Psalm 23
Mood:  chillin'
Topic: Bible
I have had this Psalm stuck in my head for the past week. I couldn't remember anything but the first line and the famous verse 4. Finally today I took a quick second to look it up. It's a wonderufl Psalm to memorize if you're at Cornell. It will definitely keep you on the correct side of the bridge.

Psalm 23
A Psalm of David who became King of Israel

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
for his name's sake.
Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and love will flollow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
----
I just realized for the first time the deep shepard/sheep metaphors in the first paragraph. q:o)

dan's blog is back
Mood:  celebratory
Topic: other blogs
not sure if it was ever gone, but it seemed that way for a while. Dan, my brother, has his blog up again. Link has been reinstated on the left there.

To dan - I also sometimes find random pieces of clothing throughout campus and wonder who could be shedding them. The most mundane - a pair of mittens. The strangest - a bra.

breaking news! (kinda)
Mood:  celebratory
Topic: News
US Secretary of State Colin Powell has submitted his letter of resignation to Bush. This IS breaking news according to the MSNBC website, but the reason that I wrote "(kinda)" on top is that my fiancee and I have known that he would resign ever since everyone else started dropping like flies.

We didn't think he'd leave because it seemed that everyone else was leaving. We thought he would leave because he has had a very tough couple of years. Ever since the Iraq problem began, he has always seemed to be on the wrong page. He was the stooge for the government and Colin Powell has too much integrity and pride for that.

For example, practically on the eve that we went to war with Iraq, Colin was still sayin that we weren't going to war. He was also talking a lot abou the weapons of mass destruction. Like those weapons, both things blew up in his face when he found out that no one had sent him the memos about how wrong this was. I can't think of all of the examples off the top of my head, but I can remember in the past few months that he has been on the wrong page nearly every time.

If you know anything about Colin, you know he's not purposely going against Bush. He's a military man and a man with a lot of integrity, he wouldn't do that. He would respect his leadership and do what he needed to do to get the job done. No, this has been the Bush team consistently using Powell to quiet down critics while they schemed away.

Leave Powell, leave and go have some peace in your life. I am proud of the work you have done.

Ying and Yang: One Good Thing and One Bad Thing About Linux
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: Linux
Good Thing: I used K3B, a CD/DVD authoring tool, yesterday to burn my mix from the PSP AIDS Ball and I was very, very impressed. K3B is the perfect blend of the simplicity of Roxio and the informative aspects of Nero. (Both of these, if you don't know, are Windows CD/DVD burners)

What I hate when I'm using Nero is that I don't have the nice drag/drop of Roxio. Also, the interface is not very intuitive. However, when it's burn time, Nero gives a lot more detailed information about what's going on and keeps a log. So I know exactly what the program is doing. Roxio has the overly simplistic CD that turns golden as it is authored.

K3B, on the other hand, has both of these aspects. It is awesome! Last night I hooked up my external DVD burner to the laptop for the first time, started up K3B and it worked perfectly on the first time. It is also chock-full of a ton of options which I have only begun to understand.

Bad Thing: I am 99% ready to migrate fully to Linux with just a backup computer running Windows for when I need a certain capability for work or school. But there is one last thing keeping me from doing this: installation of programs is horrid. Well, this needs qualification - if I install from yum (I'm using fedorda) then everything works dandy. But if I have to download from the internet and ./configure and make and make install and all that crap then it is horrible. It almost never works for me and it takes forever and you have to go find things to satisfy dependencies. Why can't there be an installer like Windows? This is the only thing that gets me ticked about Linux. If I find a windows program online I just download the file and click on the .exe and everything is installed. Can it be so hard to incorporate something like this for linux? I guess that's what an RPM is, but there aren't RPMs for everything. Am I wishing for something impossible?

extending the offer once again...
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: "Kobrakai" - Lost Prophets
Topic: The Web
Anyone out there with a blog who wishes to exchange links, just let me know. This last month alone I've had 2003 visitors to my blog. So if you would like for me to have a link to your blog, just let me know and, if you put one up to mine, I will reciprocate. Not only is this good for getting more readers, but the more links you have in and out of your page, the higher you are ranked on google. q:o)

sdrawkcab
Mood:  don't ask
Now Playing: "Some Fantastic" - Barenaked Ladies
Topic: School Stuff
Argh! I hate when stuff is backwards in ECE and then it just confuses the crap out of you. For example, current is caused by electrons, but the direction that we conventionally use for current is backwards to the flow of electrons.

