landmark

Heyyyyy I've beaten record for posts in a year! (Besides the fact that the first year was only more like half a year, but I'll just gloss that over and look at post counts). And the year is closing up! For now though, my dry spell on the blog is gonna have to go for a little bit longer.

Finals week is upon us and I'm busy studying. HAHAHAH yeah right. *sigh. Well, let's just say I'm leaving time that can be used for studying.

Next post I plan on unveiling a little program that I recently whipped up. I personally think it's neat, but maybe that's just because I made it myself. Anyway, until then, good luck on finals if you have them! If not, you suck.

Happy Turkey Day!

Suppose I haven't had much time to post anything, butttttt.........

Happy Turkey Day! Well, at least that gets rid of international discrepancies with holidays. It's not Thanksgiving, but Turkey Day!

adventures in the nfinite : part i

Ok, so the title says 'part i', but there are currently no plans for 'part ii'. It is simply a generic title that I may be able to re-use again in the future. It's actually quite difficult to come up with an appropriate title sometimes! But that's mainly because many of my posts don't have one specific focus. So I'm cheating by using a numbering system on a generic title!

So it's been some time since my last post. And it's not because I didn't have stuff to talk about. I've just been busy with schoolwork. It's now a Friday afternoon. Classes are done for the week. And there's relatively little homework to do. So here I am.

First up! Windows 7 Wallpaper Rotation feature. A while back when I wrote up my first impressions on Win7, I said I was pleased with the integration of wallpaper rotation in the windows theme framework (framework?... w/e). I did not, however, complain at how absurdly difficult and finicky it is to select specific pictures from different places.

Issue #1: The GUI for adding pictures to the list of wallpapers is horrid. An interface NIGHTMARE. Allow me illustrate.


So the first issue I have is the selection scheme they have set up. Each thumbnail has a checkbox and a hover marquee/highlight. Now, if you check a checkbox and then check other multiple checkboxes, they will all stay selected. HOWEVER! And this is the dumb part. If you have multiple pictures checked off and you click on a thumbnail for a new picture (not its checkbox) ALL OF THE PREVIOUSLY CHECKED PICTURES ARE DESELECTED. How dumb is that? Checkboxes aren't supposed to clear until you uncheck them. What's the point of checkboxes if they get reset on an unrelated click event?

This issue makes it very frustrating because I have accidentally missed a checkbox and cleared my entire selection. This happened 2 times, since I have... a lot of pictures. And I was mad both times.

This caused me to research on how to do it manually. As in, edit the themes configuration file and manually put in image paths. This brings me to my second surprise! I don't know if these problems are just with my installation, or if this is how all Win7 versions are. (fyi mine is the RTM from MSDNAA).

So after some research, I found this link Creating and Installing Theme Files [MSDN]. Pleased with the simplicity of it, I decided to pursue this route of editing the themes file. And what I saw when I opened one up to edit..... surprised me. And not in a good way. In a WTF ARE YOU DOING WINDOWS!-way.



So if you didn't notice, there's TWO things HORRRRRRRRRIBLE about this. This is what was automatically generated by the system when I selected a bunch of pictures. (I chose about 900). The first should be quite blaringly apparent. WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO THE FILEPATHS!

First of all, these file paths may be at most... maybe 120 characters long.
"D:\Pictures\2008.08.02 - EuroTrip - W120\06 Wednesday - Triomphe, Louvre, Eiffel\a - Arc du Triomphe\DSC00571.JPG" being an example. Take a guess at how long one of those Item lines are in the themes file.

1600 characters. The longest one is ~2000 characters. I don't even understand how this is possible. Wait, let me rephrase that. I don't understand why anyone would even think of doing it like this. WHYYYYYY! Now I'm not exactly an expert on text encoding, but even a unicode scheme might use 64bits per character. If somehow represented in ASCII, that's still only 8 ASCII characters per character. 120*8 is still way less than 2000.

I must not be smart enough to understand the things that go in the minds of Microsoft programmers. Feel free to flame me if I'm making fun of something that makes sense at a higher level. Ok, so that's the first thing I was astonished at. The second thing was the length of these lists. It looks like they can only count to 30. Well, 0 through 29. It creates a new section every 30 images. Beats me as to why they do this too. But there may be a legitimate reason for this - like randomization or something. So I'm not going to be too critical on it.

There's some more things I want to complain about, but you don't need to hear it I'm sure. Next up! This subject might be a bit more touchy, but for some reason I feel the need to discuss it.

Last week on campus there were some ... speakers? picketers? petitioners? Something like that. We have a free speech area on campus, I guess you could call it. And I could hear the speaker on the loudspeaker as I neared the center of campus. At first I thought, wow this sounds like a religious speech. For some reason, there's a specific tone and rhythm to these speeches no? Sure enough, as they came into sight, I told myself: I need to take a picture of this. And so I snapped two shots off.


It's almost too easy to tear into these people. It's like, false logic out the butt.. or up the butt.. nvm. Well, all I could really make out from the speaker was that God hates homosexuals. Also something about homosexuals not being saved or something. I know it's bad that I don't completely have their side of the argument, but I'm going to go off on a limb and say that it was probably full of holes. This next picture being evidence of one of them.


I wish I had blogged about this a little earlier so that I may have had some quotes from the speaker. Oh well. Let me make this clear. I have nothing against religious people. But pushing your own agenda through religion is a nono. Discrimination is a nono. Unfortunately, there will always be the intolerant. Anyway, I was curious as to what Prov 8:13 was. Maybe God really did say that he hates homosexuals. That's news to me.


...
...
...

All rights to free speech should be revoked from you people. I don't care, all people are not created equal. (Ok, let me clarify: I *do* believe in equal opportunity). That reference you have so prominently placed on your sign says NOTHING about homosexuality. The only thing remotely linked might be "perverse mouth" but we're not talking about blowjobs here. So that's rejected. Only unless you correlate homosexuality with evil does it mean God hates homosexuality. But you haven't addressed why homosexuality is evil. Lack of support -100points to you.

Anyway, enough of criticizing people. If you take away anything from this discussion, I want you to direct your attention towards their abbreviation of homosexuality to homo sex. Which could be re-translated to gay sex. I mean, I understand how you might think gay sex is unpleasant, but seriously, you don't have to picket about it.

Meh, I'm done. Have fun and keep an open mind! Til next time~

and what the past built

In order to exercise my brain a bit, this post will be somewhat philosophical. I'm hoping that this will be a more structured entry. At least in relation to blog postings. My usual stream of consciousness style fits well with the blog medium, but I haven't had organized writing in a while. I take that back. I haven't had organized writing about a topic I'm interested in writing about in quite some time. Though I usually try to put at least one picture in my posts so as to break the monotony of text, I think this will mostly be one big wall of text. Apologies beforehand.

I have mentioned a few times in previous posts that I had wanted to do a little written exploration of consciousness. Perhaps consciousness isn't quite an accurate word for what I have in mind. I should add 'temporality' - if that's even a word - to be more accurate. The remainder of this entry will flesh out my opinions about the concept of 'time' and 'consciousness'. I hope I don't come across as pretentious. It's simply the exploration of things that tickle my mind.

What is consciousness? Once you sit down and think about it for a while, it's quite complex, no? Could a quick look at the dictionary entry shed light on anything in particular?

