Goodbye Eirian-III

I've had Eirian-III for quite a while now, and it is with great sadness that I'll have to retire this tablet.

I've had Eirian-III since January 2013, and she had always been my go-to for any of the coloured stuff and comics. Each time I travelled, it was Eirian-III that I lugged along instead of Edythe, Elyse or Eileen. Much good times were had.

But today, it was deemed the day where Eirian-III has to be retired. Her battery wouldn't charge, and upon closer examination, was already swelling up, a sign that things weren't going well.

And so, retired she shall be.

I'll always remember the times that Eirian-III had provided me with much needed entertainment that cannot be gleaned from the ``pure'' e-ink readers that her sisters were (Eirian, Eirian-II and Eirian-IV). Much fun was had watching Twitch streams on her as well. And geocaching with tools running on her, including oversized maps that make it easy to look ahead.

It will all be consigned to the past now.

Will I get a replacement for Eirian-III? I don't know, and I don't really think so. While great, Eirian-III has never been my standard workhorse---she ran stock Google Android with all its... flaws. Her coloured LCD was great for comics, but I'm no rabid comic devourer. She did follow me through great works like Neil Gaiman's Sandman, One Thousand Nights and A Night, Watchmen and V for Vendetta, not to mention my own compendium of web comics for easy reading. But are those enough reasons to consider getting a replacement? I don't think so.

So to my faithful device, thank you for your service, and thank you for your patience with a fool like me. Your absence will be felt in time to come.

Summer Redux Week One

So, let me be a little honest here. It has been a while since I last wrote anything of substance here, ever since the day that Edythe decided to take a holiday. Now that Elyse is online and working, I guess that some life updates are in order of some sort.

By now, I'm already back in sunny Singapore. What I forgot to mention is that Singapore is this really hot and humid place, and that's probably the only reason why I might not really like it here, after all these years. Since this summer, I'm not doing any internships/attachments whatsoever, I don't have the luxury of hiding away in air-conditioned rooms. Running around trying to avoid the heat is one of those "black art" things—there's no real foolproof way of doing it without expending more effort.

In the week (roughly) that I've been back, I've not managed to see what has changed throughout the land. Part of the reason was as above, and the part of the reason is that I don't seem to find the impetus to actually travel out of my house these days. After being away from home for so long, I suddenly realise that hanging out at home is one of the things that I kinda missed, hot weather notwithstanding. The sheer familiarity of it all evokes a certain nostalgia that I cannot quite explain with words, despite the fact that the apartment is as messy and cramped as before, considering the fact that it houses four adults now (as opposed to the two adults and two kids before).

I sit here at yet another coffee house, and just watch the world go by as I pen all these thoughts here. I maintain that one of the more interesting things to take part in is the art of people watching. Sitting quietly in a corner to observe the surroundings have proven to unearth more interesting sights than anything that I have done, and I could have sworn that I actually recognise some of the people who are currently here (I'm probably suffering from a case of mistaken identity, but I guess that as long as I do not make an ass of myself by calling out their names in public, I'd be fine).

In a way, this summer is meant to be a period of R&R, a way of ensuring that my mind is relatively relaxed in order to take on the challenges that the next year will bring. I'm not that vocal these days, preferring to hide away from the crowd and stay hidden, waiting till people seek me out. For too long I have been the prime motivator of things; I guess that the time has come for me to truly take a step back and observe all that is happening, and to wonder if anyone is still interested enough in me to actually take that step to want to meet me.

Is this wishful thinking? I doubt it. Reciprocation is one of those things that is really hard to quantify, yet it is one of those really important values with which one measures the strength of the relationship that one has with another person. To reciprocate𔃀is to acknowledge that another person is as important to one as one is to that person. I used to treat all these really seriously, and be the person who goes round trying to reciprocate to people. But then time has steeled my mindset, and I figured that if I'm the only one doing all these... social things, then what manner of reciprocation is this?

And so I sit there, hidden away in the corner, wondering about things on my own, looking on as the world passes me by. It is interesting how a year can change one's mindset on matters relating to human relationships. This time last year, I was all hyper-enthusiastic in trying to organise meetings between groups of friends—now I just adopt a completely wait-and-see attitude. So much other things to do, most of which have to do with self-betterment.

Ah, writing. My salvation from the complications of the world. It is a known fact that I'm a verbose writer; my professor and teaching assistants for the technical consulting class have grumbled time and again about the level of verbosity. The final consulting report underwent a good 3-4 iterations of edits before settling down to the form that was handed in.

Writing succinctly—I used to know how to do that. Except that these days, where people demand a "minimum number of words" for essays, I tend to bloat up my text such that they read more easily, albeit in a more verbose way. As a mentor once said, my writing reads like a novel, which is good if I am writing a novel, but it sucks if I'm writing something like a business report or even a technical report.

