Geek on Two Wheels

ATI recently released version 2.25.18 of their Catalyst driver for Linux, and, for me, it has been a mixed blessing.

Power management now works perfectly in terms of not causing kernel panics, all previous show-stopper bugs have been squashed, and it was finally practically usable for my laptop. The only problem so far is an openGL API bug, which I shrugged off as insignificant as it would only affect my games.

Naturally, I then find out that OpenOffice actually links against libGL for some rendering functionality.

UGH!

Now, I’m back on the radeon driver, waiting for the next ATI release yet again.

Damn you ATI. And you too, OpenOffice.

For those that haven’t heard already, I’m currently part of an effort by SFPIRG to set up a bicycle workshop coop at SFU. Incidentally, I’ve also recently been implicitely promoted to project leader as the person originally spearheading the project is taking the summer off, vacationing(?) in some relatively far away land.

Of course, being involved in a coop workshop means that I now have a much increased inventory of bike tools at my disposal. Today, I decided to take advantage of these resources, and tried my hand at truing my rear wheel.

Although I was ultimately unsuccessful in actually truing the wheel, as I was afraid of breaking something, I did manage to get a good feel for it after some initial confusion over which way I’m supposed to twist the spoke nipples—yes, nipples: it’s not just for laptops and boobies. I’m fairly confident I am able to at least true my front wheel which is in a much better shape.

Ironically enough, the most difficulty I’ve had during my time in the workshop was actually figuring out the pumps. Yes, the air pump: one of the single most basic bicycle tools that even the most neophyte of riders can figure out. After almost 10 minutes of struggling to figure out why air was escaping from the pump as opposed to entering my tire, I finally came to the realization that the automagical valve-type selector only kicks in when the tube reaches a certain pressure.

Sufficient to say, it was a rather embarassing as I can usually figure these kind of things out fairly quickly, especially since it was a bloody bike pump. Nevertheless, it was a productive hour-and-a-half in the workshop, and I’m sure there will be many more hours to come.

I seem to have found the source of my ThinkPad R51′s high power drain during suspend problem.

Well, not quite gone just yet.

On Friday evening, I’m off to spend a weekend slightly closer to the North Pole for the now-annual Computing Science Student Society Executive Retreat. It will prove to be undoubtedly entertaining and productive, although I am slightly dissapointed that I’m going to be in Whistler for the first weekend that the bike park will be open, yet with no time to do any riding.

Amazingly enough, I’ve decided not to bringing my laptop to the trip, instead focusing on reading for my courses to occupy time on the bus. And, failing that, I will simply spend some more quality time on my borrowed Nintendo DS before it is sold off.

Yes, that’s right: this geek is going to be both computerless and wheelless for the weekend.

For no particular reason, I decided to google my own name and see the ranking of this here blog.

Looking through the first two pages of results, a pattern quickly emerges: almost all of the returned pages are either of the .edu TLD, of people with Dr. in front of their names, or is a list of publications by authors of this particular name. The two exceptions to this are an IMDb entry, and, well, this very website.

According to the internet, I have a lot of live up to for having this name…

Oh—this site was on page 2.

Tomorrow, it’s Monday, and that means it’s time to go back to school. Frankly, I’m not looking forward to it.

The decisions for my course picks were mostly made of desperation, and I’ve not heard many positive things about the specific offerings. Although I seem to have avoided any disastrous combinations of curriculum and instructor, the situation is still much less than ideal as I’ve not had a single course over the last two years, coops excluded, where I was happy about the final outcome. Satisfied, yes, but never joyful. As it stands now, the outlook for next semester remains similar.

All of this would not be too much of an issue if my schedule were not so absurd: five-days-a-week for one class a day, except Mondays, where my morning class is followed by a six-hour break and a three-hour evening class. My plans of weekday biking trips is about to be thrown out the window, and I honestly don’t know how I’m going to keep myself motivated through all this.

Here’s to hoping that everything will work out…

And here I was, a month ago, thinking my schedule was a piece of cake to put together.

I’m seriously wanting to swap CMPT 310 out for something else, but am having an incredibly hard time finding something to replace it with. Although I was initially not worried about the instructor offering the course at the beginning, what advice I’ve heard regarding this particular professor so far has ranged from Be cautious to Drop the course, right now—not entirely encouraging. And, on top of that, one of the students’ favourite professors for that class seems to be offering the same course in the fall, and I’m also really wanting to not do coop on the fall and spring semesters.

Naturally, I would like to keep my full-time student status for the summer, and need to replace CMPT310 with something else. Here’s where it gets depressing: all my choices suck.

Out of the very few courses offered that I’m willing to take, every single one of them are either on the days that I had planned not to have classes on, being offered by a reputabily horrible professor, or will be taught by an unknown sessional.

For now, it appears that my desire to not end up in a sucky 310 class has miraculously won over my desire for free Tuesdays and Fridays, and I will be taking LING 222 instead. Who knows: maybe Introduction to Syntax is so trivial that I won’t end up feeling gulity for skipping them, despite my strong desire to push my CGPA above the 3.0 mark again.

It’s amazing how alike we are to rodents.
First there’s the baby ages, when most of the day is spent sleeping and looking cute. Next comes the hyper-energetic child- and teenagehood, followed by a long time of, well, doing a lot of the same things. And, inevitably, old age arrives. Senile, barely getting around, but still stubbornly latching onto life as it’s always been.

Now, as the young’uns run in their wheel, it appears that the old is ready for a final night’s sleep.

Sleep tight.

I just can’t seem to get enough of this Nintendo DS thing.

Not moments ago, I noticed that the charging light on my borrwoed DS is turned off, no doubt indicating that the device is now fully charged, just waiting for me to pick it up and play another few rounds of Meteos.

Now, this meaningful indicator thing may not appear to be a big deal, but I’m sure we’ve all had our share of recharging devices where we, the user, had to spend effort to find out whether or not that device still needed charging. For example, the charger that came with my used cellphone has an red LED which turns on when it is plugged in, regardless of the amperage that is actually going through the thing: a completely useless indicator, other than perhaps seeing if your wall plugs are indeed giving you power.

The DS, on the other hand, only needs to be glanced at. If the orange light is on, it’s charging; if it’s off, it’s good to go.

Kudos Nintendo—kudos.

Great: it’s now almost 2 and I’ve just managed to put down Minish Cap. And here I was planning to get to bed at midnight…