While the first half of the Definition [1] says nothing in particular, the second half is interesting. "Awareness of one's own existence" That's deep isn't it? Questions arise about what enables us to "be aware". Is it the concept of a 'soul'? Is it a God-given (by whatever God you may or may not believe in) trait? Or can chemical reactions and neural impulses produce a consciousness? Can consciousness be artificially reproduced? Although interesting questions, I certainly don't know the answer.

On a bit of a tangent, I thought I'd share a little snippet from my high school biology teacher. It can be stated that the co-existence of religion and science is difficult. As a foreword, the following quote isn't necessarily my own view. I simply found it an intelligent proposition to make. My teacher said something along the lines of, "While I believe in evolution and its development. It does not explain the miracle of life. I believe that God imbued this spark of consciousness." It certainly is a firm opinion. Who am I to dispute it? But should science be able to explain the concept of self-awareness, what will happen to religion? There's no answer to that, just think about it. I could go on to lay out my view of religion, but that would be veering too far off topic. Maybe another time.

Returning to consciousness, the mystery is: where does it come from? It's intertwined with the concept of time. A facet of consciousness is its understanding of the here and now. An unconscious person has no concept of time until they return from that state. Sleep can be thought of as being a state of subconscious. Again, the perception of time is distorted during this period. Sometimes the night passes in an instant; before you realize it, the alarm is chiming. Other times, it lasts a lifetime; an alternate time reference presents itself in your dreams. It's neat and at the same time it's scary.

Taking fear to its extremes leads us to the topic of death and its mysteries. We can only think of it as a permanent state devoid of consciousness. Who knows, it could be different - it could simply be an alternate state of consciousness. Transition into omniscience? If sleep is subconscious, could death be super-consciousness? I'm making stuff up now. But these are the points that can be made about consciousness when thinking of present time. That is, consciousness is based on perceiving the temporal immediate.

But that's not the only way we can view it. Another facet of awareness I find intriguing is our perception of the past. It's similar to the Heisenberg Uncertainty type dilemma. If you try to think about what you are doing at present, it immediately becomes the past. You can generalize about what you're doing, but this loses temporal accuracy. That's only the immediate past though. The most interesting part is the distant past - our memories.

We have vivid recollection of some memories whereas others are simply noise in the depths of our minds. When I first started college, I can recall thinking, This is going to take forever. Four years seems so far away. But here we stand in the present - nearing graduation. Remembering the past three or four years happens in an instant.

To me, therein is the paradox of time; perception of the present versus perception of the past. It never ceases to amaze me how time can both fly and crawl at the same time. As we consider the present and future, it often feels like an eternity. When will this class end... When will I graduate... When will I get a job... When will I have my own house... I plan to graduate in two years. But as with the previous example, once two years rolls around, it will be trivial to recollect the events spanning those years.

A duality exists between consciousness and temporality. Isn't it curious? Consciousness exists in the paradigm of 'now'. That is, consciousness lives in the present. But conversely, time exists because of consciousness. Awareness of the present creates the concepts of past and future.

I think that's all I wanted to say. Blogs aren't exactly conducive to structured writing. Also, spreading the writing over a few days didn't help with flow either. And I probably reverted into a stream-style writing with one topic sparking small asides. Hopefully I came full circle though. I'm too lazy to proofread (and I really should be studying for a test right now).

I have mixed feelings about types of writings like the one I just wrote. They don't seem to lead anywhere. They don't have any solid conclusion; by this I mean, there's no concrete final explanation. It's simply an exercise in explaining one's observations. On one hand, I ask myself, is it pointless to bother? There's no resolution to it. But on the other, I tell myself, if discarded for holding no conclusion, the ideas will never present themselves. And what is worse? Producing intangible concepts? Or holding back ideas?

Let's hear what you think. I'm hoping that this may incite some of you to do a post and not so much a small reply in the chatbox (though either is welcome). What's your take on consciousness, time, and even life? Maybe I'm just a huge conceited dork, but it's enjoyable sometimes to freely state your own thoughts. Hopefully the next post will be a lighthearted one. I don't know how much seriousness this blog can handle.

Until then, may your days be as bright and as wonderful as it was here in Atlanta today. Sunny, Blue Skies, with Refreshing Wind.

what the future holds

So the first half of this post will be somewhat of a journal post. Though I tend to shy from posting diary-esque content, this will be the exception. Perhaps I just need to put what's in my mind out into text. When there's just so much you're trying to mentally digest, it's best to just have it all laid out in front of your eyes. If you, the reader, are not interested, you can skip to the second heading in this post where the content is more in line with normal "from the nfinite" posts.

And there it is, the resolution to the source of so much anxiety since the beginning of this year. I'm relieved that it's a good one, as many of the plans swirling in my head hinged upon this letter. But where does this lead me now? Of course into more studies for another year (or possibly two) of studies. And as the hinge is now in place, I must fixate on building the larger door that goes with it. Before this point, I made excuses for planning the door because I didn't have the hinges; but now I need to carefully plan the next few years of my life. That certainly does sound ominous doesn't it?

There are things I want to do, and there are things I've told myself I should do. I should get an MBA while I'm still in school - while I still have the mindset and malleability to study. If not, once I enter the workforce, there may be no going back to school. Now is the time to do it - now is the time to fight procrastination. If I want to do this, I need to take the GMAT, write some essays, and get three letters of recommendation... Looking at the dual MBA program offered by my university, that's 39 hours - 18 classes. In the worst case scenario, my Computer Engineering Major requirements are 30 hours - 10 classes. I find it amusing that I just might be spending more time doing stuff outside my main area of interest during my graduate studies. But that can't really be helped now can it... Just gotta hit it headfirst and hope my head is hard enough...

And then there are the things I want to do. I want to do the LBAT-Japan program - Language for Business and Technology. This takes place next summer and requires that there are at least 10 participants. I truly hope this follows through since I delayed my undergraduate degree just for this purpose. If everything goes well, I can tack on a Japanese minor to my undergraduate diploma. Truly, we are just pimping out our degrees. I suppose it's a sign of growth and ambition too...

Another goal I had wanted to achieve during my undergraduate studies was to participate in a work abroad assignment in Japan. We have a great program here at Tech, previously sponsored by JETRO, but has now grown on its own. I was hoping to have a dip in that type of experience. After all, opportunities like this might not be so easy to come by in the future. So, it's now been delayed to be a graduate school goal... Though there are some extra snags that have appeared. As most abroad assignments are scheduled for at least 6 months, it would cut one Fall/Spring semester from graduate studies. While not exactly frowned upon by the ECE graduate department, it's not exactly encouraged to cut out one of these important semesters as summer semesters have fewer courses available. I have to get permission from some important person to be able to pursue this path. We'll see how that unfolds next year...

So I'm probably just making things sound more dramatic than they are. We're all guilty of doing such things on occasion. I have 2 or 3 months to organize this stuff, so maybe it isn't so bad. But it certainly is a lot to consider all at once. I just hope that everything will go smoothly. If it doesn't, I'll just have to deal with it when the time comes... *sigh I'm so used to my slow pace in life...　でも忙しくなりますね。。。

THE GOOD STUFF STARTS HERE

Alright! ENOUGH OF THE WORRIES AND THE BORING. I talked about getting a Zune HD in my previous post, and it got here a couple days after that post as I'd been hoping! It's quite sexy, slim, and light.

I'm not going to say the Zune HD is the greatest. (Even though I am usually partial to the devices I own) It has many flaws. I should probably outline those first so as to end on a good note. I have two main disappointments with this device. First off is wireless connectivity. One feature missing is WPA/WPA2 Enterprise support is missing. In addition, many browser-based login internet services do not work. Big problems with many university wi-fi services. Luckily, a relatively long forum thread has developed since release date with the culmination of acknowledgment by the Zune development team. Hopefully this means a firmware update will be coming in the near future.

