I have an interest in computer graphics. Specifically modelling I think. Sometimes I like to examine real world objects and think about how they might be modelled by a computer. Of course I have absolutely no experience or knowledge of this field, but I still like to contemplate nonetheless.

Today I was looking at the towels in my bathroom and I noticed that they look like crap. They have been used and washed and dryed so many times that they have become distorted due to varying amounts of stretching among the composite threads. It made me think that if I were to attempt to create a computer model of those particular towels, that no one would ever think that the model looked very realistic or accurate (no matter how good it was) unless they were shown the original towels.

The reason for this is, of course, that the towels are pretty crappy looking. The only reason my family and anyone else who sees them accepts their appearance is because people assume that the world around them is accurate. When you see something on a TV or monitor however, you are more inclined to see fault and doubt what you see. So the computer model fails while the real things are accepted.

My point is that there is a distinct possibility that computer graphics may never fully be able to recreate the real world. We (or at least me) always like to look for flaws in things that appear on screens and we avoid looking for flaws in real life (because we assume real life to be correct). So when we see a computer generated image that contains something out of the ordinary (such as horribly deformed towels) we might very well interpret the strangeness as evidence of a failure of the computer to correctly render the real world, regardless of the accuracy of the models.

Thus, even if we get to the point where everything can be recreated by a computer, it is possible that the audience may not be so accepting because the real world is full of very strange things that we only accept because they exist.

Adrienne makes good cookies:

mmmmmm....cookie

Being lazy is fun!

Am I abusing my Internet service? Remember when Sympatico DSL limited you to 10GB of transfer per month? Is more than 120GB on my own machine in one month bad?

November 2004 Bandwidth

It's November, so that means I need a post so that my website isn't blank. But I'm still busy so it won't be a long one.

Back when I lived at Helene Crescent there was a small issue with my room in that there turned out to be a deep hole filled with water under the carpet in the corner. This disturbed both me and my landlord and everyone I showed it to. Fortunately the landlord got it fixed and everything was happy (especially me with brand new carpet). Here is a picture of what it looked like.

My Waterhole!

The hole was over a foot deep and liked to overflow and soak the carpet. The only thing that prevented me from falling in was a board that went on top like a sewer cover. The board did not stop water from leaking though.

October post, too busy for more than nine words.

I've been to almost all of my classes now and they seem alright. I think this will be a hard term though (although it is of my own making so I shouldn't complain).

I know I said that I would add a comments feature to my site, but it looks like I didn't and I probably won't any time soon. Oh well.

So I think I've reached that point in my life where I have no home. My mom moved at the end of August into a townhouse in London so when I go home now it is actually like I am going to my mom's house, not mine. I guess it was bound to happen but it is still a bit strange. The whole situation has made me want to get rid of everything I own except the essentials (clothes, books, electronics) so that I can move quickly and easily. Kinda weird but whatever.

I'm officially living in Waterloo again now. Moving sucks.

So we built my brother's computer, here are the specs:

• P4 2.8GHz with Hyperthreading
• 1GB PC-3200 DDR400 memory
• Intel 865 chipset on Asus P4P800 SE motherboard
• ATi Radeon 9550 256MB video card
• 120GB Seagate SATA harddrive
• Antec Sonata Case

It makes me jealous becasue it runs so nicely. Unreal Tournament 2004 is perfect at 1024x768 with all of the detail settings at maximum. The case and motherboard worked really well and everything was easy to assemble. It looks really good too, but my brother managed to put the main case sticker on upside down (picture coming soon). Oh well, still pretty cool. Must resist urge to upgrade computer...

Jen's birthday was pretty fun as well. A lot of people showed up and we had dinner at a nice restaurant (the Hot House) down on Front Street. Michael came up for both the meal and some of the computer fun. We took him to lunch at Zelda's at Church and Wellesley which is a really great restaurant. Working in Toronto has been amazing, but going back to Waterloo where there are more people will be really cool too.

Haven't updated in a while, not for any reason though.

I wrote my exam for my distance course on Saturday, it was pretty easy and I'm glad I'm done. I don't think taking a distance course in the summer while living in Toronto was a good idea. Now I just have to write a work report. Ug.

