Entries for April, 2006

OMG!!! Ponies!!!
POSTED AT 03:28 AM in General, Website

LOL

More fun for today, and only today! http://aprilfools.urgo.org

Oh, and new usericons!
Currently feeling amused




April 1
POSTED AT 12:41 AM in General

Hangout with BST people today.

Bus schedule was whacked because of a Cesar Chavez parade. Normal route was not showing up on 511 (well it showed up, but it showed the stop as pretty far away), so I took another bus, which announced "last stop" several blocks away from the BART station (didn't have to pay for the ride though because the machine was broken)

Got there, picked up by Jenny with Catherine in the car. First place we wanted to go to was not open. We eventually ate at O Chame. Expensive, and some stuff was completely not worth the price, like their sashimi. The best dish there was probably the lamb, which Joyce had. Jenny and Catherine went back after that. The rest of us couldn't come up with a plan for a long time before we went to get boba, or rather, us guys did. Joyce and Sophia ran off to look at the sea and then to some horse racing place, which... well, made us guys quite unhappy, especially when we saw that it required a $4 admission, and it turns out the girls had sneaked in.

I'd elaborate, but I'd rather not. Although I was reminded again that misandry is a good word. Sophia had to go at 7, so David and Aaron and I ate dinner at Berkel Berkel, which was actually pretty good. Relatively cheap.

And uh, stupid Daylight Saving Time means I lose an hour.
Currently feeling tired




Associated Press plagiarizes blogger, remain unrepentant
POSTED AT 11:06 PM in General

We contacted an AP senior editor and ombudsman both and both admitted to having had the article passed on to them, and both stated that they viewed us as a blog and because we were a blog, they did not need to credit us. What we are or are not is frankly irrelevant. What is relevant is that by using a term like blog to somehow excuse plagiarism, the mainstream press continues to lower the bar for acceptable behavior. It need not matter where the AP got the information, research, and actual wording from. What matters is that if they use it in part or in whole, they must attribute properly. A blog or a small press publication or grads students working in the corner of a library all equally deserve credit for their work, period.

Unfortunately this is far too common and has happened to me and to other writers and bloggers far too frequently. This time, however, we made a point of tape recording the AP apparatchiks admitting to taking our work and using it without attribution, stating "we do not credit blogs".

While they will not credit us in any way; they will instead credit advocacy groups, as though that somehow excuses them from having to attribute rightfully. This is what their first article on the documents' said: "Lesbian and gay advocacy groups recently found the change in an 18-page document distributed by National security adviser Stephen Hadley on Dec. 29, without public notice." Yes, the groups had found it in my article, which they gave to the AP.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larisa-alexa...ag_b_17873.html

Also, from THE ASSOCIATED PRESS STATEMENT OF NEWS VALUES AND PRINCIPLES
It means we don't plagiarize.
Bunch of wanker hypocrites who need to correct that to "it means we don't plagiarize, unless we think you're too small to sue us, then ethics be damned"

Remember, these people are supposed to be "professionals"

Oh, and to orchard-l if you're reading this, too bad you disabled commenting to non-friends, otherwise, I could've given you some more info on the Touhou series.
Currently feeling blah




Firefox problems resolved
POSTED AT 01:05 AM in General

Mmm, finally fixed a bunch of problems that've been plaguing Firefox (blank pages, swf not working properly). I guess some settings must have been messed up, but copying a few files over from a new profile fixed it (but deleted all my cookies, which was annoying for certain sites). So try that if you're having some issues with Firefox. Don't touch your bookmarks and the db and dat files in your profile. Most of the others can be replaced. Touching the extensions file may mean having to reinstall all your extensions though.
Currently feeling tired




01:02:03 04/05/06
POSTED AT 01:15 AM in General

Yep, hope you noticed.
Currently feeling amused




Stupid presentation
POSTED AT 12:37 AM in General

Ugh, have a presentation after I wake up. I hate presentations.
Currently feeling stressed




1 down 2 to go
POSTED AT 02:51 AM in General

I'll be happy again by the end of next Thursday. Briefly anyway.
Currently feeling tired




Finally
POSTED AT 01:17 AM in General

Hmm, so I passed the driver's written test after like 2 years of procrastinating (34/36, I read one question wrong).

