dracil

Oh yes, found the mythical campus shuttle bus. Well, found it since yesterday, and I've now been on it three times.

The reason none of us "saw" it was that it's a pretty battered old van. Apparently, the real campus shuttle is being fixed, which is why they're using this. Furthermore, the USF lettering is on the left side of the van, which is stupid, since you get in from the right side, which means that you never actually see the left side of the van while waiting. And it's driven by students, instead of professional drivers, which means that if you didn't know, you'd think it was just some student's van.
Currently feeling sleepy

dracil

Written offline at 10:48PM 9/1

Lovely, power outage.

And the internet doesn't work.

And ITS is closed.
Currently feeling annoyed

dracil

Went to the optional java crash course. Wasn't too useful although I did learn something anyway.

Decided not to go out tonight.
Currently feeling okay

dracil

Power went out AGAIN today, causing our internet to go down again, which means it may actually be down for the entire labor day weekend because ITS does not work weekends! Geeze, shouldn't they have people making sure things are running properly over the weekend as well?!

Oof, so spent the day in the CS labs working on my project/homework. Found a nasty nasty test case that I'm not sure how I'm allowed to resolve yet (awaiting response from professor).
Currently feeling blah

dracil

Internet is still down. ITS SUCKS.

Waiting for a professor to reply also sucks, especially when I have to do the waiting in the labs instead of at home.
Currently feeling annoyed

dracil

Hmm, forgot to update yesterday. Well, we have internet again after I called ITS this morning.
Currently feeling blah

dracil

Thank you David Chu, for giving me a cold!

Hmm, I'm still pretty caught up with my classes, which is a good sign.

They finally have the real campus shuttle again. Definitely looks nicer, and you can't miss it.

Oh, and graduate students are old. Relatively. Like +5 years and married.
Currently feeling content

dracil

For some reason, my roommate never sees the campus shuttle, while I often see them within a few minutes...
Currently feeling okay

dracil

Hmm, went to the library and checked out Harry Potter and this book on Creationist culture. Now to actually *read* it.

It doesn't seem that long though. Not if you've been reading from the Game of Thrones series...
Currently feeling sleepy

dracil

Is released. Been playing with it. Kinda buggy, but definitely faster. Too bad most of my extensions don't work, although the two most important ones, Adblock and Stumbleupon do work. I'd recommend waiting for the final release.
Currently feeling okay

dracil

Woah, I need to start sleeping earlier again.

Finished one homework. Pretty much. Time to do the other one, supposedly easier than the last project, but with even more time.

One thing I've noticed about my homework habits this semester is that I'll almost completely finish my homework several days early, but *not* quite perfect. Then I'll rest (i.e. do other stuff), and then I'll go back to editing the homework bit by bit until it's due.

Come to think of it, that's how I post on forums as well. I write a post, think it looks good, then post it. Then I'll edit the post half a dozen more times as I go back and keep looking at it.


Anyway, I edited the one image I had with a clear shot of Marisa casting Master Spark so that the edge of the spell extended all the way to the top, so that everything past that is just white. Not too bad I think, although I think it could've been done a little better. In any case, the edited image is more useful (the original artist should've done it like this). It makes for a nice wallpaper (I can dump all my icons in that white area), and I made a new Peercast signature out of it.



I think the text alignment could use some adjusting, but I dunno how I should adjust it for the best visual effect. It's why I don't usually create artistic stuff, but instead modify other people's stuff.

Oh, in case you somehow want the original pic, go here. The original is 1434, and the wallpaper sized version I made with the extension is 4177. Yes, simple little edits like this make me happy.
Currently feeling accomplished

dracil

Nothing of interest today, besides waking up real late.

My radio's becoming more popular I think, although I actually do have competitors to the Touhou stuff. But I'm still the only radio station that's up 24/7 (besides crashes of course).

Oh, find out what I'm listening at http://www.last.fm/user/Dracil

I think I may go to campus and print out some Touhou piano sheet music and try to play it on the campus piano(s). I *think* they have a piano for practicing...
Currently feeling okay

dracil

Meh, that practice piano in school sucks. Several of the keys get stuck, so you get little or no sound when pressing on them. Still, did attempt to try practicing on it, but the lack of sounds kept throwing me off.

I think they have another piano somewhere, but it may not be for general use.

Finally got my free A Game of Thrones RPG PDF rules.
Currently feeling okay

dracil

Ah, stayed up a little late finishing (mostly, as I mentioned before in my homework habits) a project. Not too bad for starting at 10:30pm. I know it works properly now with good values. Just need to add the error checking stuff, which means I need to check with the prof what exactly he wants the program to do when bad values are given (currently they're just completely discarded).

This gives me enough time to work on the other class's homework, which is due a day after this (partly why I was so intent on finishing this one now).

There were also TWO optional lectures given by my professors today. One was on the project I just finished, which I only went to the last few minutes as I was busy printing homework due for my other class today. Then the class I had today had an optional lecture on Python which I attended.

Which means every week so far my professors have been giving out extra lectures, something that never happened in my undergraduate classes at Berkeley...

Is this a difference between the schools, or a difference between undergrad and grad classes?

I also currently have three novels I've begun reading: One More Sunday, Digital Fortress, and the first Harry Potter book. I began them in that order as well, I also stopped reading them in that order, since I only really read them in the toilet or while waiting for the bus.

