One More Turn To Take

The purplish sand dunes flashed by as he accelerated his blue mlaren down the course. The magenta sky and the orange-yellow gas giant hung above him in a surreal but serene manner. One more sharp turn, he thought quietly to himself. The race had been a hard one, but now only a few more minutes and it would all be over. And he would emerge victorious.

These last few days have been nerve-racking. My lecture notes and preparation for the assignments pile up, while I continue on struggling with the mere set-up of my box. I have installed everything that I need and that I want. I have fought with getting my Palm, which now is safely and soundly synced with my computer. The software suspend and the splashscreen work partially. Fortunately that is nothing I have to worry about in the near future. Getting a virtual machine running was a hassle. Eventually it worked but not without a lot of arm twisting. It does like to sync with my laptop‘s native resolution, but I think that is because of the DGA mode. All my programs have been acting funny since I started that up. Again, in windowed mode everything works swell. So that is fine for this semester. As soon as the semester ends, the virtual machine is coming off my computer, along with Visual Studio .Net, Windows XP, and SQL Server.

Today alone, I got my web server up and running. The rest of the day was spent playing around with iptables, and so now I have a decent firewall running on my machine. Decent as in it literally chokes nmap when it attempts to scan for ports from the inside. I should try from my brother’s computer, but that would take too long and I am short on time. Heck, I did not go kayaking today even thought my parents insisted. This evening I tried to PHP running in safe mode, which it did. Unfortunately do to permissions issues, things behaved strangely. Silly me. All that is left is to play a second with mySQL for a few minutes and then set up my local Subversion repository. Then I am done.

I need a break, like a walk. I want to go but I think I might have to even stay up a bit, so I will refrain from leaving until EVERYTHING is set up. Then I will go for a walk.

Nightfall, Weariness and Hope

I feel so incredibly tired that I am amazed that I am still able to function enough to be able to write a journal entry. Must of switched over to auto-pilot. Funny. Today was busy, and full of unexpected twists.

Got up this morning, and rushed to get ready to school. Meanwhile my Mom and brother were preparing for another day out. I had just enough time to stuff my backpack, make my brother breakfast, make myself lunch, copy a CD, and few small computer fixes before launching out of the house for my first class. No hope for a ride back, but oh well I have the whole day to work.

A beautiful, warm day, but I had to dress warmly as my university believes that the temperature most conducive for learning is the breeding temperature of Emperor penguins. The lectures were hard to sit through as usual. I tried to pay attention but I still managed to copy two more CDs that I owed Mom. Sorry Professor Sills, and Katz, I only have a maximum attention span of 45 minutes. So I learned a bit in Requirements Engineering and almost nothing in Symbolic Logic. However, I managed also to try out some tricks with my Palm. I seems that I am making progress in connecting with my Linux-only laptop. But I would really have to work on it. I don’t have time for that now. Too much other things to get setup and running.

Registered with AccessAbility, and now I have the letters for my professors. In the meantime however, I received a nasty shock. My laptop refused to start up! I believe it had overheated later. But at the time being I was panicking (inside of course, always cool on the outside). A while later I turned it on… everything worked. Except that the power light had changed positions with the floppy/CD light. Confusing to no end. Now it works… lights right and all… Sometimes I am wondering if I am not dealing with a sentient being…

By the time I reached databases classes I was so exhausted that I was in my famous ranting mode. Fortunately I had nothing to talk about, but still I started falling asleep in class. And I sat at the front, not a good thing. However, I regained my senses half-way through and could answer questions, and ask for clarification. I think I understand this databases stuff. I really hope I do. Its pretty cool, once it all clicks into place. Danny was thoughtful to bring a DVD with ISOs for the course software (all legit, thanks for the lenient license Microsoft!). I got it most copied on to my system except for Visual Studio .Net 2003 Prerequirements and XP Pro. Now if only I can get VMWare Workstation to work on my laptop, we would be cruising.

I got back home by bus. Chilling and listening to music helped to kill the time, and I got off with high spirits. The short walk home I enjoyed throughly. Soft silent warm night air breezing around me, cooling me down but not too considerably. I enjoyed it. Life is good. There is a good chance I will be working for Dr. Graham in the Psychology labs… paid hacking. 😉 And I signed up for PEY too. OK I now post, and reboot. Hope this kernel fixes the framebuffer issue.

