Dilemmas

Wow, it's been almost a year... Screw the excuses, I just didn't feel like blogging. And I'm still not totally sure I do.

I thought that being funemployed would give a lot of time for blogging and that the stress of writing my thesis would encourage my to seek comfort in this diary-like therapy. Somehow that didn't happen. The thesis went as usual: it started with a feeling like "I'm writing the best thesis ever!" and ended with "I'm so tired of it! When will it be over?". Of one thing I am absolutely sure (got the Twilight allusion?): school is not my happy place. Happily, school is over: I graduated last December. I now have two masters. It's really cool when it's over.

What do you do when you graduate? You get a full-time job. (Well, depending on your industry, this my be easier said than done, but in mine, staying unemployed is more of a challenge than finding work.) That's what I did. Since it's only one query away, I'll just say it: it's at WebInterpret. (Now my physical location is only another query away - is that the way things should be? Dilemma... Can I openly write about where I am or is that an entry for please-rob-me.com? Dilemma...)

My life is so much more grown-up now. Grown-up in the sense that my party small talk involves tales of recent purchases and maintenance actions performed in my home. I come home from work tired (being tired is a common denominator for all adults) and cook and clean. When I browse the web, it's for cooking recipes. Am I interesting enough? Will I provide entertaining content? Dilemma...

Or maybe I'm just ranting too much? (Forgive me, I'm currently in bed with a cold.) Because on the other hand, I'm feeling like I'm gradually getting so much stronger. In October-December, I was just getting used to full-time work and it drained all my energy. I came home, made dinner, sat at the computer. In January, I added 3 hours of physical activity a week. In March, I was up to 6. (I still am.) Maybe it's time to add some more hobbies and interests to the mix. Maybe it's time to read, do and write more cool stuff. Let's hope it is!

Blog action day: geek loathes global warming

Today is the third annual Blog Action Day and the theme is climate change. Let's discuss this "global warming" thing then.

First, I'd like to say that we're in middle October and it snowed yesterday, which doesn't usually happen until December in my country. I am not happy about it. I got cold while going out to pick up the groceries. Don't take it as balckmail, but if someone tell me how the Global Warming is inevitabely coming upon us, I will throw him a middle-October snowball in the face.

Second, let's raise the awareness about the sea levels raising. If you believe London will soon be the new Venice, I challenge you to do the followoing:

• half-fill a glass of water
• put an ice cube in it
• mark the water level
• let it melt (microwave it if you're in a hurry)
• check the water level.

How much did it raise?

Phew, I got it off my chest. Back to constructive blogging about cool stuff.

I'm going to Tunisia

I promised myself never to write a post where I apologize for not blogging (because if I don't write, I don't write and that's all) and promise to do better (because better would be getting to the good stuff right away).

Well, I apologize and hope you understand how busy I have been recently. (I also got hit on the forehead with a wii-mote, but it's not related.) About that doing better part, however... better will be later. Right now, I'm going to Tunisia on my honeymoon, so I can't really commit to producing blog content. But here's the good news: I'm intensively using Google Reader and try my best to pick the best stuff and share it, so if you want something fresh and geek to read, check it out here.

Besides the usual feeds, my reading list now contains lots of Tunisia-related content. Namely:

1. Tunisia on Wikipedia
2. Tunisia in the CIA World Factbook
3. Tunisia.com
4. Tunisia on Wikitravel
5. Tunisia on Travelistic

Travelistic, by the way, is "the YouTube of worldwide destinations". I was planning a daydreaming session on this site, by the way. It could be great to see all the places I'd love to see for free. I'll do that someday.

Yet another blog

Inspired by the many great fashion blogs out there, I just created my own one to collect all the stuff that inspires me. Less geek, less content, way more pictures, graphics, clothes and other girly stuff I wanted to spare my geekest readers. Still, everyone's invited at Lila-inspired.blogspot.com.

I Twitter!

Twitter. It's everywhere now. I couldn't have missed me, could it?

Basically, Twitter is like a blog, but there is a140 character limit, which makes it more suitable for some uses.

