Checksum Arcanius

Radio stations here in Seattle have gotten much better recently. First, 107.7 The End switched to a new format where music was emphasized, especially the alternative music that defined The End in its earlier years; DJ’s were deemphasized (a move I wholeheartedly agree with), and in general, there was more music to talk. Then I found out that 96.5, formerly The Point, an 80’s station, is now KRock, “Alternative Seattle,” an alternative rock radio station who’s musical selection seems to be even better than The End’s new format. Between the two I have found radio bliss, something I haven’t experienced in Seattle since 1997.

Today, I woke up at a sleep-defying 7:00 am in order to pick up Bobby and Jacob at the UW and get them to Larry’s around 8:00. We ended up pulling in at 8:40, but the three of us were able to turn the tide and convince the group that our idea for a strategy was feasible – basically, we’re building a huge arm that happens to not preclude any other strategy; it should make everyone happy. With another top-notch drivetrain coming from Larry and Dave, we should once again have the best combination of power and speed out on the field, and if we do the arm right, we should be nigh unstoppable. Hanging and small balls then become icing on the cake known as winning the Pacific Northwest Regional, and if we are able to raise $4000, the National Championship as well.

We broke for lunch, having crunched numbers and checked feasibility to determine that our arm could concievably lift 200 pounds at 5 feet – a figure which made us all giddy with excitement. After lunch and some small work on Inventor, we headed back to the UW with Chris and Tim. There, I soon fell asleep and got nothing accomplished before returning home, where I got my Dad’s new WET11v2 working for him before coming up here, writing this, enjoying 107.7 and 96.5, and feeling hungry for the fourth time today.

Today, I made some prints of a few select negatives. I am in love with 8×10 prints. So much detail and so beautiful if done right. I used a grain focuser (a very nifty tool) and found an enlarger that I like. It is pure magic watching your image apear on the paper as you dip it into the developer. After shcool, I finished off the Bearing block design (see left panel), then hung out with Amy and found out that there is still time to raise money for Nationals. We have both gotten a second fundraising wind. Wish me luck!

You may have noticed that I always seem to be in a good mood when posting these entries. Well, I have noticed too, and it clearly means I should post more often since reflecting on my life, in general, tends to make me happy.

Early this morning, before going to sleep, I got closer to finishing Timeline. After waking up, which was hard, I made it to Calculus and then dropped by Dan’s place where I took a look at his darkroom setup. He has converted his laundry room to have everything needed to make prints. While the school has bigger, sturdier, and more specialized equipment, this laundry-room darkroom will be indispensable when the school�s darkroom is crowded with students. Also, the hours are more convenient. We went to class together. The teacher repeated his lecture on f-stops and shutter speeds. As exciting as it is (which it is not), I knew all the content before the first lecture, and the third time didn�t make it any more endearing. Dan is convinced that our teacher is paid by the word. After the lecture, we went into the darkroom to learn how to make contact prints and test strips. Useful information, if we had had any time left to use it.

After a small lunch, Dan and I returned to the darkroom. He had only set up 5×7 developing bins, so I made a few 5×7 prints displaying the effects of different apertures. I still need to finish off my last roll and develop it. I also want to use the BCC darkroom for some full-page contact prints and some 8×10 work.

Windows is installed on Kleinoscope — It will still be until the weekend at least until it is fully functional with all the programs on Mobius here. After I get the cord on Mobius repaired, I have to figure out what to do with it. One thought that has crossed my mind is to sell both laptops and with the resulting funds buy a very nice Dell laptop with swappable battery packs, a real video card, higher resolution, and so on. The two computers combined should go for over $2000. That�s quite a laptop. Nevertheless, the original idea behind Mobius is that it would be a long-term investment � a productivity laptop that would last years. That�s why I got a protection plan for it – a decision that in hindsight I would reconsider, but it still has a year and a half to make itself worthwhile. If I want a high-power machine, then I think I should get a new desktop. But these are all hard decisions. It�s interesting how winning a laptop can lead to so many more questions.

I am writing this in MS Word, so that spelling gets corrected. I hope it makes things easier to read. Leave a comment (like anybody does that) to let me know what you think. Tennis at 8:30 tomorrow, so I had better begin getting ready for bed.

My task, which I already accepted, is to take http://www.wetoc.org and de-coldfusionify it so it can be used on Parcom web servers. Since my language of choice is PHP, and Parcom (and every other half-decent web host) supports it, I am using PHP to replace the CFM. While it is some amount of work, I’m impressing myself with my 1337 PHP skillz. Yeah…

Anyway, today I spent too much time sitting around being tired, and now I’m getting hyper again. Can you say night owl?! I’m gonna try switching over to being an early bird, though. Maybe it’ll suit me better, if I would only ever go to sleep.

