Evanesco Incatatem

Yesterday, I watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I would like to point out some of the omissions I thought missed.

They did not explain "Priori Incantatem." They were leading up to it; Harry told Dumbledore about it, and Dumbledore gave it a name, then told him nothing can bring his parents back. Would it have been so hard to tell him it was because the wands were from the same phoenix.

I felt like Harry was an incompetent wizard. Even in the book he needed help to get the solutions, but he also does a lot of work practicing spells. He may not be Dumbledore or Voldemort in terms of power and ability, but he is competent.

The Quidditch scene was cut a lot. Winky is gone, for better or worse. Actually, so is Dobby and S.P.E.W. But they also took out the scene with the levitated Muggles, which was shown in the trailer.

Moody doesn't say "Constant Vigilance!" once.

They used like 1 or 2 spells in the maze, and otherwised displayed their awesome magical power of running around.

Despite this, it was a pretty good movie overall.

Imperfect Match

My handle is one I've used for many years. Part of the reason I chose it was its relative obscurity. Years later, it is still fairly unique. I was able to sign into Blogger.com and Xanga with it. A Google stalk search of "QwertyPi" returns 15 returns; all but two of them refer to me.

One of these results is a match.com profile of a 28-year old from Portsmouth, NH with a picture of a girl next to it. This might explain why a little while ago I got a increase of random IMs. One of them even said they saw my profile from match.com. I chose then not to talk to any of them. But it's nice to know the origin of those messages.

Diving Exercise

Who knew that ants could fall with style.

What does the grad student who has to "surgically remove body parts and observe how flight is affected" say his job is? One the one hand, it sounds like those bullies you hear about in elementary school; the ones that pull wings off insects. On the other, a grad students gotta be paid.

Flying Power

Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, was recently quoted as saying, "The problem with Bluetooth headphones is that it's not just recharging your iPod, you have to recharge your headphones too. People hate it. There are quality issues - the bandwidth isn't high enough, and even if it does get there some day, people don't want to recharge their headphones."

I wonder if that means their gonna look into wireless power i.e. the experiments of Tesla. I wonder how sending power a few feet in all directions would go over with the general public.

Pick Up

I picked up this site from Userfriendly. It has a science fiction story for each element of the periodic table. I haven't gotten through much of it, but of the few that I've read (Californium, Berkelium, Lawrencium, and Seaborgium), Berkelium is the best. If only I could memorize it, maybe I could get me some "philosopher chicks."

Shady View

To notify you all of the results of the last post.

I got one response from the last post. And after getting my Pi/2% discount back, I looked today.

It came down to UrbanSpecs Wave and UrbanSpecs Seagull.

My polling was inconclusive, but for me, the Wave won out, as it looks, as one person put it, more stylish.

As for whether it was worth waiting for the Amazon's Pi/2% discount; it saved me $.44. And now I still have $2.50 at Amazon.com.

Online Shopping Challenge

I have come into possession of $30 good at Amazon.com, and would like to buy a pair of grey sunglasses (i.e. no yellow or blue, etc.). However, I do not want to shop for them. Thus the challenge I pose to anyone willing to accept.

Criteria:
1. UVA and UVB protection! i.e. 99%-100% UVA and UVB, also known as UV400 (or 400 nm).
2. Comfortable. This is as determined by comments or educated supposition.
3. Durability. Hard to determine also, but don't for something obviously easy to break.
4. Broad fashion appeal. i.e. not glasses that will go out of fashion in a month or a year.
5. Polarized would be nice. This is not a requirement, and I'm not sure how beneficial is reduced glare, but it seems nice.

The glasses can be slightly above $30, but not by much, i.e. maximum $35 not including shipping and tax. Preferrable Free Shipping, but we'll see.

IM suggestions to me or post them as a comment.

Like Sleep

I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like I've seen more dead animals this summer than I have the rest of my life. That's not exactly true, I've noticed many road kills while driving, but rarely have I seen complete animals up close.

