Also I have a website from DePaul. It is Here. There is not too much there yet.

…

I feel older now. Not as old as I probably should be feeling (or older?), I think, but I definitely feel like a different person compared to who I was a year ago. There are all of these things that I feel like I should be doing, and I weirdly care more about my future.

I want to write more about this, but for some reason I feel legitimately busy. I’ve got homework to do, applications to do, emails to send out, and programming languages to learn.

Being busy shouldn’t be an excuse for not saying more, and I do realize my posts are usually pretty empty, but I still feel like I can’t say much.

Like in real life, most of the time.

…

• PHYS 214 – I think this should be pretty similar to PHYS 211/212, but only half a semester. I dumped the discussion and lab on Friday so I don’t have to walk very far and I’ll only have one class on Friday total halfway through the semester.
• CS 231 – Today we learned about (reviewed) binary and hexadecimal numbers, and some very basic stuff taught in the first week of CS 173. As a result, I don’t think this class will be very hard; other people who’ve taken the class in the past have said as much, too.
• MATH 461 – I’m taking the Mathematica section, so hopefully that will be an interesting (and effective) way to do a math class. The only thing we’ve done so far is learn how to use the software.
• HIST 142 – This class is a 100-level gen ed, but the professor was rated highly, and I guess I’m okay with learning about the history of Europe from 1750 to the present. The lecture hall is slightly packed, though.
• CS 373 – This is supposed to be one of the hardest CS classes, but my discussion section TA said it was his favorite, and he was one of the best TAs for CS 173, too. I think the class was described by both him and the professor as mixing philosophy and theory together.
• CS 411 – This is an “introductory” course for databases. We were introduced to the “DBMS” in the first class, and the PowerPoint he had was almost impenetrable. A large part of this class is the group project, so hopefully I can work on one that’s awesome or something, but maybe I’ll see more about this class tomorrow.

In other big news, I’m turning nineteen on Labor Day. I’m busy sourcing ingredients in preparation for my pistachio cake, and that including buying (and finding out that it exists) some pistachio-flavored Jello pudding mix. One of the variations of the recipe I found calls for using Sprite/club soda, but I’m thinking Mountain Dew will suffice, and it will add to the green tint of the cake. I hope to add a layer of pistachio paste to the cake somewhere, and I’ll try to see if it’s feasible for me to grind up some pistachios; else, I’ll have to buy some pre-made paste somewhere.

…

I really wanted to take some pictures and post them here, but I kept on not buying AA batteries for my camera. :-p

That is all.

“The Bad Touch” originally by Bloodhound Gang

“The Gutterati?” originally by The Fratellis

Thanks for the name-drop and album review by our boy Jack Riedy at his blag.

…

Don’t bullsh*t me, you didn’t know that.

That is all.

I totally got owned playing by myself, though.

Shit is gettin' fo' real.

Also, the caption functionality seems to be broken. You’ll manually have to edit the caption box to be around 640 pixels or so in the HTML tab.

]]> http://www.ricera10.com/wordpress/?feed=rss2&p=2252 0 http://www.ricera10.com/wordpress/?p=2242 http://www.ricera10.com/wordpress/?p=2242#comments Sun, 01 Aug 2010 04:23:45 +0000 Adam http://www.ricera10.com/wordpress/?p=2242 Continue reading →]]> I Audiosurf’d the entirety of the Guns n’ Roses album Appetite for Destruction. For the most part, the famous songs are the only really famous ones for a reason. “Paradise City” is always a phenomenal song, and “Welcome to the Jungle” is the heaviest of metals. It’s surprising that “Sweet Child O’ Mine” was meant to be filler.

The only song outside of these three that I will really listen to ever is “You’re Crazy.” It’s way fast and pretty pimpin’ too. “Nightrain” is pretty hardcore as well, maybe it will find its way in my rotation.

“Rocket Queen” has a Sublimesque moment in having sex noises during the bridge. It’s kinda awkward.

When I first saw them deactivating the old vending machines and indicating that they were going to replace them with new ones, I thought it was great. The old vending machines were okay, but they didn’t have the little credit card swipers, and some of the labels were old. But then, they replaced them with these newer vending machines that are red and very well-lit, and there’s no benefit to them. They raised the price of a bottle to $1.50 from $1.25, and the credit card thing doesn’t work. Even worse, all of the vending machines have a reduced selection, so now I have to go to every building on campus to keep tabs on which ones have Mello Yello or Cherry Coke because they’re now mutually exclusive to each vending machine.

WTF?

I can say for certain that someone in charge of the vending machines on campus is retarded, in the truly derogatory sense of the word.

In other news, not much has been going on. I think I can get at least a B in both PHYS 212 and CS 225 (the two classes I’m taking over the summer at UofI), and I was quite happy to get a much higher score on my second midterm in CS 225 than on my first midterm. I’m going to move out of the residence halls and into a house with others, and I’m hoping that works out okay.

I also bought a Dell U2410 because it was on sale, and I was able to add a decent Bing cashback to the price (the program ends tomorrow if you want to use it one last time). I don’t use it much at all though, but it’s very useful when programming using Linux, though. I don’t know why, but my current 2007WFP still looks better than the 24″, even though the 24″ is pretty much better than it in every way. In the end, I’m not sure it’s worth the potential amount I’ll have to pay back after graduation, so I might just return it (after the Bing cashback clears…:-p).

Except for not working, the phone seems to be in excelent condition.

Mine looks like this except it has fingerprint smudges on the screen.

“Loser” and hidden track “What I Like About You”

Also, Kurt has started another blog and film company

here.

He is so baked.

I also just bought a PS3 for $51.00 on eBay.