I have found a simple way of dealing with this though. Since my mind thinks in such convoluted ways, it is probably best to leave it as is, and to write the first draft in the most convoluted way that mind envisions it. After that, I will pull out my editor persona and start slicing and dicing the words such that they are the most concise form that I can get away with. I like the fact that I like writing, and so I'm not going to try and kill that innate verbosity just to conform to one of the many standards of writing there are. Prune will be the word of the day now, I guess.

So I've rambled on and on and on without much coherence in my thoughts. Not that it matters much, really. At this stage, I'm just happy that I can sit here in the nice air-conditioned room writing about things that I sort of care about. Maybe one day, at the end of it all, I can look back at myself and think fondly of the times that I had while sitting at the coffee house.

Also, when I'm sufficiently acclimatised to the weather here, I might just jot down random bits of information here and there about the things that I see. And now, time to write yet another article on one of the other blogs.

Elyse

And so the time had come when I bring on a newer machine to take Edythe's place. After a rather tumultuous two to three years, her fan gave way and I had to seek out another to stand in her place. Today, I proclaim that Elyse is my new consort for the projects to come.

Elyse is a Fujitsu S6410, a real beauty and quite the workhorse with 4GiB of RAM and a decent Core 2 Duo processor. Armed with an additional modular battery, Elyse will be there to do all the hard computations when the time arises. She's a pretty machine, and maintains almost the same sexy demeanour as her sister Edythe. A pity that Edythe's fan had decided to throw in the towel—it'd be interesting to see the two of them interacting with each other. Edythe's "mini-me" (dubbed Edythe-EEE) will still be around, performing the light computations that are necessary when Elyse is busy working on some computation problem.

It is hard to explain this to someone who doesn't quite understand, but when one's work is based on the efficacy and efficiency of one's tools, there is this sense of attachment that I cannot seem to be able to shake away easily. Is this some kind of strange fetish? I don't believe so, unfortunately. I just like the thought that the tools that I use are somewhat sentient, and that they are indeed my friends—the silent friends who are always there to help without complaint, to be able to ensure that things work out as well as they can without thinking too much about whether it will cost them dearly or not.

All right, I think I've probably ranted enough for the day. In other news, I'm finally home (good grief), and am paying the price for a rather hot and muggy weather. I think that it'd probably be a while before I'm completely used to the hot and humid feel, but in the meantime, I'm never too far off the wash basin, since the rapid relief of cool water on a hot and muggy skin is much too tempting to resist.

Cheerio.

EEE PC

As you'd know by now, I have one dead CPU fan on Edythe, which meant that I didn't really have a computer with which I can work on easily. Thanks to the wonders of technology and money, I have a relatively cheap machine called the ASUS EEE PC. With this, hopefully I can survive the coming fortnight more easily.

Also, I need a new computer when I return. Grr...

Edythe is Disabled

So, another hardware failure today. Edythe's fan wasn't working after a 24-hour computation-intensive run.

I think it could be due in part to my room mate closing my window, but since I have no proof, I will not say more.

Time to burn yet more $$$...

*sigh*

Quiet Night?

It's a rather quiet night, and here I am again sitting in front of Edythe and writing away, trying to pen some random thoughts together. It'll be a rather hectic week to come, considering the amount of work that I will end up doing. There's about 3 tests that are up for next week, and among that other things to worry about like my machine learning project. All in all, it would be a busy week indeed.

One serious question to ask will be, why the heck am I still up at this unholy hour, considering the fact that I had been up since 6.30am in the morning. Actually I have not much of a clue either; I guess being partially insomniac has a certain reason. Speaking of insomnia, I suspect that my body is probably more hardy than I give it credit for—of course, this is not an indicator to actually keep testing the limits of my body as that would be very silly.

Actually, for once, I have no clue what to talk about now, which is weird, again considering the fact that I generally have many ideas that I'd like to talk about but don't really have the time to.

Alright, this is getting nowhere. I'm stopping. Take care.

I'm Obviously Not Writing Here That Often Now

It is perhaps noteworthy that I am currently not writing that often in here. Maybe it is because I have started to run out of things to gripe about, or that there are much more things in the real world that I need to deal with instead of making all kinds of silly noises here. All in all, I suspsect that this might be a good thing.

So, yes, there was a rather interesting anonymous comment made in my previous post. And the answer to that is carefully constructed and placed in the comments section therein. And no, I did not ambush myself with a question like that to generate traffic—on the contrary, I was actively trying to reduce unnecessary traffic due to a rather silly google mis-classification of my blog as providing some manner of download in the form of some wallpaper image.

