Since I don't think I'm ready to have a real pet... not to mention the fact that I just really want another DS game, I finally gave in to Nintendog. It's actually surprisingly good. And I've been training my little Hagau (It's Chinese for "shrimp dumpling". Don't ask) doing tricks and all... It's actually strangely entertaining. Although I do have to remember to check on her every now and then to feed her... reminds me of the tamagochi days of my youth.
In other news: My supervisor confirmed what I've suspected all along: I've done all the "intelligent" part of my research and now it's just trying thigns until something works. It's actually kinda... scary. Kinda like digging for gold. Kinda of mining. Maybe that's why they call it "Data Mining". (Ha. Ha. Seriously I can't believe I wasted electrons to build up that joke)
Righty-O. Back to digging. (Hi-ho. Hi-ho. It's off to work I go... Oh dear.)
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
Towel Day, and I'm Home with a cold...
It's towel day today, and instead of carrying a towel everywhere to celebrate and remember the life of the ever so amazing Douglas Adams, I'm not going anywhere because I'm home, sick. I have a weekend to get better, and during that time hopefully to get some work done too. BUT: I'm doing my bit. I'm wearing my dressing gown all day long, just like Arthur. (Fine. It might have something to do with the fact that I'm sick as well.. and it's the most comfortable thing I can wear around to keep me warm.) I shall also try to squeeze is as many Marvin quote as I can in the day, which probably isn't that much different from how I usually talk. ("I thought I'll just let you know... I'm very depressed today"...)
Anyway.
My cold has gave me new insight to my bone structure: you never really think about them until they all hurt at once. It's getting better though, last night I could hardly sleep. I was just lying in bed thinking "Ouch ouch ouch pain! Pain!" You know how sometimes you get the strangest dreams when you're sick and in and out of a fever? No? (Actually, maybe they're not any stranger than my usual dream...) I was dreaming that I was watching (or writing, I couldn't tell) an episode of House M.D., and House was in a coma. He woke up and lost all his memories as to who he was, but he faintly remembers that he was a doctor and wanted to go back to med school to be a doctor again. Later he found out that he's not really House M.D., but Hugh Laurie himself. He was the one in a coma and only rememebr the part of himself that was House.
You know, that would make for some rather interesting existential story. My subconcious might be trying to tell me something. I'm just too sick to think about it right now...
Anyway.
My cold has gave me new insight to my bone structure: you never really think about them until they all hurt at once. It's getting better though, last night I could hardly sleep. I was just lying in bed thinking "Ouch ouch ouch pain! Pain!" You know how sometimes you get the strangest dreams when you're sick and in and out of a fever? No? (Actually, maybe they're not any stranger than my usual dream...) I was dreaming that I was watching (or writing, I couldn't tell) an episode of House M.D., and House was in a coma. He woke up and lost all his memories as to who he was, but he faintly remembers that he was a doctor and wanted to go back to med school to be a doctor again. Later he found out that he's not really House M.D., but Hugh Laurie himself. He was the one in a coma and only rememebr the part of himself that was House.
You know, that would make for some rather interesting existential story. My subconcious might be trying to tell me something. I'm just too sick to think about it right now...
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Media reporting shiat...
I've already had my shock last night when I heard Campbell Live will be talking to a "no-nonsense influential Art critic" about modern (read "post-modern") art. I mean, seriously. The art critics themselves can't tell apart "art" by postmodern artist and those by 4-year olds. If you need a narrative or years of training to understand and appreciate the artwork, there's something fundamentally wrong. Art is the way to talk to the soul, as opposed to talking to your intelligence. Writing an essay to deciper the art in order for it to be understood (especially when the art work is something like the pile of boxes and empty bottles that showed in the show's preview) is called creative writing: while the writing themselve may indeed show creativity and can be considered as art, the object itself... wtf?
Anyway, today I came across this gem from BBC about how wifi can be harmful to children: they can't find any evidence though, but it's possible. (Oh oh, my favourite weasle line from the article: "There have been no studies on the health effects of Wi-Fi equipment, but thousands on mobile phones and masts." See what they did? How they just weasle out like that and make you think the studies must be bad for the mobile phone and masts as well? Ingenious.) I'm not a biologist and I can't say for sure whether wifi harm people, but for goodness sake stop generating mass hysteria and report things with absolutely no evidence and aired purely to generate fear and feeding people psuedo-science, all in the anme of ratings. People in research have enough problem trying to reach out already, to get their points across. Let's face it: a lot of their findings won't make sense unless you have a real background knowledge, not what they spoon feed you in the second paragraph or an article. Generateing fear in public for the sake of rating is irresponsible, and is a crime against science.