My PS3 is functional, except for slight overheating issues.

Since I have gotten up close and serious with the Internet, I have grown obsessed with and weaned off of Mount and Blade. I would still suggest it to anyone. After 85 hours and conquering three kingdoms and having no obvious enemies anymore, the Kingdom of Rico isn’t as much of a diversion.

If you haven’t gotten Alien Swarm on Steam, obviously get it. It’s free, awesome, and has a very large community of gamers of people I know. During this honeymoon phase there is bound to be a lot of community development and it should be easy to get four players you actually know to play the game. Unfortunately, there is only one campaign, but you get what you pay for. I am sure a bunch of programmer bros are already making new campaigns.

My webcomic repertoire has expanded to the Monday-Wednesday-Friday XKCD, Ctrl-Alt-Del, Robots With Feelings, and Penny Arcade; Daily Cyanide and Happiness and Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, and the enigmatic Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday Darths and Droids. All of them are worth your devoted loyal fanbase attention.

I am pumped for next semester so much it hurts. I am like a bike tire that has been pumped up to maximum capacity. I am fully loaded and ready to roll, but probably slightly misshapen and ready to pop at any second. The room is going to be hardcore and the football team will be playing terrible, terrible teams so we have a chance to get some serious wins. It won’t mean we get a high rank or anything but at least we won’t go home disappointed that often.

Inception was such a hardcore movie. It was like having your balls ripped off, and seeing your balls in the other guy’s hand, but looking down and you still have your balls. It was enlightening.

Have a great day and go Pirates.

To make myself feel better Thursday I purchased a netbook on ebay. Looking back on the purchase it was an ill-researched impulse buy. I bought an HP mini 1030NR without a hard drive for $116. I should be able to turn a profit of at least $100 after adding a 160gb drive.

I don’t know why it’s so funny, though.

You can watch the admittedly nonsensical series from the start, here.

This needed to be included for good measure.

I was thinking that there is not too much of a market in our generation, so any thoughts on the older types? We would be looking at like the 50+ aged types who make bank.

My brain has been turned into an indifferent blob of oatmeal.

However, it looks kind of ghey atm, so I’ll make some edits to it in the near future. For now, enjoy the modern-lookingness of it.

HP Pavilion dm4t customizable Notebook PC

• • Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• • Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-520M Dual Core processor (2.40GHz, 3MB L2 Cache) with Turbo Boost up to 2.93GHz
• • 6GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
• • 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
• • 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon(TM) HD 5450 switchable graphics
• • 14.0″ diagonal High-Definition HP BrightView LED Display (1366 x 768)
• • SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support
• • HP TrueVision Webcam + Fingerprint Reader + Digital Microphone
• • Wireless-N Card with Bluetooth
• • Full-size island-style keyboard
• • High Capacity 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (standard)
• • Microsoft(R) Office Starter 2010
• • HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope

Estimated build date: June 16, 2010

That is the configuration that I ordered. As you can see it has switchable graphics, giving it a 6.5 hour battery life on the GMA. I also ordered the high capacity 6 cell battery, so it should be even better for battery life without the giant chunk of 9 cells. I was considering erasing the windows 7 partition and then allocating drive space in this pattern: ~375gb Windows 7, 50gb XP, 25gb Ubuntu and 25gb extra space for another OS (to be determined). I will lose about 25 gb to formatting, so I factored that in to the windows 7 partition.

I bought this so quickly because there was a $150 instant rebate with a $200 stackable coupon, so it cost me much less than anticipated, and it has superior battery life to the envy.

The iPhone 4 has some pretty crazy specs, though.

Here are the specs of the one that I will CTO (configure to order):

Core i5 (it supports an i7 quad-core, but I already have a quad-core desktop)

4gb ram

1920X1080 lcd

500gb 7200rpm hard drive

ATI 5830 graphics

crappy battery life (2 hours)

The specs are pretty good I think. The battery life can be improved to 6-8hours by adding a battery slice. ( A battery slice is a thin battery attached across the bottom of the computer). Overall I am happy with it, and it is cheaper than the other computers that are on the market of the same class.

“We wish you success in your future endeavors.”

I almost felt like making a blog post on how the word “sincerely” is used so insincerely, or how little form letters mean because some of the meanings and feelings they convey are too ambiguous.

But that phrase I quoted really got to me, because I’ve seen it in practically every rejection notice I’ve ever seen.

“We wish you success in your future endeavors.”

I guess I really want to say something to that, but I can’t. It’s just too insincere to me; it’s almost ironic. I feel like if I went up to the person who put that in every form email and said “thank you,” all I would get would be either a “WhoTF are you” face and/or a bewildered “you’re welcome” or something similar. In the end, it makes me feel sad; I still feel like a cog that’s left out of the machine.

(But more accurately, I should be thinking that I’m just a cog that’s been left out of a particular machine.)

I think I’m just angry that it doesn’t make me feel better, but I know it’s there for the sole purpose of making me feel better, and the end result is that I feel insulted.

- MacGruber

- Get Him To The Greek

- Family Guy

- Freaks and Geeks

- Bang

- the radio, especially old hard rock

- getting my high school job back

- that home theater

- Futurama

- Everybody Hates Chris

- MOUNT AND BLADE

- George Lopez Show (good ol’ Nick at Nite)

- cherry Kool-Aid

- mixing White-Out, Distortion, and cherry Kool-Aid

http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html

The title of this post summed up my reaction to the article once I finished reading it. I feel sad because I feel like I’ve been played, but I feel slightly smarter because I’ve managed to completely avoid MMOs thus far (but I guess my perpetual lack of monthly income also helped). Still, it seems like video games really are a form of escapism for the most part, and I feel they may have skewed my perceptions of the world, too.

