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.

kde and ICEauthority fix

Installed XFCE and ICEauthority didn't like it.

When I logged out of XFCE and tried to log into KDE it wouldn't let me.

The following installation problem was detected while trying to start KDE:

No write access to '/home/myaccount/.ICEauthority'.

KDE is unable to start  [OK]

was what it said to me.

Could not start ksmserver. Check your installation. [okay]

was another.

How did I fix it? Well, reinstalling ksmserver through kynaptic (and subsequently from the Kubuntu install CD) did nothing. This is what I had to do.

login to failsafe

sudo chown myaccount:myaccount /home/myaccount/.ICEauthority

-And all was better