Tech Trans

So, today's the day I finally left WinXP behind. The free Win7 upgrade (pushed into a partition) didn't make me; hearing about the end of support for XP didn't make me; but now we're developing some Windows library and I figure it's pretty foolish to keep coding and testing on XP, which until today was what my main development PC ran on.

Come to think of it, when XP first came out, I also stuck to Win2K for quite some time. When I first upgraded to XP, I still set the look to Classic. All those square edges looked much neater to me. =D Now, though, they just look old-fashioned. (Or maybe it's the colour?) Which goes to show it was all inertia...

Anyway, I just spent the last few hours installing and configuring stuff on the Win7 partition. It wasn't so daunting as I've installed a number of programs since the actual OS upgrade a long time ago, and some of the other programs can still be run from the XP drive. Migrating Outlook used to be what I hated most about changing systems at school or work, but it's quite easy now that we use Exchange; almost everything stays at the server.

Another recent abandonment, an unwilling one, was iGoogle. This is a greater loss! Now nothing is forcing glimpses of daily news and trivia on me. I checked out a few recommended replacements, but I wasn't motivated enough to create a new account for any of them*. I resorted to bookmarking Google News and Chrome Apps, but then I rarely remember to click on them. -_-0

* It was kind of a wake-up call too, of how much of my online life was hinging on Google and its convenient synchronize feature. Dangerous!

Ah, the nature of technology. Moving on...


[Edit:] I forgot to update that I have since managed to get my paws on The Long War. NLB, you're awesome. (我們永遠支持你!)

[Edit II:] The Long War turned out a rather tedious reading for me, though. =( I ended up not finishing it.

Vista Wireless Connection Problem and Solution

Sharing this, as I've long been bugged by this problem and so glad to have stumbled on a setting that fixed it (internet searches had not been fruitful). Thought there might be someone out there who could use this.


Problem: Computer does not automatically get connected to a wireless network. "Connect to a network" dialogue is not responding. Applicable to computers that have seen some mileage.

Platform: Windows Vista (I didn't check if it's applicable to others)

Cause: The system keeps an ordered list of wireless networks to attempt connecting to. Any wireless network that has previously been detected and tried is automatically saved to this list. When the list is overpopulated (mine reached 100+ after 3 years of usage at various locations), with obsolete networks at the top, the system gets stuck in an endless string of failed connection attempts.

Solution: Open Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Manage Wireless Networks. Clean up the list, and put your preferred wireless network on top. That is all.

Evidencing Eureka

An article (a cute one I should say) mentions a press conference from CERN giving the latest update in the search for the Higgs boson, which arouse my interest as, aside of the exciting subject, I've never watched any scientific press conference before.

So here it is. (The embedded streaming didn't work for me, but some browsers should be able to play one of the download links directly.)

I quite like the tone of this one. We get a procedural picture of the real work involved:

"What we have seen today is a fantastic demonstration of how an experiment works, from the operation in the cavern to the data-taking, the data-processing, reconstruction, computing, the quality calibration, all the way to the analysis and interpretation of the result. So a simple plot showing a mass distribution contains a lot of work." -- FG

The romantic touch:

"We are discussing something that is the last chapter, we hope, of a story which lasts 47 years." -- GT

The ethics:

"Those are really preliminary results. They're very interesting, they're intriguing, but really preliminary. First of all, as it is the duty of the scientific community, we will speak more solidly through papers that will be submitted on final results we hope to be able to come out sometime end of January, beginning of February [...]" -- GT

The mild humor:

"It *is* really exciting. I can tell you. But nonetheless, we take questions." -- RH

And apparently a number of excited enthusiasts have added their own opinions into the mix, or reinterpreted the news to make their own conclusions, so the scientists have learned to be carefully accurate with their statements:

"First of all, it's not an evidence. Be careful [to ensure that] we're using scientific words at the precise meaning. We're talking of intriguing, tantalizing hints [...]" -- GT

"Don't believe all the blogs. Okay? Believe only what has a stamp from the scientists and not the blogs. Please." -- RH

It is also pleasant to listen to people who know exactly where they are:

Question: "Is it possible to find the Higgs with the present dataset and improved analysis?"
RH: "A quick answer, Madam?"
FG: "No."