I, for one, don’t want to work in Starbucks as a twenty-something who would’ve had a far better job, but didn’t want to put in the effort because video games felt more rewarding.

I also don’t really know what to say about it, either.

So, I’ll try to guess my final GPA for this semester, before the grades come out tomorrow.

I’m guessing my cumulative GPA will be lower than last semester’s 3.74. I got a B+ in CS 173, an A- in PHYS 211, and an A+ in CS 125. A B+ is worth 3.33 quality points, an A- 3.67, and an A and A+ are both worth 4 quality points. So, with just those three classes, I would get a ( (3.33 * 3 + 4 * 3.67 + 4 * 4) / 11 ) = 3.7, which is slightly above an A- average. However, I found out I got an A in CS 196-73 (the honors part of CS 173), which boosts that a little bit to: (( 40.67 + 1 * 4 ) / 12 ) = 3.72. I don’t know my grades for CS 196-25 or FR 103, but I’m hoping those are at least A-’s too. If they are, then my final GPA for this semester would be ( (44.67 + 4 * 3.67 + 1 * 3.67 ) / 17 ) = 3.7; and my cumulative GPA would probably be 3.72, since I only took one less hour this semester.

Anyway, unless my FR 103 grade is particularly bad (it won’t be), that means my GPA this semester and my cumulative GPA will be over 3.5, thus securing my status as a James Scholar for next year.

I’m already excited about the immense pressure required to maintain a 3.5 GPA while taking difficult classes, but I’m sure it’s all justified by being allowed to register for classes early.

(Also, I think I’ve heard U of I is different for making A- and A weighted differently for your GPA.)

Also, check out http://www.the-eric-project.com/! It looks slightly different, and the links work. (Well, they might all work by the time you click on it, at least.)

Finally, I can’t really think of a good way to end this post on a less narcissistic note, so I hope you guys (or non-existent girls) have a great summer!

I also cashed out all of my credits; I now have like 15 bottles of Mello Yello and Vault together, and some more bottles of other stuff.

- Domerfest

- Aftermath of the Name Tag Party (Dis-Orientation)

- Meeting new people, especially my lovely roommates

- Football season (until we started losing all over the place)

- Hockey games (especially Michigan. Eat it, Michigan)

- Blag racing

- Doodles

- “Christmas in September” SYR, Sorin Formal, and the subsequent dating in between the two

- The Extraterrestrial Life Debate: A Historical Perspective

- Dropping Calculus (not a great thing, but a “highlight” nonetheless)

- Getting a 92 (should have been 95) on my comeback Calculus test (doubling my lowest test score from first semester in Physics I)

- Almost beating USC

- NFL Blitz (more the beginning of the year when I was good at it)

- Resident Evil 4 Week (beating the game twice in five days)

- NCAA Football 10 (until Gabe gave up video games for Lent)

- Super Mario 64 (and Paul’s textbook domination of the stars)

- Mario Kart 64 (before it got lost)

- Goldeneye 64 (and dominating Alvin)

- Mountain Dew from DormDrinks

- Seeing Moon, The Hurt Locker, Taking Woodstock, The Hangover, and Get Him To The Greek

- finding and subsequent exploring what turned out to be “Stoner Island”

- swimming at the beach

- regularly going to the Rockne Memorial Pool with Alvin

• Learn C++
• Format my resume in LaTeX (it’ll probably be easier to maintain than using Office)
• Finish my CS 125 group project and post it here
• Learn about Python/PHP/MySQL/Haskell/Cassandra or whatever else is the language/system du jour
• Try to find my old Arena project from AP Comp Sci, post it here, too
• Get a job (:-/)
• Exercise more
• Have an interesting hobby
• Build another game using Java, or something meta-y
• Get a loan extension to purchase a proper laptop for the fall
• Purchase one or more of the following things when (if?) I have enough disposable income:
  • A processor with four or more cores (Core i7-930, I’m looking at you)
  • Some more RAM, type depending on whether a processor upgrade is feasible
    • DDR3 is cheaper than DDR2 now, but a better way to say it would be that DDR2 is more expensive than DDR3
  • A Dyson DC31 handvac for the room downstairs
  • Alan Wake for the Xbox 360 (maybe a Xbox 360 to go along with it, too)
• Work on some sort of portfolio of game development stuff (mods, maps, games)

I’ll probably never get around to most of this stuff, but it’s nice to have this stuff out there, so at least I know I had hopes and dreams at some point in my past.

…

Second, I think I got murdered on my CS 173 final. I was expecting it to be difficult, but she threw in a (in-depth?) question about something she lectured about on the last day of class, and I bet that’s what most people will end up getting the least points on (possibly no points for many people). It makes me wonder what my professor was trying to do with that question; was she trying to seperate the A’s from the B’s?

At least I can celebrate a one or two semester reprieve from CS theory classes; I’ll probably take the next one, CS 373, sometime in Junior year, or possibly second semester sophomore year if I’m feeling masochistic or hurried.

Also, on June 7th, Apple is supposed to announce the newest model of the iPhone and when they will begin selling it. In a graduation present to myself I have decided to buy one of them with a full 3g contract in the interest of tethering it to a laptop for wireless Internet anywhere. This will require that I jailbreak the phone to enable tethering, so I will have to consider this predicament carefully. Do you guys know if a 3g connection is fast enough to play steam games over? The 3g connection speed is rated to go up to 7.2 Mbps on the iPhone 3Gs, and may be even faster on a newer model. I think that is pretty fast, but the disclaimer says that speeds may vary based on reception and motion (like if I am on the train).

