Monthly Archives: January 2010

Food, Running and Exams

★ Posted on at 02:22 pm ★

beans and mushrooms with mince

Had some home cooked food at cousin’s place in Bundoora last night. Taken with the Sigma 30mm which I got while I was in NYC. It appeals by having a 1.4 aperture, but that’s about the only appeal it has. The focusing distance is too far for most of the shots I like to take so I can’t really get the framing I like. This picture is one of the better ones, and I like how the bowls stack up at the back, giving it a homely feel.

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Was going to go for a run, but after a minute of feeling little droplets here and there, decided to turn back. Just checked the weather report and it’s supposed to be rainy today. Will see if the weather clears up later or I’d just go running tomorrow.

Signed up for the annual Run For the Kids. They seem to have bumped up the signup fee this time and also donate less to the Royal Children’s Good Friday Appeal this year. Not particularly pleased with it, but I guess I’ll do it for one more year anyway. The run is 55 days from now, so slightly less than two months to get the feet and body in shape to push through 14.6km. Aiming for maybe 1 hr 15 to 20 min time this year, so will need to be a little more disciplined training for it.

Also finally signed up for my first CPA paper. Called them up on Friday asking about my application and it seems to have got lost over the Christmas period as I had put the application in more than a month ago. Anyway, got the confirmation yesterday and signed up for one paper (sometimes it’s just a phone call away to get things moving, and I needed to do it as a couple more days and the exam fees go up by $100). Not sure how much work is involved in the preparation, so one subject first, and another 5 after that.

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Sun seems to have popped back out, think will go for a run.

Epic Failure

★ Posted on at 08:02 pm ★

the row of trees

A cropped photo from my trip to Hanging Rock not too long ago. I’m wondering if I’d be able to get a Hasselblad and dabble with film one day, taking square photos. I just can’t seem to frame photos in a square as I get distracted by whatever else is in the frame and trying to position everything in an aesthetically pleasing way.

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[geek babble, you can skip to the next block of text if you are not interested in a rant on trying to install an operating system]

It’s the end of another week. Spent the last 5 hours trying to install Arch Linux on my Eee PC. I already have Ubuntu installed on a SD card so I got another just to test it out. It was hiccup after hiccup along the way. Firstly I downloaded the installation image and tried to copy it onto my USB stick using Unetbootin. That was an epic failure as the program didn’t do it properly so the Arch Linux Live CD got stuck trying to boot. Looked through the installation guides on the wiki on the Arch Linux website and found another program to do the job.

Finally got a working boot disk and then it was another few hours of epic failure. The Arch Linux installer is pretty unforgiving and I have decent enough experience to know what I’m doing but make a mistake, and all the steps you went through before can be chucked out the window as you restart the process. Did that a few times until I finally got it right and got the installation all the way through to the end. I thought finally I’d be able to get a bootscreen all the way through to a command prompt. It wasn’t to be as the Arch Linux installer is not quite smart enough to do that. 130am and work in the morning, so I turned in and left it at that.

Next day (which is today) after work, came back and fixed up the boot loader to point to the write drives and partitions. Yay, it’s booting. Then another epic failure. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I tweaked and read through forum posts, instruction guides but to no avail. I could not get the darn thing to boot to a beautiful command prompt. Yes, I’m trying to install an operating system that has no GUI and greets you with a command prompt, am I insane? Not quite, it’s just a learning process for me and I’m quite familiar with the different folders where all the configuration files are kept.

I currently suspect that the kernel that comes with the installation image does not play nice with my Eee PC and I am convoluting things by installing it on a SD card instead of the primary SSD. I chose to install Arch Linux in the first place was to get a highly optimised operating system that I could customise with programs that I’d actually use. Better to add stuff than to remove stuff from the operating system.

So there I have 7 or so hours committed and nothing to show for it other than being a little bit more familiar with configuring Linux. It’s a welcome challenge, to commit to trying to solve something and eventhough I failed, it’s invigorating to have at least tried.

And tomorrow I might try the alternative Ubuntu install, building the system up from scratch. Hehehe.

[/end geek babble]

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Found this relatively inexpensive website from the UK that sells book and provides free shipping the world round. The good thing about buying stuff from overseas is that the merchant doesn’t pay tax on the goods sold as it is leaving the country, and the importer doesn’t pay tax on the goods because it’s a small amount and sort of under the radar, instead of getting it at the local bookstore, where all manner of costs (shipping, storage, handling) and taxes have been slapped onto it, driving the price up! The bookstore is called the Book Depository and for the price I paid for shipping a whole lot of books, it would cost me as much as 60% more to buy it off a shelf locally.

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The weather is still icky and work is like a sanctuary from the heat as the air conditioning keeps it all away. 45 degree temperatures are becoming the norm here and they stay for a few days, bringing some sleepless nights to many who do not have air conditioning at home. I have a fan and can sleep under most conditions, so I fared alright this last week when the mercury jumped up high.

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Last of all, this domain name is in transition, as I’m finally moving it after 6 years. It’s easier to manage as I can pay Australian dollars here as opposed to getting mom to bank in a cheque in KL (which I’m thankful for each year). Much to do once the domain name moves as I have to reset the site up on a new server. It’s good to be a geek, where at least you know you can handle these changes. There will be stumbling blocks along the way, but it’s all good for the learning process.

Wacky Weather

★ Posted on at 01:31 pm ★

strawberries!

Sunny Ridge Strawberries from Victoria Market. Fabulously sweet with a soft but firm bite. Vyanne bought a punnet and I tried one. I got her to go get another punnet as these were too delicious to eat only a few. We do get some pretty nice fruit runs throughout the year. December and January you get cherries and stone fruit in abundance. November to January you get mangoes in abundance. The fruits are now cheap and taste extra good. Once all this ends, you’d be stuck with apples, oranges, pears and bananas for the rest of the year.

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Just got back from a swim, trying to escape the sweltering heat that will continue to afflict us for the next few days. It’s supposedly a top of 42 degrees Celsius on Monday and the authorities are preparing for the worst for those in dry, high fire risk areas. On the other hand, the mercury is way down in the opposite hemisphere. I’ve seen photos from friends who posted pictures of frozen rivers and the heavy snow fall in Europe is all over the news. I first read about using salt to clear roadways (Chicago has the most terrible winters) while I was in NYC passing through winter and the snow is so heavy that the UK government is worried that they’d run out of adequate salt to clear the roadways. Gas also needs to be rationed as everyone has turned up their heater to keep warm this winter. 42 degree heat is bad enough, but I don’t think anything beats minus 20 to 40 degrees ice and snow. I’m ok with tolerating heat, it just makes you lethargic and tired. The cold on the other hand, makes you feel miserable if you can’t keep warm enough. I do wonder about global warming and its effects on the human population of the world and it seems that it’s only getting worse as the years progress.