#food (optional) 29 October 1998

This may be a bit boring, so it's marked optional. I've decided to put all my one-liner things at the bottom all in one paragraph. Otherwise I have three or four paragraphs of little tidbits and that gets annoying.

Tuesday night, Jack ordered a pizza from Dining Services. Jack doesn't understand that chewing with your mouth open is rude. "Jack," I say, "chew with your mouth closed." Jack wonders with a confused half grin, "Why?" Oh, ignorant ignorant Jack, do you not know? "I don't like to hear you chew." Jack still confused, thinking it's some quirk with me. I help him out and explain, "It's impolite." Jack struggles to chew with his mouth closed, but at least he tries and at leasts I don't hear a bunch of chewing noises. Silly China-man, will you ever learn our ways? I suppose college is the only time he'd ever learn things like manners, etc.

This may or may not be out of context. From Kay's page: "Robocop and I went to bed." Oh boy, another soap-opera that I can twist.

Okay, for anybody who was wondering what Aural Stimulation was, Dimension Music cites somebody (probably from Winamp), "aural stimulation adds some high frequencies to the output, so that the ear hears high frequencies with the music. This tricks the ear into thinking that the recording is crisper, because mp3 tends to filter out most high frequency stuff, so the presence of incorrect (but unobtrusive) high frequencies makes it sound better." So it is not what I expected it to be, which would explain the unfamiliar name.

Looks like I save $299 by not buying a Matrox Marvel. No drivers for Windows NT. I'll just wait till Windows 2000 comes out. I wish Adobe would create Photoshop for Linux.

And now for the tidbits of information:

• I woke Jack yesterday with Logon Rock Witch... oops, oh well... that's what happens when you have stupid sleeping habbits. Mr. I have one class on Wednesdays.
• I've decided that I should use the computer lab in our basement more often. It's quieter at many times and there is no Jack and no PlayStation.
• Woo-hoo! I passed my fire safety inspection test... hopefully it's not the only test I pass.
• Ever wonder who hacks the hackers?
• Download this. If I choose to use this as my default laugh and laugh at more things, I think Jack will be scared of me:)

Read full post

#books Ray Bradbury 27 October 1998

If anybody really really wants a signed copy of a Ray Bradbury book, I may be able to work something out. His books go on sale Thursday at 3:00 PM (probably going to be actually marked up), and he will be there signing books at 4:00 PM. I'm sure I could work something out. I just need to know sometime on Thursday before 3:00 PM.

Read full post

#food Bees 27 October 1998

I'm afraid of bees and any bugs that can be mistaken as bees. Lots of bugs crossed my path yesterday. Urbana-Champaign decided to be warm this week. MTV took over a small sector of campus today. I managed to get a free demo CD from Intel and lemonaide form Old Navy who were assisting MTV. The lemonaide made me have a strong affinity to Old Navy jeans. This is why I love Molly, because she wears Old Navy jeans.... I think.

Okay, I'm up early, Jack is making all these wierd noises in his sleep. Like drooly sucky noises. This is disturbing. It's the kind of thing that makes you want to kill him. Why can't he sleep normal?!? Thanks to the structure of my room, my open window doesn't make it cold unless the door is open as well (so the air can flow somewhere). I left the door open when I brushed my teeth. Jack is now covered in his blanket. Okay, Jack tosses and turns in his bed. This time he hit his leg against something, and he spoke, "shit." It's amusing.

Read full post

#computers Commerce 1, Science 0 27 October 1998

Take this Sagan! (sarcasm). What horrible people will we become. Nicholas Negroponte in Being Digital states something along the lines that we must not use "ether" as much as we do. It must not be the main transmitter of bits. We should come up with local systems that transmit mobile data to cable outposts which retransmit via wired to anything else (unless it's a mobile device, then it uses a local transmitter). We have the know how. Unfortunately it's not cheap to impliment. That's why I want an army of men and women ages 19-35 to join my industrial sabotage group. We will disable all inefficient corporate projects and integrate newere better designs that are designed with longevity and efficiency in mind, not some made up fairytale thing which we call money.

Speaking of science... look what the Danish have done. I could wait for an upgrade:) Imagine the impact. Technology like that, once it can be easily replicated will enable people to have nearly unlimited storage and memory. This enables us to do so much. Unfortunately science takes its time when it snuggles its way into technology. I want to see Micron eating this technology up:)

There's a new version of litestep (b24). If you want your computer to look pretty, get this. It's real easy to install and should work pretty fine. I don't use it because I like my IE4 shell as it is.

