Month: November 2003

Just returned from my aunt’s place where I had run off to for the weekend. I probably will buy myself some quick bake cookie thingies and quick make ravioli thingies in the future.

I’ve been sleepy all day long. Could barely keep my eyes open around 3 in the afternoon. I’ve managed to force myself to stay up so long. Why? No real reason, just so that I don’t sleep at 5 in the evening and wake at some 2 in the morning or some such. I need a routine. And I’m going to get one.

Was helped by a couple of movies. “Kate and Leopold” and “Meet Joe Black”, though I have seen them many times before. The first is undeniably “cute” and the second is easily one of the cooler movies I’ve seen.

(Oh her, and I guess I am a sucker for movies where fantasies set on premises that shouldn’t be able to hold, “just work out”.)

Also, been listening to Norah Jones, the same album cycling over and over, for most of my day. It’s interestingly different. And I’ve suddenly started liking it a lot.

And no, it’s not like I’ve crossed over to the dark side. I have the cool pro-Oasis line to prove it. Of course, it seems Oasis have become established enough to stop ripping off the Beatles… so now they’re ripping themselves off. And they’re damn good at it.

During this idle time, I decided to look into alternatives to power this site and blog. After some careful analysis (well, not really, more like choosing on a whim) I’ve decided whenever I do update it, it should be based on Drupal (for the seemingly involved and nice community behind it). And it should look somewhere in between Monologue and Hacker heaven (down at the moment). Also, need to steal/recreate (steal, most probably) Monologue’s script for auto coloring code, which is cool.

I mean it’s not like I don’t like the current scheme of things. It’s just, some portions are more complicated than they have to be? Like my life :)?

Been carrying my camera with me everywhere. Just for when something catches my eye. Nothing, so far. Right now, I NEED a tripod.

I really had a lot more to say. Something about how important I feel the early developmental years of a child’s life are (among other things), but I don’t think I can stay awake too much longer.

Been staring at the moon at different points of time over the past few hours. What can I really say?, it was a pretty eclipse. As pretty as lunar eclipses can be anyway. I just wish it wasn’t so cold outside, and could have gotten a better view. Speaking of which, it’s extremely cold. And the sun shining BRIGHTLY during the day is totally misleading. I peek out of my window, and it’s BRIGHT with birds chirping and all that. I step out with erm, lighter clothing than I should have had on, and had to rush back in to change. Sneaky sun.

(And I think I am going to stop prefixing my paragraphs with “And totally unrelated,”. I realized my brain doesn’t have to be muddled at the time to just randomly switch topics this way. That’s just the way it works. Or I guess it’s always muddled, whatever.)

I plan to drink at least 8 large glasses of water per day. Even if it freezes inside me and kills me. Even if it means I have to take more frequent breaks from whatever it is that I am doing. Let’s see how long I can keep it up. Water is good for you. Or so a lot of people have told me. They ALL can’t be wrong. Ok, they can. Now I’ll know for sure.

I’ve also decided to make “the ponytail”, my natural state. I’ve been testing out different configurations over the past week or so, and I think it’s workable. It’s just, I was wondering what the experienced “people with hair longer than a certain length and it NEEDS to be tied so that it’s not in their face so they can get on with whatever it is they do” do when they sleep. It’s odd, I am mostly a “sleep on my stomach”er, and assumed it wouldn’t be an issue. But I apparently like to flip arbitrarily, and this is a bit of a bother right now.

No it’s not long or flowy or spreadable enough to form a cushiony thingy that’ll help rather than hinder. Hmm.

Since it is Matrix time of year (well, when isn’t really), I’ve been going through some of the parodies and spoofs out there and decided this is just insanely funny. If this turns out to be more fun than Matrix:Revolutions, I am going to be one angry person.

