6:43pm - I received my Google Rejection tonight. Google was my ambition for the
past couple of years, but moreso over the past few months than ever befor
e (that’s an understatement). Naturally, I feel disapointment. Yet at the same
time, I feel relief — relief that the journey isn’t over.

Google was my holy grail. If I acquired a job there, I would be content. It
would be over before things even begun. This way, I still have my ambition to
show Flickr, Youtube, Facebook and all those yahoos how it’s done. Hear me roar.

I’ll stop stealing some poor sap’s wireless on Bloor and Huron and drive home.
Good night.

Asian guy listening to Eminem on his laptop says: Hey, I’m using a cracked version of Windows, do you know how to get updates?

Me: Nah, sorry. I don’t use Windows.

Him: Oh? What operating system are you using?

Me: Linux

Him: Oh yeah, I’ve heard it’s better… How much is it?

Me: It’s free

Him: Wow, really? So I just go on the Linux website and download it?

My ultra controversial rant about women in computer science is enduring writer’s block, so I’ll present some interesting statistics I found in the latest Linux Kernel 2.6.8 Changelog (3MB, be warned):

• Total Patches:
  $ grep -i "Author: " ChangeLog-2.6.18 | wc -l
  6325
• Number of unique contributors
  $ grep -i "Author: " ChangeLog-2.6.18 | sort | uniq | wc -l
  938
• Number of patches by Andrew Morton (lead maintainer)
  $ grep -i "Author: Andrew Morton" ChangeLog-2.6.18 | wc -l
  133
• Number of patches by Linus Torvalds (father of Linux)
  $ grep -i "Author: Linus Torvalds" ChangeLog-2.6.18 | wc -l
  40
• Number of patches by people with IBM email addresses
  $ grep -i "Author: .*@.*ibm.*\.com" ChangeLog-2.6.18 | wc -l
  387
• Number of unique IBM contributors
  $ grep -i "Author: .*@.*ibm.*\.com" ChangeLog-2.6.18 | sort | uniq | wc -l
  81
• Number of patches by people with Google email addresses
  $ grep -i "Author: .*@google.com" ChangeLog-2.6.18 | wc -l
  11
• Number of unique Google contributors
  $ grep -i "Author: .*@.*google.com" ChangeLog-2.6.18 | sort | uniq | wc -l
  7
• Number of patches by people with GMail email addresses
  $ grep -i "Author: .*@gmail.com" ChangeLog-2.6.18 | wc -l
  466

Take these numbers with grains of salt. Some people use multiple email addresses, others use non-work email addesses — Andrew Morton is a Google employee for instance, but doesn’t use a @google.com address.

I was impressed at the quantity of contributions by IBM, they make up 6.1% of the total number of patches in this release. Good work!

While climbing a fence on Sunday at 11pm, I strained my left knee joints. It was pitch-dark, you see, and I couldn’t tell where the ground was. As I made the 5 foot jump off the fence, I overestimated the distance to the ground and didn’t bend my knees in time. So when I landed, I could literally feel one of my bones in my left knee dislocate for a moment and, luckily, snap back into place.

Now I wobble everywhere I go.

My courses:

CSC340H1 F - Reqmnts Engineering
CSC407H1 F - Softw Arch & Design
CSC443H1 F - Database Sys Techn
CSC458H5 F - Computer Networks (UTM)
CSC347H5 F - Intro to Information Security (UTM)
CSC494H1 F - Project Course

CSC408H1 S - Software Engineering
CSC422H5 S - Cryptology & Comput. Complex. (UTM)
CSC321H1 S - Neural Networks
CSC495H1 S - Project Course

My schedule:

first semester, second semester (dashed outlined boxen are at the UTM campus — yay 20 min commute)

Yes, that’s right: 10 Computer Science courses. I’m hard-core like that.

I’ve been lacking my camera for the past few weeks so I had to resort to taking pictures with my phone. Now that I got it back, it’s time to unload! Let’s begin:

This here is the remnants of a scavenger hunt, found on College st. just east of Spadina. Why don’t people do more things like this?

Now this is the pinnacle of productivity in the office. I was very proud of my accomplishment. (Had to use paper buffers between the cards because they were too damn slippery. :-()

Surely this is what you”ve all been waiting for (without knowing it): Office monitor art. Created entirely out of post-its, it’ll make any monitor look that much better. And it’ll make passing by grad students go “what is THAT!?” Or at least it did for one, while the rest must have been too busy deriving pi in their heads.

Last, but certainly not least, my new monitor. The Acer AL2216W, 22″ of wide screen goodness. As a screen quality junkie, it’s not that much to brag about, but after being shackled to a 17″ 4:3 monitor for forever, it’s certainly liberating to go dual screen, let alone wide screen. Hoorah.

While reviewing the latest hubbub on GPLv3 (the open source license) I got hit with a strong wiff of nostalgia. Back in my Windows days, some 9-10 years ago — before I discovered the dark art of pirating software, I would browse download.com for freeware. My perception of freeware was that a very kind-hearted developer, surrounded by a throng of money-hungry leeches, stood up and exclaimed “I’m going to try make the world a better place.” On Windows, freeware was so rare, I’d be lucky to find anything at all that was worth using, but occasionally I did (like IrfanView, one of the best image viewers I’ve ever used).

Fast-forward to today, into Linux-land, where 99% (literally) of my software is open source and free. The 1% being Cedega (used for running, non-free, Windows games).

While reading the debate on GPLv3, I see that there really is a throng of kind-hearted developers amidst the throng of money-hungry leeches. Albeit a smaller throng, but a throng nonetheless. Enough people to make the free world turn.

Some things are free.

As a casual gamer, I game. I game with Cedega and I game with Wine. Occasionally, I’ll also enjoy a native game or two.

While enjoying an exuberant game of WarCraft III, I will occasionally have some downtime and use it to check my messages. This requires switching from the game to another application. In the ol’ Windows days, this would be done with an alt+tab. You’d hit the two magic keys, blink your eyes and hope that the screen changed states by the time your eyes opened. Of course, it never would. You’d always open your eyes with disappointment, and wait a couple more seconds until Windows woke up and decided to do something useful.

Although Linux is faster with the window switching to begin with, desktop switching is in a league of its own. When I was a young and unwise penguin, I scoffed at and avoided virtual desktops. Also, in the same streak of naivety, I always used to maximize my windows — but that’s a different rant altogether. But now, by allocating different purpose to each virtual desktop, my productivity flourishes. And I can save a few precious eye blinks — dry eyes be damned!

One for web browsing and chat, one for music and file browsing, one for development or gaming, and one to bind them all.

When I play some WarCraft III DOTA on desktop #3 and I get pinched to death by the Sand King, I can spend the 40 seconds it takes to respawn productively by replying to pending messages on desktop #1. And quickly switch to desktop #2 to change songs before going back into battle.

There was a slight issue of Gaim opening its new message windows in whatever desktop was currently active, but that’s easily fixed with awesome desktop managers like KDE by restricting the application’s window class to a specific desktop. Yay.

Someone remind me, why did I start a blog? After (what I’m reluctant to call) “maintaining” a blog for several years, why do I continue? It’s not like I have anything to say to the “public”. I say oodles of things to each of you who read this individually, but I never have anything to say to all of you as a group. You don’t belong in a group. What are you doing here?

Today I witnessed a coworker getting advised to start a blog, which made me think to myself “wait, no one ever asked me to start a blog — why did I?”

Or for that matter, why do I read blogs which also have nothing to say?

It’s not entirely true, I do have things to say. I just don’t say them by the time I don’t want to say them anymore. *Looks at three incomplete pending posts*