Kataplex

Rise and shine get a glow
Cause you know you’re gonna shine
Like the star you are (you are) ~John Sebastian – Rise and Shine

For the record, the lyrics above are from the opening song in The Care Bears Adventure in Wonderland (which in my memory is the third Care Bears movie). I politely extracted Mr. Sebastian’s name from the opening credits, so if that’s a problem, you should take it up with Nelvana and let me know how it works out for you. ;) Okay, in honesty I’m just being a jerk and sticking to that despite the fact sources say he wasn’t responsible for Rise and Shine and it was performed by Natalie Cole. Enough smarm though, let’s blog!

Geez, it’s already been at least 2 weeks since my last post. Feels like I just posted a couple days ago, but that’s obviously not the case.

I’ve been trying to get myself to be in the lab more often, but it’s hard when I have to juggle it with school work and JN work. Mainly the classes get me down, because since I need the A (or I’m done with school) it’s a lot of pressure, which means a lot of time. Time spent outside of research and time I’d rather not spend. So as a result I’m less motivated to do as much research, which is bad because that just leaves me “piled higher and deeper” to turn a phrase.

I know a lot of people commit to things and then find they don’t have time. It’s always worse switching from high school to college, and switching from being an undergraduate/masters student to a PhD student is almost as bad a shift. The only difference is you’re older and a bit more able to make your own decisions instead of following someone else’s structure. I also know that November (at least for us Northern Hemisphere denizens) is when crunches start happening – the academic year has had time to pick up and let any potential snowballs grow, and term projects and exams start to float about. Group project? Check. Paper deadline? Check. Preparing for a talk? Check.

I’m aware of what’s going on, and while it might be fine to let some squirming happen, I have no intent of dropping any commitments. I certainly wish that when people realized deep down that they weren’t going to be able to keep on keeping on, they’d just gracefully admit it and drop the commitment, perhaps only pausing to make sure someone else could pick up the slack. Otherwise it’s just a world of hurt for everyone involved. Why leave with a carton of eggs all over your face – yolks dripping where you planted them one by one slowly over the months – and stepping over the field of broken eggshells so large only a full dozen eggs could provide it when you could just leave with everyone (relatively) happy and your carton of eggs intact? Those eggs might someday hatch into chickens, Cluckens, or Egg Monsters From Mars. I’m not really trying to lash out or call anyone out, it just amuses and/or confuses me. Not to mention at this point I’m just writing what I’m thinking because I just read a scary story and have found myself awake. “Strike while the inspiration is hot” I say, and in this case that means keep spewing words!

Then again, there’s the simple fact that knowing something deep down doesn’t mean acknowledging it or being at terms with it. Worse yet, sometimes things aren’t that simple. I once heard about “escalation of commitment” and I’m a big believer. The deeper you dig yourself, the harder it is to justify climbing out of the hole. Looking back it always sucks, but that doesn’t change the reality of the present when you’re still debating whether you want to climb the ladder out now, or sink a little deeper first. In the end things sort themselves out, or end in a spectacular display of self-destructive pyrotechnics, so there’s really no harm no foul. Oops, too simple again – that’s how it would work if it was just one person involved. Instead it’s a complex network of people impacted (positively or negatively) and people who give a rat’s ass (or fetid dingo’s kidney if you wish) or wouldn’t know the difference if it wasn’t delivered to them via flashing screens with blaring klaxons. And being that complex, every time is a little different and picking things apart just isn’t worthwhile.

That aside, I’m set on sticking with JN (I’m still taking projects and working on existing projects), research (I wish I was a bit more into what I do), and of course this miserable blog. It’s not that I mind writing things down, it’s that some posts like this one are a bit dangerous, though if people are offended that’s their own affair. It’s more that I look back at old posts, and wonder if I should delete scraps or unfinished products. But that wouldn’t be learning from experiences, and that certainly would be admitting unnecessary defeat.

I’m standing on a mountain destined to turn into a hill, looking at snowballs looming over me destined to be nothing more than dust bunnies, and standing on a landmine that I can only hope is a dud. If not, well I guess my cautious optimism won’t matter because I’ll be splattered across the web and then everything else is a bit more manageable. Or irrelevant. Or both.

Yeah, so I haven’t touched this in a while. Honestly I wanted to wait until the “secret project” is over, but that could be a bit longer so I’m not going to hold myself to that. I could have an “updates” post, but I’ll save that for sometime in the future.

