February 2012
5 posts
Why I actually like customizing my PC
I said I’d write about customization at some point this week, right? Well, I meant to do it earlier, but instead I spent the last couple of days customizing Emacs. I was having too much fun to appreciate the irony of the situation. On the bright side, I’m just about ready to use Emacs for damn near everything ever, which should be fun. This has an unexpected benefit to you, my dear...
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Goals for 2012?
A long time ago on a tumblr far, far away a challenge was issued to create a post about goals for 2012. Bonus points if a summary of 2011 was written. I took it the other way and made the 2011 part primary, with the future goals as a bonus assignment. I didn’t get around to the 2012 post during the Christmas holiday, and then school happened, so that kept me away. School has stopped...
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The benefits of outside perspectives
I’ve gotten some surprising complements during the past week. Surprising in the sense that I personally don’t see myself the way they were describing me. Since I don’t see myself that way, I don’t talk about myself that way, either. A stranger reading my tumblr would probably think I’m a quivering, anxious wreck that never manages to get anything done. That’s a...
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Summer job!
I have exciting news! The title probably spoiled it, but the news is this: I applied for a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council summer research grant with Dr. Robert Biddle as my supervisor and we were accepted! That means working full-time at Carleton for four months, starting in May. Also nice is the fact that the award is enough to cover my tuition and books for next year, assuming...
January 2012
3 posts
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net slum: Coding skill and the decline of... →
notch:
I am a decent programmer. I know a decent amount of computer science theory, I can type correct code fairly easy. I don’t let my classes expand too much. But I still struggle some with math, and I have a tendency to have too many cross-dependencies in my code.
I used to think I was…
I’ve been learning more and more about what a compiler actually does lately, as well as...
2011 recap
I went through my archive and picked out the posts that I think are most essential to my life in 2011, and the complete list is below. They’re all tagged recap, alongside the posts from 2010. I wouldn’t say they’re the most well-written, or the most interesting, of my posts from 2011. I wouldn’t even say they’re worth your time to go back and read. It’s just a...
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2011 in review: I got edumacated
A little story about the title of this post: I took LING 3002, Phonetics I, this semester. It wasn’t necessarily my cup of tea, but that doesn’t mean it was a bad class. There was a lot of data and practical application involved, and I’m at the point where I’ve been thinking about the phonetics of British English thanks to Xenoblade. I can even develop analyses that provide...
December 2011
4 posts
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Now available: TMI
[or at least, a more severe case of TMI than this tumblr already has]
I have this thing about keeping track of what I’ve seen/read/played/listened to. It helps to find new things I might like, too - Last.fm is a prime example. It keeps track of music I play, then puts together a list of similar stuff. For my own benefit, I’ve started using a site that does similar recommendations for...
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BCN Christmas Loot Mk II
BLAST FROM THE PAST
This year, my brother and I are with my dad for Christmas. My mom went home to spend Christmas with her family, but before she left we did half-a-Christmas. So my gifts from her, my grandparents, and one or two “from Santa”:
A pre-order for the limited edition of FF XIII-2 (once bitten, twice excited about the changes they’re making)
An IOU for a copy of...
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November 2011
8 posts
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net slum: If "the censorship bill" eventually goes... →
vael:
I’m moving my sites off of American servers. No, it doesn’t really stop the possibility of this being enacted against my sites - and in fact, I don’t even serve content that I don’t have the rights to - but I will not support a country that enacts such things.
I understand we want to control…
The best part is what Lifehacker posted earlier today: you could still access the blocked...
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Too busy planning for later, to think about right...
[title inspired by the least important line in Streetlight Manifesto’s ‘A Better Place, A Better Time’. The rest of the song is incredibly beautiful to me, too, but for entirely different reasons. Do me a favour and read the lyrics, alright? Whether or not you can connect the dots, I think you’ll get something out of it.]
I read something in my psych textbook...
net slum: re: Gmail's new layout is kind of bad →
geni:
I understand that they can’t have both the new and old looks forever because they’re not willing to maintain the older style, but modern doesn’t mean “no colors”. Here, have a look:
From left to right: archive, report, and delete email. The report button could have been red, the…
http://userstyles.org/styles/56063/gmail-easy-access-colored-buttons here you go boys and girls It...
