What A Wave Must Be

First day of class went off relatively hitchless.

Philosophy 31 looks like it’s going to be an easy class.  Levy emphasized how most students either thought the class was the easiest class they ever took, or the hardest class they ever took.  The latter tended to change their opinions of the class somewhere around the middle after having an epiphany.

The only thing I don’t like about the class is the special Logic 2000 program we’re supposed to use to complete our assignments.  Theoretically, L2K aids the student by giving him constant feedback while working on problems and lets the professor easily glean statistical information about the class’ overall performance from the assignments.  That’s all well and good, except when you get to the part where it only works on Windows.  I’m hoping that it doesn’t need anything from SP2 and can run on my partition.  If it can’t, then I’m probably going to be reduced to either going to the computer labs to do my homework, or working next to Adam and writing down the answers and going in after he turns his in.

PIC 10A also looks like it’s going to be an easy class.  We went into the PIC labs at Boelter and learned how we’re supposed to send our files to the server for review.  They even have this little console program that checks your submissions to make sure you have all the required source files.  I think that’s funny.  Mainly that the program itself is probably written in C++ and that, of course, the computer science class uses a computer to do stuff like that.

Chinese is where I’m thinking most of my effort will be going.  We have weekly vocabulary quizzes and are required to produce at least one Chinese sentence at every discussion section.  It’s also all the way over in Broad.  That’s literally on the other side of campus from PIC, which is the class I always have before it.  Oh schedule, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways…

I haven’t been to Linguistics 20 yet, but I’m not worried.  The professor is the same as the one that Adam had last year, so I should be able to sleep through that class.

I spent most of the afternoon digging around for a good C/C++ IDE and settled on Eclipse with the CDT plugin.  However, I ran into some issues with Eclipse once I installed CDT.  I thought that uninstalling and reinstalling from the repositories would work, but that turned up even more errors somehow.  So I reinstalled from the packages on the Eclipse site instead and now things work fine.  Sometimes Linux makes me so mad.

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Classes start tomorrow.  Argh.

Took the placement test for Chinese and got placed into Chinese 1.  I’m still not off the wait-list yet, but neither is anyone else, so I’m not worried.

Went and bought textbooks today, now that my schedule is finally solid.  The PIC 10A book is gigantic.  It’s this enormous soft-cover tome called Big C++.  I guess C++ is a bigger language than Java so it deserves a bigger book, but still.  This thing is gigantic.

The book for Philos 31 is interesting.  It’s this very regal looking hardcover titled simply Logic.  I looked at some of the diagrams inside and it all looks very complicated and arcane.  There are a lot of Greek letters and symbols flying around in boxes and columns and rows, like they’re describing the flow of some arcane energy through a spell.  Or something.

The Chinese books are pretty standard.  There’s a character workbook, a textbook, and an exercises book.  We get the choice of learning in either traditional or simplified characters, which I think is cool.  I chose to do traditional, so I bought the traditional versions of the textbook and exercises book.  The character workbook teaches both styles.  I guess the idea is that we do our work in one system, but learn both through the character workbook.

Linguistics only has a course reader.  I had to go down to Westwood and buy the thing this afternoon.  It’s a pretty thin reader and was pretty cheap, compared to the rest of the books I had to buy.  Still, I had to go down to Westwood to buy it.

All was not lost on that trip, though, as I decided to make a stop by Gamestop while I was walking back from the course reader store.  I found copies of Rune Factory and Phoenix Wright which I snapped up.  I need to start justifying my game systems with more games.  Rune Factory is supposed to be like Harvest Moon but with fantasy elements.  Alex and Jeff think it’s pretty cool so I’ll give it a shot.

In other news, I’m excited for the release of Gutsy.  I’m thinking of backing up my data and doing a fresh install over my current partition.  Maybe move my /home folder to a separate partition so I can change distros easily.  That’d be a lot of work, though.  I’ll have to see.