I retired Empire: Total War for now. Maybe it will pull a Michael Jordan and come back at the opportune time, but for now I have 15 solid hours in it, making the 10 dollar impulsive purchase my fourth most played game on Steam.

For the record, here is my top five:

1. Audiosurf – 37 hours
2. Team Fortress 2 – 29 hours
3. Killing Floor – 17 hours
4. Empire: Total War – 15 hours
5. Left 4 Dead 2: 11 hours

Someday I have got to get a portable hard drive. Luckily, finally emptied my Recycling Bin today, deleting 16 GB out of my computer’s existence. That should buy me some time.

Watch the video below, and tell me what times a remix of a particular song from Metroid plays.

The first person to tell me the correct times gets a free copy of the (original) Mount & Blade that I have sitting around from a long time ago.

It seems kind of disturbing, but I don’t think I can predict where Apple will be in a year or so. Will they succeed in pushing Flash out of the mainstream and making sure they have complete control over all of the technology that they use?

I wonder if Steve Jobs is thinking about total domination, or something else that’s more insidious?

P.S. Also, Jobs seems to be more open; we see him making more comments and being more outspoken, where in the past he didn’t seem to comment on much outside of Apple products.

I plan to learn some more C++ and C# over the summer, so I know enough C++ to get a head start in CS 225 and enough C# to start coding games in Microsoft’s XNA Framework.

Hopefully I’ll be able to create an awesome game for next year, and maybe even get it entered into IGF. That would be really cool.

And look good on a resume!

…

My sister showed me a youtube video of the song from a Target commercial a couple days ago:

Looking at the related links, I found I liked this song a lot, too:

I don’t really know enough about music to know what this says about what kind of music I like.

Also, I hope to post my group project for CS 125 here in about a week or so. It was coded almost entirely by me, and it uses things like multiple threads and a GUI.

As I will no longer have an iPhone 2G the question remains: what will I use as a phone? I will probably buy whatever the newest iPhone is when that comes out. Unfortuneately this means I will buy it from AT&T. The downside to this is that I will have to pay for a data plan, but the upside is that I will have an unlimited data plan.

Perhaps it will look like this:

(the picture went away)

*Edit: The iPhone 4G (or iPhone HD) has been discovered. It looks like this:

So, this morning, instead of LaTeX-ing my CS 173 homework, I discovered the barcode scanning app, and I happily scanned bottles and cans of drinks that I had laying around. But then, I was like, are there any 2D barcodes I can scan? I remembered that earlier when I was looking at a bottle of Tide Cold Water there was a tiny 2D barcode on the front label, so I pulled it out of my drawer and scanned that. It only had a short number, which was disappointing. I was like, can’t they store more than numbers with 2D barcodes? Searching the internet, I found out that yes, they do, and that you can generate your own. Spending all of my free time today researching them, I generated one for you readers of this blog:

This is a really big barcode.

This should work if you have an iPhone, too. If you don’t have a barcode scanning app on your phone, you might have to just save this picture and put it into a barcode reading app on the internet.

Basically the greatest four keywords to combine into a game ever. Its completely unassuming title (Plain Sight) must have been an effort to show that this game is no gimmick. It’s explosive death-match action, where you jump around chopping at each other to build up energy until you decide to blow yourself up and convert that energy into points. It’s $9.99 on Steam right now. I am absolutely certain that since I bought it, it will go on sale this weekend.

Plain Sight was released April 5, 2010.

Backtrack is a release of Slackware customized with security testing tools to break wireless network security, test for worm vulnerabilities, and all other realms of the legal gray area. This image also features aircrack-ng. I have this software for windows, but it seems that it has incorrect drivers for the sniffing of networks and such. I have an 802.11n (?) Netgear card capable of 108mbps. it is either N or some variant of wireless G. I am assuming that this new operating system release will solve these driver problems, but I am not really sure. There was a website that had a list of networking cards and their driver availability, but being too lazy to open my computer to get the serial number and determine the chipset I will simply rely on the amazing driver database that Linux provides.

I keep on being foiled by my own foibles.

Actually, I suppose it’s because school keeps me busy; this week I have a ridiculous amount of homework. So for now, don’t expect anything significant to happen on this blog until the semester ends. I just have too much other stuff to worry about.

And I have to say thanks to A Small Orange for doing an audit and lowering the cost of hosting this blog by ten dollars a year. It was quite timely.

I am still playing, but if I complete the final part of the main quest I die, so I am basically running around and completing other quests. After finishing all the quests in Megaton I began pickpocketing people, which turned out badly, because I got caught and then everybody started shooting at me. Not to be outdone I killed everybody in the town and looted the place before going to Tenpenny tower to detonate the bomb. I almost actually wanted to buy this game, but I still have somebody else’s copy for Xbox, so it is all good.

I have beaten it nominally on hard, partially medium, but always ending with the easy Venom several times before. I was surprised to see the difference between easy Andross and hard Andross – when you blow up his face, he isn’t some weird robot head charging at you anymore. He is a weird brain that shoots his eyes at you. Luckily, I found out all too quickly for him that I had to shoot the crap out of his medulla oblongata.

The coolest part is the quasi-Star Wars ending with an alleged James McCloud guiding you out of the tunnel and to safety, then disappearing after you escape. It is as open-ended as an N64 game has gotten for me – no way that was the real James McCloud, right? That was Fox’s projected imagination, or maybe an Obi-Wan/Yoda/Qui-Gon/Darth Vader blue guy thing.

Basically, it was flippin’ cool. I am just glad I beat Star Wolf on the first try this time, or else I would have gotten owned without my blue laser.