Cruising through the Clouds

Another day off. Well sort of. Today I may be off from school, but the assignments are there nevertheless. Fortunately, I have managed to get my system in a fairly workable state. I can develop for the most part now, I am just emerging the last programs that I need to have a fully operational development system. Basically mySQL, a few graphics programs, a number of games, and a video player is all I need. Oh sure, there are a few things I might to add-on like old style BSD games, extra themes and fonts. But really I am well off now.

I received an email from Ewa today. Its very thoughtful of her, but then she always has treated as a bit more than a friend. I am very grateful for that, since practically all the other girls that I know just think of me as “Oh, just a guy I know.” Sigh… Seems that her semester is working out for her. Actually her course load is far more balanced than mine, as I am taking only CS courses and a Philosophy course to finish off my Humanities requirement. This is sort of paradoxical of me, as I strike as more of the Humanities type but I have been mostly involved in Sciences since mid-high school. I love history, languages, art and the such, but I have been always wary of who teaches them to me. There are just too many crooks, and jerks who indoctrinate half-truths, distortions and lies, and not teach the truth. Often I find these distortions have impacted my life in a negative manner and when I learn of the truth, it becomes harder to accept. So that is why I self-teach myself, and analyze everything in view of what I know, and what I hold near and dear.

Yesterday, I sat in a PEY (Professional Experience Year) session. After this I decided to give this program a try, as the career skills I will develop will be essential to like get a decent job. I mean I can learn now while I am an undergraduate or later the hard way after I graduate. This will require some time, but even the short term monetary compensation from this venture will be worthwhile. Even if I earn some 30 grand, I should be able to pay off all my OSAP debts and the final school year in one fallow swoop. Besides I hunger for the taste of real work, not some half-brained unskilled employment in a factory on the production line. I hope this works out… anyways time to dust of that resume. I go forth now to conquer the skies, as the stars will be next. (Relax all you USAF types, I was being metaphorical.)

Framebuffer Fracked but System Up and Running

Live in the inside of a particle accelerator is quite fast. You hardly get time to look around, but still things happen. So you are never too bored. Buts its no fun… especially if you are about to have a head-on collision with your opposite-spin counterpart at 0.99999C. Enough about high energy physics research, more about me.

Recently, I have concentrated almost exclusively for next week, and especially with building my Gentoo system. The Synaptics touchpad on my laptop gave a lot of trouble, and even worse was the framebuffer. Everything is now working, except for the blasted framebuffer. Naturally, it took nearly ten recompiles of different kernels to get it right. And a lot of searching. As of right now, I have a working X, with a minimal KDE install, Abiword, and Firefox. Its still a long ways away from the hard core developer production system I need. Fortunately most of the hard work is done.

Truth be told I have been slacking a bit. My room is still a mess, things are misplaced, and I have not touched my notes (let alone the assignments) yet. The resume still needs to be done, OSAP picked up, rides, scheduling, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum. Better get cracking. Night.

Paper Blogs in the Morning’s Gloom

Its raining again. This is not at all unwelcome or surprising. Most people despise rainy days. I don’t. The gray cloudy skies above enhance the colors of the land below by throwing them against a canvas of clouds. Sure I get headaches sometimes with the changing pressure. Still a little bit of pain and discomfort keep you in touch with the reality of living in a shattered Post-Deluvian world. Besides I love the sight of rain. The beads of clear water clinging to the windows. The fog-like spray thrown up by passing vehicles. Just the silver curtain of rain bombarding the dry, crackled clay ground is a relaxing sight.

I had to start early today, as this time I will be commuting by bus. Not fun but necessary. I was surprised to find out that there is an express bus for Hurontario street. This discovery should cut my travel time significantly. Normally Rudy would give me a ride. Sigh… his dropping out courses has left me stranded with taking buses. The carpooling system is not being helpful either. I want a car. Naturally that is not going to happen anytime soon.

These past few days have been busy ones. Yesterday, I did a monumental backup and now I am rebuilding my Gentoo box. It works mostly except for the framebuffer display and the mouse under X. It will take time to get it in production mode. Also my Palm has been left stranded without a Windows box, and I deleted the evil Documents2Go program. Oh well.

I have a fair bit to do before I set foot in school, so I will leave of here.

Staring into the Endless Void

The void stretched endlessly outward. Far past the insignificant planet, that he called his homeworld. Far past the distant gas giants. Far past even his own wild, mechanistic imagination. He stood there, the cold air condensing his warm breathe. Beside the glow of the fire, snuggled amongst the still river, and the dark forest, he stood. He stood there. A feeling of absolute insignificance in face of the grand scheme of things. He asked quietly, neither to himself nor to the silent, distant stars, “Are you there?”