The DMV is messed up. They actually gave Xia a temp driver's license. Despite her protests that she only had a Georgia *instructional permit* they still insisted that she should receive a driver's license and just waved it off as different state laws. O_o

Well, that's the kind of people you have working for the government.

Anyway, now to actually learn *how* to drive.
Currently feeling satisfied




Number crunching
POSTED AT 02:15 AM in General

Mmm, work work work.

Or rather, wait wait wait.

Security class programs = lots of waiting time.

Updating from Python 2.3 to Python 2.4 = 2x speed.
Using Psyco = many x speed.

And it's still taking hours and hours.
Currently feeling stressed




Stuff getting done
POSTED AT 02:12 AM in General

Yay, lots of work done. But more out of necessity than anything.
Currently feeling accomplished




Yay?
POSTED AT 11:09 PM in General

More work getting done. Feel much less stressed now although much stuff due soon.

Thank goodness for my old tax forms (less hassles filling them out)


Currently feeling okay




I. Hate. Threads.
POSTED AT 02:52 AM in General

Well ok, it wasn't that bad, and I got them to work just fine, but they still suck. Especially when the built-in library doesn't provide a multi-threaded server method (like you'd expect) so you have to do it yourself.

Oh, /me is happy for discovering some nice math formula for my elliptic curve project. Yeah, mathematicians and cryptographers probably figured it out decades ago, but whatever.

Can't wait to actually get a good night's sleep this weekend.
Currently feeling tired




Done
POSTED AT 02:31 AM in General

Well, it's all done. For now. Unless something decides to break.
Currently feeling tired




Yay, relief!
POSTED AT 03:25 AM in General

Ok, even though I was "done" last night, there was still a tone of bug squashing to do today. Not everyone's clients would work with mine for example, but good thing we could test with our own little groups so I did it with Xia and Li. I tested with Xia, who tested with Li, so ours sort of worked, but because of that Li and mine didn't work as well together, because of the extra degree of separation. His did have a bit more problem because his server wasn't multi-threaded, so when we had to demo it, someone else's program kept crashing his program and since it was single-threaded, that meant it completely hanged.

After class, we then spent 2.5 hours arguing about who had better program design (yay, geeky behavior ), e.g., threading vs. the thread module, and who wasted more energy re-inventing the wheel, and so on. Then some discussion of our school, and then Xia and I went to dinner while Li went to work. We ate at Pho Hoa Clement which we've gone to a few times, and it seems like they aren't exactly honest. The pho we ordered were rounded from $5.95 to $6.00, and then they charged us $0.30 extra tax on top of that. They kept trying to hurry us to pay the bill, either because they were closing soon, or because they knew we'd caught on (we were re-calculating it on paper and figuring out how much proper tip we should be giving). So if you decide to eat there, you've been warned.
Currently feeling relieved




Shoot the Bullet EX replays
POSTED AT 05:24 PM in General, Gaming, Touhou 東方

Well, I guess I'm using today to relax before going back to working on the last 3 major projects + 2 smaller projects. Need to fix my sleeping pattern as well.

Did the following last night. I'm using YouTube because Dailymotion is taking a long time to process for some reason.

Shoot the Bullet Scene EX-8 Clear

This one is just an update. No missed shots, faster clear, and better score (top score on the Touhou Wiki)

Shoot the Bullet Scene EX-4 Clear

Kinda short, but quite mesmerizing.

Both are good examples of danmaku.
Currently feeling sleepy




Mmm
POSTED AT 01:43 AM in General

Not much to report. Hard to fix my sleeping schedule.
Currently feeling tired




The Easter Bunny Hates You
POSTED AT 01:10 AM in General

http://www.devilducky.com/media/44065/ - I should've probably posted it earlier in the day, but whatever.
Currently feeling amused




Class canceled
POSTED AT 01:01 AM in General

Class canceled today, but it's good for catching up on work.
Currently feeling okay




Polished Turds
POSTED AT 09:40 AM in General

So someone had a comment on Polished Apples (referring to Apple products), and that made me think of polished turds, and then I thought, wouldn't it be funny if someone actually went and found some turds and actually polished them, and then sold it as an actual art piece? And I'm convinced it would actually sell!