Right, now I have to try to produce science of my own. *sigh*
EDIT: I went back to read the slashdot forum on the BBC article. Someone wrote: "In the meantime, their children are outside getting burnt without sunscreen." I actually laughed out loud.
Anyway, today I came across this gem from BBC about how wifi can be harmful to children: they can't find any evidence though, but it's possible. (Oh oh, my favourite weasle line from the article: "There have been no studies on the health effects of Wi-Fi equipment, but thousands on mobile phones and masts." See what they did? How they just weasle out like that and make you think the studies must be bad for the mobile phone and masts as well? Ingenious.) I'm not a biologist and I can't say for sure whether wifi harm people, but for goodness sake stop generating mass hysteria and report things with absolutely no evidence and aired purely to generate fear and feeding people psuedo-science, all in the anme of ratings. People in research have enough problem trying to reach out already, to get their points across. Let's face it: a lot of their findings won't make sense unless you have a real background knowledge, not what they spoon feed you in the second paragraph or an article. Generateing fear in public for the sake of rating is irresponsible, and is a crime against science.
Right, now I have to try to produce science of my own. *sigh*
EDIT: I went back to read the slashdot forum on the BBC article. Someone wrote: "In the meantime, their children are outside getting burnt without sunscreen." I actually laughed out loud.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Beryl in all its glory...
3D cube workspace
Look at that pretty, pretty cube! To go from one workspace to another (All you Windows infidel: Workspace is a wonderful idea where you have put different windows in different workspace, and have them "separated" so you don't have about a million windows opened at the same time. Think about one space for your email, one for your spreadsheet and whatnot, and one where your IM is running. You just click to that workspace when you want to.), you do get this pretty cube effect.... so pretty.... anyway, that's not even half of it...
Windows Animations
I wasn't too happy with the animation until I played around and foudn them all... heh. I've decided that whenever I close a window I want to see it burn. The screen shot doesn't do it justice. It's really really REALLY pretty. Everytime I close a window I still sigh in contentment when I see the buggers burn.
Raindrops keep falling on my head
Ah... raindrops. So soothing. It's not like I switch it on 24/7. It's not THAT annoying. Animated raindrops!
In conclusions...
Admit defeat, Vista! You can have a pretty and secured OS without costing am arm and a leg.
Although I do admit that there are bugs that really need ironing out. Especially when the graphic card isn't actually all that nice and fast. (Pete tried that on his family's computer... took a while to go around all the bugs.)
But seriously, if you have a new machine, there's no reason why you would want to slow it down again by loading Vista. Ubuntu's new release doesn't eat up half as much resources (i.e. doesn't slow your machine to a crawl), doesn't require high end graphics (well, unless you install Beryl to make it look pretty.. even Beryl doesn't need top of the line graphics though, unlike Vista), you don't have to worry about virus or spyware, you don't have to buy software (there's a big list of free software where you can just search and click "install".), and it's free! It's meant to be free!
Ask your local geek for more information. :)
Look at that pretty, pretty cube! To go from one workspace to another (All you Windows infidel: Workspace is a wonderful idea where you have put different windows in different workspace, and have them "separated" so you don't have about a million windows opened at the same time. Think about one space for your email, one for your spreadsheet and whatnot, and one where your IM is running. You just click to that workspace when you want to.), you do get this pretty cube effect.... so pretty.... anyway, that's not even half of it...Windows Animations
I wasn't too happy with the animation until I played around and foudn them all... heh. I've decided that whenever I close a window I want to see it burn. The screen shot doesn't do it justice. It's really really REALLY pretty. Everytime I close a window I still sigh in contentment when I see the buggers burn.Raindrops keep falling on my head
Ah... raindrops. So soothing. It's not like I switch it on 24/7. It's not THAT annoying. Animated raindrops!In conclusions...
Admit defeat, Vista! You can have a pretty and secured OS without costing am arm and a leg.
Although I do admit that there are bugs that really need ironing out. Especially when the graphic card isn't actually all that nice and fast. (Pete tried that on his family's computer... took a while to go around all the bugs.)
But seriously, if you have a new machine, there's no reason why you would want to slow it down again by loading Vista. Ubuntu's new release doesn't eat up half as much resources (i.e. doesn't slow your machine to a crawl), doesn't require high end graphics (well, unless you install Beryl to make it look pretty.. even Beryl doesn't need top of the line graphics though, unlike Vista), you don't have to worry about virus or spyware, you don't have to buy software (there's a big list of free software where you can just search and click "install".), and it's free! It's meant to be free!
