Older blog entries for Iain (starting at number 146)

.:

  • I need a new layout. I'm bored with this
  • Apparently (according to a FWD that I got twice, from different people at the same time...) I have huge problems, but I just watch them and think of cool problems, and my sexual desire is huge, but I feel sex is of absolutly no important what so ever...

    Cool

  • More revision. Revision sucks. Can do some of the miranda stuff, reading the networks is still interesting, NLP is pointless, and KB systems has no point either. Graphics looks interesting, and the exam is a bastard but should be okay so long as I remember equations and stuff, and I dunno about the distributed computing cos I've not even thought about it yet. (Thats next weeks fun topic once I finish networking this week).
  • Dawned on me today:- If I fuck up these exams, I'm fucked.
  • Strangely "Linux && Belfast" revealed no jobs in any of the job databases
  • Al left today, dunno when he's back. Means I get to nick his modem and our electricity bill drops.
  • Wanted to be on the Ricki Lake show so badly today, just to insult one of the audience members. The situation was that there was a guy sitting at the front who said he hated gay people and thought they were all wrong in the head, and this woman stood up and said "I can't believe that in the year 2000, we can't all just accept each others views, and you are so wrong in your view"...I just wanted to point out the fatal flaws in her arguement.
    I also wanted to ask her what her views on paedophilia were, but then I realised that if I did that I'd be linking someone who chooses to love members of the same sex, with someone who chooses to love small children, and that maybe this example was a bit too extreme.

A flower:

  • When I don't get my degree, I will say "If only I hadn't started reading goats.
  • I think Chessmaster looks like a photo of Bowie J Poag, or at least it looks like the photo I saw (from memory)

You are pure, you are snow, we are the useless sluts that they mold:

  • You know a band has hit the mainstream when a 40year old checkout person tells you they are "a brilliant band". I knew the Manics had sold out, but it had never hit me till today.
  • Did the biggest food shop ever. I'm never going to need to buy food for the rest of my life. 30quid (although that did include a 7quid CD). Got lots of cool food now.
  • Was sitting in a revision lecture about Baysian Belief Networks, when I suddenly switched off and started thinking about how I (or someone else) could implement scaling gnome-canvas-text items. Came up with the solution that there could be a cache of all the zoomed in levels, so when it draws the item, it actually uses the larger size. When I switched back on again there were lots of squares drawn on the board and I've no idea what they were all about. I'm going to blame Harold if I fail KBS

If a ten ton truck, kills the both of us:

  • Looky Colour!
  • Miguel released GNOME-Libs 1.0.60. My text patch broke it. I don't think this is a good thing. All I know is, it compiled here fine.
  • Made another attempt at the canvas scrolling patch. Did it the right way (tm). Waiting for someone to tell me what to do with it.
  • Played with Nautilus for the first time in ages. Wow, it's so amazingly cool now. It's such a good time waster just adding random emblems to your files, and funny backgrounds to your directories. Totally cool. Plus I made a patch for it so it checks the width and height of an image before deciding to use it for an icon (stops icons being made from huge images, that are really small in bytesize).
  • Trying to learn DESS for my exam, but I'm not sure if I need it.

I left my wallet in El Segundo:

  • I never want to be famous. I found a site on a Neighbours star (Here) because I was looking for information to prove that there wasn't going to be a lesbian relationship on Neighbours, and these fans are freaks. Like every time this poor girl is on screen there's about 10 stills taken of her in the same pose but her arm has moved an inch...FREAKS. I have trouble accepting that people read this diary or email I send them, to know that my every move was recorded...scary
  • Revised some more.
  • Hacked an ugly hack that won't go into gnome-libs, it really was hideous.
  • Not going to revise anymore tonight. Well, I might do some more networking stuff, cos it's actually interesting, and easy to read (as opposed to Knowledge bases. It's boring as hell)
  • Rewrote a song. Got lots of them now, ones that I'm quite pleased with.
  • Need to buy/steal more Hiphop CDs

Kill the fo':