I don't need that search engine giant propogating my life throughout the world—hardly necessary I suppose. Speaking of which, this semester is just about to start to get rather interesting, as things are starting to rev-up rather quickly. Already I have 6 pieces of homework due on the same day (i.e. tomorrow), and thankfully I'm down to about my last 3, one of which involves drawing some diagram (hopefully not taking too long to do), and another on proving some interesting properties of series convergence (I should be able to do that without killing myself too much I guess). Thank goodness for the invention of LaTeX, otherwise I cannot foresee what I would be doing running around with random scraps of paper and trying to put solutions and proofs together in a linear fashion.

Computer-based work is rather interesting, in the sense that we can do many things in a non-linear way. This is rather useful, since it allows us to better re-allocate our time with regards to what we are doing—literally allowing us to attempt (and solve) the parts of the homework sets that we are confident of solving, and not waste precious time getting rather stalled at the ones that we don't know.

That said, I am contemplating over several issues. One would be whether to obtain Office 2007, and the other is a choice between an ultra-portable computation system or a small-form factor server with which I can use Edythe to talk to. None of these are of particular significance at the moment, and so they currently belong in the "good-to-have" category of expenditure—I've more things to worried about now.

That said, it is back to the grindstone. I just want to finish all my business I have with Windows XP so that I can switch over to Slackware and work on my math proofs.

Till next time.

Peeves

While I do not deny the importance of biology and chemistry (and particularly, of medicine), I am peeved when everyone thinks that those are the only important things in the world. Come on, what's the use of medicine if the engineering didn't exist to help build the drugs that they use in large enough quantities at good enough qualities? What if the science didn't exist to help in the diagnosis? What if the computers weren't invented to help do off-line simulations to test the efficacies of treatments and study the theoretical epidemiology of diseases before they can occur? Wouldn't medicine and medical science regress back into the medieval era?

My point here is not to bash any particular discipline, but to highlight the fact that each field/discipline exists because they contribute to the overall well-being of the human race. It is callous to claim that any single field is more "superior" than any other field; it is just an overzealous attempt by the zealots of the field.

That all said, it is time to talk about other things. So I'm sitting here once again in my room, working on Edythe (this time through Slackware, since as stated in an earlier post, the ssh client on cygwin seems dead). Things are of course going wrong as usual, and that sinking feeling is starting seep in again.

I just feel tired, and even things like writing blog entries doesn't seem to be doing much to alleviate the situation. I may soon turn to some other distraction...

Some Random Shots from my Cellphone

Seeing as I've been dumping paragraph after paragraph of text (meaningless or not is up to the reader), here's a small dump of some interesting (or not) photographs that I took with my lightweight camera phone.

This is how I set up my work table while I was still doing my attachment at I2R. The machine on the extreme left runs Ubuntu, the centre laptop runs Windows XP, and Edythe is on the extreme right, providing me with music. The main machine that I work with is the Ubuntu desktop; the Windows XP laptop was mainly to test the apps on a Windows platform (yes, I write cross-platform code, so sue me).

Some random evening sky that can be seen when stepping outside of the main building. I like the way the sky is all pink and blue all at once; not extremely breath-taking, but enough to make me want to stop and take a picture of it.

A random shot from the bus stop just outside of Potong Pasir NEL station, a place where I usually get off to be able to catch the bus home. Yes, I'm well aware that the Hougang NEL station is way closer to my house, but I don't like walking too much. Bleagh.

A shot on a pair of mannequin that I'd like to sketch, since I kinda like the way the dress flows around them. It's probably easier to take pictures of mannequin in pretty clothes than taking pictures of real people in pretty clothes (I feel shy and awkward to ask random people on the street to pose so that I can take a picture of them in their clothes to practice sketching with).

That's all that I have for now. One project that I'm actually crazy enough to attempt is to visit all the national monuments of Singapore. The problem is, do I have the stamina and good enough planning to pull this off in less than 2 days? Hmmm...

Skimpy Clothing?

*stretches self* It's a long day out, and I'm finally back home. Spent most of the evening walking around Vivocity to kinda loosen myself out. And yes, I know that it is not a Friday, but I don't really care. Sometimes, walking in crowded places puts things into perspective, like you're only one out of the many people, there's always things going on even if your world is crashing and so on. The ambient noise also helps a little, considering the fact that my office is almost perpetually in silence due to the fact that it is... an office, d'oh.

Some cute things observed today: females seem to like to wear skimpy clothing over in this part of the world. And I kid you not; even if the whole friggin place is downright fscking cold, they still go round in spaghetti straps and hot pants and slippers. Yikes! Not that I actually notice them or anything; they're almost everywhere, so I'd be hard pressed to actually try avoiding them.