Most recently, in my simulation lab I am working on CMOS capacitors. I was going nuts for the past 15 minutes because all of my graphs were backwards. Then I suddenly had a flash of insight...nmos capacitor is p-type and pmos capacitor is n-type. I have no idea why this is and it drives me nuts! I could have saved so much time if they had named these things correctly the first time!

mmhmm track 1
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: "Things of This World" - dc talk
Topic: Music
Here's part one of the awesome relient k lyrics from their new album, mmhmm. This one always makes me think it belongs in a teen movie.

"The One I'm Waiting For"
Relient K

The way that girl can break a heart
It's like a work of art
And this is the worst part
She knows it

And she's so confident
That she's what everybody wants
But nobody wants
Her to know that

So fall back on all of your premonitions
And just learn to listen
To those that have more wisdom than you
And just stop
Putting so much stock
In all of this stuff
Live your life for those you love

And I'm still waiting for
You to be the one I'm waiting for

The way that girl can turn a head
Well she is such a threat
But don't ever forget
She knows it

And she's got it all
All figured out
And she won't let you doubt
She knows it

I'm still waiting for
You to be the one I'm waiting for

Something tells me that this is going to make sense
Something tells me it's going to take patience
Something tells me that this will all work out in the end

why oh why does it take so long?
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: School Stuff
why does everything take so long when working off the unix machines from home? each graphic takes soooo long to load - it's killing me!

and while I'm asking why, why is Firefox 1.0 more buggy than 0.9? 0.9 was my complete replacement for IE because it was much better. 1.0 keeps messing up with my tripod page.

AIDS Ball Analysis
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: "We Three Kings" - Dingers
Topic: School Stuff

If you didn't go to Phi Sigma Pi's AIDS Benefit Ball last night you really missed out. The party was bumpin' and the dance floor was packed once people got the courage to start dancing.

It was my first time DJing in over a year, but I got right back into the groove as soon as I got everything up and connected. I was a little worried at first that my speakers wouldn't be able to fill all of the Memorial Room with music. My fears, it turned out, were unfounded. My music filled the hall as well as the lobby of Willard Straight Hall.

I was able to set up the laptop to record my mix throughout the night. I haven't been able to listen to it yet - it was a 3.5 hour mix and I've been busy with some other things. But I intend to get it onto CD so that I can listen to it and see how to improve my mix. Also, I'll make it available online for others to experience.

As always it was tough to decide which songs to play. There were so many that I just couldn't get to because there were only 3.5 hours in which to do it all. I also had to go across quite a few genres to get all of the music that everyone wanted.

I ended up playing Rap, Reggae, Sala, Bachata, Merengue, Swing, and Disco. At first I was afraid that people wouldn't be able to dance to some of the music because I'm used to DJing in South Florida, but apparently a lot of people here take advantage of the Salsa and merengue PE classes.

Overall, I think it was very successful because people pretty much kept dancing the whole time. It's funny because it took some people a lot of time to warmup. Some of the people who were dancing at the end and really enjoying it, wouldn't get up to dance earlier. I almost wish I had just one more half an hour.

It was also a success because we were able to raise quite a bit of money for the Elizabeth Glazier Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Last night alone we raised $1000 and we had collected $100 in donations. Plus, at least one of the alumni has decided to match the money we made with her own donation. She may not be able to do a one-for-one with $1000, but even a 1:2 would give us another $500. And if more alumni participate we could send them an awesome check!