Oh yeah, NT 5.0 to be named Windows 2000. It seems logical as the Win95-98 continuation is being absorbed by the NT 4.0 progression. I guess I'll be using the same OS as you (probably) will be. Of course, that depends on the state of Linux next year. It seems to be gaining a lot of popularity this year. It's become easier to use. And then there is Corel! Most of the stuff I do right now in excel, etc can be replicated using web-based interfaces, etc. So I shouldn't care too much. I'm thinking of buying a new CD-ROM for my old computer and slapping on Red Hat. Maybe next year if I get a laptop it will be a Linux and NT machine... of course.

Sorry I've been away from humanity too long. I have too much computer stuff on my mind. The RIAA ban on Rio has been lifted. Rio is the handheld MP3 player.

Ooh, non-computer: This is for all you people who are sick of those motivational posters.

And, Molly and I by the end of the year hopefully will be both on the NetCam Network thanks to ZDTV who deemed both Molly and I as winners of NetCam devices. I decided to go the ultralegal route and have my mom sign it for me (since I'm under 21). And then I'll send it in later this week hopefully.

Am I being too mean to Jack?

Read full post

#web development 32 and 1 day 26 October 1998

I have a short term memory. I noticed this last year when I started using ICQ heavily. I'd message people and they'd reply and I would have to constantly look at my message history to figure out what they were replying to. This happens less and less, but it was disturbing dealing with such a short term memory. I've started to notice it elsewhere as well. I can't pay much attention in class because taking notes is difficult and keeping a lecture together in my head is hard. When I read a book I often miss important details. This happens especially if the subject matter isn't filled with vivid description or interesting.

I've started taking it easy instead of constantly being stresse over work. It's helped. It's funny my hobby is web site development and I chose the school that created graphical web browsing. It's fun to go to Help|About Internet Explorer if you use MSIE. If you like space, you'll like this. Our school has crappy Pizza delivery. It's just Totino's party pizza. It's nasty. If you go to UIUC, eat dinner, don't get the pizza from URH, if you must spend $5 and order pizza.

Winamp 2.04 has Aural Stimulation support for MP3s. I hope this is what I think it is. In other MP3 news, I just found a bunch of new MP3s from Aphex Twin, Tangerine Dream, Orb (an awesome live Toxygene), Orbital (as if I didn't have enough), Skinny Puppy and Underworld to name a few. I should be set for a while.

The Simpsons yesterday lacked some intelligence that the older Tree House of Horror's had.

Jack is back today. He woke up early (a few minutes after my final awakening). He's awake now.

Read full post

#friends 1 Free Hour With the Purchase of Two. Limit Only One. 25 October 1998

I found a link here and here referring to the shooting. Apparently they had the wrong guy.

It's a bout time that somebody came out with a phone that hooks up to your PC. Unfortunately you can't use this with talking over the Internet. It wouldn't be that hard. Just make it a USB device that doubles as a microphone/speaker and you could talk to people via netmeeting with a phone.

Friday Night I watched Omen IV with some friends. It's actually the second time I saw the movie. It's very funny. Watch it with girls. There was a seen where snakes bit people and Cheryl, a friend of mine, screamed a little too much. I'm not implying that all girls will scream, there are probably quite a few exceptions. One exception, I think, is Molly. I can't picture her screaming out of fear of a movie. Or having any fear of something in a movie. That's why I love her.

Looks like Windows NT 5.0 Beta 3 and subsequent 5.0 releases will not have as cool of an active directory interface as I thought. Originally it was to be a type of metadirectory where virtual links could be made, similar to Unix type systems where you can type "ln -s" to create a symbolic link. Oh well. One day I hope to be running this. Probably a legal copy too. My friend Chris has gotten me into this legal kick.

Crack.com is folding over supposedly because of lack of funds. They made cool Linux games. One game Golgotha has great music. I remember Tom playing a song, Meathook when it came out, it's now called Munich Germany. You can get these of the MP3 Server. These are, by the way, legal MP3s. All the legal MP3s I have are pretty cool.

Also on the MP3 server is an mp3 of Jack, my roommate. It's in Chinese. It's his mom calling about the shooting that happened. I have a translation available too. It's under \D\Dave's Roommate, Jack Lin\.

I shaved yesterday. I look a lot less credible, but I also look like I'm not fresh off the boat. I also noticed that some of my hair has a copper color. I think it would be cool to have more uniform copper hairs.

I've noticed that it only takes me a small amount of time to set up a web site. Here is one for Millenium 3. It's our team that's competing in a robot design competition. The sad thing is, if Peter were in the competition, he'd beat everyone's ass.

Read full post

#allen hall Jack's messages 22 October 1998

Again, I wake up and no Jack. The difference? I woke up at 7PM (naturally with no alarm clock). He came back within a half hour or an hour.