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Decided to order a set of Swap Magic discs for my PS2.  Now that Jon and I don’t live in close proximity to each other, I need some other way to play the PS2 Naruto games.

I’ve chosen Swap Magic for my mod solution mainly because it involves no soldering and doesn’t void the warranty, provided I can properly install the magic key that lets the PS2 still run with the disc flap open.  I’m hoping it goes over well.  If it does, then I’ll never have to buy PS2 games again.  Provided, of course, that I get a DVD burner so I can burn the games…  But that’s a bridge I’ll cross later.  Swap Magic allows for booting from a USB source as well, which I think is really awesome.

The process for modding these things always seems so sketchy to me.  First, there’s the part where you order the tools from the sketchy looking website with the bad graphics, bad copy editing, and obviously filched product pictures.  Then there’s the part where you have to insert small pieces of plastic into strategic locations inside the disc bay to stop certain mechanisms from moving.

Oh well.  I might just consider finding someone whom I can ask to do a modchip install for me seeing as my warranty’s already expired.

Banshee is acting up again.  Something with DBus and the gnome-settings-manager.  I hate that because it means the media keys, those same ones that I’m striving so hard to get to work, don’t work with Banshee.  And the error seems sort of erratic.

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Today was a day of victory.

First, I went to Best Buy and found the perfect components for our little game station: a 3-port component A/V switch.  It’s even specifically made for use with game consoles and had lots of little faceplate things for the switch buttons labeled for the different consoles.  It’s awesome.  I hooked it up and it works perfectly.

Second, the router was successfully registered and activated.  We now have wireless in our room.  My Wii is online and so is Evan’s Xbox 360.

Third, I pre-ordered Guitar Hero III and the pre-order box came with a very nifty leather guitar strap for the controller.  I think it’s awesome, even if a little extravagant and unnecessary.

Fourth, I finally got fucking Banshee working.  This is perhaps the biggest victory of the day.  I’ve been using Amarok almost since I first switched to Ubuntu.  And while I like Amarok a lot, it not being a native GNOME app means that it can’t use GNOME’s default keyboard shortcuts.  That meant that I had to choose whether I wanted to set my media keys to work in Amarok or set them to work across my other GNOME-native media apps.  It was a horrible decision.  I wanted to switch to Banshee because it was the premiere GNOME audio app and looked very cool.

However, I couldn’t make the switch effectively before because of some strange importing error that I got on a few of my tracks.  I recently looked into the bug tracker on the Banshee site and found a possible solution in rewriting the ID3 tags for the offending files.  I tried that and it miraculously worked.  And now I’m using Banshee.  And have my media keys set through GNOME.  It’s a small victory, but a big one in my heart.

Other small cool bits: Debate over the default wallpaper for Gutsy is ongoing.  Some interesting wallpapers based on the textures of animal skins have surfaced that are pretty awesome.  There’s one based on a lion’s mane, on an elephant’s hide, and on a giraffe’s hide.  They have this strange sort of simplicity and exotique about them that makes them really appealing.  I’m using the elephant-based one now and I love it.

Tomorrow is the activities fair.  I’m tabling with the SCA for a while.  It’s going to be “fun.”

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Drove down with Uncle Simon this morning.  I have concluded that I hate long-distance driving.  Sitting in a car and doing nothing for hours on end while you barrel down an interstate is no fun at all.  Even when it means I get to play large amounts of Puzzle Quest or read more Snow Crash.

We got to UCLA almost exactly at 4:00, which I thought was amazing.  We got a parking spot in the SV lot then I went to get a cart to unload all of my stuff.  We brought it up to the room.  Evan was already there so we did little introductions.  Then Uncle Simon took off and I was on my own.

The first order of business was to rearrange the furniture.  Whoever was in this room last had a horrible sense of a good room layout.  Both beds were going the short way across the room and each desk was at the foot of the beds.  The dressers were in random places against the wall.  Obviously, that wasn’t going to work out.

