Nerd Corner: no longer trying out Opera

two weeks ago, i wanted to dig up a picture, so i hit up the trusty Google image search (via keyword search which Opera already had). lo and behold, something looked off. every image no longer showed any information below it (requiring a mouse hover instead). i was a bit annoyed, but it didn't bother me enough to search for a workaround. the next day i stumbled upon one anyway, courtesy of Google Operating System (via Lifehacker) and implemented it immediately.

what struck me was not the idiocy of Google Image interface designers, but the ease of correction in the web browser i am using (Opera). where Firefox users had to dig up their user profile in hidden folders and edit javascript files (granted that there are many firefox users very willing to muck around in their hidden folders and edit javascript files) and Internet Explorer users had to open a menu regarding Security (every time i see that word in a menu dialogue, i get antsy), Opera users merely had to right-click for site preferences and uncheck a box.

Opera wins.

here is a comparison from extremetech of Firefox 2.0, IE7 and Opera 9. the FF2 and IE7 tested at the time were still in beta. i have all three final versions and most of the obvious observations are still there in the final versions (particulary the Acid2 Test).

so i was hopping along the intertubes...

when i came across this loverly post:

Tips for liking someone better (or disliking that person less)

Some notables:

1. Seek contact. You may feel like avoiding that person, but because of the psychological phenomenon known as the “mere exposure effect,” we tend to like people better the more we see them.

5. Act friendly. We think we act because of the way we feel, but often we feel because of the way we act. So act the way you want to feel. This is uncannily effective—just try it.

6. Resist criticizing that person. When you voice your complaints, they assume a solidity in your mind that’s hard to eliminate. When your thoughts remain unspoken, they can more easily be changed.

i have no thoughts on it yet, as i can't think of anyone that i particularly do not like. it is also very buddhist.

the sophisticated nerd

i've taken a shine to documentaries recently. two of my favourite shows (The Office and Arrested Development) follow and mock the genre. there is nothing quite like a comedically timed flashback to contextualize and augment the humour of an innocous voice-over. my film class has also enlightened me to the cinematographic aspect, so i can find enjoyment there as well (i just noticed that the opening scene of Serenity has one really long single-take that was quite masterfully done both as character introduction and expository).

come to think of it, i've always enjoyed documentaries as a kid watching TLC and Discovery (mostly about astronomoy and dinosaurs and other cool animals). the difference now is that my pallette has expanded with my interests. i am very excited about Wordplay. not quite sure how wise it is to do so, but i'm going to gut it out and watch The Root of All Evil too, which features an atheism bordering on fanaticism. you can find it online if you are so inclined.

this craving for documentaries has also led to a mild craving for interesting essays. i picked up John Stuart Mill's Three Essays on Religion, Sigmund Freud's Dream Psychology and Sun Tzu's The Art of War. i had a good time editing out the project gutenberg copyright drivel and formatting the layout for concision. i will be reading them after i plow through my course readings. still hunting for Carl Jung's works though; i might have to go physically to a library (note how i avoided splitting the infinitive). i heart the public domain.

certain events have transpired...

and i've thought about certain things, and i'm sorry for the way those certain events transpired, and i would just like to make some changes about certain things and certain situations...

i feel much discontentment with the direction of my life. i have no hope for the future. i believe no one will be my life friend and gene-co-contributor. wail, moan, etc. i don't wish that i could have made this more lengthy and clever to bring into question my level of sarcasm, thereby causing those who care undue distress and worry.

blogspot is mad at me because i don't blog about my life, therefore not allowing them to spy on me. sometimes, i try to be like paris hilton, and leave false information lying around to see if nicole will blab it to the press. since blogspot is a computer sitting on the intertubes, it does not understand sarcasm or any other powerful human techniques of motive-masking (i.e. courtesy, political correctness); it is not a truck.

so utterly amazed, i threw up

from the guys that brought you the hilarious video about Things You Can't Do While Not In a Pool...

The Contortionist


The Story of Anthony Razz (The Contortionist Part 2)

dream interpreted

Setting: some of my best late-formative years were spent running around the portables of CHPS. some of my other dreams feature this type of setting, although only in the peripheral.

