The age-old question “What’s inside shazow’s head?!” has been answered: It is, indeed, a brain. And a vitam E pill taped to the left side of my forehead. No, I don’t have a fragment of my nose growing on the back of my head, it just got a bit cut off in the image. Aren’t my insides sexy? You’d do them. I know you would.

More pictures here: /files/photos/20060125 fMRI/

All of this brainy beauty is under the Creative Commons license — go wild.

So, how was the fMRI? Some was what you’d expect from watching too much TV, other parts were not. For one, it does make those weird sounds when scans are in progress. Not sure why (all those magnetic waves interfering with the atmosphere, making the molecules go berserk, thus producing noise?). Aside from different types of (really loud) noises (presumably depending on the type of scan), there was a faint chirping-like noise in the ambience the entire time.

The scan took just under an hour (I’m guessing 45~50 minutes, I wasn’t timing it). That included an anatomical scan, as well as a bunch of speech-related tests and other scans. That’s almost an hour of being unable to move in a very crampy plastic tunnel with loud noises. Fun (it kind of was).

So, it’s giant magnet, yes. But apparently the magnetism can be localized to different parts of the MRI tunnel (is there a more technical term?), and that was confirmed because my metal pants-zipper didn’t even twitch (while I was asked to remove my hoodie due to its zipper).

What’s more? I had to wear insulated headphones. Not sure if there’s an actual speaker inside the tunnel like we often see in movies, but all the instructions I heard were from the headphones. Don’t know what else to mention, questions are welcome.

The coolest part of this whole ordeal? The Windows-only (turns out there are Linux ports) scan-reading program (MRIcro) ran flawlessly under Wine. Go Linux.

How not to ask for help (#gentoo @ irc.freenode.net):

[02:02:46] <roRisc> help. upgraded from 2.6.12 to 2.6.14, and X dies

[02:02:49] <roRisc> at startup

[02:02:55] <shazow> roRisc: how does it die? error?

[02:03:06] <roRisc> shazow, yes. error.

[02:03:13] <shazow> roRisc: and the error is…

[02:03:13] <mat_b[home]> haha

[02:03:26] <roRisc> shazow, something that doesn’t make much sense…

[02:03:32] <shazow> roRisc: oh, thanks.

[02:03:34] <mat_b[home]> lmao

!!!

I got my first 90, hoorah! This puts me ahead of schedule in operation improve-my-cgpa. The plan was to get all marks above 70 this semester (achieved) and at least one mark in the 80’s (achieved). Then I was supposed to go for another one or two 80’s this semester, and then finally go for a 90 in my final year. Well, now the bar has been raised and I have no choice but to try even harder. :’-(

I learned one important lesson this semester: More remarks = more marks.
CSC324 - 90% - 4 remarks (2 assignment remarks + 2 midterm remarks)
CSC343 - 80% - 2 remarks (1 assignment remark, 1 midterm remark)
And the rest of the 70’s have no remarks (except my highest 70 which might get one exam remark, depending on whether the Professor is going round my mark one percent up).

I passed my Operating Systems course (with a modest 74%), and as promised, I’ll release a sexy gzipped archive of the shazow.net CMS source (under the GNU GPL license) sometime next week (when I have time to strip it of any hardcoded stuff). Along with that, depending how my course load goes, I’ll go on to develop a new module (you’ll see) and a couple of improvements to the current UI module.

Stay tuned (or something).

My preliminary schedule for the coming semester has been updated: /files/school/schedule3s.html

I’ll be dropping one course from that selection, most likely CSC318 on tuesday nights, so I’ll have tuesdays off (not that it will accomplish much, I’ll probably still come down to campus).

My fate for Operating Systems will be announced any day now. If things don’t go well, I may waste ~$700 and take some courses during the summer. Conveniently, my expenditures for the previous year have been very limited, so I already have enough money saved up for next year’s tuition. So, worst case, I can forego working full time in the summer (yet again) and concentrate on school and a couple of side projects to pay for my expensive lifestyle of weekly restaurant-eating.

Here’s a brief summary of my accomplishments for this winter break:

• Built two computers (for my relatives and parents of the significant other).
  Lesson learned: Latest NForce4 chipset motherboards don’t work with the latest Maxtor SATA2 hard drives.
• Played a fair amount of WarCraft 3 (mostly the Dota Allstars map).
  This is good in that I haven’t played a single game of anything since summer-time.
• Started another project which will never be fininshed. Named FeedNoodler (for now), it’s going to be an improved web-based RSS feed reader. It’s being co-developed by Hyfen (of doom). If you want to contribute somehow for some reason, you may contribute to the FeedNoodler Wiki, such as by adding to the Wishlist.

Possible plans for the future?

