Not Psychologically Unstable

And no, before anyone claims anything, I hereby declare that I am not psychologically unstable. Life's a pain, yes, but it will never affect me to the point where I lose my rationality. As long as my rational mind is still standing strong together with determination, I will never succumb to the darker sides of human nature.

So, it was quite a quiet week. Some programming was done, new ideas have formed, and I managed to do some packing; am likely to start sending packages of stuff back to Singapore. I am determined to return home with only one piece of luggage; no sense in bringing all my clothes back, for instance. Edythe has been reconfigured into a more mobile form now; the 120GB hard drive is forever portable, and the Wacom graphics tablet is always nicely packed so that I can just grab and go. Battery packs are always kept charged, and the bluetooth emitter is safely tucked away with the USB hub. The modular bay DVD-writer/reader is kept safely in a static-free bag complete with bubble wrap and slipped into the carry case, ready to be used when the unlikely event of needing to read an optical disc arises. The mouse is on semi-permanent retirement; it will only see use when I actually have the time to sit down and play a game or two that explicitly requires it. Just went to Radioshack to obtain a US-type transformer cord; so I can just plug Edythe into any US power socket without the need of having to lug a universal adapter. Oh, and I finally managed to get hold of a grounded adapter for my power brick (with grounding and fuse) to the mains. Still waiting for the screen protector to arrive; checked with the sales person and she said that the distributor will take up to mid April to send it. *shrugs* Shouldn't be a problem, I guess, in the meantime I just need to make sure that I keep the screen well cleaned always to avoid the weird markings caused from pressure of the centre of the LCD onto the keyboard.

Managed to finally get a more decent sketch pad that will not fall apart with insistent erasing; will be proceeding with the plan of a sketch-a-day-before-I-sleep, in the hopes that my drawing skill will improve fast enough for me to carry out my little summer project. Will probably use the old one for really throw-a-way works, the kind that one cannot use an eraser (simply because the damn paper will just get rubbed off as the eraser is used). Bought a small mannequin to aid in human figure studies; originally wanted to get Stikfas due to the ease of poseability, but the cost was too prohibitive and the proportions just weren't right.

Ocarina performance is on Mar 23, and I don't think that I have enough practice. Hoping deeply for a miracle to happen, or else I'm going to end up making a fool of myself. Speaking of Ocarinas, I think I should actually start epoxying my flutes (again), and follow the trick of using orange peels to humidify the bag, just like how they use to protect clarinets from the same fate.

Set theory is starting to fall into place. Suddenly realised that one of the books that I bought from the old books store contains interesting constructs that are directly pertaining to the problem areas that I have in set theory; very interesting and will probably dedicate Sunday to explore it in detail.

Japanese studies are almost grinding to a halt. I think I should work on perfecting the recognisation of the kana first, before I even try to do anything else. At least, I think that it is much easier that way than to try to do so many things at one go (considering the fact that my mind is constantly being blown away by the new material that I am learning from all my courses).

Probably have a quick scan through the GRE book to see what the whole shebang of GRE is all about; will devote more time to it during sophomore year.

Attempting to gather thoughts on the long delayed book on basic techniques for surviving programming competitions. Hopefully, I will actually have time to work on this. Original plan to publish on Lulu may not be that feasible; I think I'd just LaTeX the book and publish it online as a pdf file for download.

Teeline shorthand learning process remains unstarted; will probably first write a program that will generate arbritary words written in Teeline.

Linux kernel sources are downloaded and unpacked. Am reading through the 233MB of C source; very painful process. Some things don't make sense now; hopefully it will be clearer a little later.

The Palm Z22, very tempting price. However, I have no idea why I might want a PDA for, considering the fact that I actually store all my meeting information/schedule etc in my head or on paper. However, it does look good, and maybe I might buy it, if I can convince myself that it is indeed necessary. Well, anyone with experience with PDAs can help by leaving a comment or two on the actual uses of a PDA.

Fractal Transforms seem interesting, especially with regards to the ability to resample pictures without the usual artifacts from Lanczos Sinc or even the Bicubic or Bilinear Interpolations. Maybe I can make something good out of it... for compressing my digitised notes perhaps?

Okay... it's 5am now, and my mind is drifting. Time to sleep.