Yes, I'm weird.
Currently feeling thoughtful




Dogs
POSTED AT 10:57 PM in General

Xia's really afraid of big dogs, but she wants to own a small dog. Her neighbor has a big black dog, and she usually cowers when the neighbor comes out with the dog. Today, while going home, the dog was just lying there in front of her house, and she refused to get near, then the owner came out, and made her come and play with it. Although she seemed to enjoy it, she was frowning afterwards. Her hands smelled of piss. Or something.

That's generally why I prefer cats. Dogs, especially big ones, are more likely to be dirty. It was a well-behaved dog though.
Currently feeling tired




Free goods
POSTED AT 12:17 AM in General

Whee, thank you Cindy (even though you don't read this) for the Naruto poster! :D
Currently feeling thankful




Windows is faster than OSX
POSTED AT 12:27 AM in General

So I installed Boot Camp on my MacBook yesterday. I had read a few articles saying that people playing games under Windows on the new Intel Macs saw a “20% performance increase”. That number doesn’t mean anything to me so I figured I should test it out myself.

Boot Camp is a pretty slick program. Once it is installed it lets you partition your drive a then it burns a disk for you with all the drivers you will need to make XP run on your Mac. You go through a standard Windows install and then you throw your driver disk in and boom it just works. Once I had XP on it was time to test it out and that meant installing WOW.

So for reference here are the stats on my MacBook:

MacBook Pro
2 GHZ Intel Core Duo
2 GB Memory
Radeon X1600

I’m running WOW at 1440 x 900 with all my graphic settings jacked all the way up. I’ve got spell effects and textures and all that good stuff up as high as it can go. With these settings under OS X I hovered between 15 and 20 FPS. It was just barley playable but for raids and stuff I’d drop down to a lower resolution and take off a few of the fancy effects. Now on the same laptop, but running under Windows with the same crazy settings I averaged between 35 and 40 FPS. That’s a pretty fucking big difference in my book. It was even able to maintain that frame rate in major cities and in a raid out in SS.

So if you’re thinking about giving Bootcamp a try now you have some hard numbers to consider. I may try and get steam on there today and check out Half Life 2 just to see how it runs. On one hand I’m pretty impressed with the machine. It’s a hell of a laptop. On the other hand I’m disappointed that I can’t get that kind of performance under OS X. I honestly prefer using OS X at this point and it was sort of nice to have a game I could play that didn’t require me to go upstairs and start up my Windows box. But it runs twice as fast under Windows for fucks sake. I can’t ignore that.

There’s a pretty big interview with us over at CGW and we’ll have a new podcast up this afternoon.

-Gabe out

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/04/19
Currently feeling amused




Haircut
POSTED AT 01:08 AM in General

Yay, haircut.

Went for dim sum at Bay Fung Tong with Xia. Fair price I suppose. But the best thing was probably the deep fried sanddab (half), which was about 25% cheaper than normal.
Currently feeling okay




Meh
POSTED AT 01:20 AM in General

Bleah, work sucks.
Currently feeling blah




Meh2
POSTED AT 01:41 AM in General

Oi, this crypto analysis stuff is making my head swim (too much math and symbols and words describing stuff I never learned)




Meh3
POSTED AT 01:26 AM in General

Good thing the lowest score gets dropped. I think this may be my worst project.

See, because of the way the professor assigns the projects, I generally prefer doing programming projects. I didn't think the project would turn into one of the written report type projects, which is usually described in *very* vague terms, which makes it really hard to do well.
Currently feeling meh




Ugh
POSTED AT 10:03 PM in General

Unhappy about various stuff. No, I'm not going to talk about it. Yes, I know that's what blogs are for. But I'm just too tired to bother.
Currently feeling moody




Pizza Night
POSTED AT 02:15 AM in General

Yay, lots of food.
Currently feeling okay




Comic strips galore
POSTED AT 01:22 AM in General

Well, guess I didn't blog last night. Don't wanna come up with something long to blog, so I'll throw out one of my bookmarks.

http://www.angadi.org/comics.html
Currently feeling okay




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BlogMad Dracil/Male/16-20. Lives in United States/California/Berkeley/UC Berkeley, speaks Chinese and English. Spends 80% of daytime online. Uses a Faster (1M+) connection. And likes Anime/Gaming.
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