actuality.log

This is just a bit too weird. I mean, I am old enough to understand death and things but that doesn’t mean I have to be reminded it exists so often. I was walking home last night rather late, when I noticed this small deer lying down in the snow by the side of the sidewalk. For an instant I hoped she was resting or something, but that seemed like an awfully cold place to be. A little closer and her eyes were open, with this blank stare.

She wasn’t breathing.

By the time I got home and figured out the number (without a computer or a half decent phone book) for the humane society / animal welfare people, they already knew about it.

This is too much, she was definitely just a kid. It’s not fair.

Spent some time in the evening working on the backend for our friend http://umich.edu/~hnarayan

All was well until I checked it on Internet Explorer. For some reason it wants to render arbitrary lines which just mess things up.

How it should look, as rendered in galeon.

How it looks on IE.

If people with different versions of IE confirm this I will be a happier man. Now I need some sleep.

I “know” none of these people, and haven’t met any of them. But I have gotten a glimpse into their work through email lists, activity logs and brief exchanges on IRC. Three young GNOME hackers passing in something like a month. It isn’t supposed to be like this. I do feel quite sorry for their families and friends. :(

Ettore Perazzoli, Chema Celorio and Mark Finlay.

Good bye, thank you and hope things are better where you are.

I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to not do this either. I hope I don’t have to ever again.

First, rush here: http://umich.edu/~hnarayan/

Back so soon? It’s a template for a non-existent ‘professional’ site. I’d really like comments. And yes, I am willing to listen (and not snap back too). This is the first step in a bunch to separate the work related things from the not work related things around here. Yes, I am begging. Even a good/bad/gah/eek/.. might help.

Change might be good.

I noticed I’ve been maintaining a whole lot more eye contact with people in general. Not for the normal folk I usually be with, that’s always been ‘creepily high’. I mean, for the random ones, who you pass and you’re quite sure you might never see again or don’t particularly care that you won’t? It’s been, odd. I’ve never had more random person 2 line exchanges or even small conversations with arbitrary people in my entire life than I have over the past few weeks. And people just seem to be an awful lot more friendly and smiley. Or maybe it’s just me. Eitherway, this is a sort of thing that I couldn’t stand when I first got here. Now I (gasp) look forward to it.

Change might be good.

I ALMOST rolled my first ‘r’ today. :|. Someone was asking me about something complicated and I go “But it’s just so harr(begin to consider the roll .. mayday mayday, what the fish do you think you’re doing.. abruptly end the syllable)d”. Was awfully close.

Change might be bad.

And hair lengths. You know it’s time for a hair cut:
(a) When you cough up hairballs
and you’re not a cat.
(b) When it gets stuck in your jacket zipper
when you thought you were holding it out of the way
and your zip is no where near the general neck region.
(c) When you’re willing to admit it
though it means having to endure overly chirpy people. GAH!
(d) All the above, and a bunch more you claim you’re too lazy to jot down
when in reality you want to but you can’t see very clearly with all that hair.

Change might be necessary.

And yes, let’s not forget these.

Change might be good.

And really, I have nothing more to say about it. Making people laugh is the most amazing feeling one can have. (Probably the most is a bit strong, but it must definitely fall way up there near the top at least.)

Losing your computer can hit you on so many levels. Apart from the obvious work related things, there are a host of other irritants like lacking the ability to wake and chew through email or being unable to download images from your camera without going through mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/camera/ style cryptisms. But something that’s really made me miss it is being unable to listen to music at home. I was pretty hooked into the rather nice docking station like feel at home, where the notebook would plug into the rest of the “music system” and I can listen to whatever noise I usually do.

Now that’s gone.

So I’ve been lugging around 50-60 discs at all times, but that is a pain after a bit. So made some space and started ripping the better 10-20 onto some other machines last evening. Grip has proved to be an excellent tool, though there was one scratched disc and paranoia didn’t give up, needing it to be killed. But all in all good stuff.