Today would be the third of the summer (the first two were a dead baby bird and a skunk), and it is certainly the largest animal I've seen. In this case a dead sea lion or sea otter. It seemed to have suffered some trauma, since each passing tide took with it some blood from near its head.

Some people might interpret this as a sign of evil forboding. Like what I will look like in the future. But then again, won't we all.

UPDATE (7/28/2005, 1:02 AM): Went to see the sea lion again. Going towards her, I could smell, what I only assume to be rotting flesh. She was covered in many white insects that come out from the sand. It definitely seemed like it got hit in the head, as there was blood coming from what I can only guess is her left eye, and her left fin may have been ripped a little. Certainly it seemed as if the some layers of skin were torn from her bottom side. I noticed that it was tagged (its number was 040041), though that means little to me.


UPDATE (7/30/2005, 9:44 PM): Someone mentioned to me that it could be the result of eating a pollution-ladden shells, though I have been unable to corroborate this.

What to buy?

Whoa... two posts in one day. Must be a record. Probably just to make up for a lack of posting. And technicially, the last post was suppose to go out yesterday.

Today I got an idea for what to do with this $100 gift card to Best Buy. I will weigh the options of buying an external hard-drive against buying an internal hard-drive and a kit that puts a case around it (essentially making it external). I could you some space to put various multimedia on and for backup. My other idea was to buy a MobiBLU DAH-1500i Cube MP3 player (completely for the cool factor), but those are only sold at Wal-mart, which probably doesn't honor cards with Best Buy on them.

I guess I just need to do some research on what's less costly and gets me more space. Unless someone else has a great idea that I can get from Best Buy for about $100. Then I'd actually need to get to a Best Buy. This will be one step in my ultimate multimedia server goal.

Now I just have to figure out what to buy with my other gift cards.

Unspeakable Obscenity

On Saturday, a friend and I went to watch The Aristocrats. It's a documentary by comedian Paul Provenza, who I had never heard of, and Penn Jillette, of Penn and Teller fame. In this documentary, they record many famous comedians analyzing and performing variations on The Aristocrats, an in-joke among comedians.

The joke is as follows:
The Setup: A family walks into a talent agent and says they've got a great act. The talent agent asks what's the act.
The Middle: This largely open, except the comedian tries to be as vulgar and obscene as possible. Drawing on anything and everything from incest, beastiality, scatology, etc.
The Punchline: The talent agent asks what's the name of such an act. And the family responds, "The Aristocrats."
To illustrate this, here is a NSFW clip of a South Park version.

The punchline is suppose to be something about the contrast between something so non-aristocratic and the aura of aristocrats, but is largely besides the point. It's the middle that's really the key. Some good performances was a comedian/magic card trick version, and Bob Saget cracks himself up with his endeavor to out do everyone else (he makes a pun on "cockeyed" at one point). Sarah Silverman's tone was such that without listening to what she was saying, you might not think she was joking. And Gilbert Gottfried just sounds funny no matter what he's saying.

In conclusion, an interesting movie watched with good company. Though maybe I shouldn't have shown clips of Battle Royale after that. Hmmmm....

Flirtations

There are some chicks outside my room; as in baby birds. They're in a nest built behind something that looks like an alarm. And earlier, I noticed the parents flying in an out, and the chicks being very noisy. It was quieter today. In part this may be because of the death of one them. It fell out of the nest, and is now lying prone and covered in ants. Kudos to the circle of life.

Sticking with this nature theme, the other day, I watched a spider, that lives under a hummingbird feeder outside the window of the trailer that I work, eat a insect that was buzzing about. It grabbed for it several times before the two of them finally met. Then it quickly wrapped the bug in its web and proceeded to feast.

Penguin Toss

Linux rant follows. coherence... level unknown. proofreading... none.