Getting down to geekier things, finally got around to playing Halo‘s demo. It was, pretty sweet. It’s just, no, it’s not buy an XBox RIGHT NOW material. Or even scarier, maybe it is and that just shows how much PC gaming has trumped consoles over time. About Halo however, the dynamic music (like in NOLF) was cool. It was really funny too, but that was more like an ad for buying the real game. The physics sucked. It felt sluggish. Like playing UT in a viscous goo. As if UT weren’t slow enough I mean. And there was quite a bit of clipping nonsense that was going on. I could “see” bits of things through other things at a few points. But overall, it’s no Id game, but fun none the less. And much more than I would have expected for a demo.

Disclaimer: And yes, all that talk about other products was an OPINION. It isn’t necessarily factually accurate. Please don’t sue me.

A ton of stuff I bought earlier for my brother and that had got held up here might be reaching him some time soon. I’ve got relatives visiting home. And that’s a good thing, I don’t have to worry about buying him an N-Gage any time soon. He’ll be distracted.

Muahahahahahahah. I hope.

And speaking of extreme things, I know people like modding their PC cabinets, but this is a tad ridiculous. Fishies are cute. The lil colourful ones.

Why is it that whenever I hear the instrumental backup for “Nightswimming” by R.E.M I tend to almost cry, a happy cry?

You, I thought I knew you
You, I cannot judge
You, I thought you knew me

And I guess a lot of people were excited when HL2’s source was leaked. It’s just, sigh, it’s caused a long delay in release. And I can’t wait. I mean, look at it.

Just concept art, but still. Drool.

And what Gabe, one of the developers had to say “Important: Just to be clear, it’s ok to talk about the leak and the possible implications, however we’ll nuke you and your family if you even make the most slight clever hint of where to download it or even screenshots of it.”

Ok, I’ve idled and tried to avoid this long enough, now to get back to.. documenting my days. I had this test yesterday and didn’t do entirely too well. I mean, I could see that it was extremely simple, for someone who’d prepared a bit. But not me. Oh no. I’m the one who’s above preparation and all that sort of jazz. What’s even worse, we were allowed to prepare this little sheet of notes to take into the hall, and I had decided earlier to go without one. Sheer brilliance. Half an hour before the test, I get a little tense and “prepared” this thing hurriedly on the bus ride there.

Needless to say it wasn’t entirely useful, or readable even.

What’s even more scary, every time I tried to get around to doing some work towards this the previous evening, I kept, I don’t know, I think it’s called wallowing in the past? or some such thing. Moments of “glory” related to previous exams and tests flashed, and I smiled (internally), and “realized” I could handle it, it’s me.

But no, obviously.

It’s like, I put in a lot of work at some points of life and then sort of “live off” that for as long as I can. My last real input was some time towards the end of high school? It’s payed off all this time. But I think it’s close to getting depleted (or already is).

It all makes sense now. That’s the reason for the rapid decline in efficiency in work as well. Things aren’t “magically obvious” anymore. I’ve tried to fight this sinking feeling while realizing I need to get my nose back to the grind stone.

Fish. It just all has to be obvious and come naturally, damn it.

But if there is a silver lining to any of this, I have been totally focused and been actually doing some real work since then. And there will be many more “tests”. Tests, bah!

And in all this confusion (and mild depression? I just hate admitting I don’t know, and having to work to know) I forgot one of the more interesting (well, more like pathetic, but interesting is the word I choose to use) events of the day. I met this person on the bus, again. The last time she happened to sit next to me, some 3 weeks ago, she’d just broken up with this person. The deal here is that this was her third break up, read been dumped, by the SAME person.

How do I know all this? Trust me, I didn’t really want to. She’s the one who went on and on to the nearest person who looked like (s)he’d listen, me. Of course, why would someone keep going back to someone who randomly decides to discard you when they feel like it? I don’t know. So anyway, on the other day, I guess she was (understandably) depressed, and it had dawned on her that she doesn’t need this any more? And weeee, lucky me had to be the one to hear her go on and on about her newly attained enlightenment.

It’s not like I don’t care about things, but random strangers? That’s a bit much. Needless to say, she looked totally fine today, and not a word was spoken, just the smile and nod. That’s all I need to hear.