And to close, the inspirational quotes:

"Of course it will be good to find new physics, new things, and we have some ideas of how, for instance, new physics could manifest itself. But we should not forget that we are researchers, and the foundation of research [is] really looking for something that is also unexpected, or something new. So we have to remain open, because we don't know what Nature has chosen. And so we may be soon confronted with some surprises, and this would be, I think, for us, the best reward -- something unexpected." -- FG

Question: "Before, you spoke about the next 20 years, the physics beyond the Standard Model, and then about the rest of-- 96% of the universe to explore. And I want to ask, is there an end to the scientific question, and if not, then why?"
GT: "Because we are-- this is the mankind. I mean, mankind started asking questions, and we will continue forever."
FG: "Remember what Isaac Newton used to say: 'What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean.'"
RH: "Each time we find something new, we have new questions to ask. And that's the fascinating thing of science, yeah? You answer some questions which you know how to pose. And then you find, suddenly, new questions. And that will go on, I'm sure. And it's very difficult to find the moment 'when do I know everything?' That's impossible, at least for me. So, there's a lot to do."

Notes:
The above has been transcribed from the video, with minor edits for clarity.

RH: Prof. Rolf-Dieter Heuer, CERN Director General
FG: Prof. Fabiola Gianotti, LHC ATLAS
GT: Prof. Guido Tonelli, LHC CMS

Big History: Beautiful Story

I'm sharing this video link in the spirit of "collective learning" as recommended by the speaker of this wonderful talk on the history of the universe. I recommend watching it in full-screen mode (and darkened room if possible) to enhance the experience. =)

David Christian, "Big History" @ TED Talks



If the above streaming is slow, you can also find it on YouTube here.

Teaser snapshots:

Look Smart

Feels like I've grown rather saturated of smartphones without even starting to use one. =P Too much seeing them used in buses and trains and they start to look the same*. With running apps that look the same too (usually messaging or touchscreen games... pardon me for glancing).

* Even those of a certain fruity flavour, as I'm just not a gadget person enough to bother to differentiate at a glance, with those protectors on.

The increase in capability is of course a good thing, but visually speaking, I feel that the older feature phones, with range of models that are more distinguishable, have more of a personality.

But call me biased, as I'm still using a feature phone and liking it (points for it being able to fit unobstrusively in my pocket, and I'm on full-fledged computers almost all the time, anyway); wait til it's time for my mobile plan recontract + handset upgrade and see --- shall I go for looks, or intelligence? ;P


On a related but not exactly relevant topic, here's an interesting article that questions the nurturing of that intelligence (in general terms) where it should foremost be.

Green Beginnings

...which are not so green new anymore, but it's only now that I get the time AND motivation to write about them, so. =D


Roses Are Green


--A new cell phone last August, because I renewed my line subscription (and because I lost my old one around May and had been getting by with a borrowed phone). It's Sony Ericsson Elm, with a 5 MP camera (for all the photos I like to take on the move) and a "normal" keypad (I do not trust touch screens as yet). Loving the camera so far. =)

It's also a green (eco-friendly) model, so I get interesting reminders such as after setting the alarm: "works even when phone is off"; and after charging: "unplug the charger from the socket as well to save energy". =D But seems it's considered an old model in this country because I couldn't find a screen protector for it anywhere (I usually like my gadgets accessory-free, but this one gets dirty easily and more persistently than I can tolerate), until a helpful shopkeeper in City Plaza got me a similar model (G700, note to myself) that works satisfactorily.

And yes, as the image shows, it's pink (or as per the official description, "pearly rose"). ^_^ The customer service guys (seen more than one of them 'cos the process had involved other complications not elaborated here) sounded skeptic when they told me the alternative black was not in stock, but I actually do prefer this colour. (Metallic makes most colours okay!) It's prettier, no?