First day of university, and already I feel about squished under the immense pressure. So much to do, so much to learn, so much to set into motion. And so many to greet again. I was in a stupid rambling mood… but still… I guess I was nervous too. Please forgive me. Anyways, this entry is going to be a longer one since it deals with the last three days… so here goes.

Saturday. I crawled into the tent when the sky became gray, and the stars had dissipated into the morning gloom. That was at 6:30. I got up around 9:30, and needed a few coffees to revive myself. After breakfast we packed up, as we had decided to head back home in the evening. Of all places, we found the outer covering of the tent, underneath the tent. We had been sleeping on it all the while. While the packing took some time, we managed to start kayaking around 2:00. This time we kayaked the lower part of the Masquash, below the Big Eddy generating station. There we encountered a long stretch of beautiful grassy banks, a half constructed bridge, and a not so amazing C1 rapid which handled like a swift. And I was hoping to have some fun on that one too. Anyways we paddled all the way down the river, and the adjacent Grey Lake all the way up to the falls.

The falls themselves were quite pretty, and dangerous but we didn’t go anywhere near them on kayak. We portaged ourselves (not our craft) to a lookout at the base of these falls. Quite a view. But the best was still to come. On our return trip, along the stretch of grass bank, we met up with a beaver chewing on fresh greens on the bank. Naturally my brother had to scare him, as my little brother is usually up to doing silly things. The beaver jumped into the water, but later emerged and swam along with us! Then we noticed another, and yet another swimming a bit further up. The creatures swam with us mostly, but occasionally waded unto the bank and after spying us jumping back into the water. I must say, that I felt privileged to kayak alongside such beautiful creatures. Of course, the beavers were sly enough not reveal their lodgings. But still… wow!

Due to the beaver incident, we got back to our car by dusk. We barely secured our kayaks to the rooftop rack before it got dark. After a short meal, we started on our long trip home.

Sunday. Fortunately not such a fast day, as I had expected. Still a worthwhile mention. I started off with mass as I have with every Sunday. This time the mass was held on the field nearby the construction site of the new church. Not a very interesting mass at that, since the pastor ranted the entire time about the “miracles” of preparations for building the new church. I will not state my opinion about the pastor, but it unfortunately leans to the negative side. Even more unfortunate, that most of the more “involved” parishioners have stronger, negative opinions. Sigh… Anyhow, leaving matters of religion and politics aside, my brother Martin’s dance performance happened later on in the day. Martin is in a Polish traditional dance group, and today he performed a number of dances. I am impressed with his progress, since he is one of the best dancers in the entire group. Go bro go!

The day ended in a disastrous walk to Heart Lake which ended up in me having some 12 crazy mosquitoes landing on my legs simultaneously. The walk cut short because of that, my parents decided to go to Professor’s Lake instead. I greatly enjoyed the latter park. When we got back home, I got started on preparing for school: getting rides, and fixing my wireless card. I gave up on the wireless card around 1:00 AM. I really don’t think its fixable.

Monday. First day of school, and I am ready for action. My lecture of the day was PHL245: Modern Symbolic Language. It seems incredibly easy thanks to all the previous intensive logic training I received. Rudy also found it simple too, and so instead of listening to the professor, Rudy attempted hacking my wireless card. Naturally after about half an hour, he gave up on the venture. When I talked to the head of computer services, Joe Lim about the problem with the card, he also remarked there was no way I could fix the problem… maybe the manufacturer could… or maybe not. After class Rudy and I drove to Chapters in hopes of purchasing of the textbook for our Information Systems Analysis course. We did buy them but only after searching for the store, then the book, and then paying for the books was fun too. The store price was too high, and they chewed up my gift card in the process. Fortunately they lowered the price and reset my gift card (hehehe funny little story about that too but I am not going to tell). On the way back to school, I grabbed a fairly inexpensive Netgear PCMCIA wireless card. It cost me less than the old one, and the new one can do the faster 802.11g protocol while being able to switch back to the older 802.11b one. Nice.

