Posts tagged with "university"

Lonely Thoughts, Cryptography Presentation, Etc.

I feel…alone. I wish I could speak to some­one who could under­stand. I wish I could express my feel­ings the way I wish. What a per­fect time to write.

I’ve been work­ing on my graph­ics project all day. I have almost every­thing done now, with the cells co-ordi­nat­ing their move­ments in a 3D Game of Life dance. They grow and shrink as the rules dic­tate, and although I have some bugs to iron out, and some bells and whis­tles to add, it should­n’t take too long.

My cryp­tog­ra­phy pre­sen­ta­tion went alright. We did­n’t quite for­mal­ly rehearse, so I spoke for 15 out of the 20 min­utes allo­cat­ed to us, when three of us had speak­ing to do. We were fair­ly rushed at the end, but I think that we got our points through well. I felt that I did a great job at open­ing the pre­sen­ta­tions, and at explain­ing my part. Mike, Pat, Iain, and I went to get loaded before the pre­sen­ta­tion, but unfor­tu­nate­ly, the shock of the sit­u­a­tion sobered me up rather effi­cient­ly. After all, it was the first pre­sen­ta­tion I’ve had to do through all of uni­ver­si­ty.

I feel bet­ter after play­ing a few games with Darren. Somehow we made it under the 300th mark, with a 55–7 record at lev­el 14. I believe the height of my addic­tion was most evi­dent when I was watch­ing a movie where a man gets trapped in a bath­room by some tri­ad mem­bers, and the first thing that I thought of was the item box, and town por­tal­ing to a safe loca­tion.

I might going to the Dominican Republic when school ends.

I’ve lis­tened to some of the Tool songs off of the strings trib­ute album, and they’re not very good. The strings are great­ly lack­ing in ener­gy, and some­times bare lit­tle resem­blance to the songs they’re pay­ing homage to. One can tell that the com­pos­er is inspired by Tool com­pos­ings, but the instru­men­tal­ists are insipid in their per­for­mance.

The Honest Lawyer yes­ter­day was relax­ing and frus­trat­ing at the same time. I nev­er I had a chance to real­ly savour the fries this time though, since I felt so guilty about munch­ing on Wheaties’ last time. All in all though, I think I’d rather not have gone.

I’ve always thought that Beth Gibbons had an amaz­ing­ly attrac­tive qual­i­ty to her, not only from the dis­tinc­tive tim­bre of her voice, but also from the grace and gen­tle­ness of her fig­ure cap­tured in her pho­tographs. I’m try­ing out some of her lat­est side-project work with Rustin Man, and so far the sound has been amus­ing­ly unique, a mix of acoustic gui­tar with bit­ter­sweet melodies.

Moody Days, Y'z Dock, Etc.

I’ve been rather rest­less the last few days. I can’t seem to con­cen­trate, or do any­thing pro­duc­tive. I think it’s the fact that I’m so odd­ly mood­less, that I don’t feel like doing any­thing in par­tic­u­lar.

I feel…dirty. I’m unsat­is­fied with my XP theme, and I won’t have time to pol­ish it until the sum­mer. Whenever I try a new theme, it’s either not sim­ple and clean enough, or it’s too bright. I’m using the nxPro theme right now, with Y’z Dock to replace my short­cut icons, which is the sweet MacOS tool­bar for Windows XP, com­plete with trans­paren­cy and 32-bit icon sup­port.

I actu­al­ly for­got about a geo class I had ear­li­er this week. That wor­ries me, because I’ve nev­er for­got­ten a class before, even through high school. Usually when I skip some­thing, I’m very con­scious of my skip­ping it. This is one of the class­es that I can’t skip any­way though, so I’m a lit­tle wor­ried. Maybe it’s a sign of my get­ting old­er. I’ve always found myself to be very “con­scious” of things, and I almost nev­er for­got about any­thing. I remem­ber my dad telling me how some­times he would peel an orange, and then throw the orange in the garbage and start to nib­ble on the peel by mis­take. Scary.

A bunch of peo­ple are going out to the Honest Lawyer tomor­row to cel­e­brate Aaron’s and Iain’s birth­day. I have a cryp­tog­ra­phy pre­sen­ta­tion tomor­row as well, which might con­flict with the time every­one is meet­ing to have some din­ner. I’ll prob­a­bly present my sub­ject (I think I’m sec­ond out of four) and just leave. I’m sup­posed to stay for oth­er pre­sen­ta­tions for peer eval­u­a­tion, but hope­ful­ly my oth­er group mem­bers will cov­er for me.

I've Been Busy

I was­n’t able to accom­plish any form of work today, and even though I feel com­plete­ly exhaust­ed, I have noth­ing to show for it. I did man­age to get my graph­ics pro­pos­al approved, how­ev­er, which will be to imple­ment a 3D Game of Life in OpenGL.

I went to Iain’s place yes­ter­day, since Jeff had to can­cel on me due to sick­ness, and we watched Rushmore. The walk home was great; the tem­per­a­ture was beau­ti­ful­ly brisk, and the fad­ing sun­set lin­gered in the dark­ened sky.

