's what happened. After Brian kicked the people out of the building (squatters in a friends room or whatever) the people didn't take it lightly. After they appeared to leave, but didn't really, they sprayed mace/bear/pepper-spray throughout the hallways and ran out of the buildings with their mouths covered. That's the story I got from Brian and his wife. The fire department came by, inspected the place, decided it was pepper-spray as well. 'Interrogated' the woman in the room that was busted up this morning and she made up some story about a friend of hers having a can of mace in her purse that must have exploded by accident blah blah blah. The fire department flushed out the halls with industrial fans and all is well now. I just had to wait downstairs for 10 minutes with the cats (one of which gouged a big red streak in my gut with his claw) while the halls dispersed.

-I can now leave the cats safely at home while I get packing boxes

moving

Back to the topic at hand

I'm moving. My girlfriend and I are getting out of our little apartment and are attempting to move into a little basement suite. The problem with moving is you've got to bring all the stuff you accumulated in your old place to your new place. And in our case, we now have two cats. It was simple enough to find a place beforehand, we just happened to move into an apartment that allows cats. Now, however, no-one wants to take these cats. Until today; I think I may have found a home for the four of us. A basement suite that has us pay 40% of the utilities and has a bath tub. We don't pay utilities where we're at, but I guess it's something we'll have to do if we want to bring the cats with us.

-Gotta grab more boxes this weekend

awk stuff

Hey, I learned something new today

Here's a file I have, this is just a small example of it:

*** Week 1 @@@ sfm_146 smm_146 wfm_0 wmm_0
1989,3479 m1 s121 e141
2449,3503 m1 s121 e141
2555,3539 m1 s121 e141
2652,2849 m1 s121 e141
2349,2229 m1 s121 e141
2617,3004 m1 s121 e141
2713,3097 m1 s121 e141
3356,2684 m1 s121 e141
2725,2193 m1 s121 e141
2016,1992 m1 s121 e141
2813,2569 m1 s121 e141
3000,2796 m1 s121 e141
2851,2628 m1 s121 e141
2320,3693 m1 s121 e141
2270,3087 m1 s121 e141
2538,2173 m1 s121 e141
2647,2702 m1 s121 e141
2669,2445 m1 s121 e141
2217,2498 m1 s121 e141
2565,3155 m1 s121 e141
3212,2145 m1 s122 e142
2338,1808 m1 s122 e142
2009,2752 m1 s122 e142
4142,2074 m1 s122 e142
2605,2691 m1 s122 e142
2756,2689 m1 s122 e142
2337,2698 m1 s121 e142
2959,2286 m1 s121 e142
2554,3128 m1 s122 e142
2761,2578 m1 s121 e142
2894,2183 m1 s122 e142
2789,2265 m1 s122 e142
2315,2834 m1 s122 e142
2846,2133 m1 s121 e142
3218,2455 m1 s122 e142
2023,2796 m1 s121 e142
2683,3119 m1 s122 e142
2570,3545 m1 s122 e142

That is the output file from my program regarding moth matings and their locations. The first pair is the (x,y) location of the mating. The second number beginning with 'm' is the mate type, 1 for sterile:sterile, 2 for sterile:wild and 3 for wild:wild matings. The third bit that starts with the 's' is the start time of the mating session. The 'e' is the time they finished mating. My moths are pretty in sync with each other, maybe that's something I should fix later.

What I needed from that file was all the mate start times. I had to find an easy way to parse that data, but how to do it? A friend of mine suggested a quick 'awk' command on it that went something like this:

cat _MatingLocations.txt | awk '{print $3}' > tmp.txt

which just takes the 'third word' from the file and spits it out, in this case I piped it to the tmp.txt file. The tmp.txt file looks like this now:

1
s121
s121
s121
s121
s121
s121
s121
s121
s121
s121
s121
s121
s121
s121
s121
s121
s121
s121
s121
s121
s122
s122
s122
s122
s122
s122
s121
s121
s122
s121

And as you can see, it's got a '1' printed at the very top. You might have noticed that is the third word from the first line '*** Week 1 @@@ sfm_146 smm_146 wfm_0 wmm_0' and is something I might not want. So now I grep'd the file to output only the files with the 's' in it.

grep s tmp.txt > filter.txt

which looks the same as above, just without the 1 at the top. Now I want to get rid of the 's' in front of the values so I can run those values through another program to get the mean value. To remove the 's' I simply grab the substring of it like this

cat filter.txt | awk '{print substr($0,2)}' > inp.dat

which outputs data like this

121
121
121
121
121
...

and can now be read by other programs as numerical values. awk made it a whole lot easier to parse the files than writing a custom script in, say, matlab to do it for me.