I arrived just in time for my next lecture: CSC320 Visual Computing. Yay! My graphics course. Well yay sort of… I mean the material is interesting, the professor is pretty cool as he seems to be one of those hacker-types, and a number of my school friends are in the class. The only problem is that the assignments are huge and technically difficult. Yes, I know its a third year level course… but still. The professor, Arnold Rosenbloom actually went through two lectures today. A song and dance about visual computing, the quality of the assignments, and a bit about image processing. Then on to the matting problem… which bewildered most of the class. When he asked for a show of hands who knew what was going on, about a third of the class raised there hands. Most of them were lying, including me. No, seriously I did understand it, but I had a bit of difficulty visualizing the solution, and its been ages since I touched linear algebra. Anyhow, no slouching in this class. No sir.

That was my last class, and it was time to go home. On the way out, I saw a posting for a student position in working on programming in the Psychology department. Very interesting, and I met the guy hiring. Apparently there is one more position, and I should bring in my resumée. I will try it out. I should be up for the job. I took the bus home since I have not gotten a concrete answer for a ride. Sigh… the rest of the day was spent resting, and preparing for tomorrow’s kayak trip. Looks like another busy, and interesting school year.

Traveling at 300km/s

This morning seems to be a continuation of yesterday. The world seems like a blur and time runs like a maddened hare on steroids. So in fact yesterday we did not go on a trip due to inclement weather. Instead I busied myself with school preparations, registering myself for my tutorials, finding where to buy my books, and getting rides. Most of this is pretty much down pat except for one tutorial, one ride back home, and obtaining the books physically. I am bit surprised that the visual computing course has no textbook… strange. On top of that I had to clean up around the house, make a few meals and prepare everything for tomorrow’s trip.

On the tech side, I finally got my USB stick working under Linux again. Now all I need is my SD card, and my Palm to get detected. No work on justCheckers, or my writing of course. I did meet up with Dmitry for a short walk, but getting there was a hassle as pretty much of Kennedy Road was torn up for repaving. Dmitry seems to be settling into his new house, and new semester at Wilfred Laurier splendidly. I convinced Rudy to take that course in databases, because I have no clue how otherwise he will survive the web programming course next semester. He seems to be walking a fine line with his courses… Oh well, times up! I need to get busy, busy again. Bye! And see you on Sunday. 😉

Rain on my Window

Morning again. The rain outside gentle patters on my windows, smearing the world into a watercolour-like painting. Dream-like. Same way I feel today. Nevertheless I must quicken my typing if I want to get anything else done this morning. I will probably be going on a pleasant 2-3 day camping and kayaking trip along the Masquash river so this maybe the last entry I will have time to write before the eve of school.

Yesterday, I managed to sneak in a bit of preparatory work for university. I managed to switch a course that I by mistake chose. Later on in the evening I convinced Rudy one of my friends who gave me rides last year to class. Now all I need is someway of returning on Wednesday back home. I am also planning to get a new wireless card, as I will not have the time to fix the old one. Other than that I just need to get into two tutorial sections, and get my books. As for actually reading up before coming to my first lecture. Well that is not going to happen probably.

Unfortunately I could not get anything done on my software projects due to lack of time. I do not know if I will be able to work on them again until next week. And only then when I do not have any assignments or course work to do. On the plus side I managed to write up almost all of the factions that will be in my novel. As for a glossary of made-up words. Well I will leave that for later as I write the novel. Its kind of unfortunate that I can not bring my laptop with me for the trip, as I would be able to get more writing accomplished that way. Sigh…

Yesterday, I walked down a beautiful white sandy beach around the Long Point region. The soft squishy feeling of my feet impacting with the wet sand that stretched down the surf. A fresh breeze blew from across the lake, whipping the water into turquoise and indigo waves. The tan, foaming, sand laid-en breakers rushed up and down the beach. Every so often, a larger wave flowed over my feet up past my ankles with such force, that the water sloshed up onto my knees. And so I walked down the beach in a leisurely pace. The sun blazing in the clear sapphire sky. The wind tugging at me. And the surf washing over my feet.

Then we went to London, to see my brother’s orthodontist. He also asked to see me, and said that my backward jaw was also fixable. Yes, overbites without the use of surgery. The cost… $5800. Ouch. Out of my own pocket. Ouchie-ouchie-ouch! Then forth to the local Costco where I found a tempting offer. Twenty dollars for Myst IV. I only left it for the sake of my own project, Insomia, so that the game’s ideas would not influence my own. Sigh…

The rain has stopped outside. Now the world is clear to see through the minute drops that cling to my window. Time to move on.