In some unrelated site news, I realized the index of the main site has crossed 10,000 hits. Somehow, I’d assumed it’d be a more gratifying event.

And totally unrelated again, Adobe Reader, the fishing piece of software that it is, just randomly stopped running today. It’ll open and it’ll close. After 3 reboots and 20 occurrences of the event, I googled for a fix and found this. It fixed it, eventually. I mean, why should it be so brain dead?

And I hate to admit it, but this new found peace/focus/desire to actually do something, all related to a relatively simple recent realization, feels good. Which is strange because I rarely (never?) have positive feelings towards work.

Hmm…

Is it just me, or after one too many South Park episodes I’ve started talking like Cartman?

Aww god damnit.

Guess who, just guess who is on a spanking new 2.6.0-test9 Linux kernel.

Where the fish is my all hyped desktop responsiveness? Sure, it feels snappier than OS X, but then, it always was.

It doesn’t feel magically different. What gives?

I am not a happy man. I expect too much.

A couple of people have asked me about this and I’ve essentially typed up the same thing (for two moderately different questions). I paste it here because I’m a lazy slacker and I don’t see why a good 10 minutes of typing should be wasted, if people really care about my thoughts on the issue.

I just came to know about Redhat’s plan to stop support for the 7.x – 9 line and start commercial enterprise Linux! I trust you must be knowing about the Fedora project too. I have a question?

Given the uncertainity that distros typically exhibit (are exhibiting), does this mean LFS is the future?

Firstly, they are not “starting” their EL line of products just now. They have had it for longer than you know. That, and their other services like training and so on is what makes them money.

There will always be uncertainity about distributions until they figure out how to make money, essentially packaging someone else’s work. And there are other distributions like Debian whose fate is not “uncertain”. RedHat is just trying to switch to the development model followed by them. (Again, personally, I feel this might do a lot of good to their product. I know people who maintain rpms for software that is not part of the standard distribution. Now, people like them will have a place to officially “put in” their work, and many more will get to enjoy it.)

The community wants frequently updated and freely downloadable software. They don’t (I don’t) necessarily care if some odd package is broken. The companies want slowly changing, robust software, and don’t care if it’s not bleeding edge.

For right now anyway, Fedora IS RedHat. Just unsupported. (But it’s not like yout current free download of RedHat was “supported” by them, so it is not an issue.) The only thing different will be the lack of free up2date and other such services that lose them money (bandwidth, having to backport and maintain all this for free).

Like I said, it is worth their while only if their “commercial” OS and their “consumer” OS are close to each other. They will be doing it for the commercial one anyway so they can release patches to the public. Now the two products are diverging because the consumer one is being released more often, and more radical changes are going into each release.

So they let the “public who want it that way” handle that and support it. While they work on the slower (older) product for making money, which is what companies try to do.

I don’t think it’s necessary for everyone to abandon them and rush to something like LFS. Firstly, that’s fun as a learning tool, but not terribly productive unless your job or aim of the exercise IS installing the system. Secondly, like I started, there are a lot of other distributions, and there always will be as long as people tend to think they can make money off packaging someone else’s work.

And personally, I’ve seen Fedora and it’s very polished. I don’t see the need to jump ship yet. Long story short, they might be behaving “evilly” now. But they have done a lot more good than I care to detail, and until all that built up positive karma is exhausted, I am not going to “abandon” the distribution.

Yes, it’s all just religion, and I think they know it and are counting on it.

In order to avoid the drama that was caused due to skipping sleep for a few nights before the previous work submission date, I’ve decided to start in a bit, and not wait for something like 1 A.M and stay up all night.

Or so I keep telling myself at the moment. It’s just, sheesh, I am not too keen about finishing before deadlines.

And hmm, how is it that India is the country of origin for the largest number of international students? Just who are these people ;) ? And why California? And just how is it that these poor souls’ (now) poorer parents cough up nearly $12 billion dollars towards the U.S. economy?

I wonder. Hmmm.