Its been a few days. During these days, I’ve gone to bed too late, gotten up even later, and barely made it to school some days. I have also accomplished a lot. I developed my first roll of film, got Linux working – mostly – on the new laptop. Right now I’m compiling a 2.4.22 kernel, since the 2.6 kernel seems to be, while working, full of annoying missing modules and just not as friendly yet. I need to get ahold of a non-spyware version of Windows XP for the other 55 gb of the hard drive.

You may recall that I recently began using iTunes for Windows. It works well for buying music, but it is a terrible media manager. I tried importing all of my music and the program froze. I was forced to shut it down and feed it my music in smaller chunks. Quickly, with hundreds of songs, the library because unusable. So the store works alright, and the burning and other options seem nice, but as a media player is is crappy. Winamp, on the other hand, has been constantly upgraded from the good old days of 2.x, the version I, until recently, still used. Nullsoft, the developers of Winamp, began charging for a pro version of their version 5 video/music/everything else player. I didn’t want an everything player. I wanted a highly customizable music player, and winamp 2.x was good, but with plugins harder to find, support dwindling, and the entire project moving in an unfortunate direction, I decided I had to find something better. iTunes clearly couldn’t handle my needs, so the search began. This one ended relatively quickly with the installation of foobar2000, a highly customizable, extremely extensible, sleek, small, beautiful music player with built in support for global hotkeys. In short, it is everything I was hoping for and more. Congrats to the designers of this fine peice of software.

This is the third major software package that I have radically changed in the recent days. First I switched from Microsoft IE to Mozilla Firebird. Based on that incredible success, I tried, and adopted Mozilla Thunderbird as my mail client. Now I have migrated from WinAmp to foobar2000. I suggest to anyone with similar minimalist yet highly functional tastes as me to do the same.

Today my first class was Tennis; I seem to have a problem getting there on time. Most of the people in the class are beginners, but I did get a nice-looking girl as a partner; we’ll see if anything happens there. For a first-timer, she was pretty good, drawing on her badmitton experience I suppose. The teacher, whom I met at the Bellevue Club, mentioned that he saw me there yesterday, which is indeed true. It was my first stop there in over a month. It was strange, all the tables seemed very small; in fact the whole resturant seemed very small. And really, it is a small resturant, but the effect was still strange. I was looking for my last paycheck which, apprently, HR has, but I did not figure this out until after I left, having failed to find either Michael or Kytta. I did get to see Erica, Heidi, Jessi, Will, and Joe again – It was very good to see them again. Hugs from three pretty girls is certainly a perk of leaving the place on good terms. I will try again soon to pick up my paycheck.

Last night, two salepeople pitched an air filter and a surface cleaner (not a vacuum – its a medical device, you see) to us. We were impressed both by its ability to suck up what our vacuum missed and by its price tag. Within one week we will decide if we want to go for it. The salespeople were my age, and apparently the company is hiring; I’m going to give them a call and try to set up an interview to explore the possibility there. The hours might not be the best, but they said it was flexible – so we will see.

I just recompiled the Linux kernel again – it certainly is faster on this P4 2.8 Ghz than it ever was on Blackbrick, the P90 laptop that I bagan using Linux on last year. It looks like this kernel jams on boot… but wait, this time it made it. Interesting.

Somewhere between Linux and Windows is the optimal operating system. I have a 3 inch book to help me figure out if FreeBSD is that happy median. Complete control within a standardized system – so things work without trying too hard, but you can tweak things endlessly as needed for specific needs. Just that book is so intimidating. Speaking of books, I have quite a few I still have to begin and finish: The Bourne Ultimatum, Wild at Heart, Red Planet, A Beautiful Mind, and The Mind of Wall Street, just to name some that are in sight of me right now. But before I finish any of those, Timeline will have to go. Its just that much more itneresting.

Since this entry is pretty much just stream-of-conscience, here goes some more random information – I came up with a name for the new laptop: “Kleinoscope.” It combines the idea of the 3-D mobius strip known as the Klein Bottle with what I think is a much better sounding name. Too bad its not too colorful (yet), or the Kaleidascope connation would fit as well. The computer has a few interesting problems – the first is that its power cord doesn’t stay in as well as it should. It never falls out on its own, mind you, but jostling and make the cord fall out, so I have to keep an eye on it or it will randomly turn off from time to time, usually in the middle of compiling something while I’m away. Also, the PCMCIA port looks deflected and the left lower side doesn’t taper like it should. Also, its missing a 9-pin serial connection. Its hard to complain about much else though; its a solid machine with USB 2.0, DVD+RW, Firewire. Of course I’ll need windows for most of these features to be used in the way I wish to use them, thus I am looking for a non-spyware version of Windows XP and I’m contemplating even officially buying the Home -> Pro upgrades.

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.