I first thought Twitter had only two uses:

1. reporting details of your life nobody cares about, like "I just went to the bathroom and made the biggest... mistake ever reporting about it".
2. losing weight publicly (or tracking any other goal).
   

And then Penelope Trunk blogged about Twitter and some people called it a "new technology". That's two very wrong things.

First, Penelope Trunk. I like reading her career advice blog, but I don't really trust her advice. She writes not to post one's naked pictures on the web - what a wisdom! A few months later, a guest blogger called "Google Guy" writes: "Those photos don’t matter as much as you think". She gives "advice at the intersection of work and life" but is getting divorced and blames it on the fact that her husband stayed at home with the kids. And she twitters:

Asking my therapist: on my blog post about kissing the farmer, should I leave the comments from my not-yet ex?

(Want some advice at the intersection of love and life? Don't let your marriage fall apart. Don't blame divorce on a single bad decision. Don't kiss when you're involved with someone else. Don't kiss a guy when all you can say about him is "the farmer". Don't give intimate details to thousands of readers. Do hide the lame stuff.)

Second, "new technology". Twitter is a bit like a blog, but with shorter posts (who forbid you to write shorties before?) and a bit like your info on your instant messenger (except it's logged better). You gotta give me a lot more to call something "new technology".

Okay, so that was me and Twitter two days ago. Until my dearest Lifehacker gave me great inspiration. I added a few Twitters on the side of the blog and found more smart uses to the thing. But the biggest thing is: I have starter my own one! It's a combination of goal-tracking, note-taking and bookmark-managing and it's dedicated to learning languages. I'm just starting the summer holidays (and work on Monday!), so I'm trying to plan language learning for this summer. I was thinking about setting up a new blog for it, like Lila Loves Yoga, but a blog is too much work, so let's all welcome the new Twitter: Lila Loves Lingos.

Not everything is due at midnight.

Today has been another day of gaining life experience and wisdom.

I used to think everything was always due at midnight, unless otherwise stated. The operating systems assignement were due in the morning, which meant sleepless nights. Everything else is always due at midnight, as far as I know.

Today, an economy paper was due. Interdisciplinary and related to our studies. With the team project going like crazy and finals, let's just say that an economy paper is not exactly my main priority, nor has ever been in the 45 given days. (Yes, 45.) I sat to it tonight, at 10 p.m. (Yes, two hours, and it was 45 days.) Well, I did some work before: I chose a subject. Buying DRM-protected music made me wonder wether good protection of the kind can be done, which is crypto, which is related to my studies. So, subject: piracy, because it's so interdisciplinary (crypto, economy, sociology, ethics,...) So, 10 p.m., me logs to the platform and what do I see? It's due at 11 p.m.! Did I panick? Not at all, I didn't have time. I just started writing and produced 6500 characters in one hour. This is easier in Polish as the words are longer, but the thing that really helps is writing on a regular basis, which I do here. Anyway, I wrote my paper without sacrificing more time for it than it deserves (now I really really hope the teacher doesn't read this).

Today was way longer that this and way richer in experiences, but, tomorrow is the correcting codes final exam, so I have to go now. Sleep well and remember that not everything is due at midnight.

So there is a "no to all" option in WinXP

If anyone's been waiting all week for me to post something, I'm sorry. I'm going through a bit of health issues and writer's block at the moment. So a shortie tonight.

From the earliest times humanity looked for ways of copying files from one folder to another. Under WinXP, in the 21st century, the drag'n'drop method gained the most popularity. It had however a huge lack: there were options "yes", "yes to all", "no" and even "cancel", but no "not to all"! Or so I thought until I read this article.

As it turns out, if you hold the shift key while clicking on "no", it acts as "no to all". I really wonder why is such a useful option hidden in such an unintuitive way. The same goes for hibernating Windows. This OS really is full of shi[f]t.

Doesn't it make you wanna click everywhere with the shift button pressed to see what happens? Out of curiosity, it kinda does to me. But then I think of what could happen. Maybe the paperclip from hell would resurrect... not worth that risk!

