Web Comics Redux

If you have been paying attention to the side bar labelled Web Comics, you would have realised that it has been steadily increasing in size. Since I never did give a good description to each of them over in that side bar, here's a slightly more in depth look at them, in alphabetical order.

• Cyanide and Happiness is an absurdist comic that features the most unrealistic situations that can happen in real life. More than just a social commentary, it is also populated with terrible puns and sexual innuendoes. I like this comic because it updates daily, and provides my daily dose of WTF.
• Dr McNinja is an adventure comedy about a doctor who is a ninja (or was it a ninja who is a doctor?). The adventures here are usually fun and out of this world, and have several memorable moments (like chainsaw nunchucks!). I like this comic as it satisfies that adventure side of me, without the usual grovel associated with ``realistic'' renditions.
• Garfield minus Garfield is a different take of the cult classic comic Garfield. The difference here lies in the complete and absolute removal of all other characters that are not Jon Arbuckle---this has the strange and twisted effect of showing how truly alone he is, and how his antics are really sad, since he is talking to himself most of the time after all, even if Garfield is present (Garfield's ``speech bubbles'' are really thought bubbles, and is unlikely that Jon will ever know them directly). I find this comic somewhat hilarious as it brings out a different side of Garfield, and it sort of reminds us how loneliness can be such a terrible thing.
• Girls with Slingshots is a slice-of-life comic about Hazel and Jamie, two best friends who take on the city together as they live their lives. It also features a few other hilarious characters, like Clarice (porn store clerk by day, dominatrix by night) and McPedro (a talking Irish cactus). A touch of reality with a tiny bit of absurdism---that's what draws me to this comic.
• Jack of All Blades is yet another adventure comic, but this time it is set in a completely fantasy setting, and thus have a much more comic effect than say Dr McNinja. It is a fun read, and features a cast of very interesting characters, including a shape-shifter and an inventor penguin. I like this comic for its light style and easy comedy.
• Kukuburi is easily the one of the most complex plotlines of all the comics here. Set in a strange fantasy setting, the storyline is just about to be unfolded. The art work is brilliant---each rendition of the phantasmal plane has just enough details to make it believable. A most fun read indeed.
• Megatokyo is what happens when manga meets geekdom. The concept of alternate realities coexisting in the same plane and the complex interrelationships among the characters are the main selling points of this comic. Updates are supposed to be thrice weekly, but is often looser than that. But the wait is usually worth it, as the pencil work is excellent. Fred pays a lot of attention to the details with his pencil work, and all the diehard followers of this comic wait patiently for the next one to be up each time.
• PhD Comics is the first web comic that I started to follow, and still remains among my favourite. Depicting the lives of PhD students and being presented in an easy-to-digest 4-panel style, PhD Comics is a good source of the pain and pleasures of being in the PhD programmes. Some of the jokes can be a bit technical, but most of the comic is accessible by folks who don't have that technical background.
• Questionable Content is a fun slice-of-life comic by Jeph Jacques, and features the lives of the three [current] ladies who work in the Coffee of Doom, as well as Marten, the main male protagonist. Questionable Content balances realism with a dash of absurdism, like the various anthro-PCs like Pintsize and the oversized and somewhat sentient iPod Winslow, in a way that is hilarious and yet not altogether impossible to fathom. I like its depiction of life, and find the stories really interesting.
• Sam and Fuzzy is another absurdist comic (seeing a trend here yet?) featuring Sam, a taxi-driver-turned-fugitive-turned-ninja-emperor, and Fuzzy, a bear of ridiculous strength and propensity for violence whose origins are yet unknown. It updates thrice weekly, and has a really large cast that comes and goes as and when the story leads. The plot line is fairly intricate, yet not impossible to follow as Sam Logan helpfully puts out links to show where a crucial plot item was first shown. I like the smooth nature of the art work and the excellent story-telling of this piece.
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is a non-sequitor comic that makes a lot of plays with words. I discovered this comic fairly recently, and so cannot really give much of a description, but from what I have been reading [in the archives] so far, I like its approach towards understanding various aspects of human nature.
• Sinfest features the smooth manga-style of Tatsuya Ishida, and is often talking about current affairs (recent story arcs) and the issue on ``what is life''. Featuring a cast that covers God, Buddha, and the Devil, to the mortals like Slick, Monique (ooo so cute), and the fundamentalist Seymour. I like the depth that this simple comic achieves through the few words that it uses.
• Sore Thumbs can be seen as what Megatokyo was once before, with an emphasis on gaming culture and the clashing of that with various fundamentalist principles. Featuring a cast of cute women and various types of men, this comic is really interesting in the way it depicts the absurdity that arises in real life.
• Perry Bible Fellowship is the undisputed absurdist comic of the list. Most of the humour in this can be seen as ``dark'', but upon deeper reflection, it just shows that ``one must be careful what one wishes for''. The exploration of human reactions and the problems of jumping to conclusions too quickly makes this an interesting comic to use to learn yet a bit more of human nature.
• Wapsi Square is a comic that has a very deep dimension to it. I sort of stopped following it for about a year, but that was because I didn't really have the time nor effort to follow the intricate storyline that is the main feature of this. Perhaps when Winter break arrives, I will have the energy to look at this again, and pick off where I last left off...
• XKCD. You either understand it, or you don't---there is no middle ground. The brainchild of Randall Munroe, this comic is a cult piece, setting off trends and memes all over the Internet. Featuring simplistic stick figures and even simpler backgrounds, XKCD brings out the geek in all of us with its steady jokes from Computer Science, Physics, and Mathematics. If you can understand everything in XKCD, then perhaps you are not too different from me after all...