We moved the beds against the two long walls and put the desks at the foot of each bed, against the walls closer to the door.  We put the two dressers between the beds under the window to make a nice counter of sorts.  The TV and all of our game consoles are going on that counter.  The fridge is next to my desk in a little alcove of empty space.

Things I love about this room: Having space above my head when I’m sitting in my desk.  Having real closets.  Not sharing a bathroom with five other people (but just one).

The TV Evan got is actually pretty nice.  It’s a 19” flat-screen HDTV.  It has the full complement of inputs on the back: HDMI, component, composite, and two coaxial ports.  However, it only has one component input, which is a problem.  I’m hoping that I can go down to Best Buy tomorrow and find a nice component switcher.  If I can’t, I already found several really nice ones on Amazon, for around $45, so if all else fails we can just order one.  I think I’m lazy enough that I’d prefer to spend money and time on getting a component switcher than have to manually switch each input.  There are five plugs to pull out and replace when you’re dealing with components after all.

I registered my computer with the school’s network again.  I was greeted by a pleasant surprise when I went to register.  Normally, UCLA makes you download this thing called the STC Policy Manager.  It monitors your internet usage to make sure you’re not doing anything illegal.  I was worried that, since I’ve switched to Ubuntu, I wouldn’t be able to use the school’s network because I couldn’t use the Policy Manager.  Well, it turns out, that Linux inspires some sort of implicit trust with UCLA as I wasn’t asked to download any sort of policy manager at all.  I was just reminded to install anti-virus software and then sent off.  It was very cool.

So next order of business is to register the router with the STC again so we can get wireless in the room.  I’m hoping that the router will be able to work without set-up and use the old settings.  It’s no big deal if it can’t, I’d just much prefer it.  Once we do get wireless in here, we’ll be able to wire up the 360 and the Wii.  Our room will be ultra-connected.

I’ve actually already started using that Moleskine GTD notebook I hacked together earlier in the month.  I have a few toiletries and miscellanea that I need to buy so I’ve started the notebook with a list of that stuff.  I think it’ll be helpful over the year to keep track of my assignments.

Not much other news to report.  I read an article recently on CSS frameworks and using CSS resets and baselines to streamline a design.  I thought it was really interesting and it got me to thinking about rebuilding some of my designs.  There are a bunch of grid-based CSS frameworks that I think would be really helpful to me.  I really like the grid design pattern but have always found it a pain to implement cleanly.  Maybe this is my salvation.

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My biggest problem when I’m trying to record my dreams: I’m a writer, and I tend to forget to treat dream journals as non-fiction, instead of fiction.

I used to dream a lot, actually.  I don’t so much anymore.  That’s a shame, because I really like my dreams.  Maybe it’s just that I can’t remember my dreams anymore.  I’m not entirely sure.  Have I been spinning the gears in my head too much these days that my brain doesn’t have the energy to spin dreams for me when I’m asleep?  Has life been so boring of late that I have nothing to dream about?  Am I too stressed during the day that my brain wants the sleep just as much as my body does?

Whatever it is, I’m not sure.

In Linux news, I’ve been having fun tweaking and modding my Ubuntu installation.  I’ve been keeping up with the developments in Compiz Fusion and am very pleased with them.  I’m really excited for Gutsy when Fusion will be the standard window manager.

I also found this really cool terminal client called Tilda to replaced the default Gnome Terminal.  Tilda is interesting in that it’s designed to be a sort of “visor” that pulls out from one side of the screen, rather than a separate terminal window.  I have it set so that it doesn’t show up in the taskbar, has no window decoration, and spans the whole width and 20% the height of my screen.  I simply press a hotkey combo (Ctrl+Return, for me) and Tilda pulls down from the top of my screen.  I used Fusion to set it to be partially transparent so I can see through it to my desktop.  It’s fully functional and works just like Gnome Terminal.  I find it more convenient though because it’s one less window to clutter up my desktop and it’s really cool too boot.