Something needs to be done with shazow.net. Right now it’s at that stage where it works well enough for it to be a shame to abandon, but not complete enough to do all the fancy things I’d like to do. One option is to migrate to an existing blog system like WordPress. By the likes of Maria, this action would be considered a sell-out. I agree with her.
So, I decided, if the OS/161 gods bless me with a passing mark, then I’ll opensource the shazow.net codebase and start on rewriting the core node-handling system into something more powerful and secure so that other people can start on writing nice modules for me to use.

Lastly, I want to mention good things about my fantastic host, DreamHost (referrer-enabled link).
They recently upgraded their services and features 4 to 8-fold. Their basic service, for example (the one I’m using), was upgraded to a ridiculous 20 GB of disk space and 1 TB monthly transfer cap. This is, as they said, jawdropping. I highly recommend them to anyone looking for a new host. Now, I just need to find of a good way to waste all that space. :D

I’ve been avoiding doing this, but after taking an awesome shower with my new awesome showerhead, I’m rejuvinated and motivated. Showering is no longer a chore, hoorah.

(Several minutes after putting my clothes on.) Ok, the rejuvination wore off.

Umm, here are situations where public smoking irritates me:

On my way to school on a cold winter morning, I get out of the bus. The way from the stop to the class is via a thin sidewalk and a half-hour subway ride. With subzero temperatures, I struggle to breath the thin frozen air. My fellow commuters transform from a bunched up clump of coats, hats, gloves and bags, into an orderly single-file line to fit the thin sidewalk path to warm salvation. We walk over the padded snow, we breath in what little cold air allows itself to be sucked in, and we walk. Somebody lights up a cigarette, now breathing isn’t so pleasant anymore. To walk around the pesky smoker? I cannot; the path is too thin and enclosed in icy snow. To fall back away from the fetid fumes? I cannot; the lemmings behind me push on. I’m stuck trying not to breath the air that was once thin and cold but is now thick with that pungent sour smoke smell. I don’t like it.

On my way home on a cold winter night, I wait for the bus. At the Go Transit station, the bus is idling in front of the stop, scheduled to depart in ten minutes. I wait along-side of the bus, as do my fellow commuters, for the driver has not arrived yet. We’re in single-file again - these are the times when you appreciate your thorough kindergarten training in single-file queueing. The man behind me chatters away on his cellphone to his significant other. The line is long and the unspoken rule requires us to line up ahead of time to insure good seating. Unfortunately, the man behind me lights up a cigarette while chattering away on his cellphone. Also unfortunately, the wind is blowing his smoke in my direction. The people behind him are saved, but I and the couple people in front of me shuffle around, trying to avoid the stream of smoke eminating from his mouth. Ack, the smell. I don’t like it.

My exam schedule, for your convenience:

CSC363H1F  TUE 13 DEC  PM 2-5 (Computational Complexity and Computability)
CSC324H1F  THU 15 DEC  AM 9-12 (Principles of Programming Languages)
CSC343H1F  MON 19 DEC  AM 9-12 (Introduction to Databases)
CSC369H1F  TUE 20 DEC  EV 7-10 (Operating Systems)

When this is all over, school starts up again on January 9th. I’m not sure what I’m going to do until then.

Let’s go back in time about 14 years. I brought home some flowers that I picked from the park nearby (I do realize how flamboyant that sounds, and I don’t remember why I did it - my mother’s birthday perhaps?). Anyways, couple days later, all is well, and there is a big stench. I sniffed my toys, I sniffed my clothes, I sniffed the closet, I sniffed whatever could be sniffed, for the longest time I couldn’t figure out where this, very distinctive, stench came from.

Couple of days later, I stumbled upon the flowers and noticed that they were the ones that reeked! Crazy huh? So I got rid of them, and lived happily after.

A decade and a half later, I noticed this smell in my home again. Without a second thought, I knew it was the flowers. Amazing how we learn, isn’t it? Seems like something so trivial, yet so useful.

Update: Am I imagining things or did the font size on this site decrease?
Also, you can now add feeds into your GMail account, it’s fun!
Settings -> Web Clips -> Search by topic or url: shazow.net -> Add
Fantastic, isn’t it?

I added a new icon for this here website. It’s not a gold-plated S-etched phallus - it’s a tophat! Really!

I want to say that I’ve survived yet another year, but next week looks bleak. And the week after even worse. I could very well be dead in a couple of weeks and then you’ll all laugh at the irony - we don’t want that.

I have absolutely nothing to rant about. My life has become so dull. Or perhaps my life has become so condensed with things to do that there is no more room for imagination (just whining).

I am going to conclude this fourth paragraph starting with “I”, then read my daily comics, and go to sleep. Good night.

What’s worse than a week of doom? The little week after the week of doom that pretends to be friendly and cute, and then when you get through the week of doom, the cute little friendly week turns into a flesh-tearing manifestation of Cthulhu and has its way with you.

