Checksum Arcanius

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!

The image gallery seems to be working with all the featured I originally wanted. Of course now I can think of some new things that would be nice, but that will have to come at another time. Basically, you are treated to the most recent set of pictures in the left frame. By clicking on “Albums” you can browse older pictures. When you click on a thumbnail, it opens up in the main window and lets you select different sizes to view the picture, all the way up to the photo’s original maximum size. I am working on parsing EXIF image information, a PHP issue as opposed to a PHPix issue. Check back soon!

Today was the first day of classes at BCC. I had Calculus of Several Variables (Multivar) at 10:30 and Photography at 12:30. Both classes went well – and I have a friend in each. My other class, Tennis, starts tomorrow. It is interesting going back to school, but it was an easy transition, even if things aren’t as familiar as they would be at BYU. At least there is snow-covered grass and contruction to make me feel at home.

Multivar is going to be a real class, I have some brush up on Calc I and II that I’ll need to do if I want to get a jump start in that class. Photography should be relatively easy since I already know most of everything there is to know about the camera side of things. I’ll still have a lot to learn about what happens after the camera, but thats why took the class, so I should enjoy it.

After the photography class, Dan, my friend in the class, and I went to Glazer’s Photography in Seattle where we together purchased 10 rolls of Ilford HP5 Plus 400 – Black and White film, 36 exposures each roll, 100 sheets of Ilford photographic paper, and some plastic sheet negative protectors. We then went to Vetco where I was once again surprised at how expensive easy-to-use ethernet jacks are. With cable modem being installed tomorrow, 100 meters of cat 5 (or is it 6?) cable sitting in the living room, the jacks and wall plates are all that really stand between me and having my own dedicated 1.5 Mbps connection to the internet. I must thank the kind neighbors for all the internet I have borrowed over the months since I learned about Wi-Fi.

In computer-land, I was disappointed with PHP homepage. It parses very slowly on silverfir. Even a faster machine, performance wouldn’t be stellar and there were no particular features I needed. I still plan on a major overhaul of arcanius.silverfir.net at some point, turning it into a more full-featured website instead of just a weblog, but with the ‘blog as the main updated component. This is mainly so I have a better way to display my photos.