I’ve been working on my CS 125 and CS 196 projects, and doing some of the hardest CS 173 homeworks yet this semester. I’ve also felt like crap most of the time.

But that will change!

…

Maybe not for you, if you play this game. But it’s important to do what you like in life, and I guess doing all of this CS stuff is what’s important to my life at the moment.

So, I continue to do it, and I hope the readers of this blog continue to do what they feel they want to do in their life.

Even though I dislike creating graphical representations for them, we just learned about the existence of parse trees in CS 173 a few minutes ago. It sounds like it would be a useful structure for creating the JSONParser class for my honors project. It would take a file/string and convert it into a JSONObject for use/manipulation in a Java program. I was considering using an ArrayList of StringBuffer’s, but it was going to be really complicated.

I hope those trees don’t end up looking like actual tree branches. That would be a b*tch to diagram on paper.

When she returns quizzes and other miscellaneous items during lecture, she puts them all out on a table at the front of the room, whereupon almost half the occupants descended to the front in a massive crowd. For tests and questions about the class, she constantly directs students to other parts of the CS department. It strikes me as being “hands-off”, but she may be following the Computer Science philosophy of passing of tasks to the most competent handler. Still, I wish I didn’t have to go the CS Academic Office to get a question about the class’s credit hours answered, or have to ask some random person about taking the test at a different time. I would think most professors would be nice enough to handle those things for students.

She talks constantly about the statistics of the grades in the class; right now she’s talking about reducing the curve (skewing it downward) so that she can more clearly differentiate the “A+” and “A” students. She also uses quizzes as a “diagnostic” so she can adjust the curve of the class. I think this is probably the first class I’ve taken where the curve is used to reduce your grade instead of raise it.

It doesn’t help that I forgot to turn in my last homework, either.

Something is wrong with me. :-/

…

Uh, I’d say something about what I’m planning to add to this blog, but it’ll have to wait. I’m too meh-feeling.

It needs to be updated, because FW 2.07 only supports WEP, although I am not entirely sure that 2.08a supports WPA.

Any advice?

Also I will probably get the Vaio Z series and tether it to an iPhone with 3g!

lyrics:

I’m taking a ride to the liquor store
I’m looking for a beer and a little bit more
I’m gonna spend all the money she had
On a nude girl in a dirty old mag
50 cents cheaper than the real thing
Even though it may be a little bit disgusting
Can’t call a bitch and it ain’t got no drama
It’s called a new sensation called the right hand-a-rama

I don’t know why
I don’t know why
It sure feels good
Most every time

Alright

Pamela and her five sisters
Are giving me a bad case of nasty blisters
A third degree burn going straight to my head
I guess my pipes are a little bit rusted
Close encounters of the strangest kind
I got the heebee-jeebes for the hundredth time
It didn’t work out the way it was planned
All I got now is a beer in my hand

I don’t know why
I don’t know why
It sure feels good
Most every time

I’ll tell you why

All right

The ethernet cable is connected to my computer, on which is a wireless adapter. I bridged the ethernet and wireless in Windows 7 so that both the Xbox 360 and my computer can have internet at the same time. Unfortunately, that means my computer has to be on whenever I want to access Xbox Live on the xbox 360. Furthermore, I had to crack off the bottom half of the Xbox 360 AV cable so I could hook up a DVI-HDMI cable to my monitor and the two composite sound cables to my speakers. Since my computer was using the DVI, I had to attach a DVI-VGA adapter to the graphics card, and right now I’m using the VGA connection to use my computer. Then, I went to Blockbuster, and my dad rented Assassin’s Creed 2 because there was no way I was going to buy a $60 game to play it for a week.

But Assassin’s Creed II is a completely awesome game, and I guess it was worth it to avoid paying $50 and using the Ubisoft DRM.

Right?

This movie does have some creativity in the way of deaths, such as the typewriter death or the use of the hacksaw.

This is a huge step from being a strict PC user, but I feel that the MacBook Air owns the competition in terms of power for the size of the laptop. All the other models use a ULV (ultra low voltage) P4m (only 1.66ghz) like the Acer Timeline or they use an Atom. I want something a bit more powerful like a Core 2 Duo at least, which lead me to these steps…

1. Get a MacBook Air
2. Erase OS X
3. Install Windows 7 Ultimate

Apple actually provides the drivers for windows for their computers, so that will not be a problem and the MacBook Air has been around long enough for them to work out the problems that they had with the original models. Acer is supposed to be coming out with a new generation of laptop that is as thin and uses a Core i7 m (about 1.5 ghz with turboboost to 3.06), but that will be like $3000, so it is a bit too expensive to take with me to college. The MacBook Air that I am considering is only $1800, but the specs are really good.

• 2.12GHz Core 2 Duo ULV
• 2 Gb DDR3 1066mhz
• GeForce 9400m with 256mb DDR3 (shared with system memory)
• 13.3 inch LED screen
• 128Gb SSD
• 40Watt/Hour battery (Apple claims 5 hours, but real world tests indicate 2.5 for gaming, 3.5 for watching movies, and 4.5 for typing documents)
• Backlit Keyboard
• Multitouch mouse pad

I will install Windows 7 and it should be a great PC.

I am not too worried about lack of ports, as it has bluetooth 2.1 for mouses and keyboards and can use any network shared DVD burner, even on a PC. For networking it has wireless A/B/G/N. It also comes with one USB, a headphones port, and a mini display port.

Late homework isn’t accepted, but I feel like I need someone to see that I spent too many hours working on this.

The homework assignment file is here.