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Hey Matt, Whatcha Up To?
Had a “wonderful” experience this morning of trying to overcome my anxiety enough to speak up in my philosophy of mind class. Something I’ve done before, actually, although I’d never participated as significantly in the class discussion. For whatever reason, just the thought of raising my hand and presenting an argument was enough to leave me shaking due to anxiety....
October 2011
6 posts
"It's like Apple products"
I got some free headphones with my new phone, and they weren’t bad as far as free headphones go. Better sound quality than the piece of crap $15 Skullcandy earbuds I bought a year ago, and they had a button that would play/pause anything playing on my phone. Neat! So I stopped using the crappy, uncomfortable, terrible sound quality Skullcandy headphones, which I only bought out of...
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Not Antisocial, Just Shy
[title courtesy of this XKCD shirt I’ve always liked, but known it would be stupid to actually wear. Also, I wrote this post… nearly two weeks ago, and since I’ve started talking about it with a few close friends it’s gotten a lot better. I’m only just posting it now because I know the rest of the people who will read it are exactly the people I haven’t spoken...
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I went back to Last.fm! →
I used to use Last.fm, and found it great for getting recommendations, but at some point it stopped scrobbling so I gave up on it for a few years. I found out a week ago that when you install scrobbler and create a new account, it reads your existing iTunes library playcounts, so I did that as fast as I possibly could. Now I’ve got this nice little profile that tells you all the music I...
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RIP, my interest in shooters
Five years ago (minus a month and 9 days) I was sitting in front of our “big screen” 36” CRT TV with my launch day PS3 and a copy of Insomniac’s first Resistance game. I ran around, shot aliens in the face, and I probably had fun doing it. I think I tried to run around and find all the hidden documents for a little while, and even ventured online for a couple hours of...
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Starting in October, PS2 games on PSN →
It’s not totally clear how this is going to work on non-backwards compatible PS3s, because they haven’t been totally specific about the details yet. Really, all I’ve found so far is that they’re starting with five games, for $10 each, which is probably at least 50% cheaper than getting them on eBay. I probably paid at least $20 for the copies I bought of, uh, every single...
September 2011
14 posts
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Off the Facebook-grid →
S’been two weeks since I last posted something, and I’m really sorry ‘bout that. See, this whole time I’ve been planning a big post, but I haven’t been willing to sit down and work on it and wound up deciding it was too much reading for too little benefit. I’ll try to salvage it sometime soon, with as little text as I can get away with. Realistically, sharing my...
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Give me a break.
lacealchemy:
So, I told myself I wouldn’t pull “Condescending Second-Year Science Kid” in my PSYC1001 class. BUT. Butbutbutbutbut.
The first-years on WebCT are so annoying.
“You know guys, it’s not high school anymore! We have to step up our game!”
Step up your game? He gave you 20 pages of reading, sweetie. Come on.
If my PSYC 1001 course is any indication: Wait for the deluge of...
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Card Hunter!
Ars Technica wrote a great piece you should really read about game developers leaving the AAA industry to make it on their own. Inside, they mentioned a game called Card Hunter, which is being funded by the co-founder of Irrational Games - the guys who made System Shock 2 and Bioshock. I looked it up, and found out it’s being worked on by other people you might have heard of. Farbs makes...
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My Schedule, Do You Want It?! →
Classes start again tomorrow, so I thought I’d post my class schedule. I’ve already posted about which classes I’m taking, so available/busy information should be good enough. This is a public link, indexed for Google searches (required in order to have a public calendar, sadly), but I guess I can give you - specifically, you, because you’re my favourite reader - the...
Fix Your Wireless Internet Problems Yourself →
Dear various parents, grandparents, co-workers, and other “Not Computer People.” We don’t magically know how to fix everything.
First of all, this XKCD comic will make you just as good as I am at helping you figure out how to do things I have no idea how to do, like wrapping text in Photoshop. Second of all, the article this post’s title links to will actually make you...