Last evening was also one of those (now frequent) caffeine abuse evenings. I was buzzing like a bee, and went home at some 1 in the morning. Couldn’t sleep of course. Totally active, high, and happy. Worked on and sorted out accounts (of all things) with people and am a thousand bucks richer. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. Then called comcast, and their lines were busy at TWO in the morning, but eventually got through and should have cable at home in a bit. I just hope my computer’s fixed before that. I generally detest comcast, but there was something rather cool that happened last evening. As I was one the line with the woman changing my cable plan, the channels I could access were instantaneously changing. Very cool.

That done, I still couldn’t sleep. Remembered I told this person I’d work on something if I have the time. So I started. First pass was just a bunch of unrelated paragraphs, quotes and anecdotes. In the second, I started tying it in. It looked cool last night. It looks just about bearable right now. Will work on it some more and send it to the people so the little kiddies can read. I don’t have a title yet, but for now it deals with curiosity, knowledge, thought, experiment, all leading to deterministic points of view and I might stretch that even to the existence (or not) of “God”, if I feel controversy createy at the time, culminating in the saviour and champion probability inducer, quantum physics.

Moving along, had to wake rather early and reached a class that wasn’t held where I thought it should be (or has been cancelled or was off today for some reason or…). So spent that time looking around for studio deals. I think if I am willing to double what I spend a month on housing, I can live in some rather cool place, in a hip part of town. Yes, people living in cool places are automatically cool.

Or so I have to try telling myself to convince me to cough up the added 400 bucks or so each month.

And yes, I totally side-stepped the joygasmic happy making thing, again.

I even started typing it out, when my brain fused. I am enjoying a long overdue overdose of music this evening (which explains the timestamp on this post), and my brain is finding it hard to multi-task. In a great way. Was however, strangely able to catch up on a large chunk of unanswered email. So these stolen yet apt enough lyrics will have to suffice.

Cold and frosty morning there’s not a lot to say
About the things caught in my mind
Damn my education I can’t find the words to say
With all the things caught in my mind

Shot from the comfort of home on another such cold and frosty morning. Yes, that explains the dirt on the glass becoming a part of the picture, but it’s a small price to pay to stay warm.

Unrelated, but what I wanted to talk about I think – making people smile is fun, in a life-force-giving-fluid thirst quench sort of necessary joygasmic way. I wonder why everyone doesn’t see this.

This living with people thing is a bit much. I mean really, I am too old for this. Just one fishing evening, and suddenly with three people instead of one, I’ve never felt more cramped in my life. Guests, phone calls, LOUD talking, and general noise. It was perfect. Orderly, and neat. IT WAS ORDERLY. One day, and it’s all back to chaos and entropy’s through the roof. And it’s too hot even by my standards.

And here’s the killer, too much fishing HINDI.

There are so many aspects to this that annoy me in other ways too. I hate being the youngest person by over ten years all the time. I just hate it. ALWAYS being around older people at home is so depressing. I DON’T WANT TO END UP ALL BALD AND BELLIED. I know I probably will, but I’d rather not think about it or be reminded about it at every possible instant.

I think what is bothering me is that somehow I’ve lost my chance at being a kid. I’ve been old and mature as a child. Soon, I’ll be old. Somewhere in there, there should have been fun and carefree. I really would like to know how that feels. This being a wannabe kid in the head, but circumstances and people you live with and so on being “been there done that, I’d rather sleep” old, is fishing crazy.

While I am at it, this doesn’t help either.

First thing tomorrow, I look for a studio. I don’t care if I can’t afford it. I don’t care if I become the… I might as well paste this.

CHANDLER: If I’m gonna be an old, lonely man, I’m gonna need a thing, you know, a hook, like that guy on the subway who eats his own face. So I figure I’ll be Crazy Man with a Snake, y’know. Crazy Snake Man. And I’ll get more snakes, call them my babies, kids will walk past my place, they will run. “Run away from Crazy Snake Man,” they’ll shout!