And so that's a quick introduction to each of the comics that I have on my web comic side bar. Have fun, while I head back to working on some homework that is due very soon...

iRex Digital Reader 1000S---Arrived!

Without much fanfare, my iRex Digital Reader has arrived. Check it out:The text is pretty sharp in spite of having only 16-levels of grayness---this is due to the rather high resolution of the device (1280×1024 spread over (roughly) 8inches by 6inches). The response to input is relatively spiffy, which is good, except for a few cases where the page size was ridiculously large in storage space due to the insertion of images that were scanned at high resolutions.

I'm quite happy with this device---being able to read is always a joy, and now that I have something that is as funky as this, it is even more fun than before. I will take my Digital Reader for a spin, and then talk more about it when I have the chance.

Till next time...

Waiting...

And so begins a three-day lull period, except for the fact that it is not technically lull, since I actually have to do non-trivial stuff, like for instance, my research and research paper, as well as the final term paper for the Chinese language and culture class that I am taking. Hopefully, my order for the iREX DR1000S will actually come in today to help relieve an otherwise terrible week.

c|3n1z3|\| 0f t3h c|_u5+3rz

It is somewhat official---I am semi-officially known to be a denizen of ``The Cluster'', and am one of the ``cluster-folk''. This ``cluster'' that I'm referring to, of course, refers to WeH 5207, better known as the ``Wean Linux Cluster''. It is interesting, since I have tried valiantly to avoid ending up in the cluster for the first two years of my time over here in CMU, knowing full well that the moment that I went there often enough, I would blend in most naturally given my geeky but weird ways.

Well, I guess two years of prolonging what was inevitable is long enough, and I find myself retreating to the Cluster whenever I have free time.

The other denizens of the Cluster are pretty interesting people, who look rather mundane on first glance. We have huginn (wait, huginn's a chick?), Elly (and Elly is a dude??), talchas, rntz (rntz rntz rntz) and jwise, who are almost permanent fixtures of the place. Each of them are fun in their own way, and are all excellent hackers. It is fun just to be able to hang out there, and the amount of random noteworthy geeky/hacky knowledge thus obtained is almost immeasurable.

Also, code seems to magically work itself out in the room. Someone told me that it was the spirit of the old hackers that was helping, and I am inclined to believe that to be the case. After all, most of CMU's fabled School of Computer Science was built upon the efforts of faculty and star hackers, and I'm pretty sure much of that cosmic energy goodness is still haunting the buildings and powering the people in it.

That said, csawyer said that my cursive style was pretty, which I found to be amusing. I never knew that I had a nice handwriting style to boot.

Alright, back to cramming for a final that is held in-class tomorrow.

The Daily WTF

Something fun to read: The Daily WTF. Essentially a web site containing various stories about horrific programming errors that should never have occurred in the first place.