Not much else has happened lately, but this weekend should be interesting. My brother is coming to Toronto and we are going to build a computer for him. It is also Jen's birthday and a bunch of people are going out for it. Should be fun. Hopefully Michael will come join us.

That's it.

I saw two movies this weekend: I, Robot and She Hate Me.

I had hoped that I could read the Issac Asimov work that I, Robot was based on before seeing the movie, but that didn't turn out and I've been told that the movie is only "inspired" by the book and so it probably doesn't matter. The movie was pretty good; typical Will Smith stuff for the most part, but with the occasional thought provoking moment. And killer robots are cool!

She Hate Me was a bit more of a special experience. It is the new Spike Lee movie, but it isn't coming out until July 28 and that is only in New York and Los Angeles. It is scheduled for general release in Canada in about a month. So yeah, I'm all special because I got to see it early. Not that it was hard to do, they were showing a free screening of it at Harbourfront last night and all you had to do was show up in time to get a seat. The movie itself was pretty good, it dealt with lots of "issues" like corporate corruption/greed and non-traditional families. I really liked it and will probably go see it again when it comes out for real.

Other than those two things my weekend was fairly quiet. I read a couple books, watched some Futurama and slept a bunch. Yay weekends!

This weekend was fairly tiring, but still cool.

On Friday I went to Pacific Mall and bought a DVD of questionable legality, but it was a DVD that I can't buy in any other way so I don't exactly feel bad about it. The movie is called Hero and it is a Chinese movie starring Jet Li that is going to be released in theatres in North America in the near future. I saw a preview for it when I saw Kill Bill 2 and it looked good. After watching it I would say that is was very good. The movie paid a lot of attention to visual presentation and was very pretty and artsy. I'm glad I bought it, especially because it was only $8 (no tax, yay Pacific Mall).

On Saturday I went with Adrienne to various parts of the Street Festivals that happened here this weekend, but we didn't see anything too exciting. The best was the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibit, which was at Nathan Phillip's Square and was a show with something like 500 artists displaying their work. Lots of good stuff. The only other stuff really worth mentioning was the food. We had lunch at a random vegetarian Chinese restaurant that gave massive servings. We split a $6 meal and we weren't able to finish half of it between the both of us. And for supper we ate pasta in the Italian section of Toronto that was pretty good and not very expensive.

Today was much better as far as the festival goes. We went and saw a break dancing competition that was really good. The music (courtesy of DJ Serious) was amazing as well.

The rest of my weekend was fairly relaxing; I spent a bunch of time with Kim and slept a lot.

On Saturday Kim and I went shopping, saw Fahrenheit 9/11 (which was moderately interesting) and then had supper at Mongolian Grill. Pretty good day.

And today I had lunch with Kim's family (roast beef) and then rode a bus to Toronto, yay!

Normally I update after the weekend is over and it may appear that this post occurs just as the weekend is starting, but in fact my weekend is ultra long due to Canada Day being on a Thursday and the fact that everyone (myself included) decided to take Friday off. And a lot has already happened this weekend so I figured this would be a good time to update. This week has been crazy and really fun.

Monday was the federal election and although I signed up to vote by mail (since I am in Toronto and away from my home riding) they never sent me the voter kit and so I had to vote in my Toronto riding (As an aside, I later found out that Elections Canada had called me at work to tell me that they needed a copy of my driver's license in order to verify my identity for voting by mail even though the guy who told me how to submit the form said that I didn't need to. Unfortunately for me, I have been working downtown for a while and did not get the message until after the election). So, to return to the story, the local returning office (in North York) told me that all I had to do to vote in my Toronto riding was to show proof of residence and register at my polling station in Willowdale (my riding in Toronto). So I went around 7:00 with my lease and with Matt and Adrienne to vouch for me if necessary and got in line to register. When I finally got to talk to the registration lady I was told that I was not allowed to vote here and must go vote in my home riding. They didn't even look at my lease or anything. This seemed strange to me since the returning office had made things quite clear, so I kept trying to explain to them that it would be impossible to get to my home riding before the polls closed and that I was told that I was allowed to vote in Toronto. Eventually one of the ladies got fed up and essentially gave me the boot and told me that they were too busy to help me. So yeah, no voting for me. By that point I felt that I had put an honest effort into it and so I went home. Then I went swimming which was quite tiring but very excellent. I'm going to try to do it regularly.

