Easily Distracted

I know I said I’d try to blog every 2-3 days…. Well, does silently updating backend stuff count? Not much, but I set up Feedburner, Technorati, and upgraded to the latest WordPress (2.1.3). At this rate, maybe I’ll even hook into Facebook and other social sites. Look out 2001, here I come.

Also played with iGoogle a bit – Google’s answer to a personalized homepage. Since I use a few of Google’s online services, it may prove useful for me. Currently, I have Google Calendar, Gmail, a couple world clocks (Vancouver/Japan/Sao Paulo), the weather, Google Reader, and Google Docs.

Cool. The new WordPress auto-saves posts. I’m tired. I sleep now.

Gatherings

Had a nice get-together with the gifu-crew, on Sunday. Chinese-Taiwanese-Japanese fusion hot-pot shabu shabu. The pot was courtesy of Shirley (thanks!), despite her not being able to make it. Unfortunately, I don’t think there were are any pictures captured in the digital medium to show. But it was good times!

Ubuntu Feisty

My Desktop PC was not able to complete a dist-upgrade of Ubuntu from Dapper to Feisty, and consequently has trouble booting. Yes, I tried skipping Edgy, and I advise you not to do the same. I’ve decided I’m just going to start with a fresh install, because my system was very cluttered with stuff I don’t use or need. So I started going about backing stuff up, from a live CD boot onto my external USB drive… it was becoming very apparent that this would be painfully time consuming, as I was quickly running out of space. Easiest solution? Get another hard drive. I did that and am now running Feisty. Most of my settings and everything have been transferred and I must say I’m very impressed with the latest Ubuntu. Videos seem to “just work” on Gstreamer Totem, and many things seem much snappier. It will be making its way to my laptop soon, as well.

goals

When my computers are all back and healthy, I plan on regulating a few short-term goals:

• Reading a chapter a day in my Python book, Dive into Python. I think I’m on Chapter 6 or something, at the moment.
• Blogging every 2-3 days. I don’t need to have earth shattering news to report (do I ever?), but if I can’t say a little something every few days, then I’m certainly not doing enough with my time.
• Update blog aesthetics. ’nuff said.
• Enjoy the sunshine, when it comes.

I was planning on making a nautilus extension for easy image resizing, but someone beat me to the punch. It uses ImageMagick, is pretty much what I had in mind, and seems to work great. I just tested it out with my meal from the Cloud 9 rotating restaurant, on March 8th. (I went there to take advantage of their extended Dine out Vancouver with a couple friends.) I now demand that you become hungry, with pictures of FOOD!

links of the day

• Western Perspectives on Japanese Game Development – Interesting Gamasutra link John sent me.
• Family Guy vs Christianity – I swear, Family Guy is the Kevin Bacon of Youtube.

Technical diagram of technicalness

I renewed my domain name for another two years. For some reason, I felt inclined to make this:

Some random links

• Peek at next gen Linux desktop
• Jack Bauer Facts
• Chuck Norris Facts

My Laptop! Got my laptop back, on Thursday. Amazing, it was almost exactly 2 weeks after I dropped it off that they called and said I could pick it up – exactly what they predicted. Turns out the PCMCIA was just loose, so they just fit it back into place and everything works again. New machine would have been better, but this is fine w/me. Goodbye warrenty.

Visited Ben & Mayu after work, on Friday. Had a relaxing evening of wine, sushi, and the food network. I should stop by more often, they’re practically on my way home from work. Oh, and Ben lent me Tanpopo. I’ve wanted to see this movie ever since we were given a 5 minute teaser scene at the Co-Op Japan orientation at UVic (3 years ago?). Its uniqueness drew me in, and I couldn’t stop. What initially started as a 10 minute “I’ll just see what it’s like” session, turned into a 2 hour “I must completely consume this movie” session. Yeah, a little bit of a pun (the movie’s all about food); I’m allowed one.

TV Stuff

24. After fervently getting through the first season, I understood why everyone liked it. Currently awaiting the completion of the 2nd and 3rd seasons. Oh marathon, here we come. And House is one I got interested in during its 2nd season, so now I’m watching the first. Awesome show. The main character is constantly playing psychological games with his staff and patients. Plus, he has a DS.

The DS

Metroid Hunters looks pretty awesome. Wireless handheld classic Deathmatch. Yummy. And I haven’t actually tried playing it, but the control looks like it is much closer to mouse aiming than analog sticks. And the new DS (Lite) looks way better. Nintendo’s gone and sexed it up some good. I’m not sure how popular the DS is in North America, but I had no idea it was so popular in Japan… so popular that some retailers are actually “buying units back from customers to support the shortage.”

