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.


...
...
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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.