Tuesday was wing night with Jeff, Brad, Jen, Matt and Adrienne and that was pretty cool. I had the suicide wings which were of the perfect spiciness and were much more tasty than the hot wings I had the last time I was there.

Wednesday was the big day for the summer, the Dave Matthews Band concert, and it was really really good. I left work at 4:00pm so I could get home to meet Mike (who found his own way to our house) and Matt and then head down to Molson Amphitheatre. On the way we met some guy who was also going and we chatted with him a bit on the way in. Matt and I were on the lawn (cheap, haha) and Mike had a really nice seat in the 200 section. The concert was amazing, all the members of the band are insanely talented and there were a lot of solos and things. After the concert we met up with Mike to go home, but it turned out that the person Mike was sitting beside was actually like some sort of disturbing copy of Mike (the guy works as a coop for Alias, is a student at Waterloo, likes DMB, likes Jazz, plays the sax, was student council president, was involved in OSSSA, etc, etc) and so the guy gave us a ride home. Getting a ride home after a concert at Molson Amphitheatre is most excellent because, although it takes a while to get out of the parking lot, it takes even longer to get a street car. So that was pretty sweet. After getting home we went out to get food near our house and the only thing open was a place called John Anderson's. I had the biggest chicken souvlaki ever and ended up being really full until like 3:00pm the next day.

In the morning on Thursday Adrienne, Matt, Mike and I went downtown to check out Mike's apartment for the Fall and it was really nice. It's in one of the high rises near the Skydome/CN Tower and it is clearly meant for real people and not students. But the guy who lives there is trying to get some extra cash by renting out the spare room, so Mike found what may be the sweetest apartment in Toronto (based on the price/goodness ratio which is $650/amazing). The place has hardwood floors, nice kitchen stuff and a really good view of the CN Tower. The building has a workout room, exercise pool and massive patio on the roof, and it has pool tables, plasma TV's and Internet stations on the ground floor (all free to residents of course). It is also downtown which makes it extremely useful. After seeing the apartment we went to Nathan Phillip's square to catch some of the Jazz festival and we saw the Mayor talk and listened to a few songs from one of the bands. It was really cool and it would have been nice to stay longer, but we had like a billion things to do. So, we went up to York Mill's to pick up Mike's girlfriend and then went to see Spiderman 2 with everyone plus Adrienne's friend Tess. The movie was pretty good, I enjoyed its acknowledgement of its corny roots. It was also clearly set up for a sequel. After the movie we went downtown to go to Salad King for supper but they were closed. Kinda weird for a restaurant to close on an almost certainly profitable day but whatever. We went to Spring Rolls instead which is another Thai place and it was very good. Another place I'll have to go back to. Then Mike and Kristen and I went to see some more Jazz and then the fireworks and then went home.

Today was not as exciting; I just got up in the morning and got on a bus to go home which is where I am now. I'm writing this on Kim's new laptop which I have spent the day fixing up.

I don't know what I am doing for the rest of the weekend but I think I have had enough fun for a while so I will probably just sleep.

Last weekend was quite amusing. On Friday Matt and Adrienne met me downtown and we went to Canada Computers to buy things - Me: DVD-ROM drive, Matt; 256MB USB Pen Drive; Adrienne: Computer Speakers. Then we got ice cream and stuff for sundaes and watched the movie "21 Grams" while eating the ice cream.

On Saturday I was supposed to meet Adrienne downtown to go watch the Dyke March (part of Toronto's Gay Pride Week) and then maybe get food or something. But she was at the running show and was late so I stopped waiting and watched it by myself. It was pretty good, but nothing compared to the real pride parade on Sunday. Adrienne and I went to it after getting stuff from the Eaton's Centre. It was really busy, the Toronto Star estimated that a million people watched the parade. And it lasted at least 2 hours I think. Making it the biggest parade I have ever been to. There were also a lot of booths setup on Wellesley and on Church which we spent some time looking at. The parade was cool because everyone was happy and there wasn't any hate or intolerance or negativity or anything. Just happy people having fun.

Today I am going swimming for the purposes of...EXERCISE! Gasp! I don't know what will become of me after this. Probably I will become a superhero. Yeah. That's it.