Should I take these with me to college? As a frame of reference for size the keyboard in the picture is a standard size, multimedia, wireless keyboard from logitech. It is about average keyboard size, but with buttons on the side of the keyboard for controlling the media.

 Also these monitors are both 1680X1050 resolution. The silver one is 22″ and the rotated one is 20″. The viewing angle on the 20″ is not so good, because it is rotated, but I like it rotated better than completely viewable.

I do not know how well these would fit on a dorm desk, but you guys might be able to provide some insight as to average desk size.

…

Over the past couple of days I’ve read David Foster Wallace‘s Consider the Lobster, and I liked it a lot. If you haven’t already clicked and read through the preceding Wikipedia link, the book is a collection of essay’s that the author has written. The must-read ones are the one on the adult porn industry trade show, the profile of McCain during the 2000 election, and the book’s namesake essay. The author frequently uses footnotes and in one essay the equivalent of textual hyperlinks, so it might be annoying to have to interrupt your reading to look at a different part of the page, but I find it fun and interesting, and I sort of wish more books did that. I feel it gives the author a chance to give explanations where those explanations would’ve probably been excluded.

…

This is a funny comment to a story on Slashdot about how someone made “Hello World”–using C on Linux–even simpler. (For those who don’t get programming, a “hello, world!” program is one used to output that line in the simplest way possible; it’s usually the first program you make when you learn a language.) Even though the article is very old, there seems to be a trend of people growing resentful over the increasing bloat in software. Most people cite the performance of Microsoft Office over its iterations versus the functionality as a particularly egregious example.

I’m not sure it applies, but I notice it in CS 125, too, where it takes some people like a hundred lines of code to write some functions; I remember one person took over a hundred lines to write what I did in around fifty, and even I thought my program was a bit more complicated than it had to be.

It might have been because they did something like this though; multiple times and in many different ways:

int x;
x = 42;
x = 42 + y;

…

Also, this story might concern readers of this blog, but not me unfortunately. It’s still a good idea to support health-care legislation, but there’s extra incentive if you go to college and receive private loans or Pell grants.

One credit to this movie though is that it was nothing like the Jason Bourne movies, unfortunately it was much worse.

• If you have the JDK installed (the developer version)
  • Game1.bat
  • Game1.java
• If you have the JRE installed (the one that most people have; if you don’t know what the difference is between JDK/JRE, download this one)
  • gam1.bat
  • gam1.jar

They’ll need to be in the same directory, and double clicking the .bat file should open up the console and start running the program. The source code is in Game1.java if you’re so curious and want to see what’s in it. You can compile it by downloading and installing the JDK, and then using the javac command contained in the Game1.bat file. Or, open it in Eclipse and run it from there.

The .bat files assume your java folder is in the PATH variables on your computer; if they aren’t, you may need to look into adding the jre/bin folder to it.

In other news my new new monitor came last week and has been working fine and my old new monitor has still not been picked up and is also in working condition with only a bit of minor cosmetic damage. Also I may get another Xbox 360 console from this guy in english. This is in return for my HD Xbox connector cables, although that is not realy a problem, because instead of the HD cables I now use HDMI. After a few quick minutes of heat-gunning the motherboard I should be good to go with it. I will also mod the DVD drive, becasue iXtreme LT came out and I want to try that before I try it on my own Xbox. The only downside to this Xbox is that I will need to get a new power supply for it, but that will only cost $15, so it is still a good deal.

Anyway, you guys (girls? hahahaha) should check out the trolololo-thingy. It’s not meant to be funny (I think), it’s just kind of interesting to listen to.

I liked Prototype better than Dead Space.

Mozilla Weave

This add-on for Firefox lets you sync bookmarks and other things across computers with the add-on installed. I found it useful because I use Firefox on my desktop and netbook, and so I don’t have to worry about my bookmarks on one being missing on the other, especially for the hard to bookmark things like the CS newsgroups.

POWDER

This a fun dungeon crawling game that’s kind of like nethack (it’s a rogue-like!) I first learned about it through the DS homebrew scene, but then I found out it also had Windows, PSP, and other versions. It’s fun to play because you grab random loot off the floor and beating up on monsters so you can eat their corpses. Just watch out for those all-too-frequently-found Evil (insert item of headwear here) of Draining.

I also added stuff to the redesign page on the right, so if you have anything to add about what I should be doing, you can post a comment over there.

Two old ladies were outside their nursing home, having a smoke when it started to rain. One of the ladies pulled out a condom, cut off the end, put it over her cigarette and continued smoking.

Lady 1: What’s that?
Lady 2: A condom. This way my cigarette doesn’t get wet.
Lady 1: Where did you get it?
Lady 2: You can get them at any drugstore.

The next day … Lady 1 hobbles herself into the local drugstore and announces to the pharmacist that she wants a box of condoms. The guy looks at her kind of strangely (she is, after all, over 80 years of age), but politely asks what brand she prefers.

Lady 1: It doesn’t matter as long as it fits a Camel.

Overall, this seems to be a very interesting marketing ploy by Valve, a company that has always done well with PR in the past (for good examples of how well they market, check out the lead ups to the various Team Fortress 2 updates). Hopefully, next week will bring some answers as to what all this means. I know that I, for one, would be interested in a Portal 2.

Edit: I forgot to mention this extremely fun flash game I found online.

The game I have been playing mostly tonight is called Altitude. It is a 2-D airplane shooter that has a cutesy visual style reminiscent of Team Fortress 2: it’s kiddie style belies its intense gameplay. For just $2, or less if you buy as part of the variety pack, you get a game with upgradeable airplanes, 4 fun modes, a surprisingly large and active gaming community, and just an all-around fun play style.