It's Black, It's Green, It's Not Blinking Red


--A new portable hard disk from COMEX 2010, because the last one, an 80GB Samsung (a case-it-yourself which was still common back then), went puff without warning a week before (good timing?). But seeing as it had lasted five years in my not-so-tender care, I had good opinions about it, so I decided to get the same brand. This time I got a 320GB G2 model, which is also a green product (thus cheaper than the slicker S2 series).

I don't get why the reviews have been keen on the G2's visual design, with the dots and novel colours... I happen to not think it's nice, so I chose the least-offending black (^^0), but otherwise it's been working great -- lightweight and quiet.

On the note of dead hard disks, I have recovered data from a few before, but this latest one was a tougher case as the hard disk couldn't be detected by the PC, knocking noises and blinking red light and all. So I tried the freezer trick. Still no luck after a 24-hour freezing, nor a 3-day freezing, after which I abandoned it in the fridge and went on to dig up old backups. =P Three weeks after, I thought I had to put a proper end to it, so I took it out and gave it a last revival attempt, which, to my pleasant surprise and absolute delight, worked!

I'm not trusting any more important data to it, but it was still working okay the second and third time I plugged it in, so maybe there's life in it yet. =)


The Colour of Magic (Is Probably Not Green)


By DIsk's recommendation I got to know the wonderful wit of Terry Pratchett, whom I first ignored because fantasy was not my usual genre (LotR and HP have been somewhat short-term interests =P). As it is, I think it's more his fresh sense of humour that baited me, though the fantasy setting certainly lends a unique quality to it.

The title of this subsection (minus the bracketed part) is the title of the first book in his Discworld series, which ironically I haven't read (but soon will!). I started from the second book, and have since acquired the National Library membership (which I'd been postponing to do) just so I could start on a quest to consume the entire series. Do try it! It took only one line (conveniently the first in the book) for me to decide I love this author, so I'm venturing to say you won't waste much time testing the waters. =P

(In a semi-fandom clash, the latest release names of the VideoLAN VLC media player (used in my work project) seem to hint that the developers are sharing this interest. =D)


Green with Evil, We're Not


This is a closure to my previous post on Werkz. I have received response from NUS as well as an apology token from the studio, possibly after a follow-up from the university. I haven't quite expected this level of response, and it made me feel a little bad for the "blow-up" of the issue, though I guess it should've been the whole point of making a feedback. =D; Myself may still avoid dealing with them in the future, but I hope this incident has somehow improved things in the big picture...


Green Green Grass (Among Other Things) of Home


"I always say home is where you hang your hat."
"Um, no," said Twoflower, always anxious to enlighten. "Where you hang your hat is a hatstand. A home is--"
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"

And this is just a notice that in two days I'll be disappearing for a while (not that I haven't, judging by the interval between my recent posts) for a trip back home. =) Back here mid-October, when you'll hear from me if I have anything worth publicizing. ^^

Reminiscing is a Sign of Aging, and I'm Dragging You Down with Me

(...with a truckload of links!)

We had an all-Indonesian lunch today. At one point we started talking about the science syllabus in Indonesia (getting more advanced nowadays than what we experienced in our high school days) and proceeded to reminisce about the early days we came into contact with computers (the 90s).

Oooh, nostalgic. =DDD

To think that back then we were happily using those flimsy 5.25-inch IBM floppy disks whose capacity I couldn't recall because file sizes weren't big enough to be a concern at that time. Nowadays we can hardly find a new PC with a 3.5in floppy drive, let alone those "A drive and B drive"...

Then there was Digger, the popular PC game of that time. (Even thinking about it now I can relive the panic at being chased around by those mice. (Oh yes I suck at action games even now.))

There was BASIC, our first programming language; mIRC, our first chatting experience (
*pops* asl pls
*types* m
*disappears*
). Before Winword and Excel there were WordStar and Lotus 123...

(Incidentally today too I just found this HCI comic about Lotus Notes from the same company.)