The second disappointment was the weak excuse for an "Apps" section. With the success of the Apple's App Store, I was hoping MS would realize it's quite the lucrative business model. Unfortunately, all we got were a few games and two apps. What's worse is that it seems to be just the previous Zune XNA development API with support for the accelerometer and touch screen. I'm not exactly sure how App/Game code is loaded and run on the Zunes, but it seems they didn't change anything from the old Zunes. Maybe that's OK for forward compatibility, but it does not take advantage of the more powerful hardware available in the Zune HD.

The main reason I'm disappointed in this is because I won't get to play with the Tegra platform just yet. There's an amazing amount of computing resources available on this device. Dedicated GPU, dedicated image processor, dedicated video processor... I want to play with those. But no, XNA development is still locked to mainly drawing 2D sprites. Absolutely no evidence of being able to use the power available. There's the promise of a proper app store once the windows mobile team does whatever. I don't care much for the details, I want an SDK that gives me access to the good stuff.

So my two main gripes will probably be resolved in the future. The latter probably much later though. When it does come out, I'll probably play around in it some. You may see a really cheesy scrolling shooter come out of it. ... and not much more.

Alright on to the goodies of the Zune HD. I'll try to make it short because I feel this post has gotten quite long. The OLED screen is beautiful. The contrast on this thing is straight up delightful to look at. The menus are pretty as well, it has a fun typography video-ish feel to it. I very much enjoy it.

Sound quality is great as people say. And hey, that's what matters right? This is first and foremost a media player. The audio better be good. The picture viewer is very responsive with pictures looking much better than they did on the old Zunes. (On the old ones, they doubled the native resolution of the display so as to have better image quality when zoomed in, but the scaled down and zoomed out view looked very aliased and ugly). I only wish there was a rotate image ability in this newer picture viewer. A feature I thought would be inherently intuitive, but apparently not. You can tilt the Zune, but it remains in one orientation no matter the orientation of the Zune.

Ok rushing on to the next subject (since I feel this post is becoming quite long). I was pouring some cereal the other day and was like... WTF HAPPENED TO LUCKYSeriously, what happened to his nose? It turned into a snout. I didn't know leprechauns had snouts instead of noses. If you don't remember what Lucky looked like, I guess you can google him up. But for those of you who do, doesn't that look... awkward? Or is it just me... This redesign of Lucky disappoints me =(.

I hope you have no disappointments like this in your future. Until next time, I hope you enjoyed this quite long post... and weren't bored out of your mind.

busybusy

Hmm so it's been a pretty busy weekend with a pretty busy week to come. But this shall all die down fairly soon, if only to start up again in a few weeks again. Deadline for degree petitions are soon. I have to run around and see if my plan to go to Japan after graduating will be possible and if it'll affect the petition stuff. And also gotta go to the Co-Op office for certification in that...

In other news, I did some thinking recently and just today decided to drop some moneys on the new Zune HD. After winning that RAM and also getting a cheap Zune80 in the recent past, I figured I could resell some of my gadgets and be able to afford this new player. So before it goes on eBay, if anyone (or if you know anyone) who is looking to buy either: a 2nd gen iPod nano 8GB, a refurbed Zune80, or 6GB of DDR3, lemme know =) -- this is my shameless plug, yes.

Anyway, maybe I'll have some pictures of my new toy in a few days. There's part of me that's excited, since this will be my first pocket gadget with an internet browser. But the other part of me (the cheap and frugal side) is giving me a hard time - I'm just falling into the consumerism trap. I really don't need this thing and the money could be better spent in savings.

Too late, purchase made. Bought it from Dell b/c they have a 15% coupon... Even though it said shipping in 6weeks, I hope that's just a placeholder and that they will have them in stock on release date.

Anyway, I don't have much to say - haven't really done abstract thinking due to doing nothing but coursework and gaming... take care readers - until next time.

long post is long (maybe)

Ok so it's time for another round of...... let's talk about random things! YAY!
First up on our menu is toilet paper. Maybe I shouldn't have used food imagery with toilet imagery...

...

Anyway, this is something I've noticed only since living in an apartment with a shared bathroom. And it leads me to this question: Which direction do you hang your toilet paper? Please excuse the following horribly illustrated image. I didn't feel like creating a sophisticated looking diagram, nor did I want to take a picture of the real thing. So you must opt for the final choice of mouse-drawn MSPaint l33tness.

This is something that truly bothers me. I do the latter of the two choices. I ask because I wonder if people really do intend on doing the former? or if they're just being lazy when they put on a new roll and don't check on its direction of unrollage.

The problem I get is, we have a trashcan in the vicinity of the toilet paper roll dispenser thing. Having the TP roll in the former position always causes the edge of the TP to extend from its center of mass. And by that I mean..... IT FRICKIN DIPS INTO THE TRASHCAN. I don't want something that's dipped in the trashcan (or even brushing the wall) to be wiping my buttocks. The latter orientation of TP protects the loose TP from extending past the immediate radius surrounding the toilet paper. It also keeps its separation from the wall. The former orientation often swings and brushes against the wall. Anyway, that's just me being a neat freak.

On the topic of bathrooms, while typing those previous paragraphs I had a hard time choosing the proper word for bathroom. The main subject was the toilet. But the word bathroom has the term 'bath' in it - which is not the main subject I wish to talk about. I could have used toilet - but this can refer to both room or physical toilet. Also using toilet too many times is no good. And then there's washroom. But I don't speak English (in its strictest meaning), so that would just sound pompous coming from me. I now end this paragraph with no conclusion.

What sounds cooler? "End of Eternity" or "Resonance of Fate". If you said End of Eternity, you are cool. Resonance of Fate sounds like they're trying too hard. At least, to me it does. Anyway, Resonance of Fate is the localization of the JRPG End of Eternity. I just wish they kept the original title in bringing it overseas. Is it some copyright issue? Who knows, but I think End of Eternity sounds cooler. I'm looking forward to seeing more about this game though. An RPG featuring gunfights is unique enough to warrant some attention (and hype if they make it fun).

Speaking of JRPGs, I still need to finish Star Ocean 4. I think I'm at the final moments of the game... storyline-wise. Myuria is the cool character in the game. And if you're unfamiliar, I must clarify that it is not because of her ... assets ... that I like her character. Which reminds me of a character from another game that I liked. Viola from Eternal Sonata was awesome. I think that's enough of my dork comments.

On to the nerd comments. So recently I added 4gigs of RAM to my computer (like I said I might in that Win7 First Impressions post) for a total of 6gigs of RAM. And I've yet to get over 4gigs usage (I got close while playing Crysis with a buncha background apps). But I now idle around 2gigs with all my usual background apps running. Of course a problem comes up... of course.

So it turns out Creative sucks. (I know this, and I've known this, yet I still use their products. Stupid silly me) My first problem was a long time ago with the SCREECH OF DEATH plaguing the Audigy line. I'm sure you can google it if you're interested. But anyway, I've had a newer Audigy 2 ZS for a while now. Aside from crappy Windows 7 support, the specific problem incurred is this: Microphone input is extremely erratic and can result in a robotic type of voice. It's hard to explain, but let's just say it can be difficult to understand at times. (Especially while playing FPS games and chatting).