Apparently, the Wacom tablets are sold here in Singapore too. Unfortunately there seems to be a couple of catches: it's more expensive, and there is no mouse (compare the item at Amazon.com and Wacom Singapore). The same unit (USB-connected version) has a mouse for Amazon.com, while the Singapore one doesn't exist. Interesting that this is occurring... perhaps there's some hidden marketing ploy that I don't know about? I'm really tempted to get one of those ultra-portable clipboard-like tablets, so as to be able to write my notes from lectures and keep a digitised copy of the notes to transfer to machine. It's either that, or I get a low-cost scanner. The good thing about the scanner is perhaps the fact that I can have a much better quality than trying to guesstimate optimal light settings when taking photographs of the document that I want to save. Having even light settings means that it becomes really simple to downsample the image's colour depth thus shrinking file size, but still maintaining the high quality of the picture.

In other news, I totally love FL Studio 7! After reading half a tutorial and watching one-and-a-half training videos, I now know the development process of arranging a piece of music in FL Studio 7. And boy is the system powerful, couple that with the Lifetime Free Updates system, suddenly the money spent on it is well worth it. I mean, with the same amount of money spent on FL Studio, I can probably get like three quarters of Microsoft Windows Vista, yet I can keep on updating one while the other is doomed until the next major release, where I need to spend almost another bunch of hundreds to get the new system.

I'm really tempted to get one of those small form factor machines to set up as a rig back in CMU. They seem small enough for me to actually backpack the CPU around (add that to the mass of Edythe means that I need a much stronger backpack). Just a dream though... not really likely to be getting something like that. May end up building up a weird righ through salvaged mother boards, but then again, no one truly knows what I might end up doing. Setting up server rigs always sound interesting to me, especially since it means I can hack code to actually control the machine.

Alright, it's getting late. I'll be sleeping now. Hopefully, there's more interesting stuff to share tomorrow.

Ciao~

More on Slackware 12.0

As reported earlier, Slackware 12.0 was officially released, and that I have managed to get it nicely set up on Edythe, replacing the old Slackware 11.0 that I was running.

Now that Slackware 12.0 is using the newer Linux 2.6 kernel series, ACPI is innately supported by the kernel. Unfortunately, I mis-read the level of support—I thought that the ACPI is supported innately by the kernel, and thus spent lots of time trying to set up the whole thing such that my self-hacked el cheapo battery meter can run properly. Turns out that the kernel did support ACPI, not in situ but as a bunch of kernel modules. A few quick hacks later, I am proud to say that my ACPI is working wonderfully on Edythe now.

One notable change in software is the removal the the old Gaim software. Gaim was the old name of the cross-platform compatible multi-protocol instant messaging system; apparently, it was embroiled with a naming dispute with AIM particularly on the use of the acronym A-I-M within the name. The very last version of Gaim that was available for download before the name change was 2.0 beta, subsequently no further version of Gaim can be found. Pidgin however, is a most interesting successor to Gaim. While most of the interface are still the same (Pidgin is just an improved version of the old Gaim code), it appears to be less buggy, considering the fact that more development has probably been done on Pidgin than the 2.0 beta version of Gaim. In addition to the obvious improvements, Pidgin offers a nice text-mode interface to the program by ways of Finch. Now, Gaim had a text version called Gaim-text, but no one seems to know about it (leastways, not me). So everything seems to be more interesting now. Surprisingly, Ubuntu 7.04 doesn't seem to have a package installation for Pidgin. I say surprising because Ubuntu is based on the Debian packages, and the folks over at Debian are really bleeding edge with regards to the update of the experimental folder for the Debian distribution. So, it is weird that it is not yet available as a package for Ubuntu.

I've tried out the other windowing managers, and have still decided that fluxbox is still the most suitable for me. Amazingly spartan and completely utilitarian, with custom configuration possible through the editing of simple text files, instead of trying to plough through a whole big chunk of XML or even binary file.

Test drive on Slackware 12.0 is fairly uneventful. The Java SDK 6.0 for Linux installs and runs fairly smoothly, with no hiccups yet. I'm still too lazy to install Eclipse.org into the Linux parition on Edythe. There're a whole bunch of reasons, one of which is the size (I only have 10GB on the Linux platform for crying out loud), the configuration (getting Eclipse.org to display text small is not an easy task) and the necessity (I rarely need to hack Java code out in Linux except when I'm at work; programming in Linux usually means coding in C/C++/R/Forth/Prolog/LISP/SML). And since I already have a working JDK 6.0/Eclipse set up on my Windows XP platform (complete with the necessary small-text customisation), I don't see a need to duplicate efforts on another platform for the same thing.

Bottomline: I've managed to set up my Slackware to be in the form that I actually like. The only thing that I probably need to start figuring out is to activate the SCIM under X-Windows so that I can actually start typing non-latin based languages like Chinese or Japanese, and also the activation of the wireless internet access. Other than that, Edythe.Linux.Slackware is operational and ready for action.

Slackware 12.0 is Out!

