Checksum Arcanius

I was reflecting recently on my short-term plans, so I thought I’d enumerate a list:
1. SilverFir.net
a. Decommission oasis as my desktop machine (I haven’t actually turned it on in weeks).
b. Remove the S.B. Audigy II Platinum and CD-RW drive from oasis and store for next desktop machine.
c. Move the SCSI cards and drives from the dead-by-power-supply server machine to oasis.
d. Install Gentoo Linux with EVMS (?), Apache, PHP, Tomcat (?), MySQL, Exim, ProFTPd, and maybe a few other services — all secure as needed.
e. Move oasis back to a higher bandwidth location, switch SilverFir.net DNS resolution back over as well.
f. At some future point, set up VPN or otherwise secure file sharing on SilverFir.net so I can access my [mp3’s | documents | videos | other files] from anywhere in the world with my laptop and an internet connection.
2. Other stuff
a. Research and purchase a digital video camera before the FIRST Pacific Northwest Regional on March 5-6.
b. Get 2001 TRC thank you awards that are sitting in Tim’s house to proper people.
c. Research and purchase components to build a new desktop.
i. Better than P4 2.8 Ghz (Current laptop)
ii. High end graphics card
iii. Flippin’ fast disk arrays — perhaps software RAID 0 for video editing.
d. Help design of kitchen remodel at my house
e. Talk to International School principal about keeping portables around after this year for use by TRC.
f. Finish writing thank you letters to the rest of my hosts on the road trip (Better late than never).
g. Study for math, so I can ace my next midterm, so I can play CS again.
h. I keep thinking of more things, but I’ll stop there.

Notice the order. This is why I’m not doing so well in math.

One nice thing about this computer: While its DVD reader only gets about 2x on rips, I don’t even notice any latency anywhere else on the system. I actually rather prefer it this way — multitasking as it was meant to be.

Well, today was rather uneventful. Math didn’t have enough content, I studied with Amanda for the test; consequently, we both did well. I then finished my second roll for the assignment due Wednesday, then developed it after quick lunch and picking up the DVD I am currently ripping (TRC’s 2003 Pacific Northwest Regional Matches) and dropping that off to a waiting Chris and Tim at BCC. Then I went to my mom’s office and helped her with some Word Page layout, then it was off to Tim’s to check on progress of the TRC’s video for the assembly on Wednesday. I also bid on a ATI Radeon 9700 Pro — but he decided a 240% annualized rate of return wasn’t enough for him, so I didn’t get it. Yet. But it did get me to thinking about getting a new computer, thus (1) and (2c) above. After that it was a quick jaunt home for dinner (Corn tortilla chips, cheddar cheese, and chili) before heading to the Walt and Karen’s place to carpool to Benaroya Hall in Seattle to listen to the Archdiocese of Seattle’s Catholic School’s Choirs perform. It was mostly good — my favorite of the night was Sacred Names school’s “Three Ways to Vacuum a House” which featured a vacuum cleaner prop and no director. Then it was back home to blog. A good day.

Now I just hope the nice nested lists copy over to Greymatter alright.

CDex rules again. I used it long ago to rip my CDs to mp3s, and then I switched to EAC. Then EAC stopped working on my laptop, and I used nothing for a long time. Then I got the latest version of CDEx and it is even better than it was before and it seems to make wonderful rips. Straight to mp3 via lame. And its open source. What more could I want? check it out @ sf.net (sourceforge.net, not to be confused with silverfir.net, although both are worthy projects).

I have some really good friends. In fact, I am amazed by the quality of my friends. You know who you are.

So far I have kept my counterstrike commitment, but I’m not doing so well with the studying commitment. Not enough library time I suppose (none, to be exact). Other commitments are doing even worse. I blame it on my lack of diligence. In my life, when the going gets tough, I have tended to pack up and leave. I was good enough at enough things that I guess nobody noticed. Or if they did notice, they didn’t do anything about it. But that is the past, and whatever happened, I have to deal with it now. I’m getting significantly better at facing down irrational fears, although it still takes the active intervention my rational self. My big need right now is to find it within myself to stick to something hard even if the outcome looks less than optimal for me. These two things are related because — as far as I know — I have always done well in school courses where I tried. However, because I tend to back off from things that aren�t looking to end well for me, I’ve never really tried at a course in which I was doing badly. Since it goes both ways, and I’m not really sure which is the cause and which is the effect, or if its some combination — but the end result is that I have never really been at risk of putting it all out there and failing in a classroom setting — or any other setting for that matter really. I’ve been planning on having this Calculus test change that — the first test didn’t go so well, so there is a real chance I’ll do badly in the class. And I want to ace it, which is still very possible from a raw points perspective. But I�m having trouble getting into gear of this — I have only done homework once. While I am not required to turn the homework in, it is very necessary to do it to get the proficiency needed for tests, which require both accuracy and speed. So unless I actually try here, I will remain uncertain of my ability to excel at school when failure is a real possibility. I will keep you posted.