But even with these vivid recollections, our lives had (naturally) been so much more detached from computers that they are now, so we went on to appreciate Bobo, the hugely successful children magazine of our childhood. Probably because the memory was shaped during our most absorbent age, we could still recite the names of most recurring characters in that magazine. I have a very good impression about it in terms of being educational both intellectually and morally. I just had this similar reminiscence with my childhood hometown friend, and she said she would probably subscribe to it for her son after he'd grown a bit more. I hope it still maintains the same quality.

Randomly I was also reminded of Sanggar Cerita, the Indonesian version of audio stories that came in cassette tapes. I only owned one that was "Cinderella" by young Ira Maya Sopha (singing "Hari ini, hari ini, Ira ingin ceritera..."). To jog my memory I tried to sing the whole storyline in the shower (they had a summary song and a conclusion song and one at each main event), but I had blanks here and there. xD

There, there, enough reminiscing for now. ^^ I would call them "the good old days" but without undermining "the good nowadays" with all my present indulgences enabled by the technology leap, even if it means I'm constantly on watch for disk consumption while owning a total of nearly 750GB harddisk space...

An Eloquent Astrophysicist

The second law of thermodynamics holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of nature.

If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the Universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations -- then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations.

If it is found to be contradicted by observation -- well, those experimentalists do bungle things up sometimes.

But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing to do but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

-- Arthur S. Eddington, in "The Nature of the Physical World" (1928)

In Their Shoes

An interesting article written in an entertaining style:
Living free with Linux: 2 weeks without Windows

Much Talk About Computing

What makes an orator?

Attended the Computing in the 21st Century 2008 in Suntec yesterday. It was part of Microsoft Research Asia's 10th Anniversary celebration, and I was invited since I interned there last year as one of the 2006 Fellows. I thought the logo was nice, though Bernard thought the color scheme (the bits floating around) was too similar to Google's. =D


-- Talk to Me

There were the welcome address and opening speeches. While everyone did read from the script, I noticed our NUS Provost, Prof. Tan Eng Chye, delivering it sort of 'newscaster-style' -- with an engaging tone and much pause/emphasis on strategic places. It gave me the feel of being spoken to (even though it was still a recognizable 'recital'), and kept my attention better. That said, I did feel guilty for drifting away from some others from time to time because their contents were all pretty interesting. =P

But anyway, that brought my thoughts to a great orator most Indonesians are proud of, Bung Karno, who never needed a script. (I vaguely remembered hearing about this from my mother. If even she was impressed...) Apart from the gift, I think it might have come from the extent of his passion for the subject-- I really imagine him as someone who lived and breathed patriotism (putting aside the infamous other side of his personality).


-- Look and Feel

Then there were the PowerPoint talks, which I usually labor a lot on myself, being fussy in the department of idea presentation. =)P

Tony Hoare (quicksort, Hoare logic) jogged up the stage stairs. (He is going to be 75 in a few months.)

His slides were plain black-on-white pure text in contrast to the colorful others with the cool demos, but I think I still like his best, emotionally speaking. =) (My own favorite slide design is the 2003 'Edge'.) They stood out in their simplicity, unclogged and easy to read. There was a kind, humorous ambience in the way he spoke, too.

The topic was his dream on zero-defect programming, with the scientific basis and a comparison to the established reliability of the Engineering disciplines. He likened it to a wave of Harry Potter's magic wand to make the errors disappear, and Bernard pointed out that it helped that he had the accent already. =D


That aside, I am still kinda lost on what to talk about to these big names in research. =P People will have technical questions or ask for inspirational advices or talk about life I suppose? I'm probably having too clear a separation between my social and technical associations... And when I feel the gap in our level I tend to fall back on silence (not necessarily awkward if you ask me) or small talk that I am not good in, either. =PP

Walls and Mirrors

Abstraction is a wonderful concept. Like, tell your 'client' just what he needs to know at the level of his understanding. Much as this opens another can of worms of how to determine that level. (After all, what a man does not know can hurt him. And me, in the process.)

