getting dunked

Many people who have known me for a long time (mainly aunties and uncles at my church) were surprised that I haven't been baptized yet. Maybe it was an age expectation they had...or maybe that other people around my age group had already been baptized a few years back.

It hasn't been much of an issue though. I think the only thing that I had to deal with was being mistakenly given some communion bread while I'm playing the piano while the deacons passed the plates around. Thankfully I didn't eat and drink judgment upon myself those times.

Anyway, If I haven't already invited you guys to my dunking session, it's at NTCBC this Sunday at 3:30pm.


...sploosh...

O Hi

Maybe it's a good thing I haven't posted in a while, but oh well. I'm still alive and kicking.

Oh, and I can't wait to go back to school. I've been wanting to go back after the first week of work. I must have some form of A.D.D...

study break 2

as i was studying at slc, phil was working on his micro and multitasking skills. I didn't think that he could play sc and read the bible at the same time. pwnage.

study break

So i was talking to my mom on MSN while studying at SLC today, and here's an excerpt:

Mom: is anyone renting your room for the next 4 months?
Me: yup, that's all taken care of
Mom: thanks God, you are winner



...what??


(dzeh...what are you doing??)

The Reverse-bias Dan Au Effect

Dan and I got to dc today at 2pm, and we didn't do any work until 45 mins later. I think i was influencing dan this time around...the Jon Wong effect? =P

Back to work with transistors.

The Dan-Au Effect

def'n: the propensity to follow Dan Au's actions w.r.t. academic study

e.g.1: If Dan feels like going to the library to study, I would also want to.
e.g.2: If Dan would rather stay home and watch Macross, I would do likewise.

There are a few exceptions where the Dan-Au effect does not impact my actions at all, for example tonight. I decided to stay home and work on my labs, but I'm more prone to distractions...like blogging.

back at home

It's almost 1 in the morning, so i'm making a brief summary of my long weekend so far.

- I've done little to no work lately, and I have 2 more days before everything's due.

- my little aunt/uncle/cousins/whatevertheyare have started to drink tea when we went to a chinese restaurant on saturday. YAY!! Now their teeth won't have as many holes due to all that sugar content in the apple juice they drink. I think i'm gonna have to force them to eat more vegetables again sometime. ooh, what fun =P

- i've sort of forgotten what it's like to be at home, having not been back for a while. oh well, it's all good.

- WHY IS IT SO HOT IN HERE?? I LIKED IT BETTER IN MY GHETTO BASEMENT IN WATERLOO. okay, maybe not, but still...ac was only turned on like, on thursday.

- Stuff i've been compiling over the last couple days to watch:
-gurren lagann
-denno coil
-g gundam
-macross frontier
-soul eater
-spice and wolf
-bamboo blade
-potemayo
-ex driver

PC, Mac...can't we live together?

The most common things I hear:
"Macs are stupid. You can't play any games and are only for graphics."
"Windows sucks. They get too many viruses and crash often. Macs don't have any of these problems."

I remember how I used to cringe when I had to use a Mac. What? Only a one-button mouse? I need to press Command+Click for Starcraft? Garbage!

Then there was the time at work at Espresso where I was told to install windows through Bootcamp on another person's Macbook. I basically didn't know how to do anything in the OS...yes, I thought that the nice Apple icon on the top bar would act like a Windows start menu. It was like playing DDR with all the arrows mixed around in different order. I don't know how to do anything!! ARGH!!

During my 2A term, Keith gave me the first real exposure to the Mac OS (ironically on a PC, but that's besides the point). It did take a bit of time to learn simple tasks like opening and closing applications, installing applications, making new folders, etc. Tim, being a long time Linux and Mac user, also helped me get familiar with the operating system, including using the terminal.

My work term was when I decided to take the step in buying a Mac. It was probably because my co-worker Hash bought an iMac with his first payroll. He also learned how to use Linux through the help of his friend Jack who was an open-source purist (running all open-source software on gentoo linux and swapping out all his proprietary hardware in his laptop).

I bought my Macbook Pro from a student from Western. He was apparently the Apple Campus Representative there. He got a brand new Macbook Pro from work, so he wanted to sell his 2-year-old 1st-gen one...surprisingly at a decent price, so I bought it on impulse. I needed a desktop replacement laptop anyway.

Even after buying, I still used my old desktop Windows XP machine. However, I got so used to running programs and opening folders using Quicksilver that I found having a perfectly neat and laid-out start menu wasn't efficient enough for me. So I got a Windows equivalent of it...wasn't perfect, but I was happy.

I also experimented with ubuntu Linux on another computer lying around. I was surprised by the amount of work that had been done since the last distribution update. The GUI was just more user friendly, as if the developers were trying to have a sweet-looking interface that rivals OSX with the core functionality of Linux. Then I started to think that my Macbook Pro wasn't so special anymore. It was just like another laptop (albeit with a capability to play games hardware-wise). It seemed like I had just bought a PS3 at launch...expensive, few games, unpopular...then realized that the Wii and Xbox360 were also great consoles.

