Heath Ledger Dead

Why.

Cracked's 8 Celeb's You Didn't Know Were Geeks

Cracked's 8 Celebrities You Didn't Know Were Geeks

Now, I already knew about Vin Diesel's Dungeon and Dragons hobby but I never knew he was behind the studios that created Escape From Butcher Bay. I played that game and kicked-my-ass. I loved that freaking game. The story, voice acting, and small details you'd never expect from a game based on a movie topped almost any game I've ever played.

Dolph Lundgren. Who'd knew?

"So, really, to play a superhuman machine of destruction in Rocky IV, he still had to tone it down quite a bit. Hell, this man had to tone it down to play He-Man."

Link also contains Kate Beckinsale and Natalie Portman goodness.

Arthur C Clarke's "Star"

http://lucis.net/stuff/clarke/star_clarke.html

Clickety-click on the link before you read what I have to say.

Sigh. I read this short story from a small sci-fi anthology book I found in a discount store. I've never believed in the preachings of my church but I've always kept a small corner of my heart open for belief in the divine. This story got to me like no other story before. I know it's just a story but, to me, it's already truer than what I've read in the bible. Those stories where Noah builds an ark and Jesus feeds the multitude is a lot less real than the imagery I've seen from reading "Star."

Now, it's not all about how I saw the story as I read it. After I finished it, I was already so sad and crushed why God did this and how he let it happen. Ah... if I could write a story like that.

Hot Singer/Programmer Girl

This is just an idea... a hope... a dream. I hope that I can see in the near future a hot girl who sings songs about programming. Now, I don't have the artistic skills to write comic strips like XKCD so let me just write it out for you. She'll be like Kari Byron and she'll be singing songs titled "It's A Big Oh N log N" or "Perl Scripts Make Me Quiver." Sigh.

478 Motherboards

I've had problems with my Asrock motherboard since I first bought it but I've only been able to trace the problems to it after I tested different graphic cards and ram. I have this weird artifact that keeps cropping up during 3D intensive games; it's always the same figure and it's always in the same places. My 3D games also get these screwed up planes and lines intersecting at weird angles and I have to restart the game, go to the main menu, or (in the case of The Sims 2) I set the shadows to none then back again to detailed.

I've replaced my video card from a ATI thingy to the present nVidia 6800 and I've tried removing and leaving in the different ram thingies at different times to see if the artifacts come back and they always have. Interestingly, Warcraft 3 doesn't display those artifacts nor do the graphics go all screwy.

Recently, I've had really slow read/write speeds between my external HD (2.5"), internal HDs and my DVDWriter. Last year it took me 20 minutes to burn and verify a full DVD and now it takes an hour. I went to Gilmore St to look for a replacement motherboard and I found out that motherboards compatible to my present video card, processor, and ram are now phased out. Sucks.

I don't have enough money to buy a whole new set so I decided that the access speeds might be helped by replacing the IDE cables and a new enclosure for the external drive. I bought the IDE cables and a new enclosure and replaced them on my cpu when I found a fishing hook bait thing and a lead weight inside the cpu casing. WHAT THE HELL. I took them out but the access speeds remain a disappointing 2-4MBps between hard drives and a 1 hour 10 minute burn for dvds. (The fishing stuff must have ricocheted there when I ripped my boss' stored fishing gear from under the bed.)

Beach

My mother, grandmother and I took my grandfather around for a drive last Christmas vacation. This view is from Jo's by the Sea, a restaurant in Sibulan. That's Cebu in the distance.

Presents

This here's my girlfriend's niece kissing my present to her. This was sent to me with the caption "Thank you. Kiss doggie." My girlfriend told me she never let go of the stuffed toy. Sigh. I love Christmas if only to see my gifts thoroughly enjoyed by the receivers.

Dementia

Sigh. My grandfather had a mini stroke last year and it left him blind in one eye as well as decreased his mental acuity; he now has trouble finding some words to communicate. The day before I arrived home for the holidays, my grandfather was admitted to the ICU of the hospital because they, my grandmother and mother, feared my grandfather had another stroke. I don't know what makes a stroke a mini and I don't know what made them fear that my grandfather had another one but I do know that my grandfather looked pretty wasted away when I saw him in the hospital.

He is eighty-four years old and is suffering from delusions that my grandmother might be looking for another man. He is throwing tantrums when only my grandmother is there with him and sometimes even trying to choke her although at his age he doesn't have the strength to do so. My mother, a neurologist, tells my grandmother that you can't just tell him it's so silly to think that way. "It's the disease talking," she says.

I don't know what to do.

PSP Pdf Reading

I'm sad to say that I can't get Bookr Pdf Reader to work on my psp but I used PDF Tools to convert pdfs into images then use irfanview to do a batch rename as well as increasing the jpg compression rate. The batch rename is needed because PDF Tools creates image files without left zero padding and this might change the order of viewing the images.

My Daemon From the Golden Compass site!

Desra. She's my daemon. She's modest, shy, solitary, spontaneous and fickle. I wanted a dog. A bulldog. Or a grizzly bear. *sigh*.

The Day After Trillanes Stormed The Manila Peninsula Hotel

I don't know if that's real smoke. And I don't know where those buildings are.

Basic Math

I can't believe what happened to me last night. I don't know what caused it but I suspect the framework I'm using at work is to blame.

I went to CDR King to buy some blank dvds and asked how much would twenty-five of those cost me. The girl at the counter said they were priced at twelve pesos each so I struggled to calculate it and ended up with six hundred pesos. Damn it. Counter-girl then told me they didn't have any stack less than fifty pieces so I told her to go ahead and get them for me.

I held three five-hundred peso bills as the girl rang up my order because I thought I was going to shell out a thousand and two hundred for the stuff. Everything was totaled and my bill was at six hundred pesos. I embarrassingly pocketed my extra bill.

Neat Questions

From necramirez:

questions sa client (U.S.) interview via phone:

CompSci questions!

1) Given an array of integers of length N, you know that the values are unique and belong to the range 0..N, where one number is missing (0..N is N+1 numbers). Provide a solution to determine the missing number and what is its running time.

2) Given a 2xN grid, provide a solution to determine the number of possible ways to arrange 1x2 tiles to cover the entire grid.

3) Design Problem: You are able to accept different forms of input (XML via Web Service, plain string, XML via HTTP request) and should likewise be able to output in different formats (HTTP Response, Web Service Response, e-mail). Describe how you will set-up the application such that it will be easy to add new forms of input and output.

I will try and solve these later when I have the time. In the meantime, feel free to post your solutions.