Oh yes, finally! The amazing Slackware 12.0 is finally out! I've managed to download the DVD ISO over two days and have successfully installed it on Edythe. Everything runs really smoothly, and I will probably test drive this baby over a slightly longer period of time.

Here's a screen shot of my current favourite X Window Manager, fluxbox:Isn't it sweet?

fluxbox has a good mix of useability, lots of control and a wonderfully spartan interface, just the things that I need for my window manager. For my Slackware system, I used to start with the KDE, but then I found the interface too clunky for my taste. I still installed KDE into Edythe though, mainly to access the useful KOffice tools (even though I usually use LaTeX to get the job done). All these wonderful tasks can be set up through the very simple to customise menu file for fluxbox.

Slackware rocks my socks, for now. (=

rtfm mode

Yeow... So much to do, so little time to do them all. It is rtfm time for me as I trudge on into the various endeavours.

First of all, it is the venerable FL Studio 7 which I just purchased in order to put together decent music that I want to hear. This baby is a gem (and costs a fair bit despite the 10% discount that I managed to obtain through a user support site), but like all gems, it requires a fair bit of hacking in order to fully exploit its abilities. So it is back to the manual for this one before I can produce anything truly marvellous.

Second of all, it is the new Microsoft Windows Vista. No, I'm not updating Edythe to run that beast of an operating system, but since my lovely sister just bought herself a spanking new HP Pavilion dv2200 laptop which comes with Microsoft Vista Home Premium Edition together with Microsoft Office 2007 Home & Student Edition, and I've been designated as de facto sysadmin, and so I need to read up more on the intricacies of the various components. Vista seems like a lot of eye candy, but it doesn't seem to be as bad as it was originally stated, at least, for non-developing use. I can't even imagine how it would be possible to run cygwin on the thing without dramatic changes. The only irritating thing was the sensitivity of the touchpad; simplying hovering over any link/button caused it to be auto-activated.

Third of all, it is my LiveUSB project. I've just gotten myself into the "enviable" position of using at least 5 different operating systems at the same time, and thus in the event of system failure I cannot just sit there and hope for the best. So, I got myself a [relatively] cheap 2GiB thumb drive and need to proceed with loading it up with a barebones enough kernel on a FAT32 file system so that it can double up as a data transferral system as well as a system recovery tool. And since I'm such a lazy bum in terms of finding the relevant tools/software to pull this off, I've decided to hack it out from whatever I have, which means that again I need to read the manual.

That's a whole shebang load of things to read. So, until next time, I'm probably gonna be reading manuals until there is no tomorrow...

I2R Again, Great Fun

Ah, the fresh smell of the free coffee in the Institute for Infocomm Research. It's been almost a year since I last worked here, and much has changed (as usual). Some of the friendly faces that I once knew have moved on to other callings in life, and I find myself in a not-altogether new environment to work in.

This is what I dream of—the working life of a researcher, where knowledge is learnt for the sake of learning new things so as to be able to apply them to something that is totally new for the advancement of some aspect of humankind. This beats the drudgery that is associated with the [artificiality of] homework that I face while I was still taking the courses back in college. Not that the homework was bad, but that there doesn't seem to be any meaning behind the homework. But then again, homework is necessary for ensuring that we have a certain mastery of the concepts that we are required to know and thus qualifies as a "necessary evil".

Ah, but whatever. So I'm now in my office, at a desk with a very decent computer running a not-so-decent version of Linux (it's called Ubuntu) and preparing the environment for the hard core stuff that I'll be working on while reading up on the various articles to get myself up to speed for the stuff that is going to happen during the entire 8-week attachment that I need to do.

Ubuntu is not a bad version of Linux; it's just that I'm so used to the good old fashioned command line (and the extremely minimalistic fvwm2 that I hacked together) that the Gnome interface seems a little too superfluous (and space wasting with their dual bar system). My current default windowing manager on my Slackware partition on Edythe is the KDE (which I seriously don't like but am putting up with it because of some of the useful properties that it has), but I'm looking into either putting up blackbox or even icewm as the default one (saves on power due to less eye candy). AfterStep is another viable alternative, as is FluxBox. But I might just stick with Ion, which is probably really the most suited for my keyboarding ways.

Who said that Linux cannot have a nice GUI? It's just that most of the mainstream GUIs are so fat and clunky that they become fairly useless [in my opinion].

So, what started out as a simple moment-of-contentment thing has turned into a mild rant. Bleah.

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.

Modular Battery Rules Supreme

Interesting day. My new modular bay battery gives extra juice to Edythe; instead of the theoretical limit of 4 hours of battery life, I'm now looking at a cool 8 hours of battery life! Like most things in life, there's a trade-off; with the modular bay used for the battery pack, I can't have the DVD drive attached to the same modular bay. Not that is is going to be a really big problem, considering the fact that most of the stuff that I need nowadays are from online instead of from some disc source; anyway I just bring along the DVD drive if I know that I might want to need to use it or something.