The Game: the lockout part seems familiar, but i was on the other side

The Green Water Balloon: reminiscent of that time some young hoodlums shot Roman Candles at me and my school friends on one of those fireworks nights. a green one nearly hit me but i sidestepped it and it hit someone behind me (not in the face). i felt guilty over that for some time. i should have caught it, or kicked it out of the way. why else would i spend all that effort honing coordination with hackysack? i think i have a hero complex.

The Unpopped Balloons: i think these are my delusions. sometimes when i think about it, i realize that i am thinking out of phase with most other people. there are days where i honestly feel like Michael Scott, saying totally off-the-wall things that are absolutely normal to me, but result in shifty glances. i keep observations like this in balloons and leave them in there.

The Kids: i didn't recognize any of the faces, but i knew i knew them. that's how dreams work. it was like day care. along with my hero complex, i have a fairly strong desire to be a dad that can romp and play like a kid. option a) marry and spawn young(er than the norm nowadays). option b) stay become as fit as David Suzuki.

Weasels: here is where i go, "what the deuce?" i've never dreamt of animals before. once i dreamt of a foldable pocket-hoverskateboard (patent pending!) that i rode to school. and then i saw Back to the Future and was like, "no way, stealers." another time i dreamt i was flying without wings and did a stoop (in birds that means: fold wings, fall fast). there were a bunch of electrical lines and i had some good fun weaving my way through a net of them. i got tangled in the end, but i want to dream that dream again. i have recurring nightmares that the aliens from Aliens had landed on earth and were chasing me around my grandparents' (mother's side) house.

anyway, back to the weasels. the only weasel that sticks in my mind is that line from Amelie (see banner). Amelie's landlady is reading her letters from her ex-lover that cheated on her with his secretary and flew off to South America and died in a car crash. he used to call landlady "my little weasel," so the landlady, sniffling, asks Amelie, "isn't that beautiful? has anyone ever called you that?" to which Amelie replies, "i'm nobody's little weasel."

also, from the last song on Weird Al's album, "Running with Scissors", Albuqurque, the narrator/singer meets his true love after buying a box of weasels from the donut shop (because they were out of all the conventional donuts). the weasels attacked him and he rolled out into the street. this woman stops to look at him and says, "hey. you got weasels on your face."

dream interpretation

last night i dreamt i was at a summer camp with TJCAC. it was ghettofabulous. there were cabins that resembled the school portables at Churchill Heights PS as they were elevated and required little stoops, but wooden all around (perhaps more like the cabins at that camp i went to at the beginning of grade 8 where we sang Chantal Kreviazuk's version of Leaving on a Jet Plane, kayaked and peed in the woods).

i was in a group of people walking out to the large group activity site. we were told very strictly to be on time. i was a straggler so when i got there, the fence just closed (there was a fence). we were told we could join in a few minutes. everyone who was on time were playing a game that involved hurling water balloons. perhaps it was a water balloon fight because they started throwing them at us after awhile. someone threw a green one towards me but i sidestepped it and it hit someone behind me in the face -- he did not appreciate it.

i threw a few unpopped balloons back and they remained unpopped. i thought this game was mighty unfun, so i wandered off to see what some other kids (little'uns) were doing. they were crossing a little bridge over a tiny creek. why there was a bridge was beyond me as this creek came from one of those open sewer pipes coming out from the end of a ditch where there was perfectly good land to walk over.

i was about to start a game with them when i noticed there were other kids (who seemed to live in the woods) playing with some weasels. i initially saw three black weasels, but it quickly became apparent that there were at least three others who were striped grays and otherwise pale.

i told the kids i knew to be careful to not startle the rambunctious weasels. they noticed us anyways, so we ran like the dickens. a weasel jumped onto my left calf and it gave me a scratching. i wondered if it would give me rabies; the cure for rabies involves jabbing a huge needle into the abdomen -- who would look forward to that? maybe i was thinking of lycanthropy, which you can contract with a scratch.

anyway, the weasels were jumping on the kids, so i woke up.

courting crazy environmentalists on film

ENGB24 - Courtship in Literature | Professor: Dr. Natalie Rose
same professor from Victorian Prose and Poetry, but with much more interesting topic, though no less Victorian. i was a bit aprehensive about taking this course as there was a high probability that it would be full of girls (and girls have cooties). i underestimated a) the number of guys looking to acquire cooties b) the number of guys who have cooties and have been dragged into it by their infector c) the number of people merely interested in the topic. i will be required to read (and sometimes watch):

1. Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
   
2. Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre
3. Tennessee Williams - A Streetcar Named Desire
4. William Shakespeare - Much Ado About Nothing
5. Martin Amis - The Rachel Papers
6. Helen Fielding - Bridget Jones's Diary (the movie only)
7. some raunchy poetry - the professor wanted to assign a Harlequin romance or something equally trashy but did not have the guts to. John Donne will have to do.

i watched Mansfield Park on Monday. i liked it very much. it had some quirky Amelie moments. the book is quite different, and likely more long-winded. i haven't read it yet, but i found the pdf for it on Project Gutenberg's online catalogue.
this will help give you an idea of what we might talk about: Take Girl. Add Boy. Bring to Boil.

ENGB75 - Cinema and Modernity I | Instructor: Natalie Papoutsis
i am really excited about this class because i get to learn about film and cinematography. i've always wanted to know the terms and technicalities so that my movie reviews could be a bit more authoritative. i watched a short film from the 70s that presented and explained and showed a lot of cinematographic terms. it was hilarious.
there won't be any reading in this class, apart from a few short articles. it will mostly be watching movies once a week from three genres: the Western, Film Noir and Melodrama.

1. Shane (1952)
   
2. Unforgiven (1992)
3. Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003) - tentatively, if she can get the license
4. Double Indemnity (1944)
5. Blade Runner (1982)
6. Memento (2001)
7. Broken Blossoms (1919)
8. Stella Dallas (1937)
9. All That Heaven Allows (1955)
10. Far From Heaven (2002)

ENGC03 - Studies in Canadian Fiction | Professor: Dr. Marlene Goldman
this is a continuation of last semester's Canadian fiction course. some of my favourite authors are Canadian and megasuperstars (Atwood, Davies) and so this will be a fun course. the teaching and marking style i am already familiar with so i will just need to keep up with my readings. there are a lot, on top of the Courtship readings, but they're really good books and i'm working very hard on perfecting the art of reading three books 'simultaneously'. currently i am reading Alias Grace, Mansfield Park and Little Men (the continuation of Little Women - for fun. can you believe that Jo shoots down Laurie? poor Laurie). the course will be all about the crazy. reading list:

1. Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace
   
2. Jane Urquhart - Away
3. Robertson Davies - Fifth Business
4. Timothy Findley - Pilgrim
5. Michael Ondaatje - Coming Through Slaughter

PSCD02 - Current Questions in Science | Professor Donald Cormack
last year (technically 2005) i took PSCD01, which was basically the same thing. this time around i seem to have a lazier professor and less work. there was a huge debate project last time. this time there is merely a group presentation about some topic that is probably environmentalistic. we will be watching the documentary An Inconvenient Truth (which i have promptly downloaded and watched an hour of), which is quite a scary piece on global warming. it follows Al Gore around as he does presentations on the same topic to academic institutions and so on. contrary to Royal Canadian Air Farce belief, Al Gore quite a dynamic speaker and is quite funny in that deadpan way that i like. i highly recommend watching it for the sake of your future children.

"what happened to grape soda?"

i ordered a new hard drive on wednesday because my existing hard drive was making quite a ruckus even when idling. a quick google told me that my hard drive was probably on its last legs of life. so i did a bit of research and found a lovely deal on a Western Digital Scorpio 120GB 5400rpm 8MB cache hard drive for $150 counting tax and shipping. i planned on backing up my data on thursday after school, or friday morning because i had no classes.

during my first class on thursday the hard drive failed as i was typing some notes on an Atwood poem. i had to try my hand at taking lecture notes by hand (after a year without doing so). the results were less than spectacular. fortunately, it was an introductory lecture to cinematography terms. i had a nice and relaxed night. couldn't do any real work, so i read a good chunk of Alias Grace and watched The Office.

friday was when the drive was slated to arrive. i hoped that it would arrive early in the day so that i could spend a few hours installing stuff because i had a small research assignment on Intelligent Design due on wednesday. alas, it arrived at 5, just in time for me to head over to the church. i tried to install xp before aletheia, but i was silly and only brought an xp pro ugrade disk. hurray for wasted day.