I'm actually surprised that the Harry Potter's so short. I remember reading something about how they were very long, but 309 pages in relatively big fonts pales in comparison to George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series that averages 1000 pages per book with small fonts (although the book IS smaller).

I think if I was completely free (and wasn't distracted by the computer), I could finish the current Harry Potter series within a week.

dracil

Spammers are cool. Remember to pay some of my spammers a visit (just like they want!) at http://aces.tabulas.com/dracil/media/4265_antispam.htm

In fact, what we love so much about them are all those wonderful pictures they have on their sites. We love them so much that we'll visit them thousands of times. Hundreds of thousands of times in fact! ^_^

Some spammers don't realize that, and so they only let people *on* their websites look at these pretty pictures. But surely they meant to share the love (that's why they spam us with their sites! They're so proud of the pictures that they want us to go see)! Which is why RefControl is your friend. Just install it, type in the site name, choose Forge, and you're set!

Oh, and you can get your own Spam Vampire at http://www.hillscapital.com/antispam/
Currently feeling lovingly vengeful

dracil

http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050914/ids_photos_ts/r2587077477.jpg/print

'nuff said.
Currently feeling amused

dracil

Eh, spent the entire day working on project, then gamed the night away.

That's pretty much today in a nutshell.

I think one of the reason I feel sleepier is the wind. Wind = dry eyes = want to close them = feeling of sleepiness.
Currently feeling okay

dracil

Was stumped by a homework for a long time today, and ended up with a solution that did not use the method the prof claimed was needed. THEN I figured out the normal method after a while. But I like the alternate method better. Less code, and it turned out to be more efficient as well (although this isn't guaranteed).
Currently feeling okay

dracil

Prof liked my alternate method, so that was good.

It's Mid-Autumn Festival! Or was.

Didn't actually go out though, kinda left my mind till late in the afternoon.

Maybe I'll go by Clement tomorrow and see if they're still selling mooncakes. Might be cheaper since it's over.
Currently feeling okay

dracil

http://terrafirma.brokentoys.org/ - This is so good it deserves its own entry.

Hope they don't mind the direct linking!



And a couple for us too!


Currently feeling amused

dracil

Hmm, didn't see mooncakes, although I noticed "Oil Strips" (in Chinese) being sold on Clement.

Went to Japantown to buy a book.

Lost my earphones, might need a replacement.

Almost done with Harry Potter 1!
Currently feeling tired

dracil

Ah, forgot to mention it was "Talk Like A Pirate Day" on Monday.

Got headphones.

Meh, found out close to submission when comparing results with my classmate that part of my program was sub-optimal and didn't have time to properly fix and test a fix. Hope this won't affect my grade.

Finally have a small break between my homework.
Currently feeling blah

dracil

Urg, got homework back for one class. Graded pretty harshly. Not as good as I had hoped. But at least I didn't get a 0 (25% of the people got 0 for the first homework) and was above class average. Still, probably gonna need to spend more time in the CS labs.
Currently feeling disappointed

dracil

Roommate's gf is staying over for a couple days while her apartment is being fumigated.

Got my first real project today. Unlike the stuff before, this is actually practical. Need to build a webcrawler that grabs a site, finds links, and then looks at those, and so on, saving pages that match the search criteria. Interesting. Good thing about this class is the extra credit. Going to need them to patch up the inevitable lost points here and there.
Currently feeling sleepy

dracil

Not much actually happened today.

But did fix the bugs that cost me some points in my old project. Finally understood the non-round-about way to do this certain thing that was more efficient.

Oh yeah, I've watched Advent Children as of several days ago. You should watch it just for the battle scenes. Even better if you've played the game and actually understand the story. Worth watching in the theaters I think. It works better than Spirits Within because they don't try to pretend the characters are real people.

It's also probably the best movie ever based on a game, which doesn't say much, but it does have an 8.5 rating on IMDB.com, which is HIGH considering ratings there are around 5-6. Monster Inc. had 8.0 as a comparison.
Currently feeling fine

dracil

Spent the day in the lab to make sure I wouldn't be distracted.

Except people were playing music. =/

Well, still finished one class's project. I think this one was easier. Now to work on that 3 week project. -_-

dracil

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/25/1315224

Get your very own iPod Scratchpad! Oh, if you own the iPod Nano, then you already do! :D

Suckers!
Currently feeling amused

dracil

Bah, after turning in my project, I realized there was a test that I'd forgotten to do (and what's worse, it's one that my program would fail), what's even more worse is that it's fixed by 2 lines of code. -_-

Eh, hope they don't catch it, since they apparently didn't catch it last time (although my program *did* work for this before I rewrote a big chunk of it).

It's why I try to start my projects earlier, so that there's more time for me to realize things like this, but a few always seem to slip through.
Currently feeling blah

dracil

Yay, I'm back at 100% for one of my classes, thanks to an extra credit.

Hmm, possible job as a lab monitor. Hope I wasn't too late in applying for it. (Opening appeared just yesterday).
Currently feeling happy

dracil

Bah, was asked a question in class while I was momentarily distracted with the project. Sat there like an idiot for several seconds, but did finally manage to give the right answer, thankfully.
Currently feeling blah

dracil

Finished Harry Potter 2.

Really REALLY sleepy today. Think I may have dozed off for a few seconds in today's guest lecture.
Currently feeling sleepy