I had my appointment with the speech pathologist today. It involved stuttering in front of a camera, in hopes that naive students can learn from my misfortune (consent form signed to that effect). Then, followed by a short term memory test, reflex and rhythm test, hearing test, and some specialized personality tests. (The results that I have received on the spot were all normal — I’m NOT going deaf.)

I received $10.00 for my troubles, which I wasted on a Pita (from the pit), and Programming M&M’s (and a chocolate croissant, with chocolate milk, but that’s a secret).

Now that my profile has been acquired, the next step is to get my fMRI, which wont be until after January (or possibly February). Looking forward to it.

So, what happened this week? XBox 360 has been released!
Interesting points about it:

• XBox being sold for phat lewt on eBay.
  Current prices range from $750-1050 USD.
• Microsoft is losing money again? ¹ (Remember how Microsoft lost a few billion in the underpriced original XBox, including game profits?)
  
  Microsoft is gaining money for a change?
  No one knows.

  ^{1. These estimates aren’t really accurate, since they take retail prices of each component into account, and not bulk contracts, like it’s actually done.}

Alright, I reached my Microsoft-talk quota for the month. We’ll be resuming our regular programming (Google-related chatter) in our next installment of shazow’s blog.

Google Discovery of the Week: A Google Images Feature

Type in the address of your favourite site, and get all the images that Google has indexed from that site.
Example: shazow.net @ images.google.com

Isn’t that fantastic? Too bad it doesn’t cache full-size versions, since most of them don’t exist on here anymore. But it’s still nice.

So here’s my status from last friday, to next friday:

• Friday 11th:
  
  Economics term test (The stench of death was mild for this one.)
• Monday 14th:
  
  Computational Complexity and Computability assignment (Or Tuesday, if I don’t want the 5% bonus.)
• Wednesday 16th:
  
  Programming Languages assignment
• 59 seconds later on Wednesday 16th:
  
  Operating Systems assignment (Going to screw over 2 other partners for this.)
• Friday 18th:
  
  Databases assignment (Only one other partner is going to hate me for this.)

I cannot recall who was victimized by my ranting and who wasn’t, so I’ll re-rant to insure full encapsulation of victimization. Or something.

So, I’m getting an fMRI of my brain (and getting paid for it) for stutter research at UofT. Next week I have to “come in for a speech-language assessment done by a qualified Speech-Language Pathologist” ($10 for this trip). Then, couple months later, I get shoved into a giant electronic magnet and am going to be asked to read and speak to them while they “ooh” and “aah” at pictures of my brain. And then I get a CD of all the pictures of my brain, and a toasty $15.

Don’t you wish you had pictures of your brain?

The annual NetHack Tournament is among us. Unfortunately I’m nowhere good enough to compete. I’m kind of sad that I am yet to find anyone else who plays (I need to make some new friends with people that do). Seeing as how I don’t know anyone interested in it, there wont be any use in me ranting about it, but I’m going to do it anyways: Here’s an awesome public NetHack server, nethack.alt.org. What’s awesome about it is that you can telnet to it and see other people play live. Though I very much would prefer a tiled version, like I play on my PPC.

I have no more assignments or tests for a week and 4 days. Isn’t that fantastic? It is fantastic! Maybe I’ll do something productive, or maybe I’ll go play some NetHack.

My accomplishment for October: I watched all episodes of House, M.D.. Very good show, though I don’t know who I’d recommend it to, it’s very heavy.

By the way, the pricing scheme for PS3 is out. This is to settle an old bet with ol’ Mark:

- PlayStation 3 will start at under 40,000 Yen (or under $346 USD) (Source who can’t do currency conversion).
- XBox 360 will start at at least $299 (Source). Many sources speculate that it’ll rise beyond $350 by the time it actually launches.

Anyways, the point is, by the time they come to release, they’ll most likely end up being the exact same price, which is what I said to begin with. Only difference is that the PS3 is scheduled to come much later than the XBox 360. Oh well, gives more time for the XBox 360 to fail miserably and for ex-fans to seek refuge in their new saviour. (I’m somewhat biased towards the Microsoft-less alternative.)

I also noticed that I’ve been growing more Microsoft-hating lately, like a good little Linux fanboy ought to be. Why? I am dunno.

Quick analysis of Doom:
Budget: $70 million (+ $8 for the motion blur)
Opening weekend: $15.5 million (worldwide)
Second week in: $22 million
Rating on IMBD: 5.5/10 (preliminary, likely to shrink)

Quick analysis of Serenity:
Budget: $40 million (No motion blurs were harmed in the making of this film)
Opening weekend: $13.8 million (worldwide)
Second week in: $22 million
Rating on IMDB: 8.3/10 (21k votes, not likely to budge)

Serenity wins. Humanity escapes eternal damnation by small margin. (It’s still very depressing that it only won by so little, but better than nothing.)