Last weekend was fun, Kim came to visit and we went downtown and wandered around and looked at things. Not much happened but it was still fun. We also watched a movie. And ate a lot of berries. We also cooked supper together which was amusing. Corn on the cob is good. Oooh, and we played pool. Kim has gotten pretty good. Apparently she gets practice at the restaurant.

Tonight Adrienne, Jen, Matt and I went to Lick's for burgers and that was also good. While we were eating, Jim Harris (the leader of the Green party) came in and got food or something. It was amusing. After supper we got Frozen Hot Chocolate from Second Cup which was very good but made me very full.

I lied, no one came to see our house tonight, the person is living somewhere else.

So, last weekend I went with Adrienne to Salad King which is a really good Thai restaurant. It was really good. We got Spicy Fish and Pad Thai and the fish was amazing. And Spicy. Stating the obvious is fun. We also watched a street performer for a while (he juggled machetes) and we walked along Queen St and went to Active Surplus. Anybody need surplus medical supplies?

I also finished 3 modules of my distance course, which was mind-numbing but productive, I guess. And I cleaned lots of the house.

On Monday I chose my courses for the fall term, here is my schedule so far:

• MWF 10:30-11:30 CO330 - Combinatorical Enumeration
• MWF 12:30-1:30 CS341 - Algorithms and Data Structures
• TTh 8:30-10:00 CS343 - Concurrency
• TTh 10:00-11:30 CO350 - Linear Optimization
• Th 7:00-10:00 SCI206 - The Physics of How Things Work

But I noticed like two days before I had to pick my schedule that Networks (CS456) is actually being offered this Fall, which is cool because that course is normally only offered in the Winter. I only have one Winter study term left, and it has already been taken by Graphics and Programming Languages (CS442) so I had pretty much abandoned the idea of taking Networks. But now I might be able to if I think I can handle it next term. I would replace Linear Optimization, but first I have to get in. The section is already full so I am on the waiting list. I wonder what will happen?

Tuesday was wing night again and we went to St Louis Bar and Grill and the wings were alright, but I didn't like them as much as Morty's and that made me sad. I want Morty's to be in Toronto.

Last night we opened our new bag of milk to find that all three bags were really nasty, even though the expiry date had not yet passed. They were really nasty...like curd-tastic. Mmmm...curds. So we went and bought new milk and as such I stayed up too late last night and now I am tired.

Today our landlord is bring someone to see the house who may potentially be living with us in July and August. Mmmmm....potential roommate.

Kim is coming to visit this weekend which will be really cool. I haven't been seeing her as much this term because of the fact that Toronto is a bit less convenient than Waterloo for coming and going. We will probably do some random stuff, not sure what yet. Maybe order her a new laptop which will at least be fun for me. New computers rule.

So yeah, I think it is about time I do a proper Toronto update.

I'm living just off Yonge St. between Sheppard and Finch which is pretty far north, but since it is on Yonge St. it is close to the subway and so it is close to everything. Also our house rocks, it is all well-kept and real and I don't expect I will live in anything nearly as nice for many years to come. And we have a pool table in the basement because the landlord doesn't want to move it out I think.

I'm working for a telemedicine company, (video conference medical stuff) North Network, at Don Mills and Lawrence but I am also working for a company downtown at King and Jarvis because they are contracted to North. It is going alright because both places are fun to work and I have money again so that makes me happy.

We have been doing a lot of fun stuff in Toronto, I have already been to a clothing show, the Harbour front, several malls, St. Lawrence market, a bunch of restaurants, Ikea, North York General Hospital, China town, the back of an ambulance, Marche, Yonge between Eglinton and Lawrence, the movie Troy and a bunch of other random places that I can't really think of right now. Should have updated more I guess.

I am also doing a distance course, *booming voice* NUCLEAR SCIENCE */booming voice* which I wish I wasn't because it is taking too much of my fun time. Like time better spent playing Chronotrigger and other fun games, like the entire Final Fantasy series. Or working on my website, I still plan on implementing the comment feature. I think that will get done on this weekend because I am staying and no one will be here on Saturday.

So yeah, now I am going to investigate a pool where I could swim lengths every night for something called exercise. I've heard its good for you or something.