In other news, I’ve been pondering getting an Xbox 360 of late.  Bioshock, Mass Effect, and Rock Band all look exceedingly cool and I want to play them a lot.  Too bad I’d need a 360 to do that.  I looked around and found that the Xbox 360 Elite is only a cool $449.  It comes with a 120 GB hard drive, an Xbox Live headset, a wireless controller, and an HDMI cable.  Plus, it’s a smooth matte black, instead of the cream white, a change I really like.

$449 is a lot compared to the $250 I spent on the Wii, which makes me somewhat apprehensive in purchasing it.
  I don’t think my money would be ill spent, though, because the 360 seems to be moving into a position of dominance in the game world, with the PS3 doing so badly as it is.  Plus, those three games look really cool and I really want to play them.

$449 is also cheaper than the 80 GB PS3.  Granted, I don’t get the next-gen disc player or wireless support out of the box.  Still, I don’t think it’s a bad price.  I’m just apprehensive about spending that much money on something that’s probably going to become obsolete in a handful or so years.

Other games: Went to Fry’s and bought a copy of Puzzle Quest.  The game is basically a fantasy RPG where battles are replaced by two-player versions of Bejeweled.  You match colored gems on the board and gain colored mana, extra coins, extra XP, or deal direct damage.  With the mana you gain you can cast spells that have certain effects on the board or against the opponent.  It’s all very addictive, much like Bejeweled itself is.

One of the things that’s been bothering me a lot of late is how disjointed our theatre system is here at home.  We have this big Yamaha receiver that ostensibly is supposed to pump sound through into our glorious 5.1 Bose surround sound speaker system.  Too bad have our cable box plugged directly into our TV instead of through the receiver so we pretty much never use the thing.  The only thing that’s actually connected to the receiver is the DVD player, and we hardly ever watch movies anymore.

My PS2 and Wii used to connect through the V-AUX port on the receiver.  The thing that always pissed me off about that set-up was that there was only one V-AUX port but two possible inputs.  whenever I wanted to switch systems, I’d have to go up to the receiver and switch out which cords were plugged in.  Now, that may not seem like such a big deal, but I’m really lazy and like simplicity in all things.  The simplest situation would have been for me to just be able to switch feeds on either the receiver or the TV and jump back and forth between the systems just like that.

To achieve this, I investigated the input situation on the TV and receiver.  I couldn’t really see much into the back of the receiver to count how many of what kind of inputs it had.  I could however see that the TV had 1 HDMI input, 2 component inputs, 2 RCA inputs, and 1 coaxial input.  I like a clear picture, especially when I’m dealing with the PS2 and its outdated graphics, so I decided to go with the component inputs.  I went to Fry’s and bought up a component cable for both the Wii and the PS2, came home, and plugged them into the TV.

I’m very happy with the result.  I can leave both systems on all the time (although I don’t because the PS2 will overheat) and just switch between feeds on the TV at will.  The picture on the PS2 is noticeably sharper too, which is awesome.  Now if I could just sort out how to make everything go though the receiver again so we could actually use those speakers that are just collecting dust around the perimeter of the room…

And get a remote to control the whole thing with just a few clicks…

In still other news, I got a new case for my DS.  It’s much much nicer than my old case, at least cosmetically.  It’s made out of really sturdy material and is black with a white trim.  It has the same logo as is on top of the DS itself on the top cover, which was a feature I really liked and wished my old case had.

I’m being really vain at the moment though and wanting to switch out my white DS for a black one.  Not only because black is the new white, but because my DS has developed some distressing scratches on the touchscreen and already has a dead pixel.  All very minor gripes and not nearly enough to justify another $129.99 for a black DS…  But it would be really really cool and I’d like it a lot?

This entry has grown to be enormous.  I’ll wrap up by saying that I still haven’t packed to move back to UCLA yet.  And that I once again managed to stay up extremely late for no reason at all.

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