Being is in Mechanical Harmonic is Not Fun

I think I can say that this is the last remnants of my malady. I can say this by the increase of sinus induced headaches and the symptoms of hay-fever. Also my throat no hurts… and so forth. Yesterday was OK too… except in the morning where I felt not too hot. Oh, and it was Mother’s birthday. Oops… I forgot everything about it. Anyways after a bit of coaxing I went with them to Awenda Provincial Park. Which was enjoyable as it was mostly me loafing around on a beach doing mostly nothing except writing. Then we went kayaking on nearby Kettle Lake. The sensation of gliding silently across the still water, gazing at the strange forest of dried pine mingled with water lilies, and grasses… serene. No unusual wildlife was seen but that is alright too.

When it comes to writing, I began to jot down notes about the different characters, factions, and plot of my story. I decided upon the title to be: Echoes in the Ether. I changed the beginning a bit, and made the background history interwoven in the conversations and thoughts of the characters. While I did notice a fair bit of influence from Battlestar Galactica (especially with the robotic Daedus faction), and the Homeworld games, I still think my idea as a whole is fairly unique. I am also glad that in the process of creating my universe I managed to get rid of the whole “Pregenitor” race idea, and still kept the Maker in the story. I hope that I can get the right mix of high tech science fiction and mystical religion as a backdrop for the story. I don’t want to turn into a fantasy story by adding too much crazy magic and mysticism. Overall I have most of the backdrop finished, I just have to finish notes on the last two factions. Then I have to jot down the back story, some technological details, and bit of landscape details. After that its just main character descriptions and plot.

On the programming front, I didn’t get much done except removing CHARVA and CLI elements out of the justCheckers code. The old style stream messages are still there. Maybe I can make a user interface from that. As for school preparations, a big fat zero. Oh well…

Standing on the Edge Looking Out

The cool wind tugged at his body as he stood at the edge of the cliff. Beyond the worn sand hills stretched in contorted shapes, casting strange shadows in the rising sun. He leaned gently on the smooth bubble canopy of his desert mlaren, and smiled.

Well today I am feeling a bit better the last few days. My sinuses still pound repulsively inside my face. But I hope that this the last part of this disease. With the hay-fever season in full swing its hard to tell which of the symptoms are the illness or my irritable body reacting to the ragweed pollen super-clouds drifting around. Sometimes I wish we could get one quick frost. Now. Then the rest of the autumn can be as warm as it wishes. But that would be too easy. Right?

Yesterday, I got up feeling much better. No pain, only one nostril stuffed up and in rather happy mood. I was up by 5:00 AM so I took the time to try to fix my wireless card. I am not sure I can fix it. In Linux doesn’t show up at all, under Windows it gets detected as PCMCIA MTD-0002 after I take it out. It quite disappointing. Not too mention my USB flash drive is not being detected in Linux. I will have to fix this up first. I searched the Internet to my hearts’ content and found nothing about the wireless card. I think its firmware is absent… but I can’t load it until it can be seen by the system. Endless, vicious circle… a challenge for Rudy when I get the chance to talk to him.

Anyhow, I worked on the justCheckers project in the morning. I went through all the documentation, and updated most of it. All that remains is to expand upon on the style guide which pretty much complete, and write up a code of behaviour for developers and community users. I am confident with that done, and CHARVA being removed from the dependencies I will be able to release version 0.1.1. Then I will have to do a fair bit of work on updating the code, fixing a bit of the website (yuck), and getting the GUI finally fixed up.

As usual my work didn’t last for very long as I found out that my parents had planned to go on a trip. A kayaking trip. I mean I have been sick for these past two weeks, and they want me to kayak?!? Where will I get the energy? My feeble protests were naturally ignored. So we went kayaking on the Masquash river in the Muskoka region. So after a bit of grumbling (especially from my father’s side), some hectic packing, whining (mine and a bit of mother’s) and a long drive we were there. While I usually don’t admit defeat, I must say I enjoyed it. Mind you I had a fair bit of rests during the kayaking trip. I love silent lakes, and northern Ontario forests. I could go into a long description, but that would spoil everything. Go there and see it for yourself!

So when we got back home, I naturally dropped into bed from exhaustion (I couldn’t sleep in the car, and I had to tow Mom in her kayak back to the car earlier on). That is why I am writing this now, the morning after. Oh well better put this up on the web… and see if I can get anything done before today’s planned trip. Argh!