I got a new desk! It is fuschia. Ikea rules, just like Fight Club. *soap*

*Sniff* I did something stupid and lost all my April entries, in the future I must be more diligent in my backup.

*Sniff* I did something stupid and lost all my April entries, in the future I must be more diligent in my backup.

Well, I may have lost my uptime, but it was worth it. My new hardware appears to be working great in both Linux and Windows, although I haven't burnt a DVD yet. I am currently posting this via my WIRELESS network connection in Linux, and while I do so I am burning some random crap to a CD-RW on the DVD burner. I am quite pleased. Especially cool is how quiet the DVD burner is. I can't hear it at all.

In case you are wondering, the wireless card is the D-Link DWL-G520 (rev A2). Note the revision number, only certain revisions (like A1 and A2) work in Linux. You can find out the revision number by looking at the serial number of the card on the outside of the box it comes in. My burner is the NEC ND-2500A, which is supposed to only be available in the UK and a few other non-North American countries, but Canada Computers has them and they are supposed to be quite good.

My weekend was also cool, I actually went to Toronto to buy the stuff on Friday, and then took a Greyhound back to London that night. On Saturday I did a lot of relaxing, I didn't do a single productive thing. In the evening I went on an actual date with Kim (we don't get out on those much) where I even paid for stuff (with the assumed money I should be getting from income taxes, which is the same way I paid for the new hardware). We went to Jack Astor's for supper and they had a new menu which was fun. I got the Thai Chicken Coconut Curry, Yay Curry! Even if it is from Jack Astor's. Then we went to Galleria Mall downtown to see Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (represses large shudder) which Kim has been wanting to see for a while. Unfortunately we got there too early so we just wandered the mall for a while and talked and it was fun. The movie was alright (as good as it could have been at least).

Today when I got back to Waterloo I really felt like cleaning for some reason, so I did that until Matt came by and then we went with Adrienne and Andrew (new friend of Adrienne's) to the Egyption restaurant in the Plaza. It was pretty good, lots of vegetarian dishes and some good stuff for dessert. To drink I had some sweet sweet Mango juice that was really really really good. When we left they had a case just lying by the entrance and I really wanted to ask them how much they'd let me buy it for.

Then we went back to my house for usual Simpsons and stuff and I installed the hardware (and it works, the burning just finished), and now I think it is time for bed.

Oooooh, classes are almost done too, always fun to have changes. Except that exams are yucky.

Oh, one other thing that I forgot. I got a 12 month lease for a townhouse in the Fall with Jen, Kelly and Ryan. It is really close to the University and should be an alright place to live for the year. I'm just glad I don't really have to think about stupid housing stuff anymore.

No time to update now, must install new hardware! Yay, DVD burner and wireless PCI card! But it makes me sad because I will wreck my uptime (now at 39 days). Oh well, here it is (along with my bandwidth for the month):

Uptime combined with bandwidth, yay new records.

Stuff rules. I'm not as busy anymore, for some reason all my work went and got finished and there wasn't any more work to replace it. Somebody must be slacking off somewhere.

Last weekend was cool, Kim came to Waterloo to visit and we got up early (5:55am) on Saturday morning to catch a Greyhound to Toronto to look for a house for the summer with Adrienne and Matt. We found a sweet sweet place which happens to be pretty close to work for all of us. Yay! I'm really looking forward to the "Toronto experience" and I hope my job goes well too.

Not much else fun is happening right now, um, I have to do my taxes and that is sorta exciting because I think I will get a fair chunk back and if so I'm going out to buy a wireless network card and a DVD burner for my computer. I should find out for sure next weekend.

My computer has been on without reboot for almost a month now, see:

mclausch@duffman:~$ uptime
19:37:52 up 25 days, 4:45, 2 users, load average: 0.11, 0.16, 0.15

I'm amused because this is the longest I've ever had it on without rebooting. Doesn't seem that long except that I dual boot Linux and Windows so I have to reboot whenever I need the other OS. What does this new longevity mean? That's right, I don't have any use for Windows currently. Maybe I can keep my computer on until the end of the term, that would be fun.

It's a pickle!