It was Pat’s birth­day today, but since I knew before­hand that I would­n’t be able to see him, I gave him a bot­tle of Huge Boss In Motion. I tried some of the oth­er colognes, but none of them seemed to fit him. Most of the brand names are very strong, so I find they don’t match the sub­tle pres­ence of most Asian indi­vid­u­als.

I got my RatpadGS today, and it works amaz­ing­ly well com­pared to my old mouse pad. I had no idea how much I had worn down the sur­face of the old one.

I went to my first NHL hock­ey game last week, and even though I’m a Leafs fan, I still enjoyed root­ing for the home team, watch­ing them win 3–2 in over­time. I’m sur­prised at how much small­er the rink looks com­pared to what it appears to be on TV. I had some great seats, and they only cost me $20.

Schoolwork, Pensive State, Scratching Posts, etc.

My cryp­tog­ra­phy midterm was eas­i­er than expect­ed. I was the first to leave, and I was able to answer every ques­tion. Whether I was right or not is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

I have only four projects left to do. A cryp­tog­ra­phy pre­sen­ta­tion on mes­sage authen­ti­ca­tion, my hon­ours project on Rubik’s cube time com­plex­i­ty, an essay on gold price fluc­tu­a­tions, and a final OpenGL pre­sen­ta­tion pro­gram. They’re all due one after the oth­er, so I’m try­ing to take one at a time, even though the going is slow.

I went out to sup­port a few friends of Wheaties, in a band called Pensive State yes­ter­day. I did­n’t real­ly feel like going out, but I fig­ured that it would be a good break from being stuck in my apart­ment all day. It was much warmer than expect­ed.

CAt told me about a ver­sion of Autumn Leaves by Eva Cassidy, and I think that it’s my favourite ver­sion so far. Apparently, the song has been com­plete­ly over­done for over half a cen­tu­ry, and I’ve only just heard of it.

Jeff’s com­ing over tonight to catch up a bit.

I’ve been see­ing a lot of use of Moveable Type. I’m not very good with Perl yet, but the code will prob­a­bly be much clean­er than what mine is now, and more mod­u­lar. On every blog I’ve seen, the author keeps one large page of the cur­rent months entries. I much pre­fer to have one entry at a time, so that there can be more depth to my writ­ing with­out flood­ing the page with text. I would also want mul­ti­ple queries from the data­base, so that I can dis­play my rec­om­mend­ed and analy­sis sec­tions at the same time. I’m just not sure if Moveable Type can pull all this off, or whether my host even sup­ports the right script per­mis­sions.

Wheaties, Aaron, and Trolley are all com­ing over on Tuesday for a sort of guys night. We’ll be watch­ing Swingers, and maybe some Basketball.

With dual sisal scratch­ing posts, 3 car­pet­ed loung­ing sur­faces with climb­ing holes, hang­ing sisal toy and stur­dy, wide base? Sweeeeeeeeeeeeet.

White Cheddar KD, Game Addiction, Etc.

I had some white ched­dar KD for din­ner tonight. I have to admit that it tastes bet­ter than reg­u­lar KD. It seems to have a “high­er class” cheap taste.

Blizzard has me addict­ed yet again. At least Dina is addict­ed too. And Trolley some­how made the FT beta, which is amaz­ing. I feel like I get to say, “I know a guy who made the beta!” When I tell peo­ple they look at me fun­ny.

I almost com­plet­ed my graph­ics assign­ment. The only thing that’s miss­ing is the object motion along the con­vey­or belt, and some pol­ish­ing of the col­li­sion detec­tion. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get per­fect col­li­sion detec­tion done, but I doubt that I’ll lose too many marks for that. I think I’ll just leave it the way it is, since I should be work­ing on oth­er projects, and I need to pri­or­i­tize.

Mel is hav­ing a birth­day par­ty on Saturday at the Honest Lawyer, and I’m look­ing for­ward to going.

There are a few things I want to with this page, like add a fea­ture that will sep­a­rate archives into dif­fer­ent pages, if it finds more than 100 results from a data­base query. I sup­pose I’ll find the time some­where.

I got my mouse in the mail today. It has stiffer but­tons and a stiffer scroll wheel, but every­thing is more respon­sive. I don’t like the fact that a part of the design isn’t flush with the rest of the mouse, so my pinky will catch on it. I’m not sure if that’s part of the design, or just some­thing that hap­pened to mine. The back thumb but­ton is also a bit too small and sunken when pressed. The pre­ci­sion of the mouse is dead on though, even with extreme­ly fast motions. I can now retire my old mouse. I should have giv­en him a name.

I don’t know how Trolley seems to drink every night. Some weeks I wish that I had noth­ing but alco­hol con­sump­tion, but my con­science always pre­vents me. I guess the idea that it’s cost­ly and not-so-dele­te­ri­ous real­ly pre­vents me from tak­ing shots as dessert. Yet Wheaties just tells me, “drink for fear of being upset do to lack of rea­son to drink. this way, you can drink before you get upset, real­iz­ing there real­ly isnt a need to drink, and you’ll be a peace­ful alco­holist — bet­ter than a ragin one.. hon­est­ly, its for your own good”. I think I’ll heed some of his advice.