Tonight I went to a concert – it was Periphery who I’ve never heard of before, and Dream Theater which was the point of going. We went to a Thai/Japanese/Korean restaurant that had a spicy icon by Tteokbokki. I thought about getting it just to see how it would taste – I’ve never had it/seen it spicy before. But I wasn’t in the mood for soup. We parked close to the concert venue which is a big theater, so it was a long walk. By the time we finished eating and walked back we were about 25 minutes late. We sat in the balcony (pretty far back this time, row T :\ ) but only had to listen to about 4 minutes of Periphery as a result. 30 minutes is a pretty short set (and that’s assuming they were on time). I can’t say I’m disappointed based on what I heard though – it wasn’t garbage but it wasn’t at all inspiring and the band had like no stage presence.

Dream Theater had these three cubes up for projection – the live feed was up on them sometimes and each face of the cubes (they were cut and angled so there were 3 usable surfaces for the audience on each cube) had stuff on it most of the time. Apparently Mangini is a genie according to the opening video. The lights were pretty well done – I didn’t get bored or notice excessive repetition. I wasn’t entertained by the drum solo, but most of the show was good. It unfortunately was definitely a promo tour – half of the songs in the set were off the new album (definitely with an emphasis on heavy). The levels were… not optimal in my opinion – the drums and bass were beating out the keys and vocals. For those who are curious, the set was:

1. Bridges in the Sky (A Dramatic Turn of Events)
2. These Walls (Octavarium)
3. Build Me Up, Break Me Down (A Dramatic Turn of Events) (Right before this LaBrie finally said opening stuff)
4. Endless Sacrifice (Train of Thought) (I hadn’t finished this album before the concert, so I’m going off what a fellow attendee said. Teehee keytar.)
5. Mangini drum solo / instrumental bit
6. Wait for Sleep (Images and Words)
7. Far From Heaven (A Dramatic Turn of Events)
8. Outcry (A Dramatic Turn of Events)
9. On the Backs of Angels (A Dramatic Turn of Events)
10. ? (It sounded familiar, but I’m not sure which song it was, and I didn’t manage to pick out a phrase to go search lyrics for)
11. Metropolis Act I. Scene Three: I. Though My Words / II. Fatal Tragedy (Metropolis Part 2: Scenes From a Memory)
12. Caught in a Web (Awake)
13. Pull Me Under (Images and Words)

Certainly not quite my ideal setlist but it wasn’t bad. Maybe I put too much weight on vocals, but it drove me nuts knowing how the keyboard parts should sound and not quite being able to pick some of them out. I certainly wouldn’t ask for my $40 back though – it was a worthwhile show. (Yeah, says the guy who couldn’t name one of the tracks.)

Hindsight’s always 20/20 but looking back it’s still a bit fuzzy ~Megadeth – Sweating Bullets

In a society where mobile or “portable” electronic devices (laptops typically don’t fall under mobile devices) are becoming more and more ubiquitous it’s not surprising that the list of places and times they can be used has grown. What does this mean at a school where laptops are mandatory? It means you can see the “wall of laptops” effect in some courses – entire rows of students using their laptops during lecture regardless of whether or not the laptop serves the lecture in any way. Typically as the level of the course increases (e.g. being a special topics junior and senior course versus a freshman level introductory course) laptops become more infrequent.

However, I’ve been one to use my laptop haphazardly in many classes over the years – I typically don’t do it if I have to spend at least 80% of the time writing notes during a lecture. In some classes I’ve definitely noticed it be detrimental to my learning, for example in classes where I don’t care about the material in the least and only have minimal interest in how I perform (they say D is for “diploma”, but if you ask me B is for “Below-this-is-bad” and C is for “Cared-less-than-I-should-have). However, there are many classes where I’ve used my laptop and received a good grade and/or feel I gleaned what there was to get out of lecture. In retrospect though, maybe I didn’t learn as much as I could have. After all it’s rather difficult to have a comprehensive and thorough examination of a student’s understanding of all the material in a course, so maybe I just got lucky and was only assessed on topics I had a firm grasp on.

This semester I haven’t used a laptop in any of my courses. While this sometimes leads to me being rather bored and chewing more gum than normal, it has forced me to pay attention for the most part. On Monday I decided to do some JN work in Programming Languages. I can safely say that despite having a rather good grade in that course presently, good class participation, and an in-depth understanding of the material so far, I got a lot less out of Monday’s lecture. Reviewing the material, and from what was discussed in lecture today, I can be quite certain it wasn’t the quality of the lecture that changed. Monday’s laptop use was definitely a one-time-only (OTO) thing  but it really leaves me to wonder if I cheated myself out of a lot of my education just to stalk JNF, do crosswords, and play games in class. At least I haven’t failed anything because of it, so that’s something…

Wow, those weeks fly by fast. A good deal of my time has recently been allocated to research – there was a conference / government review thing last week and a paper deadline coming up. I’m feeling less and less confident that our paper is of submitting quality, but hey, maybe I’m just overly negative.