I've been spending most of the past week trying to get Fedora Core 4 then 3 to install on two hard drives with a few software packages. Most of it is pretty straightforward, and works without difficulty. But when Linux decides not to work, it really doesn't want to work. Some examples of the difficulties I've had.

Sound:
I installed FC4 on a computer without problem. I installed FC4 on the other computer... no sound. They have different sound cards. The former an SB Live! and the latter and SB Audigy.
I installed FC3 on the the latter computer, and sound works! I installed FC3 on the former computer. No sound. The audio device seems to be constantly under someone's use.

Software Packaging:
Fedora Core comes pre-installed with GStreamer, which I'm trying to use to create a really simple MPEG-4 Player. Fedora Core 4 does not come with the C libraries pre-installed, and after trying yum several times, I finally figure they didn't have it either. The sample code in the documentation did no work, and it took an additional download in order to get a sample code in download to work. I just installed FC3, and similarly, the documentation's sample code didn't work, which maybe be a version difference, until the sample code in the documentation on the computer also didn't work.

These problems don't really occur in Windows or Macintosh. Windows is the dominant powerhouse, and most of the time, people have built binaries for it already or easy setup files not revolving around dependency hell, and the same with the hardware. No consumer PC hardware would survive without being able to work on Windows fairly easily. Maybe a new driver install. Mac, of course, controls most of it's own hardware, so drivers are less of an issue. And the software mostly comes prepackaged and ready to install with a simple drag.

This concludes this Linux rant. If you read any of the content since the first sentence, I pity you and would give you a cookie, but I suggest you not as for one, as I might lace it with something (maybe accidentally).

The Waiting Game

Well, the Powerbook deal I was waiting for finally came in. They're now offering a qualifying Mac with a $179 rebate if you also buy at least an iPod mini. This saddens me, even in light of the fact that I don't really need an iPod of any size; I don't listen to that much music. However, I do need a good pair of headphones: good, inexpensive, and portable. I don't know if that means I should get earbuds or the slightly larger ones. Any thoughts?

Tricks are for kids

A while ago I was talking to someone about the future. This lead to the following quote, which I find hilarious.

> i'm going to try so hard to turn my kid(s) into nerd(s)!
> that way, they'll repel the bad kids away from them

I'd like to experiment on children. It would make life interesting for them.

Triton the Sun God

This post is coming straight to the internet from San Diego, CA, well, La Jolla, actually. It would be the first time I've been here in about 10 years. It's been a nice opportunity to see some sites and catch up with some college friends.

The sites were kicked off with the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre International in Hollywood. It may be the first time I sat through a conversion attempt. It certainly was the first one that was so long. It was highlighted by an informational video to Scientology. Much of this video contained funny moments, but one quote stands out. "If you wish to leave the room after seeing this film, walk out and never mention Scientology again, you are free to do so. It would be stupid, but you are free to do it. You can also dive off a bridge, or blow your brains out; that is your choice." They are right, though. With a quotel like this, it would be stupid never to mention Scientology again. But they never said I had to say good things about it.

Otherwise, we saw Point Loma, UCSD, and La Jolla Shores, including at UCSD a tour of the new CSE building. UCSD has some nice modern looking buildings. At some point we'll hit the roads again, and I'll hopefully catch the SPARKLE show on Santa Barbara's West Beach.

Not Disillusioned but Different

Lots of things happened last week. It culminated in the graduation celebration of a longtime friend, and congratulations to her. There will be many lasting memories. One of them being the purchase of my new laptop, a 12" Powerbook. And I will now try to narrate my own "Switch Ad."

I needed a laptop, and when I looked around. The Apple is just so much prettier and it has Tiger, which is such a better operating system. Still it could do everything I want: program, give presentations, etc.

Okay, that was a pretty week ad. I don't have any good stories, so I'll have to wait until I get some Windows computer burning up while my Mac computer does not (cause fire is good... my pyro side likes it).

