Risen Against Gravity

GenSephyr

I've moved my blog and portfolio to http://fusedthought.com/en/blog. However, this site will still be kept as an archive...

Individual entires can still be accessed using their trackback links.

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Stress-sify in Poems

Talk about stress... I can't believe I actually acceded the request. I don't even know if I'll gain something about of it. A recognition perhaps? but is it even worth it? Was I out of my mind to accept even though I aren't even sure that the prize dangled in front of me is going to materialize.

I just aren't sure about anything anymore.

What used to be my good subjects seem to be going in the opposite direction. I just aren't good quality of a sponge anymore. It seemed to have reached maximum capacity... The days when whatever I put in there usually stays in there. But that reality seems eons ago. It has become a new reality that things just flows out. Facts become hazy, and this is even before the haze season comes.

"The battle cry sounded. Cries for help ensues.
The future seems lost, deep within the forbidden forest.
Prayers are made. It looks as if in vain.

The light of dawn breaks, casting light in the shadowy realm,
Hopes must be rekindled amidst the coming battle.
The clangs of helmet, the sound of swords...
Onward we shall go. Into the battle for hope."
(GenSephyr)

Sunday, July 22, 2007

A deprivation

Not the usual deprivation, but with the release of Book 7 of Harry Potter, I had to steer clear of forums and similar channels due to the spoliers that are posted all over the place.

Sighz. Still have to wait. People like me without pre-orders have to wait. Some stores didn't even display the book on the shelves.

That aside, this is really one bad weekend. Was incapacitated by PE lessons the other day. My left arm, which was fractured before, was rendered unable to bend fully or straighten fully. That came after after holding in "push-up" position for 2 over minutes, 60+ push-ups and 20 chin-ups/pull-ups....

One more day of rest before needing to return to school.

Anyway, to wrap up this post, here is a quote a found quite amusing and interesting...

"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools" Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Electrifying Stats

"Don't stand under a tree when its raining, or when there's lightning!"...
We used to hear that when we are young. That still holds true now....

However, a year or even just months later, you may hear parent's telling their children: "Don't listen to your iPod when its raining!".

What's a phenomenon and deemed as a music revolution has lately become a target of nature. It has become an electrifying experience for a few users. And thats not about the tunes either. Rather, its related to rain and lightning.

Recently, according to the newspaper, a Canadian jogger suffered wishbone-shaped chest and neck burns, ruptured eardrums, and a broken jaw when lightning traveled through his music player's wires. And furthermore, it wasn't even raining, but only a storm in a distance.

"Yikes! more hazards" may be one pertinent thought now. A questionable thing is that, if electronics was to blame here, why is this happening only to iPods? Last summer, a Colorado teen also ended up being struck by lightning when he was listening to the iPod while mowing the lawn.

In fact, any of these could happen to anyone bearing an electronic device on them. And frankly, everyone would have at least one on them nowadays. Maybe they were the tallest in the area? I don't by that argument. What I can accept is that now, with the huge success of iPods, majority of the people own one, whether its an iPod, mini, nano and so on. (Sadly, I don't have any of them). Thus with such a large sample, the chances of lightning striking a person with an iPod is very high.

For all we know, its just an unfortunate accident and a case of bad publicity for it.
However, I guess its best to err on the safer side and keep that music player in your bag or pocket (if you feel safe enough) when its raining, lest it becomes too electrifying to handle.

Friday, July 13, 2007

A pain in the OS (operating system)

Put my thoughts into action. Finally ditched Windows XP. Ok.. I didn't really fully ditched it yet. However, I finally got my long awaited dual-boot system.

Installed Ubuntu. Actually was planning to use fedora. However, without an easy way to configure internet access, I turned to Ubuntu instead. However, Ubuntu is not without woes. Sadly, it doesn't support WPA well as I'm using a USB wireless adapter and the linux driver doesn't support it.

However, the results have been quite satisfying. Other than the occasional freezes, usually due to the keyboard malfunctioning as the driver support isn't that fantastic. However, I don't mind pressing the power button to reboot again as unlike booting into Windows, it doesn't take eons just to see the desktop. In fact, it takes me about 15 minutes to boot into Windows, waiting for all the services to fully load. Compared to that, Ubuntu loads in under a minute. This is probably due to the lower level of requirements to just run the base system.

Moreover, from my point of view, my Ubuntu installation seems to have more desktop effects, especially since I installed beryl, which emulates some of the Windows Vista features like ALT-TAB preview switching, thumbnail preview when you have minimized applications and also a 3D desktop with as many virtual desktops as you want.

Currently still learning how to use as most of the things, even some common things need to be done in the console/terminal (command prompt in Windows). However, security is and has always been higher as you don't get root access to system folders, a feature Windows recently adopted in Vista. I don't think I ever felt safe to enter the net without a firewall and anti-virus.

Anyway, here are some screenshots:

Main Desktop


Desktop 3D effects (desktop cube)

Sunday, July 01, 2007

Weeks

Exams are over and we get a 4 day break until Monday which is erm... youth day? Yeah.. Something like that...

Finally got my website up and running.. Manage to get two domains... my main one at: http://fusedthoughts.x10hosting.com and a secondary one at http://fusedthoughts.googlepages.com. Althought currently, the x10 one doesn't work. I assume that the uptime for the googlepages one would be better although, it lacks full server benefits.

I never thought my computer had so much files. My C:\ Drive, which has 40Gb now has only 15GB left.. And thats when most of my files are on another partition. I desperately uninstalled over 10 programs and my free space count didn't improve much. I concluded that its all due to the every increasing number of updates for Microsoft Windows and Office... Its really getting out of hand. A base install of XP can take up so much space....

I've been thinking of dual-booting my system. Windows XP and Ubuntu or Kbuntu. I've haven't decided what I like better. The GNOME desktop environment. or K desktop environment (KDE).... Moreover, I'm a bit hesitant as one wrong installation move would require a re-installation of not only the Linux OS but Windows OS as well....

On a sidenote, yesterday was the last day of June and also the last day when Goods and Service Tax (G.S.T.) was at 5%. Starting today, G.S.T. is increased to 7%.

I went Vivocity yesterday. Got a programming book. My only programming book in like 5 years... Been always borrowing from the library. Its on Adobe Flex 2. Wanted to know it as it is integrated tightly with the upcoming Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) and I thought it would be interesting to get to know more about it. Got a 24% discount on the book. So I don't think its such a bad buy...

Oh wells. 2 more days of bliss before going back to school....

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