Here's the funny thing Jack did. When you read it you will know the what the funny thing Jack did was. Today, I've motivated myself to go researching after dinner and when I came back around 8PM. Jack wakes up when I enter the room and turn on the light. There were 6 identical phone numbers on the Caller ID display and another that was from out of town. I'm assuming from the phone outside Allen Hall/Unit One Housingplex (sounds better than Residence Hall). I check my messages. Jack realizes the time and waits until I finish my message check and he checks his messages. Then he says, "Bullshit... my mom called at 7:34 PM." Well actually his Mom called at 7:34, 7:38, 7:51, 7:54, 8:00, 8:16. He slept through all six phone rings. He asked, "Where were you?" I told him I was at the library until now (then sometime after 8:16PM).

As the Chick tracts would say, "Poor stupid Jack, you'll never get into heaven if you sleep all day." Well Jack is finally gone. Not forever, but for the rest of the week.

Here is a quote to motivate "all y'all:"

We have now progressed in our thinking about giftedness and realise the static nature of our previous approach. Giftedness does not refer to something that is fixed for life but, rather, to a dynamic quality that is influenced over time. We do not seek to identify a fixed reservoir of ability and to calculate an ability score but rather to nurture and develop abilities to a higher level of performance.

-Eddie J. Braggettof Charles Sturt University: in "a developmental concept of giftedness: implications for the regular classroom"

This is the type of stuff that interests me and takes up my precious time at the education library and speech class.

Read full post

#computers News and hoaxes 21 October 1998

When I wake up and Jack is gone, I shouldn't get too excited. Jack can come back. Jack came back a little before 6 AM. He makes wierd noises when he's asleep. Probably hard for him to sleep when I've just woken up.

Anyway, the last week has brought some rivalry between a few "news" services on the web. The main reason was for an article printed about an MP3 virus. Beta News first posted the article. Dimension Music made a reference to this article. According to Dimension Music's Spyed, he wanted to see how many people would buy the story, and that later he'd post a lesson. The lesson was, not to trust every news source. Rather before buying into a story, try to see if it even makes sense. An MP3 virus doesn't make sense, because MP3s are read, not executed. Spyed is a smart person and I believe what he posted was true, that he was just doing a test. Unfortunately a lot of people bought the story. Spyed later apologized for this trick. In the meantime BetaNews updated their site informing people that it was a hoax. Spyed later apologizes for making BetaNews sound like an unreliable news source. This is all great. I later go to a new site, Acid Sounds. This is after reading a nice article posted on Dimesnion Music by Spyed:

Today (once again) DimensionMusic posted inaccurate information on its site. This time they warned people about a new virus floating around in Id3 tags, called "Bloat." I really don't know where Spyed (the Webmaster) made this one up, considering Mp3s cant transfer viruses (as they aren't executables), nor can Id3 tags. At any rate, pay no attention to this prank. There's nothing to worry about!

Today however they noticed the nice flow of traffic as a result of Dimension Music telling people to visit and they have this to say:

Finally, a reliable source (Dimension Music), has reported on the current status of the next Sonique release.

I have a problem with this. News is good. Opinions are good. Putting opinions into news you report is somewhat iffy. It's okay if you're writing an article and then at the end put your thoughts at the end. It's not a good thing when your opinion of something changes and you do not explain why. This makes your opinion sound like crap. Anyway, when you visit a news site, professional or not, keep a few things in mind. Make sure yo understand what is being said. Make sure the article makes sense. If you see something that doesn't make sense, find out more information. The Internet is great because there's always a few sources of information on news topics. When you see opinions written into articles, do not take them as your own. Those are opinions of the writer of the article. Come up with your own opinion. It may just happen that it's the same, but you need to come up with this on your own. Opinions often change based on pidly little things. Base your opinions on what you observe and can verify.

My opinion: For the record, all the news services I have mentioned are to my knowledge very reliable. If they do make a mistake I can look somewhere else to find the truth, or a day or two later they'll post a correction. Actually I'm not sure about Acid Sounds. It's too new.

Read full post

#web development Essay... 21 October 1998

Wow... I thought I wrote a somewhat decent essay for my C Lit class, but it turns out I got a C-. I guess it's because I am not a good essay writer to begin with, this is my first real essay in a while and this is my first college essay. I'll see on what I need to work. There may have been loose ends and I may have not written enough. Grr.

Chemistry is so easy. I enjoy today's unit, VSEPR models. It's not terribly complex, but it looks like it is, and it deals with Geometry. UMTYMPs intervention programs have made sure that I enjoy hands on geometry.

I'm thinking about getting some style sheets for this page. Make it look a wee-bit nicer. I think I need to go through this site one day. I wish there was somebody here that would go through it with me. It's neat when you look at your page with someone who'd been to it. They point out things that just don't make sense. Like "bigify." WTF is that? If you click on it, hit Alt-F4 to get out. I haven't been able to work cookies out well enough that it informs you on how to close the window.

I think I have to shave now. I don't like hair on my face.

Read full post