Ask your local geek for more information. :)
Quick! I need "approx. US$1564.37"
Sweet Mother of God! Optimus Maxiums - the Ultimate keyboard (Even cooler than Das Keyboard, which I didn't have the guts to try) is finally accepting pre-order! For those who hasn't heard about it: Optimus Maximus is a keyboard where every freaking key is a tiny LCD display! Here, straight from their website:
Ok Probably doesn't do it justice since I have to make the picture smaller to fit my blog, but click the link to view all its glory! All the buttons are programmable. No longer do you have to memorise all those shortcut is all those different games, or any program you happen to use. Programmable lauch buttons on the left, one button to whatever program that takes your fancy!
And the actual keyboard's design: it's so pretty! It's so.. slim and slick and everything I want in a pretty package! (excuse me while I wipe that drool off.)
Down side to that is that I need about US$1600 to buy it. *sigh*. Look if I won't even spend that much money on a computer, I don't think I'll ever bring myself to buy that. Unless of cause if I win Lotto. And My chace of winning Lotto is pretty darn slim considering I never buy a ticket... *sigh*. Why must cool thing cost so much?
\in other news: I really shouldn't blog about geek news THIS often...
Ok Probably doesn't do it justice since I have to make the picture smaller to fit my blog, but click the link to view all its glory! All the buttons are programmable. No longer do you have to memorise all those shortcut is all those different games, or any program you happen to use. Programmable lauch buttons on the left, one button to whatever program that takes your fancy!
And the actual keyboard's design: it's so pretty! It's so.. slim and slick and everything I want in a pretty package! (excuse me while I wipe that drool off.)
Down side to that is that I need about US$1600 to buy it. *sigh*. Look if I won't even spend that much money on a computer, I don't think I'll ever bring myself to buy that. Unless of cause if I win Lotto. And My chace of winning Lotto is pretty darn slim considering I never buy a ticket... *sigh*. Why must cool thing cost so much?
\in other news: I really shouldn't blog about geek news THIS often...
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Rayman Raving Rabbids 2! :D
Yay!!! More bunnies coming our way!
For the uninitiated, there's a video for the launch of the first game:
Aww... bunnies!!
Very excited about the sequeal. Apparently it's going to be released on the DS too. Hopefully it's not going to be a platform like the first DS game is.
Speaking of Wii games, Cooking Mama Cook Off is coming out soon too :D
Can't wait til I saved up enough money again to buy new games...
For the uninitiated, there's a video for the launch of the first game:
Aww... bunnies!!
Very excited about the sequeal. Apparently it's going to be released on the DS too. Hopefully it's not going to be a platform like the first DS game is.
Speaking of Wii games, Cooking Mama Cook Off is coming out soon too :D
Can't wait til I saved up enough money again to buy new games...
Sunday, May 13, 2007
New computer, and Beryl in all its glory!
Yup, I got my new computer finally! AMD64, PCI-e graphics card, and 320Gb of HDD goodness. :) Only problem is I didn't quite realise how annoying it is to get stuff working on 64bit Ubuntu. It's not too bad though: the boys were here last night to watch a DVD and Toby decided to help me get flash running... by running Firefox on 32 bit again. *sigh* Next up I'll probably need FS drive installed to try to read the EXT3 partition on my HDD.
Installed Riven on my computer, like, finally. Had to jump through hoops of course because the game was SO old that it has problem running on XP. I kid you not. But it's all going now, and now I can remember why I thought Myst was a brilliant idea and cool game but I'll never do well on it: I'm so bloody lost in the game that even a map doesn't help much. At least the worlds on Myst weren't quite that big... The first world in Riven is bloody huge... I'm so lost. :( (or is it the only world? I'm not too sure...)
Alright, need some sleep now... gonna meet with my supervisor tomorrow and for once I'm not really worried about him thinking I'm slacking off: I actually have a good plan that I would like to try... just have to worry about how long it'll take to try it all. I just need to found a friggin printer tomorrow to print my report out, and I'll be one happy camper. :)
P.S.: Next time I'll try to do some screen shot of my pretty new Beryl working on my Ubuntu. :)
P.P.S.: For those who really wants to know: I named my new computer Normad, after this little dude. :)
Installed Riven on my computer, like, finally. Had to jump through hoops of course because the game was SO old that it has problem running on XP. I kid you not. But it's all going now, and now I can remember why I thought Myst was a brilliant idea and cool game but I'll never do well on it: I'm so bloody lost in the game that even a map doesn't help much. At least the worlds on Myst weren't quite that big... The first world in Riven is bloody huge... I'm so lost. :( (or is it the only world? I'm not too sure...)
