frase.id.au archives

frase.id.au archives for February 2006:

27-02-2006 - I'm a cool uni bum (frase)

25-02-2006 - the end of holidays wrap (frase)

20-02-2006 - let it be said... (frase)

15-02-2006 - wednesday's post (frase)

13-02-2006 - omigosh.... (frase)

09-02-2006 - 100K points for MZ! (frase)

06-02-2006 - flakyrama (frase)

01-02-2006 - a new kernel for fortune2 (frase)

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Monday 27-02-2006

I'm a cool uni bum

comments (4) »

Posted by frase @ 15:14 on 27-02-2006

well, here I am, back at uni.

And I feel extremely cool. I have run into a large number of people I know today, and of course we all know that knowing people increases your coolness - especially if those people are cool, which they are.

Also, I no longer go for the 'backpack' look but the 'black leather laptop bag slung over shoulder' look is in. So that has increased my coolness, because now I don't look like a nerd (because, as we all know, nerds have backpacks and cool people have non-backpacks).

And, most amazingly of all, I am sitting under a tree in the great court (and that alone is a reasonable indication of coolness), wirelessly surfing the web on my shiny, glowy white Apple iBook. Which is extremely cool.

And the weather is cool. Not hot at all, but overcast and breezy. Which some people wouldn't call nice weather, but it beats the heat any day. So that's cool.

So in general, today is extremely cool. In fact, the only not cool thing today so far is that Zoe has stooged me and failed to show up for our great court rendezvous at 1400 hours. Slack, Zoe.

But that's alright, because I'm still cool.

t

Saturday 25-02-2006

the end of holidays wrap

comments (0) »

Posted by frase @ 19:44 on 25-02-2006

Well, it's been an interesting few weeks.

I have been working a *lot*. The last few weeks I've been working with Chriso at QCB, mostly relocating the archives to the container from the warehouse but also running this last week as the regurlar runner took a week off.

We basically finished up at the container; we haven't actually done anything to secure all the boxes from falling out, but the conatiner has actually been moved (while almost fully stacked) without *anything* inside it shifting, so we may not need it at all. Chriso did a splendid job screwing the shelves into the walls after the first container movement disaster (basically, the shelves on one side of the container toppled over = docs everywhere and twisted shelving).

With all this work, the big plus is that I'll be able to afford my upgrade sooner than expected. And the sooner that happens, the sooner I'll be able to get Vista happenang on what's left of my current rig. Which will be sweet - a new build was released yesterday; it's not Beta 2 but it is feature complete which is fully sick.

Okay, so what else is there to say? Not much, really. I've gone eBay mad over the past few weeks looking for bargains for my upgrade; hopefully I'll be able to get a few parts significantly cheaper. And uni starts in two days! I'm looking forward to it, but this semester, I mean business. I've already charted up all my assessment for the semester (bar one subject for which the Course Outline has not yet been published... *me glares at Schulzy*. I look forward to putting my whiteboard (a Christmas present) to good use.

And I suppose this wouldn't really be an 'end of holidays wrap' without actually wrapping up the holidays. So here goes: hot, relaxing, productive. They were just the right length. I've definitely had long enough away from uni for my mind to once again be operating in non-frenzied state. I've definitely caught up on all my lost sleep. So that's that.

And hmm... Blogurk. Well, we didn't get 0.6 out. In fact, we didn't even get 0.5 out, though it's just around the corner (I think... depends on uni I suppose, but the first few weeks will be light, so hopefully I'll get done what needs to be done).

So, that's a wrap.

t

Monday 20-02-2006

let it be said...

comments (2) »

Posted by frase @ 22:23 on 20-02-2006

this will be the randomest bloggage you've seen from me in a while

* How hot are the Swedish curlers!!! Man, they're hot! Apparantly it's more because of their Swedishness than the fact that they are elite curlers, but it nevertheless is certainly the sort of thing that will have people sitting up and taking notice of the humble, though highly entertaining (not only because of the attractiveness of the curlers themselves, but also in part due to the quirkiness of the game itself) sport of curling.

* How HOT does it want to be!!! Man! It's 9:30pm and it's still 27 degrees.

* Bat vs Possum. Seriously, get over your stupid territorial warfare - one of you choose a different tree and LET ME GET SOME SLEEP.

* Actually, I've been sleeping really well lately. Possibly the best sleep, on an 'every night for an extended period of time' basis, I've had in 12 months. But yeah, trying to *get to sleep* with a bat and a possum going at each other like no tomorrow in the tree outside your window can be trying.