Also… Zelda DS (check the vid – music gets me pumped every time) and the New Mario Bros. DS look pretty sweet. Couldn’t find a good (recent) video of Mario DS….

Lastly, I must pimp Lux and mention that I’m now on book 7 of WoT. (Holy crap, when will this monster end?!)

Oh yeah, 8 comments needing moderation since adding that “kindergarten” question, nearly 2 weeks ago. Well, off to bed. Another week begins.

First, some links:

• Japan Comic (good for people that have been)
• Oh, Penny Arcade, thou art funny. (Scared gamers making “the switch”)
• JS Debugger Venkman for Firefox 1.5 (normally has dependency issues for modern versions)

Made a small change to my blog. You now have to answer an incredibly difficult skill testing question when making comments. The idea was to reduce comment spam. I made the change a couple (or maybe it was only one?) days ago, and I’ve only received one comment spam since (versus 10-20/day), so it seems to be working. yay.

I’ve been super tired, recently. Waking up later. Getting to work later. Staying at work later. Getting back later. Eating later. … It’s a vicious cycle. I finished WoT book 6 on my way home, today. Good stuff. Now, I think I’d like to fool around w/my Zaurus a little… try a different environment while I’m in between books (since that’s mostly what I use it for – reading). Side note: holy crap it was cold outside! Not a good night to miss the bus and have to wait 1/2 an hour!

Now, about that sleep….

Yes, that was a long time between posts. I’ve been… busy (killing time). I haven’t felt so motivated to bother doing the alt-tab mouse input thing in Metacity (the official window manager for GNOME), as other things which seem to eclipse it are being developed:

• Gimmie (which looks awesome!)

• AIGLX (Redhat)

• XGL (Novel) (very nice demo | src )

3D is on it’s way to the Linux desktop. 3D cards – This has always bothered me. Put aside the fact that the drivers are not open. ATI cards always looked nice, to me, and they’re a Canadian company, so I would choose to support them given a choice of NVidia or ATI. However, ATI clearly does not offer competent drivers for Linux to support their nice cards. If I want any kind of performance, there’s no choice, really: NVidia. Since I’m not playing intensive games all the time, however (I did enjoy the Doom3 demo, though), I would be willing to go with a card that is backed by an OSS supporting company. Not sure what my options would be then.

The USB flash card reader I got is working awesome. Yes, it’s pretty small w/a short cable for using on your PC, but it’s got GREAT portability. Doesn’t need any extra drivers for Linux or Windows (the reader is cross platform!) heh. I’m ecstatic with it for $9. I almost bought a second when I saw them on sale again at NCIX.

Google Page Creator got slashdotted, so I didn’t get a chance to try it. Oh well.

And after watching a wicked sweet 30 minute gameplay video (140MB) of Spore, I’m not sure if I can resist setting up a windows box that can run it. I mean… Oh My God. Best game evah!~

I should upload some pix. So behind on pix it’s ridiculous. I thought about flickr… but i’m convinced there is a better personal solution, if I don’t care about the communities (that much). Maybe take a look at WordPress Gallery2 when I have time.

Oh yeah… I was working on a new blog design (like I said I would) and things were going ok. Then I stopped for a while (a week?) and wanted to work on it again after. But.. I couldn’t find it!! I thought I had accidentally deleted it in my clensing! I was pretty irritated with myself. Luckily, I only moved it… and I found it just today.

Oh man, stupid-me number two (far outdoes the first): I was keeping my laptop on the floor of my bedroom, near my bed. You know, for easy access to porn… on my bed. Anyways, when I stepped closer to my mirror to examine a couple odd hairs on my head (what else?), I felt something bend under my foot, and looked down. FUCK! My wireless card that was poking out of the pcmcia slot in my laptop! :’( I now present it dead. RIP 1000yen wireless card. Anyone know where I can get a cheap wireless card? Laptop’s pretty useless without it. And a cheap CF wireless card, for that matter… would be nice for my zaurus.

UPDATE:

On second inspection, the PCMCIA slots are totally shot. One doesn’t work at all, and the other never successfully registers a card… (BEEP beep). I’ve tried both my wireless card and a regular CF adapter. So possibly in addition to my 1000yen wireless card, I have to do something about my $2000 laptop. *sigh* Guess I’ll be heading to Futureshop again… I hope they don’t remember me. Damnit, this sucks.