top-quark.blog
Round two... fight!
Fri, 01/23/2004, 03:09Yeah, it's come around again; the flu. As I'm typing this away, I'm urgently trying to stuff my lungs back in through my mouth. Actually, it's not that bad, and there are people in a lot worse shape. Still, it's hard to be attentive in class when you're the W&W Phlegm Factory.
I'd planned on writing my Chinese New Year's message in Chinese, but apparently I've found a deficiency in the Blosxom bloggin software.. it doesn't like BIG-5 encoding. So, in Romanization that will cause me to have kidney stones for eternity, "Gong Shi Fah Tsai" !! (hong bao nah lai).
Welcome to year 4701.
hohoho...
Sun, 01/18/2004, 02:52
So apparently I had a power issue at home, and didn't notice that my beloved top-quark box had gone down... My ever-capable sister came to the rescue and got my ghetto-riffic box online.. really, this thing is *ghetto*.. it doesn't even have a power switch; you touch two wires together with TEN TRILLION VOLTS between them... (thanks sis! ^^)
School's fun and reasonable this semester.. It's the picture of balance; the perfect measure. I've been having fun "hangin' " with my floormates and studying for my really neat classes.. Computer organization is a surprisingly "visionary" course, and shows me what I'm doing relative to current industry.
School food does suck terribly, though..
Home away from home...
Sat, 01/10/2004, 04:33
Being back at college, I've concluded that Boulder is a fantastically poor substitute for Denver. I could bitch about anything, though.
Really, there's only one other place in the world that I could ever call "home", and that's the city of Taipei, Taiwan. Despite collectively having lived there far less than a year in all my visits, I never feel like an outsider.
As a massive sprawling metropolis, the first word to come to mind about Taipei usually isn't "beauty", but viewing it from farther out can often provide some perspective.. one of my aunts happens to live outside the city on a mountainside, and I was fortunate to visit with my camera right before the onset of a typhoon, during "hong-tai-tee", or typhoon weather.
This typhoon weather is something that warrants explanation, especially for landlocked types. Taipei, being a large developing city, has massive problems with smog. The typical weather of Taiwan further augments the hazy feeling with a thick layer of clouds, providing a nearly-constant neutral gray monotony (that I happen to like!).. The low pressure of an incoming typhoon, though, draws away the haze, making for clear, warm days. The drawn-out remnants of cloud provide for very photogenic scenery, if one's far enough away.
Visible in this picture, taken August 17 of 2003, is the silhouette of the then-unfinished Taipei 101 tower. It's nauseating to personally see it at a closer distance.
Inaneness Strikes! (movie at 9:00)
Fri, 01/09/2004, 02:06Yeah, it's pretty much my greatest fear, but I'll let in one "daily life" type of entry..
The last couple days have been.. well, "fun" isn't quite the word to use... I've mostly been mentally preparing to return to school.. Most significantly, I've pretty much fine tuned my dosage of Methylphenidate (yeah, I'm the latest inductee to the ADD club..) That should help *immensely*, since everyone knows that single greatest issue I have is that I'm never able to stay on one subject.. The problem is that this is also one of my few assets, and I question how this'll impact the other facets of my life. Mixed blessings all around. Here's to boring conversations... *clink*
One of my other major concerns is that of wasted time in my daily life. How much of this is ADD related, I dunno. Regardless, a large percentage of my excessive internet time is spent for crap purposes... since I'm now something like a junior in college (overworked, underpaid), I have even less time than before. Soo... since I can't self-regulate time wastage on the net, I'm bringing along my Mesozoic-Era boatanchor of a laptop to school. Yep, I'll let technology regulate me. As a plus, I'll have more deskspace to do.. well, whatever.
All my best-laid plans, though, are ravaged by.. well, reality. Being a junior also means that I'm starting to do more serious analysis, which requires a powerful computer.. I think I'll bring my desktop in reserve for those purposes.. I guess we'll be testing my self-control in that regard.
Oh, what exciting (sleep deprived) times we have coming...
And news to make my shooting partners happy.. Next week I'm sending my AR-15 upper receiver to Kurt's Kustom Firearms for a barrel weight reduction service.. almost $100 and a two months later, it'll come back to me as a turned, flluted lightweight wonder (I hope). I've high expectations, since this guy's got a godlike reputation on AR15.com.
Comments (writebacks, actually) should be working now, in a crappy sort of way.. give it a shot, if only for giggles..
Clear as mud...
Tue, 01/06/2004, 02:33I'll openly admit that I'm just grasping for content here, but nVidia's latest 53.x series drivers have a pretty neat little transparency feature included. Though being able to make transparent selected windows is of limited use, the aesthetics are undeniably nice...
It's interesting to note that Trillian (the window to the right) has for the longest time had transparency capabilities. It's rather useful (and usable) in transparency mode, because it's not an application you normally have to pay attention to, but still want to keep an eye on. A bit of a balancing act.