If I ever see any of these things in real life... I think I might just physically pulverise the culprit. Grrr...

Semester Close

The semester close begins innocently enough just about a month before it actually begins. You don't realise much, until the time suddenly starts crunching down on you from all directions. You get all nervous and worried, and wonder if you'll be able to do all that you need to do, or is it going to be some terrible thing that you will end up being burnt from all directions. At the very least, you know that you have survived thus far, and thus have some semblance of perspective of the whole issue. Yet at the back of your mind, you are still worried about all matters big and small, and wonder if you will magically be able to pull through or not.

And then within a blink of an eye, the end of semester is gone, along with the finals and everything else, and you wonder to yourself if it all had been a dream. You blink your eyes, then rub them to clean out the gunk, and then pinch yourself. Feeling the pain of the pinch and the somewhat refreshing feel of your eyes from the rubbing and blinking, you realise that all that you had been through was real. You then reflect upon what has been done, and wonder if you had lived a life that is worth living.

Winter would have arrived, and as the snow flakes fall gently all over the lawn, with you inside your cozy dorm room, staring out into space as everyone else has gone home for the winter break, you wonder, do butterflies have feelings...

Kiltie Band on Youtube!

Here's a clip of the band that I play in, and the rendition of ``Fight for the Glory of Carnegie'' on homecoming weekend with old Kilties:I'm pretty sure that I will miss this fun part of my college career.

``Pretty Typing `Part Deux' With Small Bugs''---Working... Sort Of...

I have managed to port the script that I used for my portal such that it can be a more general purpose prettifier. This means that I can simply type things like ``this'' and will find that the output is much sweeter... and it also means that I no longer have to memorise those damn entity references and just type clean text that can be read almost universally everywhere.

That is the most irritating thing that has been done---as you can tell. Also, if you are using Internet Explorer, you'll find that you no longer have to get the ``MathPlayer'' tool just to view this blog---I've decided that the need to display pretty mathematical equations here is rather moot because I'd rather have a more rigorous version typeset using pretty LaTeX, and hosting it from my portal.

So, before I go crazy with this new-found formatting power, I will retire for the night. The day ahead is going to be a rather long one, and I sure as hell need as much rest as I can get away with.

Till next time...

``Pretty Typing''---It Is Really Nice...

It all began because I didn't want to type “ and ” for the stuff that I write in my own portal, that and the need to memorise entity numbers for "…", and "—", while still maintaining some semblance to the actual plain text of the pages while being displayed on text-only browsers like elinks and lynx.

That made me use a total of 3 hours to hack up a Javascript thing to get the job done. Most of that time was spent in wondering what the magical incantations were to do a DOM traversal. Then the 30 minutes was to fix the bug that Internet Explorer was demonstrating.

So, it is done. Ugh. Back to work from the diversion.

On Helping People

It has been such a long 24 hours, possibly one of the longest 24 hours that I have had in a while. With deadlines looming so close, there's little that I can do but to bite the bullet and attempt to brave all that comes my way.

For some reason, I suddenly feel sagely, almost like I'm the rational voice among the drowning drone of the people. It is a funny feeling, and seriously, I don't really know what to make of it. On the one hand, I like helping people, and have done so many times before. On the other hand, I know that I need to slowly wean myself away from that feeling in order to ensure that I don't end up being abused like some slave of someone.

That said, it is not that I will stop helping people—it is just that I will only offer help should I explicitly be asked to do so. People are strange irrational creatures, in the sense that they will never be happy with the fact that you offered help, even if it is really obvious that they most desperately need it. In fact, I think that there is a branch of psychology that deals with the idea of how people like to feel as though they had "worked" for something in order to feel suitable satisfied. The silliest example that I come up with is that of the marathon. Clearly, one can easily travel 42km by car or even bicycle, but these people choose to run the marathon instead. By that observation, it can be seen that perhaps their goal is not to get from one place to another, but the process in which they had "worked hard for it" that makes it fulfilling to them.

I'll leave that for now. I need to catch some sleep if I want to do well for the microeconomics test tomorrow morning. Till next time…

Two-day Crunch Down

Today marks the beginning of the crunch down that is going to span two days. What an irritating thing really, having so many things that are due/happening at the same time.