Otherwise, it was a typical Sunday — dropped off movies, went to church, lounged around at home after eating… getting nothing done. Until maybe now, if I’m good, I’ll do something useful after this. We’ll see. Well, this is useful, isn’t it? Or is it? Meh.

I’m out of my Lithium — have been for a couple of days now. I take it for combating tendencies toward depression — and it does seem to level my mood. So I should probably get that one refilled, even ifs it’s just the placebo effect, it’s a good effect. And sooner rather than later I’m going to have to have my pinky on my right hand looked at. An injury that went away after I ignored it years ago came back in December and it’s lingering this time, and its probably time that I got it fixed for good. My guess is that it’s a fracture — and if so, it would be the closest thing to a broken bone I’ve ever had.

Multitasking is great: I’m chatting, administering SilverFir.net, watching a movie, and writing up the latest entry to the blog all at the same time. Well, I’m mostly watching the movie and chatting, which is why after an hour I’m only on my second sentence here. Two hours. Three� ok, maybe multitasking isn’t so great :-p.

…

Well, The movie was good, and the problem with SilverFir.net was extremely obscure. Somehow, the loopback interface wasn’t up — so “localhost” and 127.0.0.1 would give different results, and I couldn’t ping myself. Thanks to a user (see http://moretti.silverfir.net) wanting to install Uberblog (see http://dris.dyndns.org:8080/) the problem started showing symptoms, and after hours of struggle, was figured out and (hopefully) resolved.

I’m thinking I need to get the next version of SilverFir up real soon, because the current one is going haywire pretty quickly. Gentoo is looking like a good option. Now I just need a way to upgrade with minimal downtime.

Since I am thinking about it now, I have thought of an ideas that I think should be considered for Linux distributions: instead of putting files all over the filesystem when installing things (as Debian and Gentoo do), why not put all the files for a particular program in a single directory (say, /usr/local/programname/ just like apache and mysql default to), then use simlinks for everything else — logs, config files, binaries — just put simlinks in the “regular” places – /usr/bin or /etc or /var/log, etc. That way, when a program is deinstalled, a cron job can go by and neatly clean up all the simlinks and there is no residual from the program. And deinstallation involves one rm command. Very clean, very simple. Maybe someday I’ll suggest this to someone who knows what to do about the idea.

Well today I made it to Larry’s about 10 — only Hilary and Eric were there. I stayed until around 5, by which time the mast of the arm was maybe complete. I wish I were better at doing the arm project myself, but there are so many things that I just don’t think about yet. It’ll just take time I guess. After leaving Larry’s I made my way to Sammamish — stopping by Amanda’s place. She was at work, so I stopped there and let her know about the test on Monday. We’ll be studying before class Monday. o.O

I never made it to Sammamish. I got about as far as the TV — with the newfangled cable TV we have, Monster House was on, and it sucked me in as I feasted on extra sharp white cheddar melted over corn tortilla chips. Then my dad got home, and we watched “Out of Time,” which I picked up at Blockbuster for free earlier today (got to love late Saturday nights and guaranteed in stock movies). Then my mom got home, and it was after ten, and I decided I would actually make it to Larry’s around 8:00 tomorrow, so I should get to bed. But first I voiced some worries about the TRC achieving its mission, using my parents as a sounding board. It was good to get some of my ideas — developed on my own and borrowed from others — out in the open. It helps crystallize them so they stick around, which is important, especially for good ideas.

I’ve found out that I’m no good at studying anymore. I tend to mess around on my computer instead of studying, unless I’m being really good. But I don’t have trouble staying on task in the photo lab, for example. So it’s a location thing. Maybe some visits to the library are in my future�

I recently shifted strategies on my usage of Gentoo Linux on my laptop. Before, I was more worried about the fact that Linux didn’t seem to support my PC cards for war driving, that the frame buffer wasn’t working properly due to the infamously unsupported ATI Radeon IGP series. Then I realized that I was missing the point. When I got my first laptop, an antique Pentium 90, from my dad a year ago, linux was the only modern operating system that would work. And on that computer, the framebuffer was impossible (although PC cards did work) — but it was an excellent computer for me. It got me so familiar with Debian that I was able setup what is now running silverfir.net in about an hour — plus some tweaks since then. What I am now using Gentoo on Kleinoscope for is to become as familiar with Gentoo as I became with Debian, so that I can feel comfortable switching over. Already, I am pretty happy with Gentoo�s system. It looks like I can easily get not only Apache, MySQL, and PHP up quickly, but that other things I had wanted to do for friends, such as Tomcat (for Clifton at www.InLag.com), are going to be incredibly easy. Now I’m itching to get sf2 back offline (ie, use wadi to serve again) so I can set up gentoo on the faster box. Sure, I’ll have to compile everything, but I did that with all the important stuff in Debian anyway, since everything tends to be so obsolete. With Gentoo, cutting edge stuff is available, but its also much easier — and the defaults seem to work well with me, so far at least, so I won’t have to move outside of the wonderful package system that Gentoo has. And it’s a Linux, so the things that bug me about the BSDs aren’t an issue — such as the behavior of arrow keys in vim. I’ll let you know how things progress.

I was feeling a bit down yesterday and forgot to blog. But with the length each entry has grown to, maybe you all (whoever you are) needed a break. As for today, math was uneventful, and in photography we covered what will be on the test on Monday. Since Amanda wasn’t there, I am considering a trip to Sammamish — might lift the spirits a bit. Once I got home I vacuumed the truck — it was badly needed — and I felt good. Then I came back and spent some time on the computer, and I starting feeling a little down again. I think I need a little bit of time off the computer (except for blogging, this makes me happy, remember?) So here I go to suck the marrow of life. Wish me luck. =D

Updated Photos! Updated Photos!
I�m sorry that they will take a little while to load; I am currently serving from my house and thus am limited to cable modem upload speeds. On the other hand, the computer is now much faster, so resizing to a size that isn�t cached should actually go faster. Now it is time to explain the last three photos�

Years ago my dad gave me a strobe light kit. A few days ago, I finally decided to put it together. I blame this decision on my choice to avoid counterstrike until I do well on a Math test. I have a lot of time to do good things that I should have been doing for a long time now. So, I started soldering the parts to the board. I am not an expert at soldering, but I did quite well. But then I got overconfident, and didn�t read all of the instructions, and ended up soldering one part of the wrong side of the board. So I unsoldered it – a tedious task – and ended up breaking one of the leads to the transformer I had misplaced. Well, I jammed the pin back in, but once the entire thing was soldered together, I got sporadic flashes at best, and no flashes at worst. It turns out that the particular component I had screwed up was the transformer that initiated the ionization of the Xenon gas in the flash tube. I explained the situation to my dad, and he thought of an old, broken Vivatar camera flash he had lying around. He found the flash and dissected it, then I removed the corresponding part from the flash and soldered it into the kit. I turned it on and � voila! The strobe light kit came alive. The final picture has the transformer from the flash circled. The strobe light isn’t actually all that impressive, because the rate of strobe is only several times per second at best, and the flash is never particularly bright. But the point of the project really was to practice to the mini-sumo kit I have had sitting around for about two and a half years. Maybe this year I will actually compete in an individual robotics competition� I’ll explain some day, but for now, I will move on.

As mentioned above, I have vowed not to play Counterstrike until I do well on a Math test. I still long to play – I�ll look at server stats and wish I were playing and load up HLSW to see which members of my clan are showing others what’s up– and almost click to join. But so far, I have been truthful to my vow. I hope I do well on the next test, though � I want to play again! But not playing has given me some time to study math. I actually did some problems out of the packet today; this is a first for me in this class. I plan at doubling up sections until I am up to date, hopefully with enough time to study as well before the test. So, strangely, avoiding counterstrike has helped me gain some work ethic and more life structure. Well, maybe that’s not so strange.

In order to compile modern versions of PHP for silverfir.net, I have to have the GCC compiler version three or above. However, Debian’s “Stable” distribution includes gcc-2.95 � and adding on 3.0 isn�t fun. So I tend up upgrade to the “unstable” version which isn’t really that unstable, just the packages don’t always work perfectly. So while I am generally very happy with Debian, and I understand it well enough to work with it well, I think things can get better. Some day, I hope I will find the OS that clicks with me. Until then, I will keep trying Gentoo, FreeBSD, and whatever else gets suggested until one of them starts to make sense to me.

Well, tomorrow is an early class and a long day — so that’s all for now.

Today –
Classes: Tennis (suggestion vastly improved consistency), Math (fun, impending test): 8:40-11:30
Lab Work: Photography (2 more 8×10 prints): 11:30-1:00
Home: Resurect Palm m500 (success): 1:30-3:00
Larry’s: Solidify Robot Arm Design (coming together, my job is shoulder drive)
UW: Drop off Bob and Jake, Eat (yummy Pizza)
Home: Email and Counterstrike (sucked)
Bed: Sleep (now)