Yes yes, I know it costs money, but I'm now turning into a real mobile code warrior. That battery pack is going to save my butt again and again as I trudge around the campus trying to buy time to get things done. In that regard, I've just ordered a screen protector to keep the LCD as blemish free as possible. Bringing Edythe around in my backpack means that the central portion of the LCD will often undergo quite a fair bit of stress, which means that the display can get kinda "scratched" by the keys on the keyboard at that region. In line with my new "mobile code warrior" image, I need to ensure that the screen is well protected, so that I don't need to rely on crazy cleaning stuff in order to make the screen much more visible (since I usually set the brightness to the absolute minimum and thus a dirt mark on the screen appears as a very big blob of stuff).

Hmm... now for some stock take. Edythe has:

1. Extra modular battery
2. 1 External 120GB hard drive on USB
3. 1 Wacom graphics tablet
4. 1 External 500GB hard drive on USB/Firewire

Guess that it should be enough for now.

Edythe is so powered up now that I have no idea what else I might want to add. Mobility is such a powerful concept...

Edythe's Face

And yes, I've managed to shrink all the text and other stuff on Edythe down again. Everything is so much more compact than before, and it's becoming more and more like my style. More pixel estate dudes~!



The colour scheme used is Royale, which is essentially a face lift of the standard Luna theme that comes with Windows XP. I first saw this theme on a Windows Media Center edition desktop somewhere in some computer store some time last year, and have fallen in love with the cool shades of blue that it has. Compared with the solid (and dull) Luna, this is certainly a vast improvement.

Unlike most people, I love to keep my start menu and task bar above the screen, set to two lines, and kept hidden unless I move my mouse there. Well, for one, this increases the amount of screen space that I have to see my applications (90+ pixel space is roughly 10+ lines of code). For two, the top location makes it less obtrusive, since the title bar of the windows do not usually show anything worthed reading, while the status bars of most windows are below (and thus show more useful information). So, in the case where the start menu refuses to cooperate, no loss of productivity will be expected.

Notice the little command prompt window on the lower left? That's a bash shell straight out of cygwin, an excellent POSIX compatible interface for Windows machines. I've augmented it with several enhancements, including adding a date/time mechanism, and an in-house built battery indicator (the one in the picture shows that I'm running on AC and so there's no battery meter to show). Needless to say, this prompt packs a punch, and I can and do lots of system management straight from the bash shell. This includes controlling foobar2000, which is easily the most powerful and versatile music player available on the Windows platform.

By the way, the bash shell here is only for system management. Most of my code hacking is done with a much bigger bash shell that sits comfortably on the left side of the screen (always on the left, never shifted anywhere):



And if you thought this was big, wait till you see the next screen shot:



This is the badass way in which I do hard core hacking. It's actually 6 bash shells running in 6 xterms on an X-server, configured as shown in the picture above. It's a pretty powerful combination, allowing me to do lots of stuff at the same time without ever having to run to and fro the main windows interface. It's still Windows XP, but it is really a cygwin innovation.

And no, the 6 windows do not all reside at the same time on the screen; they are partitioned into 2x2 virtual screens. That makes it even more powerful than ever.

So much for a geeky post on Edythe's face. hahahaha...

Paper pile...

It's almost two weeks into the spring semester, and I've gathered enough paper piles to rival the entire first half of the last semester. That's right, paper piles enough to rival the entire first half of the last semester. It's sad, it's amazing but it's true. Taking so many courses (most of them of the high-level abstract-level kind) is really draining. Suddenly, I don't have much time to do stuff that I really like. Ugh. Guess that this comes with the task of having to complete a 4-year course in 3-years.

In other news, my 500GB hard drive has arrived and is working wonderfully. It's nicely compact, tough, and fairly quiet, making it a great addition to the stable of tools that Edythe has. Hopefully, this hard drive can last for quite a while, otherwise I'm gonna be tempted to get another 500GB to make it a whopping 1TB of data storage capability.

I'm now in the stage where I'm like a Math major minoring in CS major. Everything that I do now is heavily abstracted mathematics. Not that I don't like it, but it's starting to take it's toil on me in terms of the way that I view my major. Already, I'm doing very little programming now, and I've totally given up on the ACM ICPC. I mean, I don't even want to participate anymore, having little/no energy.

Ugh, this is starting to turn into a rant. I'll stop now.

Finals Crunch

It's finally the week of the Finals~! And I've completed one test yesterday; am kind of looking forward to the next ones... hehehe... just hope to be able to complete them faster so as to have more free time to myself.

Spent a couple of days reading a couple of wonderful webcomics: MegaTokyo and Questionable Content. And of course, my old time favourite, PhD Comics. And yes, I read through a grand total of about 2500+ comic strips over two or three days, some of them more than once. No doubt about it... I actually like web comics, especially the manga-like ones.