I'm all for transparency and being responsible (or kiasi), but oh, the frustration of dealing with people who ask for this and that just because they can be done, when in my not-exactly-professional opinion those are not necessary anyway.

Not to mention I don't have enough nonchalance to just pass on the pressure to the abstraction level above me. Which, still, may or may not work as they would have been trained at handling/repelling this kind of thing, no?

Excuse the ranting. I know I can say this since I am not in their shoes with their worries that might be valid after all -- ugh, this justifying tendency of mine -- but...

Title is a tribute to the first context to introduce this concept to me.

Bad Hand Day

Got a scare from my computer yesterday. It just suddenly went off without any warning. When I tried to turn it on again, the power LED blinked once, but the system wouldn't start. Even the blink couldn't be reproduced without unplugging and re-plugging the power source.

Clearly a power problem, so I swapped the power supply box. When it didn't work (the only improvement was the stronger blink since the new PSU had higher wattage) I was at a loss as to how to proceed next. Plugged in my housemate's CPU and went on Google. Cleaned up the accumulated dust that I'd been lazy to take care of. Started the long tedious hardware troubleshooting process: stripping to the bare operatives and adding the peripherals back one by one. Luckily before long I discovered that I had connected one wrong pin in the first attempt. =D It is back to work now, with fortunately no component damage.

Well, my fault. My system has been heating up very quickly for a long time, but aside from minimum attempt at better heat dissipation, I ignored it and kept overloading it with external HDDs and overnight operations. With the higher wattage now (480W, previously 350W) it is noticeably much cooler.

Computers, our darlings. Won't do to just take advantage of them without maintenance spending, huh.

It is still pretty noisy though, a problem that started recently. Not a threatening issue as overheating is, I suppose, but I should probably try a few tips as mentioned here in the next maintenance.

Cross-Platform Madness

Repeat after me: I should not port AMD binaries to Intel machines without rebuild.

Sigh. Lost sleep chasing a bug that's not in the code after all! *yawns*

Searching

First laid-back weekend after a while. =) This blog will have jumbled things I've wanted to say for some time, so it's unlikely to be coherent..

First, a link: The Keropok - Singapore Daily Photo

I guess partly because the photos are well taken, partly because I'm rather tuned to sight-seeing mood recently, and partly because I'm currently away... I thought, "Eh, Singapore is quite a beautiful country too." =D (Over here all they say about Singapore is "So clean!")

Hope I will still think so when I'm back in a few months, so I'll make time to look around the few places I've never really explored before. Eka, would you be up to it? As an alternative to our movie weekends. ^^

The photoblog by the way was found through a "Google query chain" for "NUS School of Computing relocation", when I needed to find out the new location of my lab, to re-apply for the expired IT resources. I'm working on something related to web search these days, so these search stuff mean a little bit more to me now. =) My browser starts on Google, and I always have an open tab for on-demand googling the whole time I'm working at a terminal. Now, occasionally I'd feel like I should contribute to my own datapool by using MSN Live Search instead. =D

As for the browser, I've been using Mozilla Firefox back home, mostly for its convenient tabbing. (It is supposedly more secure, too, but I never understand much about computer security, so. =P) Now that IE7 -- pre-installed on my lab machine, while Firefox is not -- has tabs too, I've switched sides.. for now. =D IE's tabbing feature feels slower in response, but this comparison is on different machines. Any of you have the experience?

Before the trip to the Redmond campus, we met up with our General Manager Hon Hsiao-Wuen, during which I asked him if, being "Microsoft people" (of which sense I don't have enough yet), we should be careful in revealing our preference for competitor products to these people we were going to meet (within/outside the lab/company). He said that, they would actually encourage us to experience other products and provide feedbacks and criticisms, but please make sure to convey it respectfully. =D

I did miss the powerful built-in/shell tools I'd been using on SoC Linux servers, and once gushed to my project leader about them. =P Hopefully that wasn't too... er, enthusiastic-for-the-wrong-side. The researchers I work with are very young and the team shares a much more casual interaction compared to the professor-student relationship I've had in campus, so it's easy to reveal those kind of things in conversations. =D

Things are moving at a faster pace for me here, being in a team, compared to doing my own research in the uni. My prof gave me a lot of time to explore ideas; we met once a week; I have life outside school. ^^ Here we have concrete targets and are eager for progress; we meet twice a week, plus occasional sync meetings with another department; I don't have much to do outside the lab.