In other news, my roompick number lottery is tonight. Wish me luck! Here’s hoping for an adjoining single!

If you cannot remember how to get free games or are new to the site, they are available from the ricera10 downloads section which is on the right side of the screen and about halfway down the page.

In honor of pi day I made this picture of Stalin eating a pie in photoshop.

As you may be able to see, he is really writing.

Saints Super Bowl Final Drive: C++

The source code:
SSBFD: C++ source

and here is a more visible link to Ricera10 games: games

Saints Super Bowl Final Drive

I put the computer together tonight and noticed a two wired cable coming out of the bottom when I was putting in the RAM (one of the last steps for those who are unfamiliar). I turned the computer on and it is working perfectly fine, although the extra wire is bothering me. Audioslave is playing well and all the fans seem to be running though, so there will be no lasting damage if it decides to cause problems. I cannot decide if the bass is lacking more than usual, but if that is all the wire did I can live with it, as it is a half hour of work to take it apart again.

Also, my parents decided to buy a television, freeing up mine, as they had been using it as their tv or more accurately the family’s tv after they threw away the old CRT one. I have been debating hanging it on a wall mount in my room, but I will be going to college in 6 months, so that seems to be pointless. I should actually rephrase that: At the moment it seems pointless. I go between thinking it is a great idea and thinking that I really don’t want to. I guess that my parents really liked my tv, as they bought this one, which is the same except it only has two HDMI instead of three.

When my tv is in my room should I move my Xbox there? (not the original Xbox that is in my basement). That is similar to the wall mounting decision, as I am not too attached to the Xbox, but it has its moments of media streaming convenience.

On top of that, my LCD is going to come in the mail Thursday and I can’t wait for that to get here. At least Audioslave is still playing on my laptop. 

Edit: I figured out what that cable did. It senses if the lid is closed or not. Now is it worth opening the computer to plug it in?

I ate some Yoplait yogurt that I bought at County Market earlier. I can’t believe I had been missing out on these yogurts my whole life!

They have several dozens of varieties of Yoplait yogurts, ranging from Light Cinnamon Roll to Whipped Chocolate Mousse. I think I like the whipped Lemon Burst the most, but I still want to try the Key Lime Pie and some others. The Very Cherry was extremely cherry-tasting, and it had a very good texture.

On that note, the concept of whipped yogurt is genius! Repackage the same product with a different texture, but then sell it with 1/3 less volume for the same price! Some part of me wants to say that’s ridiculous, but most of me says that’s really tasty. So I’ll continue to buy them regardless of me noticing the net volume.

you go, goyurt!

The seller said that FedEx may pick up the old monitor, but my father predicts that they will let me keep it, as it only cost them $118 to refund and scheduling a guy to pick it up and verify that it is broken would not really be worth their time. Either way I still did not lose any money through this venture and it finally earned my my 25th feedback on eBay. Now I have 100% positive feedback with 25 items that I have bought.

I also utilized all four cores of my computer today. I ripped two movies at the same time and played Killing Floor, which is minimized at the moment and I am blogging while converting music into ringtones, so by setting the programs to different core affinities I achieved 100% core usage. This only lasted for a few seconds though and then Killing Floor on the second core dropped down to like 75%. I have this little core monitor in the side of my screen that tells me about core and memory usage. My memory never goes above about 60% even when I virtualize Windows XP with 2 gigabytes of ram (the max for the virtualization client I am using).

Also I bought a 9800gt from Hebein for $60, so I have twice the pixel shaders that I had on my 9600 which I am going to sell for about $45. I ran a few stress tests in Counter Strike: Source and scored a 229.96 fps, where an HD 4870 got 259 fps. Overall the 9800 is a good card.

Going to the Marketplace, the bus was nearly empty when I got on but quickly became crowded afterwards. Then, a pregnant lady and a couple with a stroller came on, leaving only standing room in the bus. The bus driver used the brakes frequently, making my arm that was grabbing the poles pretty stressed out. I have to note that the pregnant lady had a permanent scowl on her face the whole time. She was also drinking either a 20oz or 1-liter bottle of Pepsi (it looked wider than a 20oz to me); I noted that it looked like her stomach reached all the way to her neck.

It didn’t really go much better after I got off. I ended up spending a ton of money on various things, but I also got some electric hair clippers so I can shave my head away from home. (:-p to a certain person who may be reading this post). I also felt like starting a half-joking website where I’d review Ritter Sport bars, but have the design look all ritter-sport-square-ish.

Finally, I got on the bus to go back to the residence hall, and that was a better experience. It never got crowded and I got off close to Allen.

And now I’m here, waiting for some throwbacks in the fridge to cool. Since it’s close to the end of the new throwback’s eight week run, I thought I’d get one last 12-pk of each to enjoy before some new version comes out. I might even save the last two, just to keep in my closet like the first throwback.

Botnets?

Like the STD’s and other infectious diseases they represent.

…

I feel like I should buy one of those $60-$70 thumb hole hoodies from Art Lebedev and review it or something. It seems like I’d be giving our most frequent visitors what they want. :p

I’d kind of want the Optimus Maximus, too, but at this point its pricing is clearly ludicrous. When it came out a couple of years ago, it debuted at an extremely expensive $1600. Now, a couple years later, they’ve defied the golden rule of electronics (and economics to a degree) and raised the price to an astronomical $2400. It’s wonder why cool stuff like that hasn’t caught on. It makes me wish I could do a research project at Siebel and make my own OLED keyboard.

Update: As of the time of this posts original posting, the hoodies are on sale for $40 US. It really seems like a good idea to get one now…except they cost $37 to ship!