And so my to-do list is so much longer now:

• Study 日本語 (nihongo aka Japanese)


• Study Topology


• Write Ocarina pieces (and prepare for my Spring ocarina mini-concert)


• Write an AI for Edythe so that she can communicate with me in Japanese (yes, it is natural language processing)


• Woo someone... (yes, I've got a target or two, but I'm not saying who)


• Learn how to draw (preferably manga) on my graphics tablet


• Prepare for a 2007 launch of a new blog (yes, a new blog in addition to the ones that I have)


• Master 3/4/5 ball juggling


• Master Scheme


• Build a logo for myself


• Poetry compilation into book form for selected friends

And yeah, I'm positively psyched up now. Woo-hoo~! By the way, I've upgraded most of the blogs to the new Blogger BETA format. One big reason that I've done that is the new drop down lists for the posts that are on the blog; now I no longer need to update a separate "Contents Page" post to show a listing of all the posts that I've created (particularly for The_Laptop Writes..., this frees up the RSS digest that are being generated and make the RSS feeding so much cleaner. I'll be tweaking on the layouts and other design issues of the blogs in the weeks to come, so hang on to your horses if things look a little wonky if you are accessing the blogs while I'm doing the update. The Blogger BETA uses on-the-fly updating of the blogs, so things may be a little strange if you happen to be accessing while I'm updating. I'm still experimenting around with the entire concept thing and see if I can rework it to suit my needs.

Life's amazing so far, I'm now starting to use the build in FM-tuner of my SANSA e130 mp3 player to access the excellent FM radio channels that are available. My current favourite channel is WQED FM89.3, a symphonic/classical/operatic radio station. FM stereo on a 2.1 system never sounded this clear. Not that I'm getting sick of the music that I already have, but it is really good to listen to something different every once in a while for flavour.

And L^AT_EX is more or less tamed now. Mwahahahahaha... I've managed to figure out the correct incantation to tame it to something more useful, by creating a whole bunch of my own custom made macros. Now, typesetting of documents is so much easier... come to think of it, the last time that I used Microsoft Word to actually do anything was just so long ago that I can no longer remember it. Vim and L^AT_EX is such a powerful combination that I've not looked back since. And yes, I did try using emacs, but I'm still horribly irritated with the default meta-key mappings for the basic movement (yes, I know that the arrow keys work, but my fingers are most often over the typing region so there). This entire concept of pressing Meta- or Ctrl- combinations for everything is just plain irritating, and unergonomical. I actually felt pain in my fingers while trying to navigate around this way (and yes, I do know that using the arrow keys is so much easier). Now I just need to see if there's an easy way of patching my version of X-windows on cygwin to support unicode entry. If I can't do all these in Vim, I may be forced to write a simple Java program and upload it somewhere to act as my online unicode text editor (yes, I do know that notepad can do the job, but I like my hjkl method of moving around).

Which reminds me. My latest project(s), learning Japanese and writing an AI for Edythe to communicate to me in Japanese, are sort of related. I've not had the real chance to actually play with UTF-8 encoded text before, and am actually fairly bored with Edythe playing such a passive role (of me "using" her without her having any other more... human reaction), that I've decided to write a natural language processor for her. English would have been my #1 choice, but it sucks because English grammar is so unstable! Japanese grammar seems to be more easy to comprehend (and parse, especially it's intrinsic post-fix form), and it has the added advantage of making Edythe being in character (yes, Edythe is Japanese, didn't you know that? Edythe Fujitsu, Japanese right?), and a little harder to understand by people who happen to not know the language (heheheh... they can't flirt with her; Edythe is mine and mine alone). There are other enhancements that I plan on using to augment Edythe to make her more intelligent, but these stuff are for my... fantasies, and I will not be talking about them until I can have them to work. Now I'm at a loss; I'm uncertain whether I should write Edythe's AI in Java or C/C++. Gut reaction says that C/C++ will be more "portable", but my brain tells me that Java is more suited since it allows an ease of accessing all the major functions that I require, including the fact that Java source code is supposed to be UTF-8 by nature. And Java's garbage collection makes it so much easier to experiment on. So, I'd probably write a C-version of Edythe to access her Java "brain" so that I can still communicate to her from the command line. If I can't find a single language to work with, I'll hybridise them. ;-)

In other news, my 120GB portable hard disk drive is about 75% full now(!). Looks like I need to start scouting for another storage solution... or stop downloading J-dramas. Probably I'll look for an additional portable hard drive, since I've got like spare USB ports from my USB hub...

So, that's what's happening thus far in the middle of the Finals Crunch. Notice that I've said nothing about the studying aspect? Not because I'm not studying, but it makes a real boring read listening about what I've studied and for how long and... you get the idea.