Conclusion: OT. =D

(Of course a portion of these OT periods is utilized for emails, blogs, chats etc, like now. Search data are huge so experiments have long runtimes, and so I have sort of excusable in-between idle periods, har.)

I'm working on a photo blog for recent happenings, will post the link here when it's ready. I wonder if the amount of photos I'm putting up is giving you the impression that I'm on a long vacation trip instead of an internship? XD Somehow I feel obliged to post them just because my usual folks (family and friends) aren't here to experience it with me.

Last-last week my parents were here in Beijing on an invitation to attend the MSRA Intern's Day. My father has always wanted to visit China (the "knowing your root" thing) so despite my normal paiseh attitude I worked out the courage to ask the management if I could invite them. Glad I did, because they approved. =)

So by now I've visited the Badaling Great Wall twice and the Summer Palace twice, but still I would like, someday when my mood has recovered from this touristy overload, to hike the Simatai and to go all the way to the hilltop of the Palace. ^_^

But aside from the general feel-good I'm probably losing the enthusiastic edge with all that happened in my life, though when casual acquaintances asked I'd surely say they were exciting, just so it wouldn't sound as if I were disappointed with anything, which I indeed wasn't. I am still aware how fortunate these were for me, so I could at least not appear ingrate. =D

But still I feel that I've been giving a whole lot of "it was all right" answers, which were honest, because the amazement did not stay with me for long. Now that I'm analysing this to write about it, it might be because I sort of know what standard to expect once I get into certain situations, so it wasn't as impressive when they came to pass.

Does one become like this when too many pleasant surprises came in a row? It seems like I got lucky once, then one unexpected thing comes after another; and suddenly I look back at all these "high-end" experience that were amazing as I name it but not so much as I feel it... if you get what I mean.

I guess the biggest weight was that I think of it as an "undeserved favor" (Hady's term), and it really is a favor in more than one sense as various parties have kindly made room for me -- those breaks from my regular obligations, less work accomplished because my time was divided for the preparations -- so, for one, my mind was not entirely free to enjoy it, and there's also this pressure to justify this good turn by, in some way, earning the rights after-the-fact.

I kept thinking "I really should be more excited about this!" but you know when you think that you should feel something, it just means you shouldn't, because you in fact do not feel it. Am I making sense? =PP

Yet here I'm faced with an offer for another weekend++ trip to Shanghai with a group of foreign interns end of this month. I tend somewhat towards the negative decision: I'm rather tired of the sight-seeing business after all these weeks; this trip is expected to be exhausting, plus it's going to eat a day into the work week and I don't want to ask for another leave. It's also a bit of a bet, because I'll need to decide (and pay) on Monday so we can book tickets, but I cannot be sure what to expect from the trip as we do not have a solid itinerary as of yet.

The decision comes down to: I'm totally okay not to go, but I'm wondering if I'll regret it later if I miss the opportunity, considering that I'm already in China right now. Classic, eh. =P

By the way, the title came about as I tried to connect these jumbled parts.. and you might notice I've highlighted the relevant words using the color of this text. **PLUG** It is also the title of one of our Soracco songs from the Passage of Time musical, which we're going to restage January next year, and which I might as well promote here. =D Stay tuned!

Sound Woes

I was required to make an audio-PowerPoint presentation around a month ago. My labmate taught me how to embed the sound files. Did it, burned it to a CD, sent it all the way to Beijing via registered mail that took 9--14 days since I was feeling pretty cheap, heh. Then the person in charge emailed me yesterday to say that there was no sound when the ppt was played.

Googled the problem and found that filesize limitation caused the sound files to be linked instead of embedded into the ppt. So, played in another computer, it cannot find the files. Riiiight.