Remember that? Good times. Good times. I remember being able to laugh so hard.

I have the strangest feeling a new roomie (I’d say housie, but that sounds more like a game than someone you live with) would have moved in and be at home before I get there. Just hope it isn’t too weird.

I’m too old for this.

Today was rather interesting. Showed off the home to more (rather nice) interested (and prospective house mate) people, and reached for work at some 11:30 or so. So far things were pretty normal. And then this shows up in the mail, at 11:42.

Hi all,

A former student in our lab has moved away and left his bike in Ann Arbor …
The bike will be offered on a first-come, first serve basis …
…
(Obviously clipped to the interesting bits because you must be the busy sorts.)

11:44, I have a new (old) bike. Which was pretty good, considering it is a rather decent 18 speed mountain terrain thing. You know, because I am the rough and tough sorts who’ll use it on his next expedition. Anyway, it must be in 20s outside. (Real world units -6 C). Why is that important? Get to that in a bit. So here I am, new bike and all, so the obvious impulse is to check it out. So, wheel it down to the nearest gas station (gasp, I didn’t even think petrol bunk), and filled up the tires (and yes, I didn’t think tyres either). Now the interesting thing here is our friend compressor doesn’t have a pressure gauge, and I have no way of knowing necessary details. Fearing not, I take it out for a spin. It was well balanced (meaning 23 or not, risk breaking teeth or not, you tend to not hold the handle bar as much) and generally fun. An hour or so later I get home and realize I have no way of chaining it to anything. So I wheel it in to the house looking for a makeshift solution, while I begin to wonder, hmm.. 70 degrees inside, 40-50 degree difference from the rest of the environment, I wonder how much the tire tubes will expand. KA-BLAM!! (Reminiscent of fun 60’s and 70’s shows involving grown men running around in tights fighting crime), and I’ve blown one tire. Needless to say, I almost emptied the other one in a little bit. Needless to say, coefficients of thermal expansion are not always your friend.

Needless to say, ah well, with the general scheme of things, I expected no better.

Was this side of the contry a year or so ago?

I am probably a lot blinder than I think I am.

Having no computer at home has some perks. Like getting to squeeze some quality TV time from the otherwise usually TV-less days. Randomly flippity flopping through channels when I stumbled upon an adorable little film, The seven year itch. It wasn’t great, or as funny as it thought it was, but it was just so cute. People who know my preferences in things know I am not too keen on things I classify “old”. (Since I realize using less “stuff” and replacing all stuff with “things” defeats the purpose, “things” in that last statement refers to movies/music.) And there it was, this darling little thing released a good quarter century before I was born, and yet I liked it. And I found it funny.

Whether I was laughing at or because of it wasn’t clear at times, but it made me laugh and that’s that.

Moving on to other things, not too long ago, during a particularly absent minded week, I lost one pair of glasses AND broke my spare. Inherently, I have no issues with that because I can see well enough without them for most practical purposes. But for some reason I had to blab about this to my parents, and voila, next time a relative flies there and back, I have a brand new shiny pair. Now, this would be good news if its frame colour wasn’t an odd mix of brassy pinky metallicish shinyish .. gah, I can’t even describe it. I hate it. I try not to wear it. And I’m beginning to feel a tad guilty about it.

I’ve screamed about it, but *cough* people responsible don’t seem to mind. I mean if the store doesn’t have too much to choose from, you don’t buy. Or you wait. I know, probably, at times I’ll sound peeved about not being able to choose your own gender, but this rather feminine coloured frame is definitely not one of the reasons.

Grayish metallicish and thereabouts – the only acceptable colour spectrum.

I am quite linguistically biased though I try quite hard not to be. This transcends into my little geek world too as a generic dislike of all things not C/C++. Like eclipse, for instance. In my opinion Java is slow and sucks and that’s that, and hence magically, eclipse does too. I did try it though, and I must say it is quite good. But I’ll stick to real men IDEs, like Emacs, for now.

Click to enlarge if you’re really that curious.