Hopefully I am able to pull this one off and get away with it. Meanwhile, I need to get to class.

Until next time.

Dead Fantasy

Woah, scary:Dead or Alive meets Final Fantasy in this indie flick. It has little/no plot, but it does feature the main heroines from both series slugging it out on ridiculously impossible scenes.

Have fun.

Mother

Something really sad/interesting/touching from the cesspool of the Internet:For some reason, I have this sudden impulse to run back to my mother and give her a hug, thanking her for all that she has done for me.

The last time that I had ever had tears fall from my eyes was when I watched １リットルの涙.

I guess I'm still human after all.

All Xubuntu Are Intrepid Ibex

How strange it is to bat an eyelid, and find that the week has passed us by ever so quickly. One moment we were trying to rush through the jobs and homework that we need to do, the next we are just literally sitting there and waiting for something to happen. The strangeness of it all, and I do mean the perception of time of course, that even though things are happening at the same rate (time moves equally fast for all of us), not everyone has the same feeling for time. It gets curiouser and curiouser…

It has been a rather tumultuous fortnight; I basically was see-sawing between extreme levels of productivity and extreme levels of inactivity. I suspect that this could be a result of the cold weather and the fact that it is the semester crunch-time, though I do not really have any way of showing this other than making the observation. This weekend was really a lull-ish one; the upcoming week has so many things that are due that it is not even funny anymore. But overall, I have a slightly better confidence over this semester's classes than the last—I just need to put in a bit more effort to ensure that I end up getting the results that I want/need. The classes this semester are not entirely hard; they are just relatively time-consuming. But that just boils down to time management, and I think that I'm starting to get the hang of this.

That said, the last two days were mainly systems-y stuff. As noted previously, I have had Intrepid Ibex Xubuntu running on Edythe-EEE. Previously, I have upgraded the VM in Elyse to run Intrepid Ibex also. Last night, I set up Intrepid Ibex for Elyse's alternative partition, but for some reason, the upgrade backfired and left me without a bootable Xubuntu partition. That was when I decided to just wipe out and reinstall the x86-64 version of Intrepid. That partition was mainly for work, and when I needed the extra horsepower (and RAM), so there was nothing there that I could recall that was not mirrored somewhere else.

The overall feel of Intrepid is alright, considering that things are still not broken after installation. I've not managed to test to see if the new kernel is really as spiffy as everyone says, but I think that the quality can be seen in the fact that Edythe-EEE, an underpowered high-RAM machine, can run it with little to no delay, I think that at the very least the bloat in Intrepid hasn't gotten to the point that it requires a tremendous amount of horsepower to work with.

That's all I have for now though. Sorry.

Intrepid Ibex Xubuntu on Edythe-EEE

Take a look at this screen capture:This is the stock Xubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) that I managed to get installed on Edythe-EEE. The installation process was relatively painless, considering that Edythe-EEE has 2GiB of RAM (this is always useful). For all practical purposes and intents, I did a clean install because of the [wrong] design decision that I made earlier to allocate 512MiB of hard disk space for swap space. That decision was made because of I had only 512MiB on the machine then, which was generally not a good idea.

Since I've increased the RAM on the machine, it made things so much easier. Edythe-EEE has a relatively sheltered life, sitting at home and serving as a backup server in case things go awry. That is, until I buy the really large battery for her, thus giving her the competitive edge to challenge Elyse in terms of raw stamina.

The only drawback in the installation is the dealing of the weird screen brightness issue with regards to the reboot/suspend/open lid actions. I think I can live with that, so I'm probably not going to attempt to fix it. That said, the wireless card (a notorious issue with the EEE PC 701 series) has been enabled through the magic hackery of NDISWrapper (details can found here).

Again, this post was created in Edythe-EEE.

——

Also, check this for fixing the gargantuan scrollbar widths. The actual file location is /usr/share/themes/Clearlooks/gtk-2.0 (I'm editing the Clearlooks one).

