Checksum Arcanius

I had some trouble waking up, but made it to the school at 6:09, well before any of the carpool riders had actually left. I was driving the Saturn, so I took three passengers and headed for Kane Hall at the UW. Traffic was virtually nonexistant, and we arrived around 6:30. Once there, we watched as the entire lecture hall filled to capacity with eagar students awaiting the anouncement of this year’s game. After the usual techincal difficulties, and then the usual hour and a half of talk, the game was revealed. Compared to some unveilings (especially 2001), it wasn’t as intimidating. That may just be experience, but still, this game is unique, despite reusing many components from previous years, and its still a doozie. After the game was announced, raffle tickets were sold by team 824, SWAT Robotics, the team hosting the event. The grand prize was a Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz Compaq Laptop. Since it was for a good cause I pitched in, eventually amounting 17 tickets at $5 a pop. Of course, the reason I tell you this is that I WON THE RAFFLE and got a brand new laptop worth $1600 for a mere $85. Of course, this means Mobius, the laptop I’m using right now suddenly seems to be a little older. I still love it though – I just have to find a good home for it once I get everything I want working on the new laptop. Parents are probally high on the list. After the celebration subsided, pictures were taken, and I signed to acknowledge that I had won, then I got to leave with a brand new laptop – currently awaiting its official name and compiling the Gentoo Linux bootstrap. Pretty much everything else has gone well today – I got cable modem installed at the house, Bob and I found the old EDUbot, battery, and charger , and the new laptop seems to be more linux-friendly, or at least linux is more friendly to the new laptop.

Now I am sitting in Bob’s bed plunking away at this computer while the new laptop compiles, and bob works simultaneously at his laptop and his desktop. Good times!

I went to classes, just calc and photograph today. Between classes, I read more of Timeline. I need to get cracking in math to really stay ahead. In photography, we went into the darkroom and made photograms, which consists of placing objects on photographic paper and using an enlarger to expose the paper. Next, we develop the paper, and images more or less magicly appear. Its quite fun and exciting to see the images appear on the paper – and mostly they look quite good too. I’m liking my photography class, even if the professor doesn’t know the science behind the art. After school, I updated some programs for my mom at her office, then I went home and ate some food, watched some TV, and played some CS until 11:00. Then I got into Timeline and read until 1:30. Saturday is the FIRST Robotics Competion Kickoff, starting at 7:00. It will be a long day.

Today was a good day, but I suppose I am being repetitive. I arrived late to my tennis class due to the parking issues at BCC. I will have to find some way to avoid these problems in the future. The instructor, it turns out, was (is?) a room service employee at the Bellevue Club – a fun coincidence. After the short intro to the tennis class, I read more of Michael Chighton’s book Timeline – its a good read, even if I’m not convinced by the science. Next, I went to Math, sat next to Rich, had a good lecture and discussion, then returned home. I applied for work at the Bellevue Club again – it was a nice place to wrok, and as long as its not my attempted source of advancement, just something to do to make money, I’m sure I’ll be alright with it. Otherwise, its back to Blockbuster and applying to Fry’s Electronics. After I rested a little, I called up Maneesh, and we hung out and talked for hours, stopping by Chilli’s for some grub. After I dropped him back home, I returned home and did some photography, some Counterstrike, and now here I am. Time does fly, but it was good.

Among other things, I read a Blog of a colleague that he started on Monday. It is nice to see how carefully it is written. Something like this one was when I started it, if I remember correctly (although I am too lazy to go back and check; someone please let me know if I was always this lax with my writing). Maybe his attention to detail is why he actually gets comments on his blog. Or maybe he just knows a lot of nerds.

I would wax reminiscent right now, except that I don’t want to write all that much – once again, I’m too lazy. I’ll try to get over it soon and share some deep thoughts. Oh, check out the new pictures to the left!

I mentioned about a week ago that I was trying out Mozilla’s Firebird browser. Well, it has converted me thoroughly. Firebird is now my default browser and I’ve only opened IE twice since I made it my default browser about 5 days ago. Both times were to utilize website features that were enabled only on IE (since IE currently has more than 90% marketshare, such features can be considered univeral). Both times didn’t really accomplish anything useful. Point being, no IE-proprietary features are useful in general browsing activities. Firebird is fast, sleek, not security-hole-ridden like IE, and seems to render everything at least as well as IE, if not better. And it is fast. PNG’s work properly. Favicon’s don’t get lost every time. Its got tabbed browsing, something I’m not very good at using yet, but its still very nice. Oh, and its fast and more stable than IE.

Well, Mozilla’s little gem Firebird was so good it got me interested in another one of their “technology preview” items: Thunderbird, an email and newsgroup client. I just installed and set it up today (an extremely easy process), and its now my default mail program, awaiting further scrutiny. I am optimistic.

Ever since I saw the default screen saver that comes with Mac OS X, I have lusted after it. If you have seen it, you probally know what I mean. If you haven’t, go to an Apple store to watch it in awe immediately, or you can rely on this woefully inadequate description: high-quality themed photos (space, forests, etc) are faded in and displayed with a slow but smooth scale/zoom and pan effect. The result is a stunning visual show comprised of nothing but some still pictures. I have tried many times to find a screensaver like this for the PC – or a slideshow, movie, or animation program that could duplicate the effect. Nothing came even remotely close – jumpiness and ugly artifacts during resizing were abundant. I tried and gave up many times before. Today, something once again triggered the search, and I stumbled across “MotionPicture,” a screensaver that did exactly what I wanted. Now I am collecting nice wallpaper-quality images for this awesome screensaver.

BCC daytime classes were cancelled again today; at least this time they announced it before I arrived for my first class. Right now I am reading chapter three of my photography book – it is quite good and has many excellent pictures. As for the rest of the day, I think I’ll try get ahead in my calculus class, become employed again, and have some fun.

As you can see, the overhaul of my ‘blog has begun. Here in the main frame you will still be treated to Arcanius: the weBLog. However, since photography is a big part of my life, I am hacking away at PHPix, a small photo album, to provide you with an integrated picture experience. I’m working on a completely different layout and frame support, and I have already implemented picture titles and descriptions. Since PHPix is GPL’d, I suppose I will get to post the hack job that come up with, and maybe someone will find it useful.

I am still trying to figure out what to do with the upper frame. Comments are welcome!