Here are two more pictures. Enjoy - and next time you better come so you can have this much fun!

Bored of Reality Tv?
Mood:  chatty
Now Playing: "Oye Mi Canto" - NORE & Nina Sky
Topic: The Web
Those who are paid to know these things have predicted that as the internet matures (it's just barely entering it's adolesence) we would end up with new types of entertainment. The big networks don't control the internet, we, the netizens, do. I can put up anything I want on my site as long as it's not covered by hate crime laws or relating to terrorism. (Oh yeah, they can also stop me from copyright infringement) People may or may not come depending upon what kind of advertisement I get, but I can put up anything and no one can stop me. As you know, this is definitely not the case with Tv. If you are caught broadcasting over the airwaves without a license, even if your material was to help little kids become geniuses, you would get into trouble and be fined. The other difference is that the internet is relatively cheap, make that orders of magnitude cheaper, than Tv to make content for.

So, if you're tired of reality tv, which is not reality tv, but really unscripted tv....ok, it's not unscripted, but the contestants don't know that the producers will string together the clips to make it seem like so and so is ALWAYS complaining when they only complained once; unless they've seen VH1, then they should know what they're getting into. Also, I hope that guy that jumped into the pool naked, in a spread eagle pose in Real World knows that if he ever runs for president or other office that this video may surface - without his bits fuzzied out. But I digress....

If you tire of this crap that you watch only because there's nothing else to watch, then I introduce you to one of the alternatives - watch something from Rooster Teeth Productions. Their work is semi-professional and the shows are pretty funny. It's geared a little more towards gamers, but it's still funny. Red Vs Blue takes place in a stereotypical shoot 'em up game. I don't know what game it's based on, but it's one of those lan party games where you each have a base and try to kill the others. I've watched the first two episodes and I think they're pretty funny. It isn't the funniest thing I've ever seen, but it's better than anything I've seen on Tv lately. In fact, they sell DVDs with the previous two "seasons". This has to potential to do for Tv/Video what the internet has done for garage bands. Groups that would have never gotten a record, not because they were crap, but becamuse they didn't match the stereotype that the music execs wanted, have been able to gain followings and actually make money. They haven't reached a level where they can sustain themselves from this income, but at least they have listeners, and as someone who likes to create content, having people look at, watch, or listen to you work is often more important than if they buy it.

Then they [RTP] have The Strangerhood. This footage comes from the new in-game camera in The Sims 2. The series only has a couple of episodes up, but I'm not 100% sure what it's going to be about. It appears to be a parody on Reality Tv, but it's a little hard to tell after only two episodes. I like the theme music and I like the idea so much that I can't wait until I get The Sims 2 so that I can try something like this for myself. It's like unlimited free actors.

So check these guys out because what they're doing is groundbreaking. The same way that I've recently begun to heavily promote Linux because it gives one freedom, I'd like to promote people doing things like this. These are the kinds of disruptive technologies and trends that force change.

I'm not saying that overnight M$ will fall and Tv will stop showing crap, but if current trends continue, things will have to change. M$ will either have to adapt and give people what they want for less $$$ or they will be pushed aside like OS/2 and become an obscure little OS that almost no one uses. They don't even have awesome graphics or music like the Mac to keep them alive. Also, perhaps one day you'll be able to watch content from RTP on your Tv instead of crowding around your computer or hooking up the 'puter to the Tv.

Stay tuned for my own creative works. If not over Thanksgiving break, then definitely when Christmas Break comes around expect new artwork, un-touched up photos, the first chapters of Lights Out, and - perhaps - some Sims-based movies. I may have to dissapear after this awesome run of posts every day since the anniversary of the blog, but I've got a bunch of crap to finish for school before Thanksgiving Break. I guess one thing to be happy about in school is that in the "real world" there's no Thanksgiving, Christmas or Spring Break. That's why they have to pay so much - as compensation. It's really bad for productivity, but that's a topic for another post.