March 2008 Archives

Well, it's official! I'm a student again!! I've set up a little page on my CSE account that shows my classes and timetable. Until today my schedule wasn't completely nailed down, as I was unsure if I could get into the Experimental Robotics course. However, I talked to the lecturer today and he signed the paper that got me in!

I'm typing this up on my new computer that I built. I had a few missteps on the build (this is the first one I've done in 5 years!) but I've cracked the case a few more times and got everything in its right place. I decided to go with a cheap processor and then overclock the heck out of it. I got the Intel e2160 which is supposed to run at 1.8GHz, but I've got it cranked up to 3.0GHz!! The whole thing cost about USD $650 and I’m very happy with it.

All of the CSE computers are Linux, which means I had to do some work to set up a work-from-home environment. I wouldn't even think of installing Linux as the one and only OS on my machine; I'm a Windows man through and through! I have plenty of copies of XP Pro lying around from the MS days, so I installed XP rather than buy Vista. Actually, even if Vista was a free option, I would have still gone with XP for my dev box... Vista is nice for fun and pretty things (we've got it running on our laptop) but I certainly don't want to deal with compatibility issues while I'm working on projects. Switching back to XP wasn’t too rough, but I couldn’t deal with the electric blue color scheme anymore. Fortunately I found the Zune color scheme released by Microsoft which I absolutely love! It looks similar to Vista, but it has some orange highlights that really make the GUI pop.

To deal with the Windows vs Linux issue I installed cygwin with X Server, but I quickly realized that this solution just wasn't going to cut it. So I downloaded VMWare Player and an image of the Ubuntu 7.10 distro of Linux. I downloaded and installed a bunch of dev tools and now I’m ready to go. I have my VM up almost all the time and I often find myself browsing the internet or checking email from it because I was already there doing something else. The experience is flawless, I don’t experience any slowdown or any other problems (except the Linux UI, ha!) Virtual machines have always impressed the hell out of me, and now I finally have reason to use one!

So, yeah, I’m having a good time immersing myself in computer land. My classes have been pretty interesting so far, and I’m excited to get going on some projects!

As far as I can tell this is all over the internet... I guess I better join in!

Update: Another sighting...

Well... I upgraded this blog software from version 3.2 to version 4.1... I have no idea what this will do to my site... Posting this entry should tell me how screwed I am... Here goes nothing!

Welcome to Less Than Me 3.0! After upgrading Movable Type to v4.1, I figured I ought to update my templates to gain access to all the new features! While I was at it, I spiffed up the look of my site a bit. The last time I upgraded and touched up the look was way back in November of 2005! And I finally got my hideous logo up on the banner!! I drew it in MSPaint back in June of 2004 but I never could coax the MT templates to display it properly. But now it's right up there, in all its 'glory.'

A few other features I threw in for good measure... The photo on the right is a random pic pulled from my gallery. It's a bit of a ZenPhoto hack, but it works pretty well. Whenever you are bored, just come to my site and refresh the page like mad... a free slideshow, WOW!

The recent comments section on the left was something that came for free in this version of MT. I like it, but I fear what comment spammers will do with it... Only time will tell. In the meantime, get your name up in lights! Leave a comment or two!

Of course, not everything is finished... The about page hasn't been changed yet so it is hideous with the mismatched stylesheet. Aww, it also has the old sidebars. The archive page is a trimmed down version of the default page... I've got a nicer looking one that I wrote a while back, I still need to update that and post it.

But I think that's it... Oh, I finally fixed the weird behaviour where newly left comments wouldn't show up on the page until you manually refreshed. That was terrible... But now it's all better! (I think).

If y'all find any other problems let me know!

Each weekend we try to see a little more of Sydney... Last weekend we went to Darling Harbour, a family friendly waterfront area. There was a circus-y event called Hoopla running so there were some interesting things to watch. We ended up walking up the east side of the harbor and across the Pyrmont Bridge where we found the Australian National Maritime Museum. Entrance was free, so we dropped in for a quick look around. Then we walked back down the west side back to where we started and we shared a gelato. YUM!

The weekend before that we visited the Royal Botanic Gardens, which is situated right on the harbour. What a beautiful place!! We walked all but the northwest section and saw some great harbour views. There was also a huge colony of flying foxes (giant bats) living in the park. We kept hearing screeching and we assumed birds were making the noises until we looked up and saw hundreds of bats hanging in the trees!

A couple of weekends earlier we visited Sydney's Taronga Zoo which is on a cliff overlooking, you guessed it, the harbour! Lots of cool Australian animals: kangaroos, koalas, and platypuses, OH MY! There was one section where the roos and wallabies (and a lone emu) were free to walk around us, so we were able to get right next to them!

One fun weekend we visited the Royal National Park two days in a row! On Saturday we took a train down to the park, and did a bushwalk from Heathcote Station to Waterfall Station on the Karloo and Uloola Tracks. We took a break at the Karloo Pools where Kara got in the water and swam around. We got a little lost further down the trail and had to backtrack until we caught sight of the trail again. That was a little worrying since we were really in the middle of nowhere and we hadn't seen any people for at least an hour! The next day we visited a church and the pastor offered to drive us out to the coastal side of the park! He took us through the park and up to Bulli Lookout, a stunning viewpoint of the coastline.

A week before that we took a short trip down to Botany Bay, the original landing spot of the First Fleet. We visited the excellent La Perouse Museum which told the compelling story of the French explorer Jean François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse. He explored all around the Pacific, was in Botany Bay for the arrival of the First Fleet, and then he and his ships were never heard from again. The shipwrecks have since been discovered, and there are remnants of the wrecks on display at the museum. We also walked around the bayside park grounds and we were able to cross a bridge to Bare Island and explore a bit.

Our first outing was to Hyde Park and the surrounding area. We visited the ANZAC memorial, dedicated to Australian and New Zealand veterans. Walked all through the park, took a peek into St. Mary's Cathedral and St. James' Church, and then walked through the city to the Queen Victoria Building.

The amazing thing is there is still TONS of the city left to see! And then there is even more tons to see beyond the city! Life as a tourist ain't bad...

It's been 223 days (that's 7.3 months) since I quit my last job and today is my last day as a bum. Tomorrow I start a part-time job at a financial software company doing database conversion work. All of my classes are Monday - Wednesday, so I'll be working 8 hour days on Thursday and Friday.

I'm ready to feel useful again!!

A big thanks to Jess for inviting me to Good Reads!! The site looks cool, but the main reason I am glad is that I found a new site to leech all of my book images from! My Media Lookup program hasn't worked for books for a while because Barnes and Noble changed their webpage layout! I've been unable to find a new site with perfect sized book images until now!!

So with a quick update to Media Lookup, I was able to run the program to create entries for all of the books I've read since August of last year. Then I decided to break up my book archive pages by years... And that's when I realized that 2007 was my bookiest year ever! I read 33 books last year?!? That's an average of one book every 11 days... for the whole freaking year!

Thanks to my prodigious year of reading, I knocked 14 books off the Hugo & Nebula award winning books list. Reading books from this list turned out to be a fantastic idea. Most of the books have been great, I have found more authors that I enjoy reading, and I've read a number of classic sci-fi books.

Sadly 2008 won't be as book filled as 2007. My coursework is making it very difficult to finish reading the excellent 'A Deepness in the Sky.' After I finish it, I'll probably not even try to start another book until winter break...