Nearly 75% of all international student funding comes from personal and family sources or other sources outside of the United States.

Sheesh.

And totally unrelated, I’ve been asking people whether folia(rson)age is like a decent name for our friend. And while they all agree it’s a half decent picture, they don’t see the humour or tremendous (well, not really) thought process behind the name and think it’s lame. I guess this means I am open to suggestions. I need a name before I can move it into the artwork page.

While on the topic of pictures, I just have to link to two of the saddest (as in depressing sad, not bad sad) works of art I have ever seen. And yes, they almost brought a tear. The first one is at deviant prints and the second one was a a piece I saw at the art fair here.

Vaguely related, I have been playing around with the new Blender. The GUI’s totally (well, almost) hacked and it looks sweet. Yes, it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing that you were one of the many responsible for coughing up 100,000 Euro for freeing the cool 3D modeller with a name that sounds like it belongs in a kitchen.

And getting overly concerned over the recent chaos about bad things happening to people saying things in their blogs, I have been working on the new disclaimer. Actually, right now it’s just stolen from another place and cheap hacked. But I’ve got the first (extremely rough) draft of one section of the thing ready. Yes, it isn’t too much different from the place I stole it from.

I retain the right to change this at any point of time, without notice. It is assumed you are reading this at regular intervals and your presence on the site assumes compliance with the terms below. Especially the bits about not using the information you read here to (or relaying it to anyone who can and probably will) hurt me in any way.

Personal relationships and privacy

Please do not assume that you know everything there is to know about me simply because you read my blog on a regular basis. Any judgements you make will be based on information I have provided, which is probably vague, incomplete or embellished. Whatever opinion you form on about me as a person, other people I mention, or our lives as a whole, is probably best kept to yourself. An obvious exception to this would be if I actually asked you for your advice or opinions.

Never contact me for more details on events or personal information than what I have already provided on the site. Chances are if the information you seek isn’t readily available, I have found it too personal or innapropriate to share. If you are close to me, I will eventually tell you privately, so intrusive questions are not necessary, just leave it alone. If you are meant to know, you will.

If you have a real life relationship with me, make sure I know that you read my site, especially if I did not tell you personally.

If I do not want you reading my blog, you should respect this and plese stop reading it. More importantly, never relay any information you gather here to others who might use it against me.

If I write something about about you and you don’t appreciate it, please let me know, in a calm and polite way. I realize that you are entitled to your privacy as well. I don’t use names when I have something negative to say, but if I do, and it bothers you, let me know.

People who have previously been cut out from my life should refrain from reading this blog. If the relationship has ended, there is no reason you should get daily updates on my life. If you simply can’t help yourself, do it quietly, and please don’t use what you read or use it to hurt me.

And now I really ought to get back to planning how I should convince myself to get back to work.

Just got back from Sarah’s place. A relatively fun filled 3+ hours of watching Simpsons and the rest of “laugh out loud” Sunday (with the oh so serious “tobacco is wacko” ads interspersed) on Fox with random people and drinking… dew. But that wasn’t the most interesting part of the evening.

I am not much of an animal person. I’ve never had a pet, or been close to people who did. So it was kind of surprising when I sat down and one of her cats decided to curl up on my lap. Totally freaky (yes, I am new at this, my first “animal experience” as someone pointed out) at first, but I sort of liked it as time went by.

Then at random points of time during the evening, one of these two would just decide to jump up, get comfy on your lap for a bit, and then when something else catches their fancy, jump off and move towards it.

No, it’s not like this is going to make me run out and get a pet. It’s just, this I think will make me not freak out when animals get.. close. It’s a good thing I decided not to quit braving the cold and the dark trying to find her place with that old torn map.

I need a new map. I could get one, but this one’s so trusty. It has like all my favourite routes and places and other bits of information like people’s homes and numbers all marked out in some weird code only I can read. (Not that that’s something I did on purpose. It’s just, I don’t seem to write very clearly while moving, and most times I write on the map is when I’m moving.)