A Pickle, most likely Dill

Matthew's number as listed below appears to be too long to display without going outside of its comment box. That is unfortunate. I've decided not to do anything about it though. Support for causing long words to break in two inside of a CSS box is being added to CSS3, which no browser currently supports. Thus I'm not going to bother putting it into my stylesheet yet. Microsoft has a CSS property that would do what I want in IE, but it is not part of the W3C standard and so I am refraining from using it. The other alternative is to actually break the number in two with a space, however that would obscure meaning and that isn't very good either. So for this month, unless you have your monitor set to a very high resolution, my website will have a horizontal scrollbar. Enjoy.

We just recieved our last cryptography assignment for the term, and lo and behold the first question wants us to factor a 512 bit RSA modulus. This is generally considered quite hard. Fortunately for us, we were told that the two primes were consecutive (no other primes between them) and so factoring is made a bit easier. And by a bit I mean a lot. Less than a second in Maple.

So, my new favourite number is the RSA modulus we were given and which I present to you here. In case you are wondering it is 155 digits long which is equivalent to 512 bits. The number is:

13407807929942597099574024998205847189283435579012041349483201012750935011022883316571881173443541492379311162245228741838039068780672466659642406067092389

And since I was successful I can also tell you that the two prime factors of this number are:

115792089237316195423570985008687912438229444125126512994416529902772624499593
115792089237316195423570985008687912438229444125126512994416529902772624499773

They are really close together and both really close to the square root of their product which makes them easy to find.

I think I will call the number "Matthew's number" and its factors will be known as the disciples of Matthew's number.

I recently read two books by Cory Doctorow, both of which he freely distributes (plain text, no DRM anywhere) online, and both of which were pretty good. They are realistic Sci-Fi, by which I mean that none of the technology in the books is unbelievable. Eastern Standard Tribe is a book set in the not too distant future in a world of increased globalization and slightly increased technology. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is set a bit further in the future, in an almost utopian society where death and illness have been mostly conquered and the worth of a person is measured by the esteem they garner in others (its called Wuffie).

I originally read both books because the author has a non-traditional viewpoint on copyright issues, and was willing to experiment by freely releasing his novels while also selling "dead tree" versions in book stores. The experiment for him was a success; he sold thousands of copies in the real world, and his books were also able to reach many more people online than they ever would have been able to in bookstores alone. I know that I probably wouldn't have randomly bought either book from a bookstore, but I read them online and am now considering purchasing them for real.

I feel that this is the sort of model that needs to be adopted by people who produce content (literature, music, movies) in the modern world. Piracy will continue despite the best attempts of many smart people. By embracing the Internet as a distribution medium, content producers can reach a greater population (unbounded by geography, financial status or age) and as such have the potential to generate a larger customer base for their work. Sure, many people will consume their work without compensating the artist, but without the Internet, most of those people would not have consumed the work at all. And for most artists, creating the art for the delight of their fans is more important than the money. Similarly, appreciative fans will recognize the importance of compensating the artist for their work and will do so accordingly. If they don't then the artist will assume their art was not accepted and be forced to pursue other work to make ends meet. Supply and demand style.

Cory Doctorow released his book under a Creative Commons licence permitting non-commercial redistribution of his work by any party in any format so long as the original freedoms are unrestricted and he is acknowledged as the author. By not restricting himself (or his publisher - the very progressive TOR books) to be the sole distribution point for his work, he does not have to absorb all of the costs associated with the distribution. However since the licence requires his name as author be preserved, he has the potential to gain customers indirectly. Currently, most artists can not afford the costs associated with content distribution and as such attempt to sign on with the appropriate organization (book publishers, the RIAA, the MPAA). The ensuing oligopoly in each medium is unhealthy for the continued advancement of art since the organizations have the power to enforce what is popular by selectively restricting/promoting the distribution of certain works (for example - why was Britney Spears popular? Because she got air time on the radio because the RIAA felt they could make money off of her. Not because someone felt she made good music). The Internet gives the oppourtunity for an artist to be their own distributer and promoter, and as such eliminates the need for the oligopolists. Costs can come down and art from anywhere in the world can be accessible to all. That seems like a good thing to me.

Ranting is fun, I should do it more often. Just as a counter point to everything I have said, a lot of these ideas depend on the decency of common human beings, something which can be questionable from time to time. Its kinda communist even, and everyone knows that didn't turn out.