And speaking of matlab, I could then open matlab in a terminal 'matlab -nodesktop' then load the data 'load inp.dat' and then calculate the average of the values 'mean(inp)' and then save the data of the average value 'save -ascii avgData.dat'

And to grab a few words from the raw text file I could

cat file.txt | awk '{print $2 " " $3 " " $4}'

-Thanks awk

12 boxes

12 boxes and hardly a dent

My girlfriend and I, along with our two cats, are out of this apartment at the end of this month. We don't know where we're going to end up. We've given our notice that we'll move out at the end of the month, but we haven't found a place to move into yet. If it comes down to it, we've got a 3 bedroom place to move into with another couple, temporarily.

We've packed up most of the pictures on the walls, the books on both our bookshelves, candles, ornaments, etc. The little stuff. 12 boxes worth, and it appears we've hardly made a dent. Though that would comprise the majority of the things to pack. Our clothing dressers will remain full and we'll move them as one.

There's the entertainment stand with our TV and stereo. Got out appliences to pack up. The bigger stuff. I think we've done a good job. Nice to start early so we're not in such a frenzy later. And we've got storage to put all this into, in advance, so that's nice. And it's free to us.

-Hope we find a nice place to move into, soon

1984 - orwell

Big Brother is watching you

I just read the first few pages of Orwell's book 1984 and this is what I think of it so far. The character, Winston, is who I've been introduced to. He's just come home from work and poured himself a glass of "Victory Gin". He's about to smoke a "Victory Cigarrette" and is about to write in an illegal diary. Well, nothing is illegal, as they say, in this society as there are no laws. But possession of such a thing would surely result in his punishment by either death or 25 years hard labour.

His apartment has a single camera mounted in it. The government is watching and listening to him at any given time. The same to all its citizens. Winston is about to write in his journal and is not sure who he's writing to. He writes a date, April 4th 1984, but is not sure if that's the correct year. Nobody knows for sure what the correct date, plus or minus a year, is any more. He decides to write about the movies he watched the night before.

It appears the government entertains its people with movies of war. Winston writes gleefully of witnessing a massacre of refugees; seeing a frightened man, viewed through the gun-barrels of a helicopter, shot full of holes while swimming away from the helicopter. Another of a woman in a boat full of children trying to calm her son, holding her arms around him as if that were enough to protect them from the bullets. And if that weren't enough, the 20 kg bomb dropped onto the boat would do them in. And he recalls a particular shot of a childs arm propelled into the air falling just short of a helicopters rotors.

Some society to live in. And this all within the first few pages of the book. Sounds like a book I should read, maybe not a happy book, but an important one none-the-less.

-When does Emmanuel Goldstein get introduced

girlfriends birthday

Happy Birthday!!



I know you wanted one of these:



and we will. We'll get one when we've got the time and space. Happy birthday, sweetheart.

-Lots of love, from your guy.

xmodmap thinger

Buttons with my laptop

I found a nice little config to get the volume control buttons working on my laptop. Note, this config file will probably only work on an HP zv5320, but the way to set up the config to automatically run after every reboot will probably be a help to you. The help came from this page particularly, so thanks a lot to the author.

Create a file called .Xmodmap in your home directory

> sudo emacs /home/user/.Xmodmap

and add these lines

---

keycode 174 = XF86AudioLowerVolume

keycode 160 = XF86AudioMute

keycode 176 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume

keycode 178 = XF86HomePage

keycode 223 = XF86Standby

keycode 162 = XF86AudioPlay

keycode 164 = XF86AudioStop

keycode 144 = XF86AudioPrev

keycode 153 = XF86AudioNext
---

Again, it's only going to work for an HP zv5320 laptop.

