Through the looking-glass

Update on my summer

2008-06-07T19:06:00.000-07:00

So far this summer, I've managed to keep myself busy with the open source work I'm doing, along with the gym and running. I'm currently part of two projects, Planeshift and Wine, both of which are very interesting. I've done several bug fixes and am proud to say that my name is in the code stored somewhere on Sourceforge :-)

Since I do all my development on Linux, I dual boot Linux and Vista. My distribution of choice recently has been Arch Linux. It's incredibly lightweight and probably one of the fastest booting distro's you can find. It's almost entirely configurable, optimized for i686 and x86_64 architectures and very easy to install. The only thing that isn't configurable is the vanilla kernel which follows the latest version of the current Linux kernel. Arch itself is very fast, it's package management system rivals that of debian's aptitude and it's ABS (Arch Build System) system rivals that of Gentoo's Emerge (that's stretching it, but through ABS, you can custom compile many packages for your kernel and architecture). Most of the software works, and I've built my entire system through ABS. I'm running some really lightweight stuff like Openbox, PyPanel, Urxvt, Sonata, Weechat and rtorrent for the most part and do sometimes feel like my hardware is underutilised, but then I switch over to Vista to make it better. It's a dream compared to Ubuntu which was too bloated for my tastest. Recently, I've been attempting to get my Vista partition to boot through VirtualBox to no avail. And to get some gaming down, I use Wine to run CSS or TF2 and it get's me through. Overall, I think Arch is much better than Gentoo in terms or speed, maintainability and general use and I finally think my distro-hopping days are over.

I've also thought about getting a 8-bit PIC development board to do some general low-level development for interest purposes. About a year ago I had an idea of installing the linux kernel on an Ipod, attaching a wifi device through the power/data outlet to get wifi connectivity on the machine (perhaps using links or someting general/lightweight as the browser). There was a linux for the ipod which I installed properly, but I never fully went through with the plan since school came up. I think I'll continue that train of thought, writing a simple wifi driver using the iee80211 stack and getting some real driver development experience going on. The PIC dev boards aren't too expensive so I might look into those as well.

That's all for now, catch ya'll later.

Creative Block

2008-06-03T21:11:00.000-07:00

I'm finding it tough to choose an appropriate title since I haven't gotten the hang of blogging about certain things, but have rather turned this more into a public online journal. Although this scares me, I'm almost certain no one actually reads it, so I'm safe.

I recently bought the Chronicles of Narnia novel to revive my childhood days. The book includes all seven individual titles C.S. Lewis wrote almost half a century ago presented in his preferred order. I liken it to a form of growing young to feed my nostalgia; those care free days when there was no weight sitting on my shoulders and I was free of any and all responsibilities. I've finished the first four novels (The Nephew's Son, The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, The Horse And His Boy and Price Caspian) and am about half way through The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I have to say that they are quiet amazing books. If I was to describe them to new readers I would say that they are a toned down version of the The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The breadth of the world created by Lewis is breathtaking. No detail is left out, there is a consistent plot-line and he manages to weave a true fantasy world in which you yourself would love nothing more than to live in. The books are a smooth and quick read for the most part and I would recommend the entire collection to anyone interested in fantasy work.

I find that finding a good book to read is a tough battle. The book has to be engrossing, interesting and written with passion and description. I'm certain there are many that fit the bill, but I have to look harder since I want to read more books, more often. In terms of genre's I've never limited myself and feel that one should dive into them all to receive as much knowledge as possible. U- has been a guiding light for the most part. She is a readaholic, scouring for books at the local Chapters, grabbing any she can (much like my mother, which scares me). To be honest, it's a godsend since she usually passes the books to me when she finishes and since we share tastes in books, this usually ends up benefiting me as well.

It's going to be U- and my's one year anniversary in late June and I had a good gift idea in mind. During one of our rendezvous' after work, I brought it up and she easily picked my brain to guess my idea correctly. I, of course, was able to do the same thing to her gift idea :-P We decided to go shopping together and pick out each others gifts. This initially seemed weird to me because, ideally, I wanted the gift to be something she chose for me. We could defeat this weirdness by adopting a new shopping protocol where the gifter (the person purchasing the gift) would do the selection while the giftee (the receiver of the gift) would only approve or disprove. This we both agreed on and I am now looking forward to shopping with her.

Of course that isn't all. I've been slowly composing a heartfelt letter to her to somehow express how I feel without seeming like a bumbling, illiterate fool. We recently had an argument and the thought of not having her in my life blew me away. The fact that I'm lucky to have her had temporarily slipped my mind. To know that she is my life, beginning and end had made way for much simpler thoughts that were not of importance at all. It scared me and I need to find a way to show her I care. In any case, I'll leave you with a little excerpt from my letter hoping that it may inspire you to never forget your loved one and to express it to them every waking moment. I hope the coming weeks will look favorable on my creative process.