The laptop has been named "yukidama," which if I read everything correctly is "snowball" in Japanese, which fits very elegantly into my computer naming theme, that I mentioned when I got my PDA. But to review. My desktop is dasGehirn, or "the Brain" in German. My PDA is named Bluey, as a reference to Pinky and its blue (not pink) color. The theme is Pinky and the Brain. The Brain's archnemesis is Snowball the hamster. This scheme, of course, makes sense. My desktop is a large computing power and my laptop is a large computing power. They will now vie for the ability to conquer the world as defined to them. Bluey, not being a full computer, is kinda the retard cousin, so to speak.

Colors of the Wind

Just after Microsoft releases a new Xbox based on IBM's PowerPC, that has powered Apple for a decade, Apple is reported to going to transition to Intel, that has been half of Wintel for the past 2 decades. Color me amused.

I swear it's yesterday

So I had my first all-nighter in a long, long time. Not even a nap, all thanks to the power of caffine. Procrastination is not laziness. You lazy if you don't want to do it, procrastinate stuff you don't want to do now.

It's been noted that I IM people just as they're about to leave. What if they're about to leave cause I IMed them. hmmm... More likely, I have a sixth sense about when they're going to leave, and try to time it to delay them as much as possible. Mwuhahahaha! I feel evil, or under-slept. Decisions, decisions... Well, one lecture to give, one presentation to create.

missile defense system 3

Since I spent the $8.50 to watch Star Wars III (the matinee was sold out when I got there, and I figured I might as well just watch the next one), I'll give some impressions. I should probably give a spoiler warning, for those of you who care. But if you're really that concerned about spoilers, you would have watched it already.

In summary, I didn't really buy Anakin's turn to the dark side, but after he turns it's good sequence of action, emotion, and nostalgia. The opening space battle was visually amazing, but the banter between Obi-Wan and Anakin seemed excessive; I think it detracted from seriousness of the situation. Being seduced by the chancellor seemed too sudden. One second he seemed like a good man, realizing he'd done a wrong thing, and the next, he swearing allegiance to Palpatine. Maybe that's to develop the notion that there's still good in him. Maybe he just needed to express more disgusted by Windu's un-Jedi-like behavior and his fear of Padme's death. All the elements of his demise are there, his dreams of Padme, the mistrust of the Jedi Council, the suggestions of Palpatine, but it doesn't feel like Anakin has fully comprehended all these aspects when he turns. Having said that, what Lucas does well is great, i.e. the scenery and the action, and the tie back to the original series provided a predictable but nostalgic and emotional ending.

This blog will self-destruct in 30 seconds.

Today is the only Friday the 13th of the year. I don't know that that is particularly newsworthy, though an interesting fact. And I have 2.17 days 18.7* left to do 9 things I've never done before. It's a personal challenge to mark the only bad date of the year. Don't ask about the logic it just is.

I should devise a punishment for myself if I don't make my goal. Any ideas for either tasks or punishments? Quickly, time is running out. Details will come later.

*edited 5/16/2005 @ 8:34 PM

Returning ears shortly

Seemingly good advice: Always go after what you want regardless of what you think the outcome will be. Remember that, and life will be good. You'll die with less regrets, which I think is the goal of life.

Now that you know, I don't have to. Hypocrisy is great.

Bouncy ball with cloud

Overall the past two weeks have not been good. Projects and finals have taken up a lot of time, sanity, and years away from my life. Then, I got sick and threw up in the bathroom, the day before my final. Now I'm sweating in my room wondering why my room is so warm in the first place but at least it's good to sweat it out a little. The only good part of the last two weeks have been a couple expensive nights in downtown Santa Barbara (expensive by my standards, at least).

One night was a farewell party for a labmate who's going back home to Turkey for a month. It made me feel like I was 21. Not so I could drink, but so that I wouldn't have to be the guy who altered the celebratory plans. We took a quick detour to Java Jones and then turned right back around to the bar the rest of the group was going to. Some valuable socializing missed.

