Category Archives: Blogging

Thoughts and rants about maintaining an active, healthy blog.

6 Weeks Away and Everything Changes

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I go away for 6 weeks and everything here changes. Its a strange feeling. When you live in a place for so long, that everything seems in stasis but its not. Maybe I am just noticing something everyone knows about.

So while I was away, my best friend Dmitri and his girlfriend Sarah got engaged. Now they have been dating for a few years. But the news of their engagement… Wow! Congratulations!

All the other news pales in comparison. When in Italy, I met and hung around with a girl named Laura. To make a long story short, Laura and I are unofficially in a girlfriend-boyfriend long distance relationship. Now I will definitely admit that I don’t have too much confidence in long distance relationships normally but… I guess I am kinda in love with Laura.

Also Carmen Hung, one of my friends from university finished her undergraduate studies. And she started blogging too. Congratulations and welcome to the blogosphere Carmen! You can read up Carmen’s blog here: http://carmenhung.blogspot.com/

Finally in less interesting news, I joined the Steam Community Beta. Unfortunately I don’t have too much time to play nowadays. But I might be online sometime in the evenings. Beside I am saving up my gaming time for when Half-Life 2 Episode 2 comes out.

I think that about covers most of the news from my side now. I will keep you updated as the situation progress.

New Feature: Feature Articles

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Starting with hopefully tomorrow, I want to introduce a new feature to this blog. I would like present a few articles about the game development, the open source/free culture world, and computing in general. Hopefully, I can share with you some ideas I notice as a person who lives and breathes in these three, often quite different universes. The plan is to present an article a week. How well this will go we will see.

Also I plan on releasing posts on a regular, daily basis. Again since I am subject to the laws of space, time and entropy, I will admit that I might be too busy or unable to post. However, I will try to conform to both the universe and offer a consistent interesting reading material for my readers.

Finally, as a favour I again ask anyone who reads this blog, and is brave to post a comment. I tried using Technorati, and other tools… but I find it impossible to track my audience. Are you guys silently lurking in the shadows or are you?

Tea & Biscuits

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Sunday evening I finally managed to meet up with Dmitri. After 2 weeks of an unsuccessful trip to the mall, I convinced Dima to scrap the whole mall trip. Malls are better for shopping and not meeting up for coffee.

I went over to Dima’s house and at Sarah’s insistence, we all had some tea and biscuits. I would of preferred coffee, but Sarah hates the taste of it so tea it was. Sounds old fashioned but I enjoy a talk with friends more than the most “exciting” game or movie. Dima attempted to get me to watch a preview of Jackass 2 and Dexter. As promised, I will watch the first episode of Dexter, but Jackass proved too crazy and silly for me. Sorry Dima, I know you tried.

Before the “tea” party, I helped Sarah and Dima work on Sarah’s assignment. Acting like a snobby writer, I commandeered the assignment. I still persist that most writing needs the golden touch of a good journalist, writer or editor. And I managed to finish up my previous blog. The next ones will be shorter.

Also I received confirmation of someone reading my attempt at journalism. Thank you Sarah for reading my work. You made my day.

Delays in Posting

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Please forgive the delay in posting. Preparing for the new (and final) semester, forced me to sacrifice my time to non-blogging work. In fact, I am waiting for a clean reinstall/upgrade of Ubuntu to finish. We will back to our “regular” schedule by Monday.

Radical Site Makeover

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I need a change. A change from the mundane, ordinary and usual. Same goes for my blogging. I dedicate this blog for this point to documenting my thoughts about open source gaming. Most people might see this funny or even odd. The truth is that the open source movement has existed in gaming for a while, but no one thought of it as extraordinary.

I want to document the progress, history and future of open source, gaming and blending of both.
Hence, I am redesigning the website in the next few days. This redesign will retouch the appearance, articles and overall feel of the journal.

Enjoy.

Exam Sideeffects, TV Online and the Pursuit of Rest

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Exams. One word says it all. If you ever taken one you know what I mean. If you never had the “pleasure” of taking one, let me just name some of the side effects: anxiety, dizziness, confusion, insomnia, sleepiness, panic attacks and memory loss. In extreme cases, exams may cause serious injury or even death of: marks, chances of passing, hope of finishing university and getting a degree.