Michael Crichton—Dead

Yet another iconic figure has fallen to the natural course of life. Michael Crichton was one of my favourite authors, and probably can be seen as the person whose writings have influence me to consciously remind myself that science with no ethics or morals is a dangerous science. Being a person of science and medicine, Crichton was in the position where he could use fiction as a vehicle to convey the dangers of amoral science, in a way that is more convincing than one who is not a person of science.

That said, we've lost another good science fiction writer. Rest in peace, Michael.

Patched Jeans

So I finally got off my ass and patched the articles of clothing that were sporting various rips and tears in the seamwork/fabric. My jeans already had a tear before (due to a fall), and not too long ago I fell again and made that tear bigger but on a completely different axis of rip. Since I had a small amount of time today, I just patched the damn thing and so it will keep out the cold winds once more. Here's a view of the patchwork done on the interior:And here's how it looks like from the outside:I think I did a decent enough job in patching it.

Alright, time for a shower and then class. Till next time.

Caribbean Queen

And another nice piece from Billy Ocean:And here are the lyrics:

She dashed by me in painted on jeans
And all heads turned 'cause she was the dream
In the blink of an eye I knew her number and her name yeah
Ah she said I was the tiger she wanted to tame

CHORUS:
Caribbean queen
Now we're sharing the same dream
And our hearts they beat as one
No more love on the run

I lose my cool when she steps in the room
And I get so excited just from her perfume
Electric eyes that you can't ignore
And passion burns you like never before

I was in search of a good time
Just running my game
Love was the furthest
Furthest from my mind

Suddenly

For some odd reason, I woke up this morning with the words "suddenly, life has new meaning for me" stuck in my head. Check it out:And here are the lyrics.

I used to think that love was just a fairy tale
Until that first hello until that first smile
But if I had to do it all again I wouldn't change a thing
Cause this love is everlasting

Suddenly life has new meaning to me
There's beauty up above and things we never take notice of
You wake up suddenly you're in love

Girl you're everthing a man could want and more
One thousand words are not enough to say what I feel inside
Holding hands as we walk along the shore
Never felt like this before now you're all I'm living for

Each day I pray this love affair would last forever

There's beauty up above and things you never take notice of
You wake and suddenly you're in love

Fixing Tags…

Am fixing some things on the blog…I wonder if it is all going to work.

Halloween Parties [Not] + Clarinet

Last weekend was really the weekend of spooks and parties, considering the fact that Halloween just passed us by. Like always, I never did feel inclined to participate in the festivities, simply because I feel that I'm too old for these kinds of stuff, and the general I-don't-really-like-parties thing that I have. Most of the weekend was spent working on homework, catching up on some sleep, and playing some clarinet.

The clarinet is an interesting instrument, first of all because it doesn't quite follow the Boehm system at all by virtue of the acoustic properties of a end-blown cylindrical tube. It is also interesting because it has a more mellow sound than the flute, even though it is a soprano instrument.

Alright, enough for now.

Python

After programming in Python for so long, it is only recently that I discovered that Python has quite a few advanced data types. From queues, priority queues to calendar-related computations, Python seems to have them all. With all that in mind, I can see myself writing even more programs in Python than before.

Slide Rules! N600-ES joins N500-ES

So, you've seen the 10" Pickett Slide Rule. Today, I received my 6" one that I ordered a few days back. Take a look at it new in box:Pretty, yes? This one is so new that it comes with its own manual too:This baby is going to live in my pencil case, and will be carried around wherever I go.

I think that's all the slide rules that I'll be getting for now. Maybe next time if there's more slide rules that I actually need, I will buy them again. Meanwhile, I need to get back to work and then I can have the chance to play with my new tools.

(=

Hallo-ween?

In theory, today is supposed to be Halloween, and thus most people are actually going to dress up and go parties etc. Unfortunately, I don't think that I will be doing that—I'm likely to be working on either more homework or other related materials, like adding more useful content for my portal.

A new Pickett slide rule is coming in; this one is 6 inches as oppposed to the 10-inch one that I currently have. With the same number of scales, it is a really portable slide rule and will probably end up being a part of my usual carry-on arsenal. I realised that I have been pampered by the relatively easy-to-use "student" Mars Staedler slide rule—I can't seem to be able to figure out how to do the computations on the Pickett. It seems that I probably need more practice to get the hang of it.

That's a quick blurb for now. Maybe more stuff later.