actuality.log

There have been a bunch of rumours going around which I hope to clear up. Firstly, there have been those who dare proclaim that this journal is dead. That’s so obviously not true. I’ve just been “away” (for reasons I will enumerate later, though I must admit it’s been quite nice).

Then, some joker actually elevated said rumour to an all new high, that I am dead. Sorry evil one, not yet I am not.

With those out of the way, where do I begin? OK, this is either frickin’ hilarious or ironic depending on how you look at it. For some two years, I lived in a part of town where there are no interesting places to eat after 9 or so in the evening. Actually, there are no interesting places to eat even before that, but that’s a whole new story altogether. Anyway I could afford to if I wanted to. They just didn’t excite me enough for me to want to. Now, I’ve moved to a relatively fabulous locality, with a ton of interesting cuisine available even at the weirdest wee hours of the morning. Of course, the catch here is with the exceptional rent increase, I can’t afford any of it.

Frickin’ ironic.

Unrelated, I’ve been having the weirdest computing trouble, apart from the obvious lack of internet at home. Do you remember the “old” Apple switch ad campaign? In particular, do you remember Ellen Feiss’ story? Now I had a similar experience, except with far more disastrous consequences. I was sitting there, like, doing whatever it is I do, and all of a sudden my computer goes, like, berserk. It’s all *beep* *beep* *beep* and reboots to come up with what is essentially a useless blank screen. Not like I panic, but I am annoyed.

I reboot to GNU/Linux and continue on with life as if nothing happened. Until there is a need for my wireless ethernet card to work which is insanely flaky on it. Angered, I decide to reinstall some things to remember the #&@$**$! geniuses at HP have a sort of “disaster recovery disc set” that wipes out all your data before actually “fixing” anything. So I shell out some money and get a copy of Windows and attempt to “fix” my install. Now this is even more of a genius. Apparently it doesn’t like doing this sort of thing either and warns me that it will wipe out “My Documents” and other folders in the process. Crap. So I cancel setup, only to realize it’s now wiped out my MBR and it only boots to my non functional windows installation. F’in genius.

So, I almost didn’t have a computer, except for me figuring out grub weirdnesses and making a boot floppy so I can get back to my trusty GNU/Linux partition after all this excitement. Actually, said boot floppy had a ton of bad clusters which led to a lot more excitement, but I value your time and will stop.

Anyway, for rather interesting reasons I choose not to get into, most current activity has been diverted to delineate. If you’re one of those relatively long term frequenters of this site, there’s nothing really new to see, but otherwise you might want to take a peek. It might be interesting.

In related news, I’ve finally figured out my next major photography related purchase. A Canon EOS 20D body with a 17 – 85 mm, F4-5.6 EF-S IS lens. Now that lens is obviously just a start, and I think that camera has to last a while with a temporally expanding set of lenses, filters and other accessories since it’s now priced at just under 2 grand. *Shudder* But then again, it’s apparently capable of things like this [>3MB!].

I’ve really got nothing to say. Being annoying-roommate-free is good, but being unable to afford the basic necessities like broadbroadbroadband sucks.

If someone knows one of those easy-to-rob bank places I’ve been hearing so much about, please drop me a line. I have a ton of shopping left to do.

Speaking of a ton of shopping, I’ve worn out one of my credit cards and it’s (embarrassingly) failed to work twice over this past week. I’ve asked for a new replacement, but I had to endure the “how much more careful women are with their things than men” lecture from the bank lady.

Speaking of lady, I’ve slowly migrated from “exceptionally asocial” to “quite social” in the recent past.

OK, so I probably did have something to say.

I’d gone on this trip, and not having access to the internet was weirdly interesting. (Some pictures here and more general verbosity will follow later.)

Oh, and I now have a phone.

This is from a café close to my new home, because I don’t have an internet connection (or a phone, or even TV) yet. I finished the move sometime last evening and as of now there is still a whole lot of stuff strewn all about the new place. I am tired, I am hurting a bit and quite disoriented. I woke rather late after sleeping very early last night, and I’ve still been groggy and weak.

Hmm.

In unrelated news, delineate moves out of beta and a first release candidate exists. Currently known issues include:
1. Rendering issues in some IE versions.
2. The (previous and next) graphical buttons misbehave/don’t function on IE.
3. The comments popup needs a lot more polishing. And the link to the comments popup gives away a lot of information (that it is a php file,
post id number and so on) which I am trying to obscure.

If you have further comments (yes I will answer the unanswered comments and e-mails regarding it soon) please tell me your browser, operating system and screen resolution so I have a more decent idea of where it works and where it breaks. Actually, give me that information even if it works, so I’ll know where it looks/behaves fine. Thanks.

Well, not good enough anyway.
Did I say good? I meant strong, yes strong, that’s it.

You’d be surprised

– How much crap a poor grad student can accumulate.
– How weak a 20 few year old male can be.
– How much he can actually move given how weak he is.
– How much physical damage and trauma he can go through.

And the delineate commenters, thank you. Your concerns will be addressed as soon as I can. For now I am bruised, am scratched, I’ve chipped nails, jammed fingers, stubbed toes, … and tired. But I did it, and the eagle hawk li’l birdie has landed.