EDIT: It’s $37 shipping for one or two; $48 for three or four. So it’s like $12 shipping per hoodie if you buy four.

My horoscope for today and yesterday was two stars. I kinda get that vibe from these past two days, as the sheer amount of homework and studying impending is hanging over my head. Philosophy decides to be a real class all of the sudden and assigns a five page essay due next Friday, something that wouldn’t be a problem if I didn’t have four (4!) tests between then and now, not to mention two Calculus assignments, a Physics assignment, a Biochemistry assignment, and Engineering group work. Spring break will be earned, that’s for sure.

In other news, I am adjusting my eating behaviors and exercising. In the beginning of the year, I could eat whatever I wanted because I had Intro to Fitness and Weightlifting as my first two units of PE. When Volleyball, Aquatic Fitness, and Contemporary Topics reared their less-fit heads, I started to get a little thicker thighs that don’t want to fit into my jeans easily. Instead of buying bigger jeans, I am going to earn them back and get sexy in time for beach season. I will be sure not to play with too many knives over spring break.

I will continue to save myself for caffeine, soda in general, and candy for Spring Break LAN parties, I will not eat anything from the grill except for grilled chicken as long as it is available, I will eat fruit and vegetables at each meal, and starting tonight I will not go out to eat a full meal less than 2 hours before bed.

Steps to repartitioning your hard drive:

1. Click the start menu
2. Right click Computer
3. Select Manage
4. In the window that opens select Disk Management (It is in the left pane of the window)
5. Right click the drive that you want to partition and select the shrink option
6. Shrink the drive to the amount of space you want to be left for Vista
7. You may need to restart your computer and wait for the drive to be repartitioned
8. Select the free space you created and click New Simple Volume
9. Put your Windows 7 disk in your computer and restart
10. Install Windows 7 to the partition you created

That is all you need to know about installing Windows 7 in a Dual Boot.

I am not responsible for you breaking your computer, although the chances of that are low if you follow my instructions well.

If we create this page and publicize the release of this new service, I feel that we could significantly increase blog traffic. If you did not notice, the Xbox 360 HDMI post is the most searched post on search engines. This computer advice category could really generate web traffic, and perhaps land EJ some ad space sales.

Any opinions on this page?

My monitor arrived yesterday, but the plastic bezel was cracked, so I am going to return it. I am considering buying another monitor after returning this one, but that will have to wait until I get a refund.

If you’re crazy and/or want something to listen to longer, try timecube.com in it. It’s pretty soothing music, unlike the actual content of the website.

Edit this post/post a comment with your favorite generated-from-webpage songs!

I’ll start off with this:

…

So, earlier this week, I bought some Kraft string cheese instead of the Sargento ones I had been buying previously because County Market had raised the price of the Sargento ones to four dollars, and lowered the price of the Kraft ones to three dollars. The Kraft ones are definitely the stringiest string cheese sticks I’ve eaten, but they come with important caveats, like being relatively flavorless and hard. The Sargento ones didn’t string very well, but they were extremely tasty, and they were kind of chewy. If they were both three dollars, I would easily take the Sargento, but I’d still hope for the existence of a string cheese stick that combines the good properties of both brands.

But alas, their respective cheese-making ways are secret, and only a horizontal merger would get both companies to share their secrets with each other. Or more likely, they’d continue to sell both brands, deem it “market segmentation”, and call it a day.

(Now that I think about, why do economists always use the “guns and butter” example?)

It is the right time for this since spring break will be coming up in a few weeks.

Edit: I forgot how stupid this video is.

Adam’s #2 Pencil from Kurt Zhuang on Vimeo.

Time.

TIME.

Brain Slugs, er i mean fungi

I suspect ghosts

Handy man indeed

some ridiculousness. Not work appropriate

my new screen

<3

Maybe this one. With 3000 watts of power I could really drown out the noise of the surrounding dorms. Would playing games on a surround sound system be really that great though? Would it be a good idea to put my tv on my desk for college? Should I look for a system with a pass through for HDMI that can pick up the sound channels?

Also I also updated my personal page. I am About that Other Guy I think.

I cannot think of a better first post than to share my spirit of Valentine’s Day, and contribute to the collective world effort of men being cheap.

That is all.

Stay classy, San Diego.

This is a pteranodon.

In this movie the robots (the people sit at home and control the robots) do not even have crazy weapons integrated into them. Bruce Willis’ robot actually carries a machine gun. At least they could have made it into a combination of Iron Man and The Matrix, where the robots make them fly around and have rediculous weaponry stored in their arms.

I suppose that I have been spoiled by Bruce Wilis’ previous, high quality work in Die Hard, Die Hard 2, Die Hard 3, and Live Free or Die Hard.

Also I recommend the Dawn of the Dead remake. It is actually far more entertaining that Surrogates, which was not worth the $3.99 that is cost me to rent it through iTunes.

In a side note, the iTunes store announced plans to make TV shows $1 in honor of the iPad. The iPad is a waste of money, because Apple will simply release a new iPhone firmware the day it comes out and I will have all the functionality of the iPad for free on my phone. If it is a really good firmware release they may charge me $10, but that would be much better than paying $500 for the iPad.

Source Code for New Orleans Saints: Final Drive

Note: The probability of catching is extremely low due to testing.

If you haven’t seen this yet:

Free Tetris.

Also, a bored college student’s doodly rendition of excerpts of The Beatles’ hit “Come Together.”

Come Together

Here is a picture of this technology:

Notice the rotation capability. I will not ever rotate it, but it is nice to know it is available.

The usb ports are behind the front plastic on the right side, although they are not visable in this picture. They are well hidden, but still conveinient.