*breathe* 'Kay. Bright side, now I know. But still feel the need to blame it on something. =P Like, shouldn't PowerPoint pop out a warning that tells me the sound file has not been embedded as I am attempting to do? Then again, it is on their Online Help, so maybe it is assumed that we've read that. Darn, can't use that excuse then.

Well, this person has nothing to do with this, but just because he is affiliated with Microsoft lab (the recipient, by the way) I felt like complaining to him. =D We're always blaming them, aren't we? On the other hand, some time ago Denny sent an article that made me sympathize with them a little.

Will have to fix the file and burn it into another CD to resend -- what wasted storage space. Yeah, still cheap. Having a constantly filling-fast harddisk does that to you. (You can tell this is another lame excuse.)

Fun with FOLDOC

No match for scratchpad memory

Sorry, the term scratchpad memory is not in the dictionary. Check the spelling and try removing suffixes like "-ing" and "-s".

Nearby terms: scratch monkey « Scratchpad I « Scratchpad II « scream and die » Screamer » screaming tty » screen


scream and die

Synonym cough and die, but connotes that an error message was printed or displayed before the program crashed.


cough and die

<jargon> barf. Connotes that the program is throwing its hands up by design rather than because of a bug or oversight. "The parser saw a control-A in its input where it was looking for a printable, so it coughed and died."

Compare die, die horribly, scream and die.


die horribly

<jargon> The software equivalent of crash and burn, and the preferred emphatic form of die. "The converter choked on an FF in its input and died horribly".


Source: Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

P.S.: If this is not enough, go back up and click on the "scratch monkey".

White

Time, precious time. But my mind is blank. And not in a good way. Too many things not yet put in order, and I don't know where to start planning.

Like the white light which is actually a combination of the whole colour spectrum? But that's a beautiful thing, so not a correct analogy. Like the white noise with nothing you can hear yet you know the static's there and just a little disturbing? More like it.

It makes no difference in Microsoft Paint, but if you use Adobe Photoshop, this is where we should go for the Eraser instead of Fill > White. Or New Layer > No Fill (or is it Transparent?) and not 100% White. Am I making any sense to you? =Q

Wash, wash, wash. Start again.

Benchmarks

From an Integrated Solutions & Systems article:

"Performance can be measured many ways. As the saying goes: there are lies, damn lies and then there are benchmarks."

It's nice to get such amusement when doing this.

Pervasive

Today's seminar is the second talk that I've seen putting "Assorted pictures from Google" as a reference. Now that's convenient. I mean, I've written a few drafts that could have had a one-line bibliography that is {\url{http://www.google.com/}}. But being on the readers' side half of the time, I certainly won't advocate that, except for maybe pictures or things we all needn't find again later.

Still, it's quite impressive how we can take that name for granted nowadays, like, if a friend asks where to find such-and-such, instead of telling him the website I can just give him the keyword to google for. (And I don't need to hyperlink that too.)

Found an amusing quote from today's talk too, commenting on how difficult it is to get information (for R&D purpose) from chip manufacturers:

"We should hire the KGB or the mafia to steal fab data."
-- Lou Scheffer (Cadence)

Seeing as it might not go into Google's listing, I'd better give proper crediting here... The talk I've been referring to is a CS Seminar in SoC, given by visiting professor Patrick H. Madden from SUNY, on the topic of Design for Manufacturability.

Winamp is playing Because, Elliot Smith's rendition, originally by Beatles. I still don't know what they're talking (or thinking) about, but I find the puns very, very interesting:


Because the world is round, it turns me on
Because the world is round...
Because the wind is high, it blows my mind
Because the wind is high...

Love is old, love is new
Love is all, love is you

Because the sky is blue, it makes me cry
Because the sky is blue...


Been hearing that their songs have insinuations about drugs, and this one in particular seems unstable enough for that, but they're lost on me anyway. =P It's totally possible that the song is simply about someone who's awed by how beautiful love has made his life. A great song nevertheless.