Anyway, I wanted to respond to some of the common sayings about Macs and PCs. First of all, Macs DO have games, but not every company writes their games for operating systems outside of Windows. If you want to play any Steam games or a majority of those Korean MMORPGs, you're out of luck unless you're running Windows. However, companies like Blizzard and idSoftware have ported their games to OSX, and in some cases, Linux as well. Yay OpenGL!

It's a common misconception that Macs are only for graphics work. There are a TON of stuff for Windows, Unix, and Linux as well. Heck, Windows machines were used for the Lord of the Rings movies.

A lot of Mac fanboys (I'm not a Mac fanboy, btw) proclaim that their precious little computers will never crash and don't get any viruses. This isn't completely true. From experience, my Macbook Pro does crash, but rarely...only if I do something stupid. It handles application crashes a little better by not hanging up the entire system. I know my old PC has trouble with this, most likely because it's pretty darn old. Otherwise, if I don't overwork my PC, it's mostly trouble-free.

Viruses. Yes, there are much fewer viruses for Mac, but they still exist. It is possible to not need an antivirus software even on a Windows machine. Tim had one running for a few years, virus free. Don't click random links, download random files, etc...and you'll be fine.

Mac advertisements have built a certain negative reputation. I personally find some of them stupid, or just bashing PCs in general. The remaining ones, however, are somewhat clever and interesting. There's also a reason why you see so many Mac ads...Windows is more popular.

There are probably a ton of other complaints about Windows, OS X, and even Linux that I won't go into. They're all great operating systems in my opinion. They have their flaws too. It's just a matter of preference: Which interface am I the most comfortable with? Do I want to play (insert game here)? Do I want to use (insert application here)?

C'mon, be nice. Mac wants to be friends with Windows. Oh, and don't leave out Linux! He wants to join in too. Can't we live in harmony, despite our differences?




EDIT: A little interesting tidbit...Microsoft products on my Macbook Pro, like Officemac, run quite a bit slower than their Windows counterparts.

EDIT2: In Japanese Internet culture, operating systems are represented by cartoon characters. More on that here and here.

mePhone

no, it's not mine. just holding on to it for a friend.

Stress Testing

Today, I was told to stress test a computer. And this was what I got to play around with:


The massive duct on the dual Xeon heatsinks was quite awesome. Topping that, there are two removable exhaust fans as well. Naturally, I removed them because they were FREAKING loud. Overall, the airflow design is pretty good. Even the power supply above and the FireGL card below get cooled.



Stress testing involved some OpenGL rendering and a few instances of Prime95. And some CS Source, which i don't have a picture of. It wasn't really anything spectacular, since the video card wasn't intended for games in the first place.




My co-worker, on the other hand, got to tinker around with a gaming-pc-turned-server machine. For some reason, there's an LCD display at the back. Maybe for troubleshooting?




I think i'll be getting back to playing CS. I am technically stress testing the computer, aren't I?

vectors

"Graham's number, named after Ronald Graham, is a large number often described as the largest finite number that has ever been seriously used in a mathematical proof. Guinness World Records even listed Graham's number as the World Champion largest number. It is too large to be written in scientific notation because even the digits in the exponent would exceed the number of atoms in the observable universe so it needs its own special notation to write down." [1]

No, it has nothing to do with vectors. I was playing around with the pen tool in Illustrator CS2 today out of boredom at work, and this is what I came up with. I really didn't know how to do the 64, nor where to position them. But whatever.

So, if you ever decide to colour an n-dimensional hypercube, just remember this.


[1] Wikipedia, "Graham's number," January 2008, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham's_number.

Pointless Studying Procrastination

Stuff that's cool:

• Pretty interface. Like, it looks incredibly slick. No wonder why they used something similar for the PS3.
• African huge screen for a portable system. 480x272 resolution is nothing short of impressive.
• The browser. I can even check my email. And it does WPA...cough DS cough...
• Sound. Expected nothing less of CD quality; but coming from a DS, there sure is a big difference.
• DJ Max. It's awesome.
• DJ Max looks so sweet. It would be almost impossible to port it to the DS.
• DJ Max is crazy.
• Did I mention DJ Max?

Stuff that's bleh:

• Maybe preference, but I don't quite like the cellphone-style of keyboard entry yet.
• Wireless B only? Oh well.
• Video playback requires conversion. Guess it's the same situation for my DS.
• It's bigger than my calculator.
• The browser supports flash, but it's an old version...so no Youtube on the go. Meh.
• With a UMD loaded, it drains the battery like a vampire.
• The square button is awfully close to the screen. I keep leaving fingerprints on it when mashing away on DJ Max.
• The circle button feels weird...kinda clicks when it's not pressed directly down the middle.
• Whoever decided to place that analog pad that low deserves to be shot. Or has hands the size of a baby...and still deserves to be shot.
• Ditto the L and R buttons. And the rest of the buttons. Maybe I need a grip attachment.

Guess I can't go wrong with $160. Came with a 2GB Sandisk memory stick. Also got GTA: Liberty City Stories, as well as The Matrix and 8 Mile movies...not that I'd watch them on this though.

Work, work...

Never thought work could be this relaxed. Meanwhile, I'll try to update this page.

Last night, I tried sleeping early...well, earlier than usual. Then I woke up 10 mins before i had to be at work.

I'm never sleeping early again.