I finished my last exam today, so please forgive my lapse in blogging punctuality. This temporary insanity only lasts for a few days fortunately. I think I passed two of my four classes. 😉

Instead of studying – the ultimate goal is to pass not excel – I contracted a recent meme-virus going around the Internet, videoblogging. After watching a number of videos on Google Video (including the feature film Dr. Strangelove), I kind of like the idea of watching videos online. It passes the time between exams and the split of Stargate Atlantis Season 3. Videoblogging reminds of watching the news, only way geekier, fun and with better looking hostesses (it’s a guy thing). The best ones I watched so far: Rocketboom and MobuzzTV.

Rocketboom, hosted by Joanne Colan feels like watching Slashdot on TV (minus the comments left by good willed gentleman – I love you guys – all trolls, except for one pleasant guy but he’s a troll too). The vlog delves into the wacky and zany antics, those creatures called humans come up with: shoverboards and the Boston Type Writer Orchestra episodes being great examples. The lovely Joanne Colan hosts the week-daily show, bringing a light-hearted humorous feel. The excellent overall quality of Rocketboom, makes me want to call it less of a videoblog, and more of a short on-line show.

MobuzzTV, raises the bar even higher than Rocketboom for videoblogs. I liken MobuzzTV to an on-line tech tv show. MobuzzTV deals with current tech-related events in a humorous, fun light. The presentation: sleek, sexy and professional. If more videoblogs of the same calibre of MobuzzTV start sprouting up, old fashioned TV will die almost overnight.

Videoblogs seems like the future of TV, and even governments seem to think so. Just check out France’s new France24. Impressive, but not surprising. I am wondering with such wonderful show and sites out there, how can a lowly “text” blogger such as myself compete for attention. Maybe some old-fashioned folks, prefer text sometimes.

I fear I must hasten to my assignments, and then I shall experience freedom from university!

Announcing Daily Updates to Mlaren Dreams!

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Greetings! Judging by the success of my recent flurry of postings, I decided to start updating the blog on a regular basis.

So I am proud to present. Mlaren Dreams, updated daily at 18:00 EST. Or 23:00 UTC, for those persistently-connected-to-the-Net-thanks-to-my-new-fangled-neural-network-connection.

Unfortunately, I need a few more days before I can link to any files.

Groogy Weather, Groggy Me

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Greetings again, and sorry about missing two day of updates. Dealing with stress, putting up with administrative nonsense, writing assignments, attempting to dance around illness and living with the sudden wacky cold-wet weather, puts me in a mood where I rather not even poke my nose from under the blanket. On the bright side, everything is falling into place.

The instructors of two of my course, kindly set the hand-in date for my course work until December 20. That gives me some breathing room, and lets me concentrate on the three assignments due on Friday. Next week I get to study for exams and work on the later assignments.

Carmen Hung, the new leader of our CSC454 or Business of Computing, handled getting everyone to work on the last assignment wonderfully. The paper still in the works, weighs in currently at a hefty 41 pages, and 24% of our term work. The business plan is coming along, not as fast as I wanted it. Still no complaints, as yesterday I came home late and crashed. I spent this entire morning getting over my tiredness “hangover”. When I finish blogging this entry, I will stock up on caffeine again.

Katarina Halan, classroom friend and almost my girlfriend, let me work with her on the CSC347 or Information Security assignment. We spent about 16 hrs on Sunday working only on the assignment. After hours of hacking, half-working and actual coding we finished the assignment. Thanks Kat for yesterday’s coffee “date”. Sorry about the Tim Horton’s coffee, next time I will buy some good coffee from Second Cup instead.

My last assignment after the “Business” course, deals with the unfortunate CCT209 Foundations of Research course. I am so behind in that course, it stopped being funny months ago. My group started on Monday, but since my e-mail to them, I saw no work. I guess I have to juggle this assignment and writing the business plan. Bother. Guys, you better get on the ball soon.

As for my open source project and my other blog, One-Time Trash Pad both I place on hold until I meet Friday’s deadline. I have too much at stake to deal with any side projects. If I don’t update this blog anytime before December 20, please do not be surprised. I will try my best, but no promises.

Until then wish me luck. I need all the luck I to overcome the stress, the weather and my own sluggishness.