* I'm fully psyched for uni. BRING IT OOOOON!!!! And go the UQ Posse.

t

Wednesday 15-02-2006

wednesday's post

comments (1) »

Posted by frase @ 22:53 on 15-02-2006

WELL, I noticed today that there seems to have been a bit of trend lately regarding my posts. That trend being I'm posting on Mondays and Wednesdays each week, and not on other days. So I figured I'd better post something and keep up the trend.

So I suppose I'll take a moment to recount what I've been up to lately.

I've been working quite a lot - a little more than usual at SCA (though not a huge amount by any stretch of the imagination), but mostly at QCB with the fine company of Chriso, installing shelving in a shipping container (last week), and now sorting through 10 years of customs docs and relocating them from their present location to said shipping container.

Truly, it's riveting stuff. But seriously it's not that bad. We did go a bit nuts inside the container though.

And what else can I say...? I've done a bit of work on Blogurk lately, trying a few new things and generally exhausting development on the 0.4 line so I can start on the installer not worrying about anything else.

Oh, and in case you didn't already realise, Omaha Sessions arrived fresh from the USA on Monday. It's is an ABSOLUTELY FREAKIN' AWESOME album and it was worth every cent and every ounce of effort expent in attaining it. Also, it makes 11 from 11 - I now have all of 311's albums, which to me is very exciting!

onetwothreefourfive

t out

Monday 13-02-2006

omigosh....

comments (0) »

Posted by frase @ 20:45 on 13-02-2006

Omaha Sessions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SERIOUSLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm like... oh..........

Sorry. I'm unable to speak. So here's a picture.

t

WHY: It's the summer of love, stupid! - All ages welcome - WHY: It's the summer of love, stupid! - All ages welcome -

Thursday 09-02-2006

100K points for MZ!

comments (2) »

Posted by frase @ 00:00 on 09-02-2006

Well, I've been hovering around the 99,000 point mark for nearly a week now, since the internet has been so dodgy. Fortnately, the phone line was fixed this afternoon (the morning after reporting the fault, which was done in the afternoon, so pretty happy about Telstra's response!), and a flurry of completed work units were sent off over the duration of the afternoon and early evening.

And right now I'm sitting at 100,082 points. So that's a milestone reached. A big milestone.

And for anyone who has no idea what I'm talking about... I contribute to the Folding@Home distributed computing project, run by Stanford University, which aims to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases (including BSE, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and even many forms of cancer). And MozillaZine (MZ) is the team for which I fold :)

It's a Worthy Cause, so grab the client and waste CPU cycles no more!

t

100k points for MZ

Monday 06-02-2006

flakyrama

comments (0) »

Posted by frase @ 10:26 on 06-02-2006

All my troubles started about a week ago.

Flaky power. It was wednesday or so when things started going crazy. The power went off, then came back on went back off again in a flurry of ons and offs. I immediately dashed into the server room and killed power to all the machines, but the power stayed off for a good few hours after that.

After it came back on, there were a good three of four more power outages that evening.

The afternoon of the following day, things started going funny with the net. It was dropping out every few minutes, which was *extremely* annoying. Still is in fact, but it's almost certainly a problem with the phone line somewhere between the server room wall and the Narangba exchange, as the line is supplying no power and the voice frequencies appear to be dead.

And now, just to add insult to injury, my computer is dying. It seems to be a power supply issue, most certainly not insignifcantly attributed to by the crazy power problems we've been having (we had at least one more blackout on Friday evening, though I'm not sure what time since I was at Rivers). Luckily it still sometimes starts though, so with any luck it will straighten itself out. For now though, I'll just leave it running (not that that's not the norm although with the power and internet problems lately there hasn't been much need for it to remain up) and start looking at a replacement power supply.

EDIT - oh, and my DVD burner doesn't work. Will I EVER have a working ODD?!?!

t

Wednesday 01-02-2006

a new kernel for fortune2

comments (1) »

Posted by frase @ 23:27 on 01-02-2006

I just thought I'd quickly mention... yesterday I compiled a custom kernel for the first time. FreeBSD 6, naturally, for the webserver.

The original (default) kernel weighed in at 6MB, while the custom job is a mere 2.4MB. It compiled in roughly 20 minutes on the target machine. That's a rough estimate, I didn't actually time it, but it was something around that including dependencies.

Anyhoo, I haven't noticed any great performance benefit, although memory usage is down a little (not that the machine has ever needed to swap, ever, so that not of any benefit at this point in time).

On the plus side, it boots noticably faster. And I've done it... which is a Good Thing(tm).

$leetness++;

t