Not getting off the geek train for just a little bit more, been fiddling around with gsl‘s love (or lack of it) for icc. Then built gsl with gcc, as icc failed some checks. Just for fun, (no, not really) I was testing the same proggy under gcc and icc. Got different numbers. Hmm. And not close to (double precision) machine epsilon.

Just one more stop. I noticed on TechTV (yes, no surprise I watch it) and other places how awesome the Canon Rebel is. I was, for just a little bit, not a believer. And then I saw some sample images. It was then clear to me, my life had purpose. I knew what I wanted, until I saw sample images from the EOS 10D. Now I am back to where I started. Just a confused man running (slowly walking) around this rather complicated world.

Eitherway, anyone with brilliant (or even not so brilliant) ways to come up with a spare $1500, should contact me ASAP.

Good, I needed that release.

(Yes, there is something about new years jokes.)

Being home has not been as much fun as I had hoped. Haven’t slept very well for the past couple of nights. I really did try. Been tossing and turning and wake early early with pain all over my body. Not happening. Oh that, and contrary to the usual vibes I might give out, being alone does suck once in a while.

In an attempt to break records of sorts breaking new years resolutions, I’ve been working on a new aggregator. I am not in a frame of mind to explain its purpose or how you can get your journal on it if you want to, but a FAQ is in the works. For now, this is a technology check and a place where I circumvent nasty bugs. If you really want to see how something like this could evolve, check out planet gnome. Yes, hackergotchi heads are sweet.

Update: The FAQ is up.

Isn’t she adorable?

Wish you a pleasant, safe, productive and intellectually stimulating new year. I’d say happy too, but that’d be redundant consdering the title of this post.

If you’re wondering what those two halves of the title have in common, don’t bother.

So here I am, back at the uni. It’s been, oddly enough, unodd. Bringing legolas up to speed on all that I need, to avoid missing megatr0n as much. Some nonsensical anti-phone caused issues, and I spent most of my afternoon in the cold outside waiting and achieved nothing. Well, not entirely nothing, I had time to think about making those resolution thingies a tad more detailed and sort out some issues with cvs. Of course, you’d wonder why, since they are most probably going to be broken in a jiffy. Anway, here’s the second pass,

• Use the computer less. As in I can make bold statements like this now, because I almost HAVE to, don’t I?
• Go out more.
• Spend time with people. Even if it’s something rather mundane sounding like synchronizing lunch breaks.
• Buy a phone, and get comfortable with it.
• Consider moderate exercise. No gym/rippley anything, just not die when we’re 45 exercising. (Jogging perhaps? No, I have no interest, just setting up for something that’s amusing me at the moment).
• Try new stuff – Improve wardrobe to something that can’t be captured by a 4 colour palette (yes, we’re looking to add brown especially), pick up interest in a sport (no, not play, watch).
• Find lost ability to focus one on thing and not pile on more tasks than I want to handle.
• Join and get involved in the activities of the carnatic music group/club/society/whatever else it might be called at the uni, and not mind.. stuff. (arbitrary elitisms must be toned down).
• Do less of certain kinds of ‘stuff’. Probably can use time for more productive things.
• Use less “like”, “you know”, “god damnit”, “jesus christ”, “sweet” amongst other words when I talk.
• Remember not to abuse megatr0n if it returns fixed and happy.

And recently, we’ll say “events” have come up which’ve made me wonder whether management might not be so bad. If I were to (as hell was making up its mind about freezing over) study anything related to management, it’d be marketing. (And that’s not entirely related too.) If I ever get conned into doing any such thing, I’m sure I’d stick to advertising or some such. I wonder if [this is an obligatory “implied certain procreative bodily fluid” warning, along with a friendly reminder that the current iteration of the disclaimer is now in effect] subviral advertising is part of the course. Sneaky (and admittedly fake), but I’m sure there are *cough* people out there who’d forgotten the existence of puma as a brand who will be buying their shoes from them real soon. You know, for when they jog or whatever.