i sat down to install xp at around 12:00 and met setback after setback (the product key didn't take). after 5 tries to repair the installation and 3 hours, i ended up deleting the partition and starting from scratch. that finally worked. i loaded the necessary drivers and went to sleep.

some time later this week i will likely install a Linux distro. here are the ones i'm eyeing:
Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu) - the most Windows-like distro
Zenwalk (based on Slackware) - the screenshots i've seen makes it look a bit like the set up i have now
Symphony OS (based on Debian) - a completely different desktop environment which might be fun to try

i have only very limited Linux/Unix experience, namely a computers class a few years ago with a Linux nerd. everyone had to use Red Hat. this puts Gentoo out of the picture. suggestions?

EDIT: i "release gas" (give up). this is too much hassle for no actual gains. other than bragging rights.

that's disgusting

on sunday, during dinner, my cousin of 6 yrs old asked her dad surreptitiously, "deem guy biu goh mo sai di uhm chong geh?" (why doesn't herman have pimples anymore?), to which he replied in Chinese, "he was hungry so he squeezed them out and ate them all."

that is a myth. someone was hired to squeeze them out for me. though i was hungry (because i was not to eat seafood or beef or other yeet hay - hot air - things), the extracted pimples were not eaten.

throughout grades 8 to 11, i proceeded to acquire as many pimples as i could (not that i wanted to, but it builds character). my mom became quite worried about my face so we went on lots of trips together to doctors of Western and/or Eastern medicine, trying out fancy topical creams, acid peels or herbal potions (bitter tea) that contained the dried out husks of some round, brown insects amongst the twigs and sprigs. nothing worked to any sort of satisfaction until we went to a beautician who had emigrated from China.

many hours and days were spent at the little clinic with me lying on a massage bed that had been converted to a regular bed, listening to soft, flutey elevator music while my face was steamed, pimples were picked or squeezed out with a pick/loop, then my face was covered in thin strips of gauze soaked in a medicinal liquid while an electrically charged wand was rubbed around my face before a good hour and a half under a heat lamp with my pimpled areas stippled with tiny acupuncture needles.

turns out that i have pear-shaped pores; the openings are small while the recesses are bulbous. that, coupled with genetics, hormonal imbalances, poor diet and sleep habits resulted in several layers of super duper pimples. after about 2 months of procedures, my face shrank noticeably. after the 3rd month, they decided that i needed some blood recycling (i have no idea why), so at the end of each appointment i would have some blood drawn from one elbow and reinjected into the other. i didn't really bother to complain or ask why because i was having so much fun already. no, it wasn't really fun.

now i look back on it after 4 years and i am thankful. not simply because i would ruin fewer pictures (i can ruin them perfectly fine with or without ugly) or gain self-confidence (too much of that already), but because all those hours of discomfort and pain and embarrassment bred much patience and humility and gratitude in someone who wasn't naturally born with those things.

my last first day

even though i hid in one spot watching Mystery Men and The Office and browsing the increasingly boring internet for about 4 of the 6 hours i spent at school day, the short walk i took from hiding nook to class netted me half a dozen familiar faces and conversations. while i do have about 2/3 of one foot out the "door", i know i will look back on these past four years with fondness, both for the countless hours spent alone and for the brief moments spent in communion with physics and english nerds alike.

if all goes according to plan, i will have many more first days of school to go through, but from the other side of the classroom. as a sign of growth, i have resolved to not fall into the trap of slack i fell into in my senior year of high school because there is so much more than myself at stake. eventually, there will be dozens of fertile minds entrusted to my tutelage. even if teaching does not pan out and other avenues open up, eventually there will still be lives entrusted to my care. i tried to motivate myself in first year with the same reasoning, but it was too overwhelming and i despaired. this time around, i still feel overwhelmed -- not with despair, but rather excitement for the real troubles and fun to begin.

renewal

 i got my driver's license renewed, so now that photo is not as bad. it's quite decent actually, though the lighting makes me look like a corpse - a corpse with a scarf. better than oven-baked like my student card though.



i unintentionally used the exact same facial expression three and a half years apart.