I need to get a whole lot of tape to fix this map.

It’s not entirely not nice just to hang out with other people. I should do it a bit more often.

While I was out today, I observed the strangest thing. Well, it’s not really that strange, but it’s not something I haven’t seen in this country so far. I saw people WORKING on a new parking lot ON A SATURDAY.

The concept of removing a bunch of trees to enlarge a parking space seems quite, evil. But I guess it’s a necessity. The big deal here, for me anyway, was I’ve never seen this type of work going on on weekends (and nights and holidays and so on), when they are SUPPOSED TO, so they minimize inconvenience to everybody else. All that I have experienced here is all sorts of major things going on at peak times, and everyone getting irritated in the process. Why? Because people who work on everything need breaks and holidays at the same time.

Notice the clear ambiguity with regards to the exact location where the said “evil” events related to clearing “good” trees is happening. It’s, I think, a consequence of this new fad? that I’ve been reading up on at slashdot. People getting sued, fired and all that for saying “not entirely nice” things on their blogs? I assumed no one a) reads b) cares c) takes them seriously, except the poster.

I have a pretty good idea who does what at the rest of my site, but when it comes to the blog, I have very little information. (Being that it exists, quite sneakily, on a different server). And it’s scary I might just say something that offends someone who’s in a position to do something about it? Hmm, strangeness.

(Note to self: Consider non “intrusive and irritating” sign up options or related things to restrict who reads entries. At least for certain “special” ones that could get you screwed.)

And yes, it’s official; I have managed to lose my only functioning pair of glasses. Evidently, I am stupider and more forgetful than I would like to be. I have been forgetting/losing/missing loads of stuff during the past few weeks. And I’m sure the list is actually a lot larger than I think it is.

Like a couple of days ago, I missed this appearance by Mike Reiss (of producing “The Simpsons” fame) down at central. I really wanted to go. I love that show. But then again, doesn’t everybody?

It’s fun to make fun of things (and people who know me realize my personal favorite target is me). It’s even more fun when society is what’s being made fun of. It’s even more fun when it’s a TV show that doesn’t give a damn about being all nice and PC doing it. There are many that are very good, and have brought me to near tear (while laughing) states doing this. South Park, Family Guy, Futurama, … to name a few. But nothing comes close to the Simpsons. I don’t know of an episode I’ve missed.

So, what I guess I am trying to say is, if it means so much to me, I shouldn’t “just forget” things like this. (However, in my defense, I wasn’t near my computer for quite a while before this that evening. Or my trusty evo would have definitely let me know. I just know she would.)

I have this strange feeling all of this general (even more than usual, over the top) absent mindedness has something to do with some dietary changes which I have effected in the near recent past. Borrowing concepts everyone already knows, but now sounding cool because super hero types in leather jackets are articulating it, it’s all causality. There is no escaping it.

And I’ve, over the past few days done everything I can to be ready for the impending release of Matrix:Revolutions. I’ve seen both the previous movies. Read up on some of the comics based on the Matrix. Seen all the Animatrix episodes, TWICE, and know how some of them fit into the grand story line.

Interestingly (well, not really), I’ve gotten to know a little bit about Japanese manga and anime in general. Even more of a surprise (to me), one of the most awesome action/scifi/robot cartoon series of all time, the Transformers, was anime. And there’s this Peter Cheung who’s magically involved with the Transformers, the Rugrats! and responsible for an Animatrix episode.

For those who asked, Megatron and Galvatron are essentially the same character, and are extremely evil leaders of this evil group of robots, in the Transformers, called the Decepticons.

I will stop there. I need a life. I guess I better not say no to the get together while catching up on this year’s “Treehouse of Horror” Simpsons’ episodes at Sarah’s place.

Hey, it’s a start.

And totally unrelated, is it just me or are “salt and vinegar” flavoured chips the worst kind of chip, ever. Or even better (worse?), the worst food thought up by man? And why are the shelves in my kitchen filled with bags of it? And why is there nothing else?

GAH!