"You are my rock, my friend, my lover and my life partner. I need you because I am weak, you are strong and I need you to lean on. Despite the front I put up and the jokes I make, I need you more than anything in this life. Knowing that you are mine fills me with light, happiness, joy, glee and every other happy emotion in the English language. I don't think you will ever understand what you mean to me, but each time I write a letter like this I feebly attempt to scrape together my emotions into something comprehensible so you feel appreciated despite my stupidity."

Random thoughts

2008-05-29T20:01:00.000-07:00

So I've finished 5 years of school (Electrical Engineering + PEY) at the University of Toronto. It's been a while since my last post, mainly because I had completely forgotten that I had created it in the first place.

There are a couple of reasons I created it, which I will list here both for my own and your clarity:

1. Become a better writer and storyteller.
2. Brush up on my vocabulary and English.
3. Plug into this blog world.
4. Express my thoughts verbally in a non-violent manner, hehe.

So a couple of thoughts now. I've taken 3 months of relaxation time before I start fulltime work and despite what most would think, I have not been bored. I have actually joined 3 open source projects and vehemently work on them through the night. I fit in the morning run along with the hour-long gym sessions to keep me sane, and the rendezvous meetups with my beloved girlfriend to keep me grounded. For the most part, this keeps me happy and feeling like my day's are fullfilled, although I would love to spend more time with my girlfriend, especially after coming off of an 8 month stint where were were in different cities and now she's only a 30min car ride away.

For some reason, I feel like I need inspiration in my life. I occasionally head on over to www.ted.com to listen to the inspiring and often breathtaking talks people give, which rile me up and give me reason to progress and work. I've thought about reading biographies of successful people or reading books such as "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People". I believe in them since my father is living proof that these books do work, and that a determined and passionate mind is a successful (why is it two "c"'s and "s"' but only one "l"?) mind. While most would wither away in bordem at home, I've chosen to pursue something intellectual in the way of these side-projects.

To follow the cliche, I attempted to book a trip with a college buddy of mine to head down to Costa Rica for a while. Rather than stay at a boring resort doing the same things I could do around here, we chose to follow a GAP adventure tour and explore and learn rather than relax and lounge. We had booked everything and it was all bells and whistles until we got an email from the GAP agent in Costa Rica advising us that during more than half of our stay, there would be a red alert weather warning concerning a tropical storm. Aside from thinking that this really screws up my plans with my girlfriend (henceforth known as U-) since we had bought tickets to a concert which I had now told her to sell since I wasn't going to be there for, for which I now *was* going to be there for, I got to thinking that any regular run-of-the-mill travel agency would hide this information from us and gladly take our money instead, but to think that these people genuinely care for their customer's safety and had the honesty to let us know (and give us the option of continuing) was a very warm gesture indeed. We happily told them that we'd postpone it until the warning was gone :-)

I guess that's all for now, but I shall definitely be posting more in the days to come. I find writing here, although no one except maybe U- is reading (which makes it kind of awkward in a way since it turns into a conversation really), allows me to control, structure and document my thoughts and feelings. As girly as that may sound, it's quite alleviating since I can always reference them later on and find patterns in my thought process depending on the circumstance. By now, you've probably figured out that this URL and my name are random enough that parental units will be unable to pinpoint me, but I will also deliberately be vague when mentioning names, although places are open game.

Until next time, keep fit and have fun! (remember those?)

First post

2007-12-20T07:30:00.000-08:00

So this is my first post on a blog, let alone my own. Most of the time, I'm on forums searching for information I need, or discussing topics in IRC chatrooms. If you Google my handle (dj_unforgetable), you'll find postings all over the place on the wierdest (non-sexually-confused) topics on the net.

It's interesting how this whole blog idea has blown up recently, both in good and bad ways. I had heard of a few Microsoft employees being fired for complaining about their work or bosses on their personal blogs. I'm torn between the idea that the thoughts posted on these blogs are personal, however, they are public to the surfers of the net. Ideally, to be truly anonymous, one would have to chose an inconspicuous URL and vague posts regarding their work. In another vein (and going along with the theme of the paragraph) my girlfriend sent me the blog of Kanye West and as I read through it I realized that this allows us normal people to briefly gaze into the lives of those we admire. One soon learns that celebrities are normal humans with interesting insights on the world and are actually quite down to Earth. This all amazed me for some reason. A simple few words strung together forming a sentence, posted on a "virtual journal" bring us closer together despite being continents apart.

I'm going to stop here and get back to much needed studying. Last exam, let's hope it goes over well. Wish me luck, I'll sure as hell need it.