What's the cause of the problem, you ask? (You did, didn't you?) There is a bug in the Creative drivers. It manifests itself on 64bit operating systems with more than 4gb of RAM installed. Lucky me. So for the past week I've been trying alternative drivers and all kinds of stuff. No luck. Today I stumbled across a quite simple solution.

Turn on my onboard sound card! No, I'm not replacing my Audigy - it has too many features that I like. But instead, I can just simply use the onboard sound microphone input! Output from the Audigy, input from the onboard! Problem diverted! Ok, I still want a fix Creative! DO IT NOW!

And now the direct stream from the nfinite shall be terminated. I hope none of that was poorly worded and confusing (as it many times can be). But I don't feel like going back to proofread.

Enjoy life! And I hope you can solve your problems instead of just diverting them!

short post is short

Ah the amusing nature of university students and class attendance. I was going to comment last week on how many people there were on campus. I had been taking summer classes and campus was quite empty. But then the regular semester started and with it came a complete change in density of students walking around on campus. It felt strange, and it made me wonder if there were normally that many students on campus.

But I was only experiencing the "First-Day-Of-Class" phenomenon. The days immediately following that Monday resulted in a sudden drop of student presence. Funny how drastic the difference is between last Monday and today. If you've started classes already you've probably seen the same. If not, look for it... unless you're the ones skipping ;).

Ok that is all, time for next class.

Take care.

i can has printer?

So after my desktop pc was moved into the dorm and I was sitting at home on my laptop, I had nothing to do. All my games and media are on my desktop as the laptop is now, for the most part, distraction free. (Distraction from school work). So I decided I wanted to play some old piano songs. I found some old sheets of Gundam Wing songs, but they were totally dumbed down and didn't sound as good as some user transcribed stuff. So I found some sheets, but then realized I had no printer, and I couldn't really find a place for my laptop to sit. Well, that's a lie, I eventually found a position for it.

Felt the desire to share the incredibly ghetto/dorky setup. It worked quite well, except that I couldn't see the entire sheet. But I just now thought of an idea to place the laptop on its side... Maybe I'll try that when I return home one day.
In other news - had two classes today already. Embedded microcontrollers and Japanese 2002. Currently waiting for some 4001 class... First project due this Friday in embedded mc's.... fun.

Ok that is all, take care dear readers!

Windows 7 First Impressions

In the vein of bloggers who think their opinion matters, I present to you my first impressions with Windows 7. Be forewarned, this will be slightly lengthy (Ok, so it’s really long, roughly 5 pages in Word). If you want the quick hard conclusions, skip to the bottom and I’ll have a list of Pros and Cons. And like I said, I just think my opinion matters – when really, it probably makes no difference. I’ll try and keep it fun, but most of the stuff is just me being nitpicky with habits that I’ve built over the years.

So here are my impressions after one day of installing my first new Windows OS since XP came out. Before that was Win2000, Win ME (yes, I had that installed at one point, shush), Win95, and Win3.11. I never installed Vista because XP worked for me. Scratch that, I installed Vista once. But I think it was only for a day since I got frustrated in trying to set it up. I think it got into an unrecoverable state after I installed some drivers and restarted for the first time. So after that point, I said screw it.

I’m pretty stubborn and have a huge emphasis on speed and efficiency – as you might see from the rest of this write-up. I’ve been used to one UI for a good 10 years, maybe more: the basic Windows Classic Theme, I guess you could call it. Windows 95 started it, and it stayed, for the most part, unaltered through Windows XP (well, I suppose XP had themes, but I stuck to Windows Classic). Gray startbar. Rectangular start button. Collapsing task tray. Quicklaunch toolbar. So making the jump into Aero and skipping Vista is a big deal for me. I’m going to force myself to use this UI and see if I begin to like it or not.

Dislikes

Keep in mind these are my likes and dislikes about things I’ve stumbled upon while customizing the OS to my liking. Most of these dislikes relate to efficiency of workflow. Some of these issues will probably be resolved by daily use. However, some of the issues will always be less efficient than before.

Distance to Close

You’ll find that I have a lot of qualms about the start bar. This is the first. This is one issue with Aero that will never be more efficient than the Classic theme. Remember my blog post about closing items from the start bar a while back? Yeah probably not. But anyway, this issue comes up in the Aero theme and its gaudy framing of all windows - including the context menu for start bar items.

So while it may look just a tad fancier, the distance needed to travel in order to select close window is painfully obvious in execution. So, while I might be able to get used to this, it will never be faster than the Classic theme. Unfortunately, some of the Aero features are not available when selecting the Classic theme. Thus, I will just have to accustom myself to being less efficient. *sigh

Pin to taskbar

I love the Quicklaunch taskbar featured since… I don’t know what version of Windows, but it was there in XP. The main reason is because I liked getting to my apps in one or two clicks with minimal screen space taken up. See http://johnbokma.com/windows/quick-launch.html the end of that page basically has the setup I like. Quicklaunch rollout window that is organized by folders/category. Unless I’m mistaken (and I very well may be), they’ve thrown away the concept of this Quicklaunch toolbar in favor of pinning items to the taskbar.

Once an item is pinned to the taskbar, it becomes an icon. When the app is started, the icon morphs into the task item (like Firefox you see there). This results in, to my mind, a unorganized jumble of task items mixed with icons. I do not like. I want my icons grouped one one side and my tasks grouped on the other.

Don’t get me started on the default view though. I customized this slightly by setting Taskbar buttons to “Combine when taskbar is full” Here’s what it looks like when “Always combine, Hide labels” is selected.That tells you jack crap about what is open. Yes yes, there is the fancy-schmancy thumbnail preview when you hover over an icon. The problem is, this defeats the purpose of the taskbar somewhat. The taskbar, in my opinion, is a quick means of bringing up a specifically desired window.

Hovering over the icon forces the user to wait a few seconds before they can select the desired window. You may argue alt-tab might be faster – but that’s only if the tasks are placed next to each other in the task switching order. End result: looks fancier, fails at efficiency of workflow.

That was somewhat a sidetrip, but we’re still focused on the taskbar here: what happened to hiding icons! I don’t think this is possible anymore. You know how you could display only specific icons on the taskbar and hide the rest in the popup menu? I think that’s gone. And while I do now have a higher-res widescreen monitor. This has got to be taxing the horizontal space on 4:3 displays. If anyone knows how to hide items like the Quicklaunch bar used to do, PLEASE let me know.

Can only pin Executables.

It doesn’t look like I can pin anything other than executables onto the taskbar. This means I can’t pin folders – like I could in the quicklaunch bar. I did this so I could have categorized shortcuts, organized by folders. And I also can’t pin .bat files. I found this out when I tried to pin Cygwin to the taskbar but could not. I tried making a shortcut to the .bat file and it looks like shortcut files can’t be pinned either. Again, if someone knows a workaround, let me know!

I guess all my dislikes were about the taskbar eh? Well, I’m sure I’ll find some more dislikes down the road. After all, I’ve only been using this OS for one day. There have got to be more quirks in other places that will rub me the wrong way… But nevermind that. Now we move on to what I do like about Windows 7. Some of these things may be carried over from Vista, but since I never used Vista, forgive my ignorance.

Likes
Taskbar Rearranging

Previously requiring 3rd party software, Windows 7 now has taskbar drag-and-drop rearrangement. Now I don’t know if this was a feature in Vista, but this is certainly cool in my books. Being able to put similar applications next to each other on the taskbar is a definite performance boost.