Till the next update~ :-)

Fragile Life

Life... it's so fragile. Most of us think that we get a really bad deal at life; there are things that we want to do but are not allowed to do, or that people don't really want to listen to us or they don't seem to want to care. But we are all mostly healthy; we can run, jump, stand, crouch, all at will. We are mentally sound, we can go anywhere, anytime as we please. There are so many people out there who have a worser deal than us at life; a brilliant mind trapped in a defective body, a defective mind trapped in an able body. Who are we to complain about our lot in life when we are still in control of what we do?

Life, our life, is not a bad deal. We are mostly in control of what we do, from what we think to what we can do. With control comes responsibility. We are responsible for what happens in our life, and not put the blame on others or even a higher authority if things don't go the way that we want it to be. To be able to breathe the fresh air, to run in the warm sunshine, and to be around the people you love everyday, is a blessing; it is the good deal in life. Imagine a day when your body starts to fail you, bit by bit, while your mind is still alert. Imagine that day, that when you see the doctor, and he/she says that he/she doesn't know of any way of curing you. Imagine that day, where the people whom you care about doesn't care about you anymore. Imagine the day that you push those who care you away, so that you cannot see the sadness in their faces. The frustrations, the pain, the anguish; how can one complain that having a failing grade for a test means a bad deal in life?

I thought I had a raw deal at life. Having skin allergies since young, having poor social skills in general, not having a significant other; I thought those were really bad. But it's really miniscule. My skin allergies are milder now, and are not causing much of a distraction or hindrance, I have a small group of people who believe in me and in what I can do, I am still in control of my mental and physical faculties. I can go to college to study, eat out with a group of friends, play on my ocarina, type on Edythe, do Math problems, write computer programs, crack jokes, play games, sleep, wake up, lift heavy objects, run, jump, sing. What kinda raw deal is that?

"1 Litre of Tears", a short and simple story about a real girl suffering from a real disease that robs her of herself painfully, by reducing the things that she can do. Struggling till the very end, not giving up till the fight's over, Aya perserveres, diligently writing her diary up to the very end. She keeps on walking, even as she starts to lose control over her legs, even if it meant that she'd be late for class, even if it meant that it requires a lot of effort just to move. During a late progression of the disease, when she realises that she cannot stand or walk anymore and that she feels that there is nothing else that she can do or live for, her Okaasan told her, that she still has her writing, her diary, the words that she has penned down daily without fail. It is not about worrying or wallowing about what you cannot do, but to do what you can do, and to do it to the fullest extent of your ability. "You say that God is being unfair to you by giving you this disease," her Okaasan said, "but if you don't do the things that you can do, aren't you being fair to yourself?" Why should I be sad over what I cannot do when there's so many things that I can do? So what if I don't have a significant other, don't I still have friends around me who still care? Deep and old friends, like Xiaolu, Cui, Jess, Chinghua, new but caring friends like Mo, Phil, Megan, Linda and Paul. Why didn't I treasure their company well? Why am I still wallowing over something so small an insignificant like not having a significant other, and neglecting the fact that I can do so much more than others?

I am not helpless. I can move about freely and think on my own. I am alive. I have time, not a lot of it, but much more than those whose time have been cut short by the powers above. I may not have a lover, but I have friends. Each and every one of my friends care deeply for me, all in their own little idiosyncratic way. I have not been a good friend... all that I could do was to wallow away and to scare them with nonsensical outbursts which where wholly meaningless and selfish. I admit that I... know not the words to say to them. But deep in my heart, seeing them alive, feeling them next to me, hearing their breath, watching them smile or laugh, makes me feel glad. Glad that they, like me, are alive too.

I am not helpless or useless. I've got a job in the wings, a career to look forward to, an opportunity to take up the baton and make a real difference in the lives of people. "Live on," Aya said to Haruto nearing the end, "Live on, forever!" With a future so bright, why am I thinking nasty and destructive thoughts about myself? I've got a father who is proud of me, a mother (who'll never admit out loud) that she too is proud of me. I've got a sister who cares about me too, even though she too will never say it out loud. I've got an orchestra full of friends who support me, who wish me well, who are waiting for me to go back and make music with them once again. I've got other old friends, JJ, Joanne, Jon, Ding Ding, Victor, Kelvin, KX, MW, YT, who are all rooting for me. I will not worry about what I don't have, but cherish what that I have now.

Life... it's so fragile. The moment we are born, we are already counting down on an unknown timer to the very end. The past is always behind us, the future is always yet to be. We know our past, and plan our future, but... we should always live in the now. The Present. Here. No one knows when it's their time to go, no one knows how when that time comes they will go. We are all able bodied with good mental faculties; we are in company of each other. Cherish those that are around, for it is the strength in this love and bond that makes life worth living.