10
Mar 08

New PUSA Album

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Go. Now. Buy. That is all.


01
Feb 08

Working for The Man

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Here’s something you never thought you’d be hearing from me: I’m working for Microsoft this summer.

Well, I’m working for Microsoft Research this summer, anyway.

Wait, put out those torches, put down the pitchforks and let me explain.

Some of you may know that I’ve been somewhat … critical … of Microsoft in the past. My anti-Microsoft sentiments have mellowed somewhat in recent years, however, The XBox 360 may have been to blame for that, and my hatred of Windows has ebbed since I realized that building operating systems is hard and keeping them working is even harder. Also, it’s no longer my job to fix PCs running Windows (thank goodness) so I haven’t seen the Windows installations of security-casual college students in a while.

So why MSR? Microsoft Research is where a lot of the interesting corporate systems research is happening right now, and the project I’ll be working on is really closely related to my current research. I’ll get to spend three months in the Seattle area during the three months that the area’s weather is really nice. Compared to what I would make at UCSD in three months it’s a huge chunk of cash. It’s a huge stack of win all the way around.


16
Jan 08

When will it end?

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Dear Sega:

Please stop making terrible Sonic games. You’ve been doing almost constantly since 1999 and it has to stop. A little part of my soul dies every time another of your unpolished, forgettable piece of crap games gets released with my childhood hero’s name on it. Thank you.


05
Jan 08

Giving the gift of game

I just bought The Orange Box off of Steam. It turns out that, since I already bought Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 1, I can give the extra license I purchased as a gift. If anyone wants that extra license, let me know and I’ll hook you up – first come first serve.


04
Jan 08

Winter break productivity

This basically sums up what my productivity would have been like if I had stayed at lab between Christmas and New Year’s:

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24
Dec 07

Garfield can actually be funny

Remove Garfield’s speech bubbles and you turn arguably one of the most unfunny cartoons of all time into a strangely moving, surrealist cartoon about a lonely single man talking to his overweight cat.

Here are some of my favorites:

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More of these can be found at Tweebiscuit.  Happy holidays everybody.


02
Dec 07

Cure for a scratchy speaker

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I had a problem with my speakers for a while, and it was getting on my nerves so much today that I finally sat down and tried to fix it. Essentially, when you adjusted the volume on these speakers, sound would cut in and out on the left speaker unless you had it set on just the right volume or you jiggled the knob for a few minutes. Even after lots of jiggling and turning, the knob was picky; every once in a while the left speaker would just  sort of stop working (and you’d wonder if you’d suddenly gone deaf in one ear).I had figured from the beginning that the problem was the knob itself. The knob is just a potentiometer (an electronic doodad that variably limits current flow based on the position of the knob), and sometimes the contact between parts of a potentiometer can get gunked up, causing the entire works to go crazy – at least that’s what the Internet tells me. Love the technical explicitness of that last paragraph? Blame the fact that I hated my electronics course in college.

Anyway, I called up my dad and asked for his advice on the subject. I was ready to rip the speaker open and spray lubricant on the knob, which may or may not have been a good idea. He suggested just turning the knob through its entire range of motion about 50 times. It turns out that worked like a charm – the speakers are as responsive as the day I bought them. Rocket scientist dad for the win!


13
Nov 07

Insert Filler for Uninteresting Life Here

Nothing that you’ll want to hear about has happened in the past two weeks, so here is a picture of a kitten in a boot:

A kitten in a boot

See you in two weeks.


31
Oct 07

Leopard

 

Leopard

Mac OS 10.5 is here!

First off, a warning. Don’t buy the Leopard Family Pack. I did, because I’m a sucker. I paid an extra $100 for a sticker on my box and an extra word on my receipt. Seriously, Apple, at least give me a CD key or some paper authorization of my extra licenses. Don’t just give me a sticker. I can fake a sticker.

 

Here are some of the things I really like about Leopard:

  • NetInfo Manager is gone! I hated that program so much. It’s been replaced by about 3 different control panels, but things are where you’d expect them to be instead of in an obscure, atrociously ugly utility.
  • Frostier frosted glass menus! Eat it, Vista! 
  • Terminal finally has tabs. iChat also finally has tabs. It’s a tab fiesta.
  • Although Screen Sharing uses VNC, it’s not glacially slow; their compression algorithm isn’t half bad.
  • Based on my benchmarks Spotlight is exactly a gajillion times faster than it was in Tiger.
  • Believe it or not, Leopard actually runs really well on my 4-and-a-half-year-old Powerbook G4. I am really surprised.
  • Apparently the OpenGL drivers are much improved, although I don’t really run games anymore.
  • NFS mounting (and auto-mounting for that matter) is no longer a gross hack. Hooray for nfs://
  • It’s shiny. Wait, you probably already knew that … but oh man it’s shiny.

I had this problem with my Macbook Pro that basically involved my keyboard suddenly not working for minutes at a stretch, but a clean reinstall seems to have solved that problem (fingers crossed on that one). I haven’t tried Time Machine yet, but I’m looking forward to it.


26
Oct 07

I’m OK!

My apartment didn’t burn down. My advisor’s home also didn’t burn down (at least it wasn’t burned a couple days ago – let’s hope that’s still true). My office didn’t burn down, so I’ll have a place to go on Monday. I’ve escaped to LA, where the smoke isn’t as thick and the house isn’t full of distracting things (like Final Fantasy XII, Guitar Hero II and reporters pointing to fires and saying, “Hey look! The people who hate America are on fire!”), so I may actually be able to get work done.

Business of the day: get renter’s insurance and get back to work.