Alright, need some sleep now... gonna meet with my supervisor tomorrow and for once I'm not really worried about him thinking I'm slacking off: I actually have a good plan that I would like to try... just have to worry about how long it'll take to try it all. I just need to found a friggin printer tomorrow to print my report out, and I'll be one happy camper. :)
P.S.: Next time I'll try to do some screen shot of my pretty new Beryl working on my Ubuntu. :)
P.P.S.: For those who really wants to know: I named my new computer Normad, after this little dude. :)
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Pink Room No More! And the return of the PhD Blues...
Pink Room No More!
We no longer have a pink study! It's now nice and white, and ready for the top coat anytime now. I'm thinking maybe a nice latte... just so it's a bit less clinical. There are still hints of pink where and there which we'll hopefully get rid of with the second coat of ceiling paint... fingers crossed.
The return of the PhD Blues...
Yup. Deepest pit of Hell again. I'm having fun.
We no longer have a pink study! It's now nice and white, and ready for the top coat anytime now. I'm thinking maybe a nice latte... just so it's a bit less clinical. There are still hints of pink where and there which we'll hopefully get rid of with the second coat of ceiling paint... fingers crossed.
The return of the PhD Blues...
Yup. Deepest pit of Hell again. I'm having fun.
Friday, May 04, 2007
iGoogle, micro-blogging and a new comptuer!
I should be working, I know. But it's been a particularly bad week: nasty bugs and silly mistake cost A LOT of time. :(
Anyway, to distract myself...
Did anyone else noticed the Google personalised homepage is now called iGoogle? and now you can make your own gadget? Including this one called Daily Me, which allows you to put in what you're listening and eating and what not... it's like micro blogging really.
And do I really want my friends to know what I'm doing every friggin minute? It's probably the whole celebrity wannabe syndrome.
My micro-blog would probably consist on "Current status: pissed off at myself" most of the time..
Anyway, apart from the weird microblogging though, iGoogle is still looking good... I just don't understand WHY it has to be "iGoogle"... sounds too maccish.
In other news: I've ordered my new computer!! :D I'll update more when I get the machine :D
Anyway, to distract myself...
Did anyone else noticed the Google personalised homepage is now called iGoogle? and now you can make your own gadget? Including this one called Daily Me, which allows you to put in what you're listening and eating and what not... it's like micro blogging really.
And do I really want my friends to know what I'm doing every friggin minute? It's probably the whole celebrity wannabe syndrome.
My micro-blog would probably consist on "Current status: pissed off at myself" most of the time..
Anyway, apart from the weird microblogging though, iGoogle is still looking good... I just don't understand WHY it has to be "iGoogle"... sounds too maccish.
In other news: I've ordered my new computer!! :D I'll update more when I get the machine :D
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Dell not so evil?
Score one for Ubuntu! After Dell decided to go back to XP after Vista proved to be less than perfect (or at least offer that option), they now offer desktop and laptop with Ubuntu pre-loaded. Hooray! Seriously given the choice of going to Vista vs moving to Feisty Fawn, I think majority of people would probably prefer Ubuntu... what's not to like. It's free, you have a whole community of people online to help out, you get more free software option than you can shake a stick at, right in the program menu too. If I can convince my mum to use Ubuntu, it can't be that hard. I think the time needed to get used to Ubuntu is probably about the same you'll need to get used to Vista.
In other news, I'm still battling with my PhD project. Found one ugly massive bug and I have to re-run my program again. *sigh*. I'm thinking I'll use this time to start writing. At least have something done. Actually, might actually use today to fix my Miktex... yeah. I need to do that at some stage anyway.
That's it from me for now. Being stressed and depressed makes me either lose my appetite or hungry. They sorta alternate... yesterday I keep wanting to eat stuff and today, I don't feel like eating. Great. Ah well. Hopefully the rest of the week will give me more comfort. Worse comes to worst I just have to work nights again.
In other news, I'm still battling with my PhD project. Found one ugly massive bug and I have to re-run my program again. *sigh*. I'm thinking I'll use this time to start writing. At least have something done. Actually, might actually use today to fix my Miktex... yeah. I need to do that at some stage anyway.
That's it from me for now. Being stressed and depressed makes me either lose my appetite or hungry. They sorta alternate... yesterday I keep wanting to eat stuff and today, I don't feel like eating. Great. Ah well. Hopefully the rest of the week will give me more comfort. Worse comes to worst I just have to work nights again.
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