  • Nietzsche: Aren't you dead?
  • Went out last night. Too tired.
  • Played some good songs last night ("Can I Kick It", "Groove Is In The Heart" spring to mind), but they also played loads of crap like "Billie Jean". Oh well.
  • Threw some girl into a skip on the way home. Then shut the lid on her. She smelled after that :D
  • Made lots of icky errors in my gnome-canvas-text patch. Duh - Can't add new fields to GnomeCanvasText.
  • Did Gonzo demo today. Never have to worry about it again. They both seemed impressed, and Prof Sleeman isn't as scary as I'd imagined.
  • Must revise. Tried revising "knowledge based systems" today, but fell asleep cos it's so dull. It's dull and seems pointless.
  • Networks is interesting though. I'm learning how to write a TCP/IP implementation for a kernel. Pity all the kernels these days have one.
  • Wrote the encryption for my ciphersabre. Was only an extra 6 lines. Going to write on for the ZX Spectrum later on after I finish revision.

Take a left, a sharp left, then another left, meet me at the corner, and we'll start again:

  • Gah, I really really want to get Jon Katz' book and make it freely available on the web, just to see how much he wants the information to be free. I'm so close to writing an article about how hypocritical the whole "We want our MP3s" buisness is
  • Lots of silly commits to gnome-libs, fixed a bug thats been around since 1.0.10 too. Had tried to do it before, but I had no clue what I was doing then...Everything starts being clear eventually.
  • Put my first poster up in the room. My signed GUADEC one.
  • Did other productive stuff instead of revision. I cleaned my guitar and picked all the icky green stuff off the edge of the frets.
  • I also got all my notes in semi order, which I guess is sort of productive, but hey.
  • beedeeboo

I'm Jimmy Dean:

  • So again Metallica are trying to get the people trading the illegal files banned from Napster. Usual /. outrage at this, but really, I think it's an acceptable solution for Napster, so that it looks like they are trying to "Keep illegal files off the network". No, they'll never get rid of the illegal pirates, but hey, they're trying their best. I wonder how the /. flamers would feel if they were the musician and not the downloaders...

    More great solutions for the problem:

    1. Invade the Metalica chat and tell them what you think.
      Yes, Metalica are going to have an open chat session, unmoderated, and fully accessible. Some people are naive.
    2. Organise a "Send back Metalica stuff" campaign.
      That made me laugh.
    3. I've got bored reading the other insane comments.

      At least some people are pointing out the hypocriticalness of it all, but they're usually marked down as trolls. /. would be up in arms (is up in arms) when people try to steal GPL code, what's the difference here?

  • Bought textbooks today. Got Natural Language Processing, and Networking and Internetworking Vol II. Textbooks are far too expensive.
  • Mazeone is complaining about a CD being 17$ Damn, he's lucky. 13quid most CDs are here. Still Canada was good for CDs. Mmmmmm16C$ Second hand ones for 4C$. Come back Canada, all is forgiven.
  • 1 year today I left Canada.
  • Did start revision, read some of NLP.
  • Punched and bound my copy of Inside Ole. Looks impressive.
  • Terminally bored.
  • I'm not scared, I'm outta here.

Watching the start of social decay:

  • My ear, is about to explode. There's some big lump beside the lobe, and I don't know if it's a spot, or if it's a gland thats swelling up. But it's sore and I just want rid of it.
  • Fixed a redraw bug in gnome-canvas-widget
  • Fixed a bug in Bonobo sample-container, then got told by mathieu it shouldn't exist as he fixed it a few days ago, then I went home and removed my changes and couldn't get it to do the bugs again. Mathieu is magic.
  • Said I'd start revising tonight, but I'm not. I've printed out the notes for NLS though, so maybe I'll read through some of them.
  • SFA else to do though.
  • Home for Fraiser

La la laaaaaaaaaaa:

  • Well, I didn't half arse up last nights diary entry did I?
  • Wrote my ciphersaber (Ciphersabre?). It only does decrypt, cos, well, I couldn't be bothered to do encrypt. I'll do it tomorrow night or sometime. The source code is here Well no, it's here. Don't forget though, that using this to decrypt the gif certificate is cheating...
  • Now I understand stuff a bit better, and it wasn't as hard as I had expected.

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