Tag Archives: PEY

Stepping Mania

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Life has been pretty hectic recently. I guess basically it always was but I was too busy gaming to notice it. Talking about gaming I bought my first new game recently, HL2 Episode 1. Excellent game and loads of fun. Strangely very re-playable and Valve has worked hard on making the game believable with good AI and HDR. Without spoiling the plot too much, the best parts of the game were: a new enemy, HDR (kept on blinding myself with a flashlight against a white wall) and the story.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am busy working on a new project recently. Basically a minimalistic web framework that you can drop into a website or extend to your heart’s desire. The only real problem recently was getting the Subversion repository working, and finding a new name for the project. It seems that at least two other open source projects have the names simplesite. I choose a new and original one. I am not going to release it yet until I get the SourceForge admins to change everything around properly.

I have been searching for jobs recently for PEY (UofT’s version of an internship). I need the money and the experience is welcome. Besides I want to decide upon my career path before I finish university. Might be a dev, tester, admin or a researcher. Right now I applied to two different places. We will see how it goes. Also I can’t get the courses I want either (might need to ruffle some feathers in that department).

Other than that nothing much else to say. I might say some nasty comments about one crazy nation doing “preemptive” invasions of another country. Looking for terrorists they say. What a pity most of their kills are civilians. Meh that what you get when you have one state-sponsored terrorist group going out to defeat another private one. Idiots.

On a brighter note, might go clubbing sometime soon. Continuations in writing, coding and other mad activities will also follow. Stay tuned for more.

Cruising through the Clouds

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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.)

Drifting in a Netherworld

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Fall. Well not officially but still… everyone can feel it. Summer’s warm embrace is loosening and slowly turning into the cool of autumn. And haven’t enjoyed it a bit… not much time off. And now the sickness. Apparently my latest illness which seemed to be fading, has struck my sinuses. Now I have had to deal with this quite painful secondary infection… So much for time off. To top it off my knee-jerk coughing spree kept me up till 4:00 AM yesterday night. The only thing enjoyable was a reading a VERY depressing Japanese (Yeah for English translation) animated novel. Well maybe not enjoyable but at least I least I felt better about my own situation after it.

Fortunately I have been feeling better with each passing day. Mostly thanks to intensive pill-popping. Of course, to make the experience more exciting, my condition always seems to worsen in the evening. Lovely. So I decided to get some work done. I have updated my Linux box recently, with a newer version of udev, a new kernel (which I soon found to be broken with a new implementation of the Alps touchpad driver…) and few other things. I cleaned out a few old things, like useless libraries, a few games including Quake 3 Demo (sorry it was just too bloody) and UT2004 Demo (love the fast action, but I don’t have time to play), and best of all Mozilla. That’s right! Now I have only Firefox and Thunderbird… without all the additional bloat. I also
threw out the Gentooized version of Eclipse, and got a newer copy for my own personal use off the Eclipse.org site. A few minutes later (and DSL reconnects), I had everything I needed. Sort of. My update kept on crashing with the configuration of wings (awesome 3D modelling program), but that bug report I sent in yesterday paid off. I am currently in the process of
reemerging a few kernel dependent programs, and my update.

I have given up on my old laptop. The not-so-hot release of FreeDOS now lives on it. What a change I might add… I really do prefer a Unix system… but at least I can play my old DOS games again. Weee… OLD SCHOOL!!!

As for back-to-school (university) preparations, I am debating on whether to take PEY or not… and whether to pursue a degree in bioinformatics (I suck at Bio and Chem labs and their reports :() or take that one icky statistics course and take the AI courses. I would really love to hack robots (especially space probes/drones/rovers) as a job^H^H^Hcareer.