School’s been school – I botched a question on my algorithms midterm, really a choke since I have no idea why I wrote what I did – but long story short, it’s no longer particularly beneficial for me to be taking the course but I can’t drop it due to credit constraints so it’s just eating time.

I have a Playstation 3 now, I guess that’s March news. I rearranged my room – a lot more space now. Maybe it’s worth a photo, maybe not.

The next big Jellyneo deadline is sometime in April for me, so I have to start pushing myself to work on that… as soon as this paper goes away. Yep, that should do it for EDL stuff – another post coming up momentarily.

Dissect a trillion sighs away, will you get this letter?
…I write to remember, cause I’m a million miles away. ~At the Drive-In – One Armed Scissor

Warning: This post is long, clocking in at 3,302 words.

This post is in part just a personal favor, but I don’t post things just for me to read them. I may have once upon a time done that with a LiveJournal, but don’t bother trying to hunt it down – there’s no public or even friend-viewable posts anymore. This is a really tough post for me to write, not because it’s got deep dark secrets in it, but because when I woke up I was really impacted – vivid emotions that I can’t even begin to feel now. It’s really hard to write without the feeling there (like in the case of the fever / my shot night / etc.) but thankfully I took notes when I woke up. The blessing of laptops (the curse being the damage to my poor wrists). Dreams not really your thing? Feel free to skip this one, though I have some dithering once I’m done with the dream.

Click here for the rest of the Post

Caught here in a fiery blaze…
the heat stroke ridden weather, the barren empty sights
No oasis here to see…
Can’t you help me as I’m starting to burn? ~Avenged Sevenfold – Bat Country

Feb 23rd through Feb 28th I was out sick. The first three or four days were highlighted with quite a fever, though the actual value is unknown. The only thermometer available was a digital readout one made by Vicks that my housemate had. As a bonus she had the same sickness I did. At any rate, over the weekend the thermometer reported temperatures ranging from 93F-103F (33.9C-39.4C). I certainly didn’t feel like I was verging on dead from being too cold, but I did have chills and that lovely burning up feeling. It’s something I haven’t had in a while, I can’t remember the last time I had chills to tell me I had a fever honestly, hence my posting this.

Of course, I went a bit bonkers from the fever – no permanent brain damage or anything, but time was all distorted and I ended up sleeping a lot. I even skipped class for the first time this semester. There was one morning where I thought I was better and proved myself wrong when I used my head to push a cereal box which in turn was pushing a plate and was making “choo choo” vocalizations. All in all an unpleasant experience, but just like the time I had a 12(?) shot line and was throwing up the next day, I remember the events and symptoms, but not the displeasure. In fact at this point I can only with some certainty say that I was rather unhappy the day after the shots.

In the end I of course recovered since there’s an end date to when I was sick, but I will admit to taking a lot of Dayquil knockoff. The store was out of gel caps so I was stuck taking liquid. “Original” flavor the orange substance claimed to be, but it tasted like fake orange (and not the deliciously sweet kind) with a mint aftertaste. Foul would be only a bit of an exaggeration in describing the flavor. Oh well, at least I managed to get medication – it was really needed for the fever.

Um… yeah again I don’t really know how to end this so, blaaaat.

Once again, it’s been a while. No JNO from Twist still, and that Flash thing is still on a back burner. It’ll get addressed soon, or boil over. Anyway, first of three posts for tonight. I’m starting to sound more and more nuts.

A challenge I’ve had more the last couple months than before is striking a balance between groups in real life and online communities. It’s not that there are conflicts in ideology or whatever, for example it’s not like classmates look over my shoulder and see I’m on Jellyneo and give me flack. I suppose that could just be because I’m not using my laptop in classes this semester, but that’s not the point.

The challenge comes from allocating time which ultimately is a question of where do I prioritize everything. More often than not I end up allocating time to whichever party has requested it most recently and just grow increasingly agitated and misanthropic. I don’t know why it’s so hard to say “I’d like to do something for person/group X instead, so I have to go now / I can’t do Y.” For some reason it is, for all the bashing I do on people who can’t say no. When it’s not personal I can say no, but it’s hard when it comes to groups / persons that I want to accept me.

I guess acceptance is a high concern for me, despite all my manipulative abilities and ability to be harsh and caustic and aloof. Well, now I have no idea where I was going with this (concept was conceived some time in February) so I’m just going to hit Publish and get on with it.

Last thought: I guess it’s a balance between acceptance, saying no, and keeping things inside and being angrified.