You may say that this could be a possible method of grouping icons on one side and tasks on the other. But that’s a really crappy fix. I want my icons grouped and my tasks grouped with no hassle.

Keyboard Shortcut: Win+Tab

The new alt-tab! Except for alt-tabbing out of a game, I’ll probably try and force myself to use this shortcut because it’s visually nifty. Reminds me of some CompizFusion type stuff. [Warning, the screenshot is 1600x1000]

While I don’t know if it’ll improve my workflow, a little eye candy couldn’t hurt too much right? I just have to get used to recognizing window content instead of icon+title. However, windows that do not appear on the taskbar do not seem to get included in win+tabbing. Maybe there will be an update someday.

Keyboard Shortcuts: Win+Left / Win+Right

These two shortcuts now resize the current window to half of the monitor – left side or right side. I used to do this manually all of the time when writing lab reports needing text and spreadsheets. Now it does it for me! And with greater precision too =).

Automatic Wallpaper Rotation

This is one that I enjoy even though I don’t have my desktop in focus most of the time. Still, it’s a nice touch and I can populate it with my entire photo collection and have a slideshow for wallpaper. It’s a nice personal and dynamic touch.

Performance / Resources

With respect to memory usage, I think Win7 is using slightly more RAM than in WinXP – not surprised since it’s also rendering the Aero interface. At startup with all of my usual background tasks (messengers and such) WinXP used ~600MB wheras Win7 uses ~750MB. I’ll probably install some more RAM in the near future as I’m sitting at 2GB. After all, I did install the 64bit version, might as well make use of the extra addressing space!

I do indeed like the new resource monitor though. Performance monitor used to be hidden in some Administrative Tools in the Control Panel, but its now a button on the task manager.

Conclusion

So that’s all for now. It was quite lengthy indeed. I had to switch over to Word part way through to get my planning of this post organized. There’s still some things I need to experience on Windows 7. I have not gotten around to gaming yet. I also have not played with multi-monitor support yet either. I don’t think I’ll have time for either of these until I get settled back in to the groove of courseworks. But, I’ll be sure to come back and talk about handling those tasks! That is, if you care. Which I’m sure you have better things to do.

Pros

• Taskbar rearrangement. Moving Excel to sit next to Word is now a cinch! No longer requires 3rd party apps.
• Keyboard Shortcut Win+Tab: The 3D interface is slick, despite sometimes not showing all active windows. A nice alternative to Alt+Tabbing
• Keyboard Shortcut Win+Left/Right: Resize to fit half the monitor. Great for working with multiple documents. Used to do this manually.
  
• Rotating Wallpaper: Nice personal touch.
• Resource Monitor: I like the presentation of this extension to the task manager. Resource usage in Win7, however, is more intensive (unsurprisingly) than WinXP

Cons

• Close Window in Taskbar context menu is placed farther away due to Aero interface.
• While not terrible in some respects, the Pin to Taskbar is messy.
  • Not quite as customizable as desired
  • Probably Gaudy on lower resolutions and less-wide monitors.
  • Can only pin executable, can’t pin folders nor regular files (at least to my current knowledge)

Next time I blog might be further impressions on Windows 7, but maybe you’ll get a break from a really long post and I’ll write about “To: Mommy, Subject: My First Day Back at School!” … something like that.

Anyway, if you made it through that entire article, I applaud you! If not, YOU SUCK. Just kidding! I probably wouldn’t sit and read through this article myself either; I don’t blame you.

giving in

So since I was bored today, I looked around for stuff to do. You know, other than watching anime and playing games. Hacked away a little on the piano, but teaching myself can be frustrating. Lack of finger speed, accuracy, as well as control in the left hand is frustrating. It's like: "Speed (4 SP), Accuracy (2 SP), Control (2 SP)" You have 5 SP to spend. Ah, I guess it's time to grind and get some more skill pointzzz. But anyway, I took a look at my baby and was like hmmm, she needs a little dusting.

Just imagine if all that dust was having fun inside the case! Well, there probably is b/c to have a lot of buildup on the outside most likely means stuff has gotten in. But my baby was on, and I was too lazy to open her up and clean dust the inside...

Anyway, that got me thinking I should probably get around to forming my own opinions about Windows 7. The ISO has been sitting on my PC for a long time. I keep hearing good things about it, but of course I am skeptical. I must experience it myself and only then can I join or refute the hype. Let's hope though, it lives up to its expectations. Thus, I shall be taking it for a spin in a few moments - the image is burning as I type. It's probably the wrong time to start testing out a new OS though - seeing as fall classes start back up on Monday. But I suppose it might be for the better. See how it handles my daily ordinary use - instead of my break usage consisting of movies and games.

On the note of games, the new Team Fortress 2 Classless Update came out a few minutes ago. Of which I'm sad I won't be able to play with until after Win7 is installed. Spy kinda got screwed, Scout got better in my eyes, and hopefully the new maps and mode will be fun.

Anyway, next time I shall be blogging from Windows 7 :o And probably my thoughts on how well the install went as well as how it performs in my hands. Until then, zip it up and zip it out.

whoa!

I won something!

http://www.evga.com/decade/scavenger/default.asp

Well if that link dies off in the future, here's a screenshot!

Don't think I've ever won something online before... unfortunately, I have no DDR3 compatible motherboard... And I don't think I'll be upgrading anytime soon.

Maybe I can set them on my desk and stare at them...

Anyway, I felt the need to share.

Until next time, I hope you win something too!

small fix

I just realized that the image mouseover opacity effect was no longer working in Firefox 3. Guess it's for the better that opacity is used and not -moz-opacity now. Anyway, that's been updated - I'm telling you for no reason at all, really. But maybe if someone has the same problem as me......

Anyway, grades were posted today. Yay for all A's! Makes me happy. Best wishes to all, and maybe next time I'll get around to that post about consciousness. I still haven't organized how I'm going to discuss it. I also don't know if it's worth it, b/c there's no point, really...

Until next time, take care dear readers!

no direction

As the title implies, there is no purpose to this post. However, I feel the need to oblige my lovely readers in a prompt fashion ;). I usually like to have some kind of idea or topic that drives the writing. But as summer classes have ended, so too, it seems, has my brain. Grades come out in two days. Confirmed A in two classes, confirmed pass in the pass/fail class, but 1 class remains. If he curves then I'll have an A for sure. If he doesn't, then I hope he is generous with partial credit cuz i screwwwwwwed the first problem (of 5) over big time.

The end of classes also brings about another change, this one at home. My parents, being the caring and supportive people that they are, usually don't ask much of me during the school terms. However, now that classes have ended. "Oh, well I was waiting for you to have some free time, so go do this, this, this, that, this, and that". I understand it's perfectly normal. I'm just spoiled.

So ends my personal stuff, how about an observation on a few good anime shows. Last season's Higashi no Eden (Eden of the East) was quite a good show - despite them leaving the storyline for two followup movies. One of the last scenes is main character dude shooting down a missile - finger pistol style.

And then just recently I finished watching both seasons of Black Lagoon. As a side note, I highly recommend this show. It's dark, somewhat intellectual, and totally badass. I actually liked it because it's dark and stays so 'til the end. Sure there's tones of redemption or honor; I'm not being cynical either, but do you ever just wish some movies shouldn't have happy endings? Anyway, screenshot from the final moments of Black Lagoon Second Barrage. I'm glad the "new season" coming up will be OVA. I hope it means they can make it super badass with no restrictions that would have come from TV censors.