With a tool like your computer, though, prettiness should be strictly secondary to usability. Frank Llyod Wright and all that stuff. Having a focused window be transparent is murder on productivity, and its really just dumb to be a slave to vanity. With reported extensive usage of alpha-channel controls in MS' upcoming Longhorn, I hope they'll keep this in mind. Ideally, I'd like to see all background (unfocused) windows set to something like 60% transparency,. then spring to 100% visibility when clicked. This should be done at a native system level, too, not some company's hack.
Of course, if I used linux, I'm sure I could cobble something up to that effect. But I'm too unmotivated.
Getting old sucks.
Thoughts, cheaper by the dozen...
Tue, 01/06/2004, 01:55God damn is it cold. Walking outside right now's about as pleasant as a surprise gang initiation. I'm now a firm supporter of indoor heating and plumbing. Anyhow, since I'm still in hoppin' suburban Denver, my weekend was filled with exciting activities and colorful people. Not really, but I'll soon be headed somewhere with lots of nothing to do and stoners/drunkards by the boxfull. The only good bit of my weekend was going to the gun show on Saturday, where I failed to:
a) Sell my rifle.
b) Buy a Mossberg 590 w/ ghost rings for $275
I'm kicking myself repeatedly for that last one; I was halfway expecting the first. Actually, it's probably better I didn't sell my rifle at the show. Being the uninhibited person I am, I would instantly have splurged on beanie babies and beef jerky. Or so said vendors would wish. As much as a gunshow is a family sort of event (no, really, it is), I've yet to have seen anyone (kids included) patronize those tables. Maybe someone should kindly explain that it's a gunshow.
Oddly enough, the National Alliance had a table this time. With publications like "Is there a future for white children in America?", they do manage to catch people's attention. The question is what sort of attention... Usually event organizers ban these folks because they're bad press.. Though I myself am probably on the periphery of their derisiveness, I'm totally supportive of their right to free speech. Regardless the truth of their views, though, one recognizes that the organization is viewed dimly by the general public. This further carries over with what impact this will have on gun owners in general, when the local news, hungry for a story, shows up with their hidden cameras and paints gun owning America as a subset of this organization. God bless media whitewash. (play on words unintentional)
Other topics, though..
Since the holidays finished, I've been slowly processing my haul of gifts. One of my giftcard purchases at Best Buy was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Though I hate doing such a totally common thing of reviewing a movie, I will say (briefly) that this is a pretty good movie. It's also a perfectly good example of an exotic fad that sweeps the country in a wave of "I'm hip, too". The movie has good fights and nice filming, but viewing it in English (dubs especially) isn't nearly the same experience as watching in Chinese. In Chinese, the movie is a mostly plot-less kung-fu movie. In English, it's a mostly plot-less kung-fu movie. Any review that praises its "awesome" story line is full of shit, frankly.
Overall the movie was good, but some very boring people make it to be some sort of cinematic messiah so that they can make themselves look sophisticated/international. Something comes to mind about molehills/mountains, and a particular Nietzsche quote about muddying puddles to make one's points seem deeper.
Interestingly enough, both Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh had to both memorize Mandarin for the movie. Even though they both already speak Cantonese, it still seems like an insane burden to make an entire movie in what amounts in some degree to a foreign language. At least it didn't come out the same as William Shatner in the slightly obscure Incubus. My opinion of that film would otherwise be good, were it not for good ol' Will Shatner. Even though it's in Esperanto, he still. speaks. like. every. word. is. its. own. goddamn. sentence. If you want comedy, listen to the audio they have on the Incubus website. It's hilarious, in a multiple car pileup/numerous fatalities sort of way.
Before I vector totally off Crouching Tiger, though, I'd like to mention that the movie is the subject of the stupidest quote that has ever gracedcursed my ears. That being "Wow, I didn't know Chinese people could fly!"
Thoughts and idiots available; inquire about bulk quantities.
Yet More Testing..
Thu, 01/01/2004, 23:24For the most part, I'm just trying to modify some page behaviours now, and I still haven't gotten around to adding comments.. it's hard to plan out just how to implement this; Slashdot-style seems logical, but I'm having a bear of a time figuring out how to do it...
Diabetics need not apply...
Thu, 01/01/2004, 22:18It's kinda stupid, but something I always like to try when travelling is foreign candy. Variously, it's good, ok, or awful. Perhaps by genetic predisposition, though, I'm rather fond of most Asian candies. When I went to Taiwan this past summer, I was a positive fanatic for "Hi-Chew" fruit chews.. one of my cousins actually bought me close to a pound as a going-away present.. I was perfectly expecting, then, to eat them again when I next returned... Wasn't I surprised to find that they sell them in the US...
At first I was pretty much inspecting it like I do most Japanese candies.. then it started to work into my head that the package seemed oddly familiar, but I couldn't pin down what was bothering me.. The color scheme tipped me off, though, and I recognized it behind its veil of katakana as what it truly was. I will jealously guard this until my end days... or until I eat it all, which shouldn't be long...
OMG KAWAII-DESU-NE? kekekekkekekekekekeke (^______^)
\(^o^)/\(^o^)/\(^o^)/...
I hate myself...
Incidentally, this page is awesomely awful...