After reinstalling my OSes 3-4 times in the past few days, I've come to realize the value of having a separate backup system.
I need something with more storage though. For stuff like photos. Mozy's servers don't seem to be as reliable as I'd like, too. And the client, which you MUST use, is Windows XP only.
At least I've managed to save my years of IRC chat logs though.
OK university life is not exactly what I expected. Living in a hostel when you're surrounded by people you don't know sucks. Everyone keeps their door closed. Including me, I guess =) This makes it hard to introduce yourself.
Crazy huh. My parents are paying for my education, how lucky I am. But I'm here whining away about isolation.
STUDY!
Call it crazy/sci-fi/fantasy/fiction, whatever.
The fact is that I just had a waking dream.
In this dream I could walk around on At first I was just coasting around, suddenly it clicked that I was in a dream and I could do whatever I wanted.
It was a exhilirating experience, I felt very much alive during it.
My heart is still pumping from the feeling of flying(which I did do in the dream)
Some boring accounts of my experience in my totally made up dream world is as follows:
...
I can only remember bits and pieces of it now.
I was with some poly mates. Sitting in some rocking chair thing. Weird, I know.
I was exploring this place. It was empty and barren. This happened a few times, all with different places.
I saw people sometimes. Sometimes they would say something to me, but I couldn't talk to them. I saw a good looking girl too, but when I tried to kiss her she pushed me away :) :(
Sometimes I was doing things to the environment - ripping pieces of the walls, looking through with "x-ray" vision, etc. No one seemed to respond to my vandalism.
I had a encounter with devils too. Perhaps they represented the demons in my heart? How poetical.
I had to come into physical contact with them. They held on and wouldn't let me pass. I prayed to God and suddenly I moved to the next phase in my dream.
Oh yeah there was flying too. I found I could float or just speed whereever I wanted. Cool, like some superhero. I even encountered an evil empire which threatened the planet. But I didn't fight or anything. just spied on their soldiers. There was a heroine in that story too. But as soon as we met the dream changed :(
Why did I think that this was a lucid/waking dream? It was much more vivid. I could recall a lot more. I also was aware, while dreaming, of my real identity. I keep telling myself my home address, thinking of my real room. I could move my physical body while in the dream too (or maybe that was part of the dream?)
Before this dream I was really dog tired. I even fell asleep during Economics lecture earlier on.(not that hard to do - it's Econs). Then, I stayed up even later to try and fix problems with my laptop. By the way, my desktop monitor seems to have blown up this evening as well.
My writing is shoddy and probably full of mistakes. That's because I'm writing in the early morning. I don't know how tired I'll be tomorrow. Aiya it's National day anyway...
I formatted the old linux partition and reinstalled Ubuntu. Haven't installed the temperature sensor, but processor scaling seems to be working again. From putting my hand near the heat exhaust, it doesn't seem as hot as last time. Hope that this isn't the prelude to an explosion or something...
I guess alternative OSes are just too advanced for me. I can't seem to stop Ubuntu (Dapper Drake) from overheating my ASUS W3J. It starts at 70 degrees and slowly rises after startup, even though it's idle. Meanwhile in Windows, it averages 53 to 55 degrees. After reading some forum posts, it seems that the solution requires recompiling the kernel or something, so that Ubuntu can access the fans or throttle the processor. This seems like a really nice OS, but I'll have to stick with Windows until I can really look into the problem.
What irks me is some forum posters writing that it's not a OS problem, it's the manufacturer's fault. If the laptop stays cooler in Windows, how can it be a hardware problem? I think Ubuntu should have more built in GUI support for laptops, like ACPI and suspend modes. A new user like me won't know about things like command-line configuration and recompiling the kernel.
I really hope nothing went wrong with my laptop after that experience. Argh.
Finally, I've started to clear my leave. Another 3 weeks and I'll be out of National Service. Good riddance.
On to the next stage!
Well, it's been a long two years for me. Now I'm about to be free of national service, and it's time to start looking ahead. I'm going into NTU this August to study Computer Science. But first, I have to plan out my ORD...
That last part might be the most troublesome. I have to get like 20 signatures from people whom I don't even know. Hopefully it will go smoothly. I hate these random variables. Who said ORD was easy anyway... I still have to collect my pink IC on the same date I'm entering university.
Reading this article on TDD inspired me to work on my game again. I've been going over code I've written and making unit tests. Excitingly, my program no longer runs.
It's partially due to the unit testing, which made me look through the code and discover what a mess it was. I may have to rewrite some stuff again, but at least I'm no longer slacking.
These are some of the sites that I can't resist visiting at least once a day, and probably a lot more. I wouldn't say they are a waste of time... more like a black hole that sucks up every inch of personal time you have, preventing you from ever getting anything done. I hope one day to wean myself off these nightmares.
del.icio.us - Social bookmarking service, shows an endless stream of interesting/unusual urls that I MUST FOLLOW
digg - Community ranked news site, sometimes a lot of crap but usually very up-to-date on the latest news
digglicious - a cruel blend of digg and delicious, uses ajax to display new activity on either site, updated in real time
Arstechnica's gaming forum - occasional good discussion on games. Sometimes I find myself reading some stupid thread for hours.
Google's startpage - Google has a customizable portal page that allows me to view all the latest page feeds. Everytime I glance at it, there's something new and then there goes 15 minutes of my time.
Newsvine - A site offering user-submitted and professional news blended together. Since it's a new site I'm not sure if I'll get sucked in too, but I'm weak so anythings possible.
Daft Punk - Discovery
Very catchy tunes in this album, such as "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger". But they've somehow tweaked their electronic tunes to sound soulful as well. Robots singing about love, that's one of my favourite genres.
Aimee Mann - Bachelor No. 2
Her lyrics are great, but I needed a few listens to catch everything. A lot of strange instruments were used on this cd, giving it a varied and interesting feel. I can't really decide if the songs are optimistic or depressing... still great pop music nonetheless.
Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Probably one of my favourite albums. Heart-rending and catchy and just damn near flawless. Surreal and whimsical yet deeply personal. I didn't take to it at first, after a few listens I was hooked. I bought the band's previous albums and was not disappointed either. But only this one features ROBOTS SINGING ABOUT LOVE.
This program allows you to scan the contents of your CD/DVDs into a database. I use it to index my collection. I wonder if anyone else will find it useful though.
Just finished sending off everyone from my house. Feeling dead tired, but it was fun. Seeing everybody with their significant other made me cold and lonely inside, haha. I'm going to finish reading a fantasy novel by Phillip Pullman before I go to bed. Got a borders gift card as a present, so maybe I'll buy it's sequel tomorrow. ;)
A couple of friends asked for help with their projects, so I spent the whole afternoon working on Java applications. Which makes me very tired and grumpy. This is because Java is very syntax heavy, requiring far more typing of symbols than most other languages. Everything must be specified in great detail before you can even run the program. Maybe this is great for enterprise level software and other professional code, but it's really too unwieldy for an amateur like me. I kept skipping the usage of brackets and forgetting to put semi-colons. Been using too much Ruby lately I guess.
Ruby on the other hand, has it's own set of problems for me. So far I've only used it for simple shell scripting, transferring files into my Palm and so forth. I can't seem to do anything major with it though, like 3d programming. It's performance is nowhere near Java or C level. But I think the real reason is I don't really have a focus, like a particular software that I really want to write. Lack of motivation has probably been the story of my life so far.
It's really loud outside. People in my condo are throwing a new-year's party, accompanied by lots of shouting, screaming and music. Happy new year.