So now you must be wondering what the point of this is. I'm not quite sure either. But after finishing these two shows in, somewhat, close proximity to each other. I just thought, when's the first time Bang was used in this manner? And all I could think of was:

Anyone know of an older reference? I also found it amusing that three different "Bang"s had three different subtitles. "Bang..." "Bang!" and "Bang." I think that about covers all possible ways of punctuating it, don't you think? Well... maybe there's "Bang?" but that is not the cool way of saying Bang. Anyway, I presented to you three Bangs which were all a part of three highly recommended anime shows. Does that mean the key to success is to end with Bang? Or does it mean that good shows end with a Bang? Ok I've run out of ideas.

Until next time. Keep on Bangin! (ok that came out wrong)

lies, chipsticks, and the light at the end of the tunnel

I'm afraid that my baby was mad at me. What did I do to her, you ask? I'm a guy; guys never know what they did wrong, right? *ahem....uh.. this baby I'm talking about is my desktop computer. But I seem to have gotten lost in the reference. Anyway, that picture is evidence that my baby was mad at me, because she was just straight up lying to me =(. But, after a good night's sleep and a fresh restart on our relationship. I think my baby is happy again.

On to chipsticks! No, chipsticks is not a new brand of fishsticks based on potato chips. That would be disgusting... Then again... french fries are called chips over there on the other side of the ocean. They are also in the shape of sticks. So maybe those are true chipsticks. But that wasn't the point! See recently I've been inundated with schoolwork deadlines and homeworks and exams. Thus, I have been spending much time, uncharacteristically, doing homework and such. (But really, I probably slack of 90% of the time and end up doing nothing except complaining about how much work I have)

In either case, snacks are the lifeblood of homework sessions, are they not? But the predicament is this: I like barbeque flavored chips. Barbeque flavored chips are powdery. Barbeque flavored chips' powder ends up on fingers. Homework requires either utilizing a writing utensil or the keyboard. Writing utilities do not like powdery fingers. THUS!, my solution is to use hardware finger extensions! BAM!

Ok, well *I* thought it was clever. So if you ever walk in on me and see me with some chopsticks eating chips, it is *not* ridiculous. It is a perfectly logical solution. So anyway, I have now adopted the style of eating snacks with chopsticks while studying. You should try it out too! It's positively great.

Ah, O light at the end of mine tunnel. Why must you be so fickle? The flickering is giving me seizures of hope and despair. Only 5 days of class left and 4 final exams. You are so brilliant in this regard. But only 2 weeks of vacation exists between the end of this term and the beginning of the next. Such a fleeting brilliance.

You can ignore that last paragraph. I never typed such a retarded thing, it can't be me blogging; it's my apathetically burned out doppelganger.

Row row, fight the power!

win or fail?

I think I said something about discussing consciousness in my last blog post, but we'll save that for next time since this will just be a quick post about some amusing events that have happened.

Purposeful Depression

Classrooms should be as accommodating as possible right? So as to be conducive to the learning atmosphere. The probability/statistics class I've been taking this summer has been in a typical room. Lit adequately with those fluorescent lights that are so abundant in school and office buildings. It would be a dark room if not for those lights... or so I had thought. The other day, I walked in and noticed something a little different with the room:

Wait, we had windows in the room?! Why oh why weren't they open! Isn't that so depressing? To be robbed of sunlight, when it is a small tug of the curtain away... It's sad isn't it? That we've become used to unnaturally lit classrooms? What if all rooms were brightly lit by the happy rays of natural lighting? Would classes be less boring? Or would there be more daydreaming... Either way, it surprised me that I had never noticed the room actually had windows... but unfortunately, the room is to be kept isolated from the outside world *sigh.

Community is ... Interesting... Amusing... おもしろい ...

Some words are best expressed in another language? Community is both interesting and amusing at the same time. How did I come about this thought? I was headed home on MARTA yesterday and reached my station - end of the line. I got off the train and I saw a ton of GREEEEEEEEEEEEN. It was amazing how many Mexicans were present. I had never seen so many at the MARTA station before. There must be some kind of event going on, were my thoughts. But ... I didn't know of any Hispanic holidays going on... But then I saw the green soccer jerseys and the Mexican flags used as capes and the only reasonable explanation would be a soccer game.

As I left the station for the parking lot, there were even more Mexican families heading to the station. And then I remembered that there was also a Braves baseball game so I thought it would be amusing to try and find those families. I saw one family. I don't know why, but I almost laughed out loud (not to be mistaken with LOLed) when I passed them. It just seemed super amusing - amongst a huge population of the Mexican community was one small family going to see a baseball game. Community is strange indeed.

So when I got home, I looked up with game was going on: Mexico v. Venezuela. But even more interesting was the fact that Team Mexico hadn't been to the southeast since the Olympics. I guess that explains the huge turnout.

ORLY?

And finally, this was on my iGoogle homepage today. And the first thought that popped into my head when reading this title was "No sh*t". Honestly, if you believe that reading/typing does not affect driving, you don't deserve to be on the road. Eyes away from the road = not looking at the road. Not looking at the road = not driving.

Still, I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt - perhaps there was more to this article than the obvious. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. There were some charts and numbers, but ultimately, it's just common sense. Seriously, the things people waste money on for studies... I know there are many more cases of such "No duh." studies, but I can't think of them now. I'm sure you've seen them though...

Anyway, those were my observations of the week. Just random things I felt like I wanted to put down in type. I've been doodling a lot in that probabilty/statistics class... but nothing good ever comes out of it. I've even tried doodling a new blog layout. But they suck. So, don't suck like me, and be cool in life. Til next time!

Oh I forgot, if you haven't listened to Suzumiya Haruhi no Gensou yet, the first track is pure win.

buried in the sand

The ebb of schoolwork is merely accompanied by an anxiety - an uneasiness stemming from being conditioned to the flow. Reflecting, reviewing, trying to recollect what it feels like to be truly relieved of all responsibilities, deadlines, obligations. There is anticipation. After being consumed for so long by the workload, you wonder, When is the next spike in activity?

And as you restlessly sit in the wake of the high tide, the question must be asked, What was the positive duty cycle of the wave? What's the period of oscillation? For these answers will reveal how long this apprehension will last...

wait, what? ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! i went from the beaches to electronic waveforms..... i'm so burnt out. I recently finished a long report on analog electronic relaxation oscillators... I think it's adversely affecting my brainz. I don't believe I've had all that much time in the past week or two to do much of anything aside from coursework. And even though the majority of it is now finished, there's still little things that still need to be done. But I always sit here wondering if I'm forgetting something big. And this continues until something big actually does come along, and the cycle repeats itself.

So on a completely random, and hopefully less depressing note: ice cubes are annoying little buggers. Even though our fridge says "Cubes" it still spits out those rectangular hemisphere type thingies. And then, after they've all populated the glass of water, all they like to do is get all up in your face - quite literally. Ever tried drinking, and then the ice "cube" pretty much blocks off all liquid flow into your mouth? Then you try to raise the glass higher so that water maybe run faster? But in the end you're just freezing your upper lip... sneaky bastards, those ice chunks are.

This morning I woke up and the first thought that came to mind was: consciousness is such a mysterious thing. So maybe next time I'd like to talk about consciousness, especially the relationship between memory and self-awareness... it certainly is an interesting thing to ponder, but whether its worth writing a blog post about is questionable...