The other night was with a guy I knew and a girl from a class I took last quarter and her dormmate. The events leading up to this night were classic. While talking to the girl online, she says something about the dormmate finding the guy in my facebook hot and that we all should do something together. This topic went on for a little while, with ideas of what do to, etc. I wasn't really planning on saying anything to the guy, until they nudged me. Well, I probably wanted to a little, since it was so funny in it's high school-ish manner. So I bring the guy into the loop. It gets to the point that I give the dormmate the guy's screenname and tell them to talk it out themselves. The next day, I hear something the dormmates ranting about me and how it was all a joke blown out of proportion. Of course, now that makes it all the more hilarious. But they've met, at least online, and can do whatever they want to do.

I'm talking to the girl later. She and her dormmate want to do something and wondered if I want to go, which was fine with me, and they've invited the guy too. And that was "the other night," as referenced above. End of story.

The night itself was fun: we ate dinner at the SB Brewery Co. and ice cream at Coldstone; I saw a volume of Bleach manga in Borders; and we watched Hitch. But nothing quite as funny as the backstory.

However, that was two nights out of like the last ten. So I hope your past few weeks have been better.

Happy SAD

What a blatant title!? No leaps of thought whatsoever.

For the uniformed, SAD stands for Singles Awareness Day, and is so named as, this being Valentine's Day, societies is glorifying the people in relationships, leaving the single people out to dry. It's like going to dinner with a bunch of couples.

In some ways it was a SAD for me; however, I've felt more single than I do now. It's probably cause I didn't get hit by the day's commercialisms, and I'm not surrounded by various couples.

The outlook is that nothing will change. Things only change if you want them to, but my desire to stay the course is stronger than my desire not to, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

Tome of Power

Yay! Apple has released their updated Powerbooks.

They've added:
- trackpad scrolling, which has been on many PC laptops for years.
- Apple's Sudden Motion Sensor, which I figure is just IBM's "airbag" technology
- Bluetooth 2.0, which I don't know how long it's been it's around
- an 8x Superdrive, which they seemed to have dropped $100 off the price of
- upped several models to 80GB HDs
- increased the base model to 1.5 GHz

These are all very incremental improvements, available in other laptops months ago, no doubt. But now they're available for the Apple.

Now I'm eyeing the 12" Powerbook with Superdrive and 758 MB of RAM for $1567.

Stones

I seems as if the quantity of posts is decreasing. I estimate that by the end of this year, I'll be down to a post a year.

I'd tell you about what I'm up to an stuff, but who wants to know about stuff you don't already know. Instead I will philosophize, since everyone knows philosophy.

If two people have a disagreement, and one of them comes to you afterwards for support. Who was more right?

As postulated, you don't really know who was right. But they came to you and told you their story. So you feel more inclined to side with them, since you feel closer to them and they've warped the story for their benefit. However, it can't be the objective truth. For example, recently a man placed a full page ad in a newspaper asking for his wife to come back. People responded with well wishes and so on. Problem is, we don't know what he did. He may be repentent, but is that enough. Some people would say not, some would say it is. In this example, it's not hard to criticize the guy. I don't know him. But the closer you are with a person the less you're able to be objective about the situation.

Anyway, there are people I want to talk to. If only they were online. Get online peoples!

Long and Winding Road

Well, the rain finally stopped. And just when I was thinking how nice it would be if it got cold enough to snow... on the coast. Right. It's more likely that the fires of hell are melting the snowballs long before they get even close. Those are the chances of it snowing here. Regardless, the sun is taking the opportunity to warm everything while it can. In particular, wooden railings seem to be smoking as they dry out. Hopefully the wind that is pushing the clouds away will be sufficient to push around a sailboat on the weekend. Otherwise, I don't know what else to do with the extra day off. I suppose I could always drop in on a party. Someone is always throwing a party somewhere around here. It is Santa Barbara, after all. The upstanding school of Nobel-prize-winning professors and similarly bright students - just kidding.