Problem was, I couldn't get the script to load up every time the computer rebooted. I would have to load the script via

> xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap

in order for the buttons to work again. You can imagine that it would suck to havae to do that every time. I don't know because I have it set to do it automatically. Here's what I did (and no other way worked for me, I tried quite a few). So now is where this works for anybody on any system, at least that's the aim. To run the command xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap at the beginning of every session, instead of manually typing it into a terminal yourself, add the following to the end of your .bash_profile from your home directory

if [ -f ~/.Xmodmap ]; then
xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap
fi

save the .bash_profile and you should be good to go.

-bash_profile is good for everything! (at least lots of things)

changing ips

Changing IPs

The computer I use in my office at school has this habit of renewing its IP every time it reboots. It's not the computers fault, it's network services fault for not giving static IPs to the computers. My biggest problem with that is I can never figure out what the new IP is without a little bit of work. Well, no more! It's easy from here on out.

The solution was simple. Have the computer email me the new IP every time it reboots itself. And since it's emailed to me, I can access that from anywhere as well. Here's how it's done.

I wanted to edit/create the S99local script in /etc/rc2.d
In my case, I had to create it.

> ls /etc/rc2.d

comes up with a whole lot of S* scripts. I didn't see the S99local so I created it.

> sudo emacs /etc/rc2.d/S99local

and wrote the following
------
#!bin/sh
ifconfig | grep inet | mail -s "new IP for work computer" myEmailAddress@theHost.something
end
------

The above is a shell script, that's why it starts with #!bin/sh and the rest is kind of self explanitory. And if not, just know that it does work.

I then changed the file via

> sudo chmod a+x S99local

so it can be run by the shell. Now every time the system restarts it emails the new IP to my gmail account. That makes it a lot easier than how I was doing it. I used to scan the whole university computer system looking for computers with an open ssh port 22. I'd pipe the information to a text file and pull out entries with 'open ssh' and try to SSH my account on there. That took a while because there are a lot of computers on the system with an open port 22.

-Much easier now

You suck education is not for you

You suck. Education is above you

So I got a reply in the mail today telling me I suck and my education will not be offered me this year. Well, in a nutshell that's what it said.

I applied for my student loan, filled out all my applications to specification. Had my girlfriend fill out her spousal form to send it all away. Got my reply and it said, "You should have enough money saved and enough money from your girlfriend over the course of the year that you can pay for school yourself. Kthxbye."

So now I get $0 for my student loan and don't know what's going to happen. I'm sure I'll still go, but I'll be getting my money more inconveniently.

-Stupid government

awakechocolate

Awake now

Augustus Gloop looks like he has been created with the help of a computer. The movie was awesome. Tim Burton plays off Charlie like he has a dark secret love of hurting others. Sadistic, maybe. The only movie to leave such an impression on me in a long time.

-Great fun

chocolatecharlie

Charlie

And the chocolate factory.

Augustus Gloop... CGI.

-Sleep now

antisomething

Working it at work without an internet connection

Started writing the paper for my simulation. Haven't gotten very far with it. Kinda wrote up a placeholder abstract section. Wrote up the beginning of an introduction and have the groundwork done for my model section. The bones are there, but the skin is at a minimal appearance and is giving off a faint corpse-ish odor. Oh, and my professor wants draft number one on her desk by the end of today. So that must mean she wants me to either email it to her so she can print it off some time tonight. Or she wants me to print it off and submit it before I leave work. If I email it, it'll be because I think I've got time to work on it tonight. In such a case, it'll be better than it would be if I submitted it at the end of work. However, if I submit it at the end of work, it'll be slightly crappier than if I submitted it tonight. I don't know what the hurry is. I'd rather work on it for a week so it wasn't so poorly constructed.

-But she's asking for it.

The reason I'd submit it before I go home

I'm hoping to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory tonight. I've seen the previews, I've placed a screenshot of the film on my desktop, I've sneaked peeks of the film. I have not, however, read the book. I'm going to add that to my reading list right now.

-Try a blade! Oh, please do. Please do!

Book worm

I'm reading the new Harry Potter book. This one is supposed to be the most depressing of the series (the rest were good). And I guess I haven't come to that part yet, it's a pretty good read so far. I wasn't going to buy it, but it was scheduled to be released with an MSRT of ~$40 so when I saw the hard cover for $20 I had to buy it. Now I just need books 4 and 5 and I'll have the whole current set.