Until next time, continue existing! (wtballs does that mean?)

failllllll

This post will be full of fail. It seems occurences in my life recently have been full of fail. But they are the amusing type of fail - not the depressing kind of fail. But maybe it's a little bit of frustrating fail. Also, there's a little bit of lose-faith-in-humanity fail.

So let's start with some complaints about life; more specifically: summer classes. So one of the classes I'm in this summer is International Affairs (requisite for ethics credit). So last Thursday, we were supposed to watch a movie in lecture. But of course, technical difficulties with the VCR (yes, VHS movie) caused it to be delayed to this past Tuesday. So, this past Tuesday, the professor tells us the movie will be shown on a different date for 3 extra credit points. THREE points! She says she'll show it Thursday at 4pm and then asks if there are any conflicts? Of course, there's a conflict on my end (otherwise I wouldn't be sharing right?). But then someone asks if she'll have another showing for those who can't make it. She says no, don't worry about it. It's only extra credit. So what was the point of you asking if there are any conflicts?! So yeah, I don't find this predicament fair at all... but I'm too lazy to complain about it. Situation = Fail.

Fail #2

So this past weekend I needed to download an evaluation version of Cadence OrCAD. Little did I know that such an important product in the engineering world had such a failure of a web/file server. 945Mb download @ 10kbps. I left it to dl for the day, and at night it said 10hours remain. So I tried leaving it overnight. But the next morning when I woke up, it said it still had 8 hours remaining. miniFAIL. Then a couple of hours later, the download failed. I wasn't using a download manager, so I failed there. So I tried downloading it again (not learning from my mistake and still did not use a download manager). This time it downloaded more than it did previously ~800MB and then failed again.

So at this point I gave up on downloading it at home, and decided to test my luck with a campus edu line. The results are disheartening.
YOU FAILLLLLLL

Fail #3

So I had to turn in an application for a joint BS/MS program we have here. One of the applications stated I needed to go to a certain office. So I went to the receptionist/secretary lady person and the conversation went a little like this:

I honestly don't know if she didn't understand that Computer Engineering is an actual major or what. But that conversation was full of fail. At least she was correct in that I really needed to go to the ECE academic office instead. But I can't really say it was my fault since the application indicated the wrong office. Oh well, I still lost a little faith in humanity there too.

Fail #4

I was recently on Facebook (which is rare, because I have a deep aversion to it). But what I saw only added to my list of reasons why I despise Facebook.

Am I the only one who loses faith in humanity when I see a blaring and elementary grammar mistake such as this one? This is a public application. There's only two words that you could screw up... and well, you FAIL.

It's only been half a week and I've encountered so much fail. I hope that next week will bring me lots of win. But the fact that I have tests in every class doesn't provide very good prospects. On a random note, I was writing today's date, and 6+3=9! I'm so clever. If you get it, you are clever too! Continue being clever! Til next time.

exit strategy

So two posts back I talked about that single/double space issue. Lo and behold, a few days ago, an exactly similar article was posted on Digg! I thought to myself... THEY STOLE MY POST! But then, their post actually had a picture of Typing Tutor from DOS (and the screenshot shows a double space between sentences! HA!)... so I guess they 1upped me. Oh well. Here's the link to the Digg FP article. At least that gives positive closure to where I learned the habit of double spacing between sentences.

Next topic! So, you know how stairwells sometimes have an emergency exit sign on them? Some of them confuse me - or at least their choice of words make me think about its meaning.

See, the wording makes me think: This door is only to be used in emergencies. Thus, "emergency exit only". But it actually means it is the only exit in case of emergencies. So should it say "Only Emergency Exit"? Maybe that has the same problem as its wording now! I guess this matter is more difficult than it seems!

know how there are some emergency exit doors that have the warning: "Alarm will sound if opened." Yeah, I'm always afraid that one day, I'm going to see an exit that says Emergency Exit Only, mistake it for a normal exit, and then end up being that person. The one who set off the alarm. Oh well.

Next topic! I see this a ton in class lectures and the student center. But before I tell you, let's begin building a mental picture of the matter at hand.

Laptop. What are the functions associated with laptop? What are its unique characteristics? Small, convenient, portable, mobility. No I'm not going to be bashing on monster beastly laptops. I do, however, see that the majority of laptop users will use their AC power adapter. They will try their best to find a seat closest to a power outlet. If this is you, yes I am criticizing you. I'm sorry, but this is how I feel.

This type of behavior contradicts the advantages of a laptop. Let me elaborate.

• Convenience: Laptops are great because you can use them anywhere (mostly). Attempting to find a power outlet to plug yourself in, however, is very inconvenient.
• Portability: You have to lug around your AC adapter. This decreases portability.
• Mobility: This, I believe is the biggest advantage of a laptop. But, along with the inconvenience of finding an outlet, you become tethered to the wall. The power cord is only so long...

And these are the reasons why I think people scrambling to plug their laptops in ridiculous. I'm not saying its always a bad thing, I've forgotten to keep my laptop charged sometimes; but it kinda defeats part of the purpose of a laptop. Yes, there's also laptops that barely keep their charge, but that ultimately stems from two things: it's crappy or it's old. And by crappy, it could be the super powerful spec-wise, but sucks battery like a ... nvm yeah crappy. Or it's so loaded down with applications that it becomes crappy...
Uh, I'll just stop there. I feel that any more typing I do about the matter will be redundant.

Final topic! Haruhi Season 2 is finally under way!... I just have to re-watch Season 1 now to be re-acquainted with the timeline!

Ok, take care dear readers; until next time!

past

That last post of mine got me all nostalgic and stuff. I went back and skimmed over some of my old essays (yes, I have archives of all digital assignments since 9th grade). My only comment is: wow, my writing sucked. It probably still sucks now too.

I read a persuasive essay that I had to write during junior year of high school and the topic was the flak that the video game industry was receiving due to violent video games. The good points were there, but they were horribly argued and explained. I'm not sure if it was because I was truly a bad writer or that I didn't try hard enough.

I guess part of the problem was that, in our high-school student mindset, we were fixated on the word count requirement of the assignments. It caused us to write as little as possible to meet the word count. Not to mention procrastination factor. It really makes you wonder how well you could have done if you had actually tried... I remember classmates (and probably myself too) complaining about poor grades on our essays; you know what? we were probably just being brats - we probably deserved those grades. Oh I'm not regretting anything, I made decent grades. It's just that, in retrospect, I'm a little disappointed in myself for being crappy. Oh well, what's done is done.

Switching tracks: I had a teacher in the social studies teacher in the 5th grade who, the only thing I can remember from her was two retorts she had. So like, the first, like, quote from her was "Don't say like. It's not 'like'. It is or it isn't." That absolutely killllllllled everyone back then. Like, yeah. It's a tough habit and I'm sure that we still use it in conversation today. I do wonder where the phrase came from though. Who started off the 'like's?

The second thing I can remember was:

Student: "Can I go to the bathroom?"
Teacher: "I don't know, can you?"

That killed everyone too. I don't really know why I'm sharing these memories, but those are probably the only two things I took away from that teacher. Social studies? meh... I don't even know what the curriculum was back then... But conversational precision, she definitely makes me think of word usage from time to time.

Uh, time for class now, next time: emergency exits... i think.

space space

Ah, only 1 week after Spring semester finished, it is now Summer semester. Hopefully that one week was enough to refresh myself for this semester. I'm sitting here in a study room... and it's completely empty. It's odd because this room usually has at least one or two groups working on some project. Now that it's summer, campus is strikingly empty. I'm sure these observations are commonplace, but it takes up text space =). I'll need all the practice I can get with text space because I'm taking an ethics class this summer. Gotta rev up the nfinite BS engine©® and flex my typing fingers for non-technical writing. Oh and this post is long because Joy says long posts are win.