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Do I trust Google? If it's convenient
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, and have mentioned far too many times to my friends, I got an Android phone recently. It’s working beautifully, by the way - CyanogenMod 7 is far better than the version of Android 1.5 that came with the phone, and LauncherPro is a whole lot faster than CM’s default launcher ADW. Despite the pretty weak hardware, things run pretty well, though I...
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You have [2] games remaining
(Although, 1.5 games might be more accurate, since I’m about to finished the second I’ve just finished the second - of three - worlds in FF V, and after that, FF VI - see my previous post from May)
Sorry for the lack of real updates recently! Here’s part of the reason why: I’ve spent the last couple of weeks playing through FF VIII. Final play time was just short of 70...
Descartes, please do not rise from the grave and...
Me: I can't help but gaze wistfully at beautiful phones, which must surely be attached to beautiful people.
Vael: Likely. As you know, I have an ugly phone, and I am an ugly person. And as you know, people who don't have cell phones don't exist at all.
Me: iPhone, therefore I am
Vael: Wow.
August 2011
12 posts
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In Honour of Bear Week →
I know I’m two days late to the party, but who doesn’t like comics from The Oatmeal? Certainly not bears.
Remnomicon: lamattgrind: remn-nomicon: Geez, how... →
lamattgrind:
remn-nomicon:
Geez, how hard is it to just get rid of people?
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to become what I want without erasing my past and getting people to let go, I just want to be myself.
Your past will always be a part of you, no matter how much you try to deny…
Oh, no, you certainly shouldn’t hold onto the past or grieve over things you can’t...
remn-nomicon:
Geez, how hard is it to just get rid of people?
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to become what I want without erasing my past and getting people to let go, I just want to be myself.
Your past will always be a part of you, no matter how much you try to deny it. You can kick people out of your present life, and you can become a different person from who you used to be. But who you...
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Be Nice To Customer Service Agents; Or, How I Got...
Last summer, when we moved to Ottawa, my mom decided that we should all have our own cell phones. My dad already had his own, so she got a 3-year contract family plan for herself, my brother, and I. Her phone, the main line, cost $35/month + $20/month for countrywide My5 call/text. The other two lines were each $30/month. Total: $115/month. We got the most basic crap phones you could get, because...
http://www.greenmangaming.com/?gmgr=masohugi →
rem-nomicon:
Greenman gaming is a website where you can buy games for Steam and for their own capsule client for cheaper than the regular retail price, you also get an extra $5/£5 store credit if you register and buy through my link, there’s also a 20% off discount code for you here: 20PEC-FACEB-SAVER
If you’re thinking of buying Deus Ex HR, Red Orchestra, etc then I strongly recommend buying...
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Got a call from the Technology Maintenance...
*phone rings, I rush to grab it in case it's an actual person calling*
Telemarketer: "Hello, I am calling from the Technology Maintenance Department regarding your Microsoft Windows PC."
Me, about to lie through my teeth: "Oh, I see - actually, we don't own any Windows computers. We're a Linux household."
*CLICK*
Some neat stuff!
Stumbled upon the website psychologyofgames.com, which I will hyperlink even though you could drag it into your address bar, and in addition to being worth exploring on your own I thought I’d link to a few interesting pieces. And actually, I’ve posted about them before - their Three Reasons We Buy Those Crazy Steam Bundles article is very good at keeping me from wasting my money!
...
Remnomicon: firefox 6 →
vael:
https://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/6.0/releasenotes/
Honestly seems more like a release for developers. The problem with firefox releasing like this is that they’re trying to compete with Chrome… but chrome users aren’t even aware when their software is updated most of the time….
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/is-it-compatible/
This puts an addon’s...
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Catherine: A mini-critique
[Continuing from yesterday’s post about Catherine, here’s the critique part. Or at least, critique-ish. It was meant to be one post originally, but it got to be really long. As in, I spent three hours writing it, so… Best to split it up. You know, this seems to happen whenever I talk about the game…]
Up until the end, I was also going to say that Cahterine is a...