I'll be reading Nineteen Eighty Four (1984) by George Orwell, next. Oh, shoot. I just remembered, I've got a book due back at the town library today. I'd borrowed Kevin Mitnick's "The Art of Deception". I guess I'll extend the loan and return it when I find time.

Harrison Bergeron is another story I'd like to read again. It was one of those short reading assignments you get in something like 10th grade English. Was an alright read back then, so I'll see how it compares to reading it now that I'm older.

-Anti evil governmentarianorsomethinglikethatism

Bad place of girlfriend's work

Once again my girlfriend is being booted around at work. Well, they're trying, anyway. But she's not giving in, so good for her. The new manager girl started yesterday, she was supposed to close the store last night. My girlfriend was to work 9-5. Well, when she got to the store the new manager girl (who, remember, was hired the same day as my girlfriend) was already there. And on top of that, the new assistant manager (the girl who used to undeservedly be the manager, but has now taken my girlfriends job) says "Oh, you're closing now. Check your (in-store) email". An email that you can't check outside the store, but is only accessible on the company intranet. Evidently there was no email there. Go figure, dumbasses. My girl fought, she said she was working her scheduled time (there was nowhere else that said she was scheduled otherwise). She got the boss guy involved, too, and he settled with her. Good for her, I'm proud of her. Only another week in this store, anyway. And we've got to find another place to move to closer to her work and mine.

-Quick, like a bunny.

soylent

Soylent Green is people!

So I went into the movie knowing the secret, I wasn't in suspense as I suppose I was supposed to be (heh, suppose supposed). Since I knew the Green's secret I spent the movie wondering when it was going to finally be revealed. And when the secret was 'finally revealed' it was kind of anti-climactic to me.

Look at is this way, the old people in the library find out the secret. Now couldn't the secret just be that Soylent Green is made in the same factory that disposes of bodies? Who says Soylent Green has to be made of people. Maybe this 2022 year New York is full of sensitive people who think that may be unsanitary. Maybe that's why Simonsen agrees he must die, he feels guilty about the sanitation issues. And Sol, he has lived long enough; maybe he is at conflict with the idea that Soylent Green is manufactured in the same building that disposes of corpses.

When Thorn breaks into the disposal/green factory does he in fact see the bodies being processed into Soylent Green? No, he sees the bodies being disposed of in an industrial waste bin (you see them at your local sewage plant, the rotating poop-spray thing). Next Thorn finds a conveyor belt pushing along the soylent product. But nowhere do we see the bodies being turned into paste and squished into green, square crackers.

I think it's purely supposition. We're to believe Soylent Green is people. However, the end of the movie contradicts that to me. I see the world as believing Thorn is a bit crazy by this point. He does not have solid proof the product is made of human flesh. Throw a couple extra scenes in there and that could be the final nail in the coffin.

-That's what I'd like to see

he can dance

Go White Ninja!



-Work it

bash scripting

Write a bash script and use it from any directory

I wrote up a simple bash script that automates creating a .java file template the way I like my java programs laid out. What I wanted to do was be able to use this bash script from any directory. From my /home/username directory I had created another directory /home/username/scripts that is intended to house any scripts I write up.

It is simple enough to write a bash script and access it from any directory via

> bash /home/username/scripts/theScript args

but I wanted something simpler. Something like

> theScript args

And here's how it's done. You have written a script (theScript) and placed it in your /home/username/scripts directory. Now change the permission of the script

> chmod +x theScript

which allows you to execute the script. Now open up your .bashrc from /home/username/.bashrc and add the following line to the end of it.

export PATH=$PATH:/home/username/scripts

then save the .bashrc and close it. The changes have now been applied, but you must open a new terminal for it to take effect in that terminal.

-Getting better at this

teh funny button masher

Skater girls and nurses

How about both rolled into one? I saw one, you know. I was on my way back from the beach, driving home with my girlfriend. And on the walkway that runs parallel to the street I see a tall blonde girl in a nurses smock on a skateboard going to work. My girlfriend caught me staring. It didn't help that I exclaimed "That. Is. AWESOME." So I'm still making that up to her.

-I love you dear.

In other news

Hapless .gif beats himself to a pulp.



-Deeper shade of red.