Time, it’s been so long
And now there’s nothing to say
I’m trying so hard to find the words to say ~Sum 41 – Speak of the Devil

Yep, it’s been a while since I posted. Frankly, I don’t remember much since the last time I posted. I had an oral qualifier on Tuesday (the 8th), which despite bumbling the first question (a quite elementary one on functions of the math sort) I passed. Good thing too since much of the previous week was split between studying for that and working on a Prolog assignment I finished way early. I’m certain most readers have no idea what Prolog is, so I’m going to take a minute to explain for the heck of it. There’s non-programmer stuff further down, so don’t be deterred.

Prolog works on a database of facts – things like “blue(sky).” which can be read as “the sky is blue” and “mother(X,Y) <- female(X), child(Y,X)” which can be read as “X is the mother of Y if X is female and Y is the child of X”. When you ask Prolog something (known as a query), you can leave as many variables as you want, and Prolog does the nasty job of trying to see what fits to satisfy everything so that it can start with things in the database and end up with whatever you asked. As a simple example, if the database had “sum(X,Y,Z) <- Z is X+Y, X>0, Y>0″ which can be read as “Z is the sum of X and Y for any positive X and Y”, then one could ask “sum(2,2,Z)” and get Z=4, or ask “sum(1,Y,4)” and get Y=3, or more interestingly, ask “sum(X,Y,4)” and get “X=1 and Y=3, X=2 and Y=2, or Y=3 and X=1″.

Applying the above concepts provides for some rather unimaginative assignments, so of course the assignment was more complicated than that. I don’t see the need to bore you any further by providing assignment details, but I will say two things: 1. A popular assignment is an/a Othello/Reversi solver, 2. Prolog was designed as a language to assist in parsing language.

Anyway, I’m back from the dead since this oral is over, I have research tasks and JN work lined up, and should be back to regular blogging. This weekend I’m going to Genericon XXIV (I’ve chosen not to attend prior ones during my stay here) – I won’t be a con junkie and form a full schedule, but the idea of playing Rock Band with random people, watching stuff without having to find it online or via DVD, and maybe get in on a quick tabletop RPG game is just something I should take up at least once. Rather than break down the specifics of the convention, I’ll just link to the conbook which can be found here. I’m not sure if I want to try to keep track of a camera so I might not have any photos. Wheee dorkdom.

Yesterday I went to a Mexican restaurant. Being in the northeastern part of the United States presently, it’s rather hard to find a good restaurant for any sort of flavorful cuisine, so I like this one. Our waiter first greeted us by explaining he had recognized us at Price Chopper (a grocery store) from a previous visit to the restaurant. This was fine. He however then stopped at the table about six bajillion (perhaps six gajillion) times and was like… way too friendly and kept hammering on the Price Chopper thing. “Sure thing Price Chopper Buddies!” “Oh, out of tortillas? Well, we sell 3 for a dollar but you could probably get them cheaper at Price Chopper!”

I’d say he was hitting on my dinner partner, or that he was just bucking for a good tip. If I said that I’d be lying of course, since we were the only table he was so friendly with. Turns out he just moved into the area due to apartment-mate troubles involving puppies and knows nobody and is looking for parties (he told us when he was handling our check). While that’s all fine, the awkward-level was so not cool. Do waiters normally do this sort of thing? I’ve never noticed it that’s for sure. One thing’s for sure – I’m scared to go back there now lest I have to have another plate of awkward.

At least the food (and desserts) are good. Oh yes, speaking of dessert, according to him the “Banana Chimichanga” (as most waitstaff call it) is a “changabanana”. Each waiter/waitress to their own I suppose…

Sweatin’ and strainin’
Well it seemed so simple at the time ~Semisonic – Never You Mind

Okay, so it’s been way longer than it should have been since I posted. Could I have posted? Yes. Did I? No. Why? The problem I’m actually posting about now. Over break I developed a habit of going to sleep really late, like 4-8AM local. I tried sleeping earlier, staying up and sleeping later, but no matter what I did, I ended up bouncing back to going to sleep around then. This did not leave me with a good amount of sleep, and creative processes were a little harder come by.

I won’t deny I played more video games, my capture card is working out pretty well so if I get desperate I can always just post a video and whine about the song or something. Did some Jellyneo work again, and a lot of receipt work (about $1100 USD all told), so I’m now clear to work on research and Flash stuff.

I’m taking an oral qualifier in two weeks. I’m horribly nervous, and have a lot to study. Things should be manageable though. Maybe I can go back to working in the Spare Room (it’s next to the Back Room) once this Flash thing is fleshed out more. No idea what will happen there though.

Umm… one or two JNO posts should come out tonight I hear. Time to make a curry.