Random Linkage: Photoshop Disasters

I'm sick and tired of my life and my school today (don't worry, it will go away soon), so instead of writing about me, I'm starting a new column on the blog. It's called "random linkage" and consists of random linkage and will appear at random times.

Today, I'm recommending you a blog called "Photoshop Disasters". It features Photoshop disasters like these:


A three-armed princess...

... and a three-armed pop-star (which is not photoshopped, but still fun).

Besides funny pictures, this blog showcases how fake most pictures we see everyday are. Have a look at these:



Now think of all the women who hate looking in the mirror because they look like the pictures on the right and not on the left. But that is a bigger conversation.

What the geek is doing

You might be wondering what I'm doing when I'm not working on my operating systems lab projects. Well, I am studying for my operating systems exam. I set up a personal wiki for that purpose with Wiki on a Stick. By the way, I learned a bit of the wiki syntax, so I will most probably make a good use of it soon.

I am so looking forward for this semester to be over. The operating systems are a real pain-in-the-brain (and a legend in my school). All I wish for right now is pass. They're not my biggest passion, they don't inspire me to anything (ever wondered why there is no post here starting with "hey guys, did you know that the slab allocator..."?). How I long for some high-level programming... And some "code what you want" programming... I fortunately will have those next semester.

So the exam is tomorrow. On Friday, there's the correcting codes exam. I'll start studying revising after the OS. Today is Ash Wednesday. Fasting when you're supposed to study as hard as you can is not cool. (Okay, fasting is not supposed to be cool, by definition.) There's no milk and I can't stand coffee without it... poor little me studying computer science, forced by... er... wait... That's it! I can quit, not have to study OS and have time to buy milk! Still, there's a reason I'm much better off the way things are (better by far).

Geek busy again

I'm really busy again and I'm afraid you won't see much relevant content anytime soon here.
This time, I'm working on a kernel patch that does some prefetching. I hope I'll finish this assignment in time and won't have to fix it in March. It's due next Monday and I'm already tired. It's no good when you find solitaire interesting. It's much worse when you wanna switch places with Britney Spears because she doesn't have the operating systems class. I know she's double-divorced, her kids have been taken from her, photographers follow her all the time, she's addicted to smoking, she has family issues, her mental health is questionable, but at the moment, I claim she doesn't know her luck.
Wait, didn't I say I was happy, I wanted this myself and stuff? I still do, but the end of the semester is coming and I'm really tired of it, and my health issues (which I didn't exactly ask for and don't make me as happy as compiling the Linux kernel) don't really help.

Your blog alone is not enough

I grew very fond of blogging and just started a second blog: "Lila loves yoga". It's more personal, intented to keep track of my yoga progress and not really share something new with the world, but if you find interesting, it's cool. Can't wait to find a bit of free time and style it nicely.
I also started a Picassa Web album and loaded loads of pictures of my private life. It's here.
Enjoy!

The banner

As you see, my blog has a beautiful banner with lots of stuff on it. It's time to give credit to the authors of the graphics I used. So, left to right:

• the bow is by me, you can also see it on my website
  
• the diamond is from here, it's by Ryan Thompson
• the Nokia 700 is from here, it's by florisla
• the little black dress is from here, it's by Missie
  
• the lady shoe is from here, it's by Almighty1
• the music notes are from here, they're by Dominique Michel
• the books are from here, they're by Doodledoo
• the "Arabic" banner is from here, it's by AnonMoos
• the lipstick is from here, it's by Jorge Barrios
• the "e to the i pi" formula is from here, it's by Dermeister
  
• Tux is from here, it's by Jan Vansteenkiste

The banner relates to my interests, hoobies, taste,... not perfectly, because I don't read much (the books are math textbooks, okay?), I doubt the musical notes clearly express songwriting, and the diamond is just nice.

So here it is

My new blog!
It doesn't look exactly as I would wish, but I hope it soon will. The banner already tells a lot about me!
I came here because the TagWorld blog I had been using wasn't great. I think I'll just copy the most interesting posts I wrote back there, so don't be surprised if you see a dozen of them appearing overnight.
See you soon.