Anyway, read Cory Doctorow's books if you like Sci-Fi (or if you don't, they're free remember, you don't have anything to lose) and if you like them, consider buying them. If you arn't interested in owning a "dead tree" edition, he also recommends buying a copy and donating it to a local library or second hand book store.

Look, its March! I have updates in February that you might not have seen because I posted on the 29th, which is barely a day at all.

And now I have four. Ha!

One other note (wow, i suck), today is Leap Day or whatever, and I have three posts to commemorate it. Cool!

I forgot, I did do one interesting thing. I went to Mel's for supper on Saturday with Adrienne and Matt, and then we went back to Adrienne's rez room and made her go over her bandwidth limit. I also got to see approximately 10 different colours of Sharpies.

I had a very productive weekend, although completely uninteresting. I essentially worked on OS for 15 hours between Saturday and Sunday and I studied Cryptography all day Friday. The result is that the coding for our 2nd OS assignment is almost done and I may pass the crypto midterm on Wednesday. I even have time to finish my CS360 assignment in time to not have to use my late. Not procrastinating is really the way to go.

Jen wants me to add a comment feature to my website so that people can make comments about my posts. I don't think anyone would be interested enough to have it, but I will probably implement it at some point if I get the chance. I'm not capable of just using any of the very good free versions available like the one she uses on her site, I feel I have to do it myself. Which means it will probably not happen, or if it does it won't be until my work term.

Speaking of my work term, the dress code for my placement is Business casual...ooooooh it makes me feel special. Never had to care about dress before.

I'm going to Toronto on Saturday to check out a place to live, hope it works out, especially since it sounds like it might have a dishwasher.

Busy, so busy. Posting to note that my Internet hit a new record today, see:

Greater than 300kB/s on a line that is supposed to max at 180kB/s!

Yeah, loser. Whatever. OS is my one and only. At least if it were things would be a lot easier.

I added legs to my robot, he looks like he can run now!

Robot v.2, now with legs!

Yeah, so we managed to finish the first OS assignment on time; we think the code is at least alright, the design/testing documents may be another story. But who really cares about them anyway? The fun part about all this is that the second assignment was posted within hours of the due date of the first. And it looks like a lot more work than the first too. Isn't that special...right during midterms.

Co-op is going really well, as of today I have 8 interviews, which is a lot and takes up a lot of time. I really hope I get the job with Oculus in Toronto, it sounds like it would be really cool and learningful, plus the salary is amazing, not that I care about such things, no never, not me.

I'm in Waterloo this weekend to try and get ahead on a whole bunch of stuff so that I can focus on the next OS assignment for a while, but I don't know how far I will get, I have a cryptography assignment and a CS360 assignment and two midterms to study for. Next weekend is Valentine's day so I will be at home and I doubt I will get much work done.

Tonight Kim might come visit which would be sweet, otherwise I might go to the Bomber. If neither of these things happen I think I will try to watch the movie "The Godfather," since I really want to see it.

I added some new random quotes...see if you can find them all! (total of 25)

It's an update for the sake of updating.

Life is more interesting when I'm at school which means I have no time to write anything here. This is unfortunate.

Oh well, back to OS.

Here is a picture of my robot so far, I hope to add legs and stuff and maybe even make a small animation of it one day, but things are going to be busy so I doubt that any of this will ever happen. Sigh. All of the joints move and stuff and I converted the key system so that the same keys move joints on each side of the robot and you switch the active side with other keys.

An OpenGL robot made mostly of scaled cubes with rotating joints

Happy New Year!

Back to school now, I'm only taking 4 courses this term since I have taken two extra courses by distance already and I am thinking that Operating Systems (CS350) may take up quite a bit of my time. I am also taking Introduction to the Theory of Computation (CS360) as well as Applied Cryptography (CO487) and Calculus 3 (MATH237). Should be an amusing term.

Christmas was pretty good I think, I set a new personal record of having six Christmas functions to attend over the course of the break. Blegh. I slept a lot and that is what is really important so it was all good.

I think that is all for now, I'm not in the mood to document the details of my break. I probably won't update much all term just like last time I was at school. :(