And by the way, that class is coming up next... 4:00 - 5:45 Mondays and Wednesdays. Nearly 2 hours of ethics. I truly wonder just how much discussion can occur in 1:45hr. It could go both ways -- it could be the most boring thing in the world. Or it could involve controversial topics that trigger thought-provoking discussion. Chances are it's the former though. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Speaking of taking up writing space, here's a question that I would like some feedback on. (No this is not some ploy to see who is actually reading my blog... ... ok maybe it is). How many spaces do you type after a period at the end of a sentence?

I hit my spacebar button twice (if you didn't already guess from my post title). I was recently talking with a friend about essays and they said something along the lines of "...and she puts TWO spaces after all her sentences!" To which I replied, "Is that wrong?" Of course the answer was, yes it is wrong. [For more information about this topic, I found this report about the matter.]

If you don't feel like clicking the link, here are some key points: Two spaces after a period is a deprecated rule from the typewriter days. It was necessary for readability. Since typewriters print fixed-width characters, two spaces after a period was a better visual cue for sentence breaks. Now that we use fonts with kerning, this double space is unneeded.

So, I am correct when it comes to monospaced fonts, but I am wrong with wrong fonts. (This probably means I'm completely wrong, but I'm being stubborn here).

Where am I going with this discussion? Well, at first I didn't realize I was double space-ing after sentences and so I went back to check on my essays from high school. Odd isn't it? That you don't realize how long you had some habits? Sure enough, all my papers had two spaces after all the sentences. My friend proceeded to say they had lost all respect for me because I have been cheating on all my papers. Just for kicks and to spite them, I went back to see just how much paper area I was "wasting" by double spacing after sentences.

A 5.5 page paper was reduced to 5.25 pages - roughly 5% less. Maybe that's not too much, but I can see it adding up on, say, a 25 page paper. You know what? No one has told me this practice is wrong. Until now, of course. I will probably keep double tapping that big button on my keyboard since its so ingrained in my typing habits. I'm not all that worried about fixing the bad habit either. No one has noticed (or said anything about) it. It also works in my favor for long writing assignments. The question is, where did I learn this habit?

I've been around PCs for quite some time now. Had an old 486SX my dad gave me. (Fun story about the DX and SX designations on the old 486s that I never knew until one of my professors was talking about it one day in class, but if you're interested just message me sometime) Then got an old Pentium-133. Then sometime in late middle school, I had saved up enough all-A money (report card reward for getting all As. Anything less would've been a beating) and I bought and built myself a rig with a P4 @ 1.7GHz and it was awesome. I forgot where I was going with this conversation. Let's backtrack a little...

Oh right, so I've been around computers for as long as I can remember and so my guess is that I learned how to type from old DOS typing tutor programs. My guess is that, since DOS was all a monospaced, text-based, with minimal GUI programs I learned the rules of typing within that paradigm. Coming into the GUI heavy operating systems and fancier fonts, I never learned from nor used a new typing tutor program and thus was never taught nor corrected to do a single space after sentences.

I find this development fascinating. I could say "When I was your age, we put TWO spaces after sentences!" Wait, that's not a good thing is it? Nevertheless, it's amusing to know that I carry a habit from a previous phase in computing. Well, let's see who all replies. My main curiosities are:

Did you know that we're only supposed to put one space after sentences?

How and when did you come across this information? - This could be from a typing training program, or word-of-mouth, or a formal typing class, or even a composition class.

And since we are quite the global bunch (we in references to those who I know occasionally visit this blog), it'd be even more interesting to see if there's some kind of trend in locale.

--post note
It turns out my ethics class won't have any essays. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised since it's one professor teaching a lecture hall of ~120 students. So I can leave the nfinite BS engine©® in low-power mode for this blog.

lawl...tough times

So grades came out a few hours ago. BAM! ALL As. So either I got above that 94 I needed, or the average did a whole lot than me... Either way, I'm happy now. Ok, that was my gloating time. I'm finished.

So I was raiding the pantry the other day - since, now that I'm home with no schoolwork, there's nothing better to do. I chanced upon a box of Gushers. Woohooo! Sticky candy! Behold, it also had a sweepstakes thingy on it too! I remember being younger and dreaming of the day I could win one of these prizes. You know, the ones where you win a lifetime's worth of candy, or ten grand, or a trip to all the amusement parks in Florida. Those were some awesome prizes. So check it, here's the prize on this box of Gushers:

Win CASH! Alright! So I opened the box and peeked inside to see if I had won. But the same words of disappointment greeted me from the inner dark depths of the candy box: TRY AGAIN.

*sigh. Rejected. I did, however, forget to check to see what the prize was. If you also didn't notice, check the picture again. Five bucks. Wait wut?
These must be truly hard economic times... the prize is five dollah.

I suppose I shouldn't be complaining, the prize pays for the cost of the snacks and then some. You could buy another box of snacks! And then the inevitable words of doom could be delayed until the next box!

Well, that's all I have for today. Hopefully this has been a short post. I never realize how long some of my posts are until I see it in the blog. Until next time, keep "Try Again"-ing in life!

a personal post

Whoa, it's a personal post! I usually have some commentary on some subject that amused me. But today, I'm going to be even more self-centered and write up something like a journal entry.

So, I finally finished my finals for this semester. All that's left now is the wait until official grades get posted. I had two classes that I was worried about not getting an A in... but the professor in one of them posted up some grades on a web-portal system (which is total crap, and everyone knows it; but for some reason the university bought it and so all the professors have to use it... and everyone hates it). And so I checked it and was saddened because it said my final course average was 85.42. But then I kept reading an email that was sent to everyone and found out that there was another field given that corresponded to letter grade. Then I saw it said 4/5 and I was like, bah foiled. But then I kept reading the email and it said 4 corresponded to A. And I was like....... nowai! So apparently, the class average was totally worse than an 85. (He gives As to the top 10th percentile.. I think?)

So, moral of that story; read through an email to its entirety before clicking on relevant links. It will save you much grief and redemption. That's one of two classes off my mind.
Now the other one is a bit tricky. I figured out that I needed a 94 on the final to get an A. (Yeah I totally bombed the first test, but got over a 100 on the second two tests and I still needed a 94.. that just shows how bad I screwed up the first test).

And so, I actually sat there and tried to figure out my worst case scenario of what questions I got wrong and it turned out to be a 94.4. But there's always stupid mistakes compounded with that worst-case scenario, so only time will tell.

Now that you've read through all that boring stuff... and if you've gotten here, I've got a question to everyone. What's up with the similarities in blog design? More specifically, what's up with the menubar and how it has links to tagboard, profile, posts, archives, links all on SEPARATE pages. Is this some new trend going around? To be honest, it's kind of a pain to go from reading a post to typing a reply in the chatbox... but that's just me being lazy.

Does anyone else feel the same way? Or am I not cool enough to be on the cutting edge of blog trends >.<

Speaking of blog redesign... should I make a new layout too? "All the cool kids are doing it!" It surprised me, but this layout has been around for about a year and a half now...

Still contemplating whether or not I should spend the week of vacation I have on a new design. (That's a lie, I just have no creative talent to make a good looking one in such short notice)

Looks like I left this post in the draft state for too long, now I forget what else I was gonna write. Okay! Time to end the personal post.
Take care in life -nfinite