Voder-Vocoder

I really think a computer should last more than 32 months. Sloop, the computer I built in June 2008, failed yesterday. Coincidentally, I ripped the old HDDs out of Dalek the day before to send it to be recycled. Now I have two old boxes to recycle.

I bought a cheap desktop at the store yesterday and didn't even try to look for a good deal online. I just wanted to have a functioning computer. The new case is 34% smaller by volume (I just measured). I would have gotten something even smaller, but I wanted a t least one PCI slot, one PCI Express slot, and room to mount my old HDD. I named it Occam.

Occam is a Dell. The CPU is a Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5800. One benchmark rates this as 34% faster than Sloop's Athlon 64 X2 6000+, which was an upgrade 18 months ago.

For the first time in twenty-five years, I am not overweight. That is all.

I am published in The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics 17(1), R105.

Six days ago I woke up with a horrible back pain. I must have strained it at work, and I think those magazine recycling boxes are to blame. After taking it easy over the weekend I felt much better, but work exacerbates the pain.

After I let my boss know that my back was still hurting me, she pointed out that we had some lumbar support belts hidden away in the office. So I started using one and found that it helped me put less strain on the injured part of my back. But I look like a dork.

I’ve got an exam in a few hours, then I’m out of school for a while. The next major project is GRE studying. I’ve also got a stack of books to read for fun. And Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) comes out tomorrow, so I’ll be reinstalling for the first time since I built this computer.

I should blog something interesting about my life, but I am busy living. I’m working on a school assignment having to do with applying algorithms to graph theory. The grad-level graph theory class I failed comes in handy there. I’m going to go hang out with friends in a few minutes. Work is still there; the days are just as long as ever, and the constant barrage of paper-cuts is bothering me today.

In the future, everyone will have a millimeter-wave camera built into their smartphone. We may as not wear clothes at all then. You’re going to want to get started getting in shape now.

It turns out I don’t actually have class today. The classes are Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday — but the Monday and Wednesday classes are every week, while the Thursday class is only the last week of the semester, to make up for the fact that the semester begins on a Thursday.

I did pick up my textbooks today. They are just as heavy and expensive as they always have been.

* * *

What am I doing? I am considering where to apply for a master’s program in computer science. In the mean time, I am taking the undergraduate classes at the local university that I would need anyway once I go to grad school. I’m still working full time at the bookstore.

* * *

I’m taking two classes: Algorithms and Digital Systems.

Digital Systems — Covers data paths, controllers, memory systems, and register transfer level design, as well as finite state machine design, classical logic design, and storage element design. Hardware and software tools for digital system analysis and synthesis are explored. Textbook: Roth & Kinney, Fundamentals of Logic Design (0495471690).

Algorithms — The design, implementation, analysis, and application of a range of computer algorithms are explored. Function order of growth and amortized analysis are used in analyzing algorithms. A review and extension of data structure topics including stacks, queues, trees, graphs, lists, sets, hash tables, and heaps are covered. Algorithm design strategies such as divide-and- conquer, the greedy method, and dynamic programming are studied. Textbook: Kleinberg & Tardos, Algorithm Design (0321295358).

* * *

Not a bad plan, considering that I made the decision to do this three weeks ago.

I’ve spent a lot of time writing email the past few weeks, so this is on my mind.

1) Keep your work email separate from personal. People change jobs, your friends shouldn’t lose track of you because of this.

2) Don’t use the email account that comes with your ISP subscription. The next time you move or change ISP you will be forced to get a new email account. Combined with (1), this leaves two options: pay for a hosted email solution, maybe with a personal domain-name, or use one of the free email providers. I suggest Google’s gmail.com, which offers IMAP connection so that you can check you mail using your favorite email client (Mozilla Thunderbird, Apple’s Mail.app, Novell Evolution, Microsoft Outlook, Novell GroupWise, et cetera) as well as on the web.

3) Configure your email client to send plain-text email by default. This usually produces much smaller message sizes and can easily be read by the most email clients.

4) When replying to a email, delete most of the quoted message, leaving only enough to give your reply context. At the very least, delete the signature.

5) If you are not replying to something in a previous message, don’t hit reply; instead, compose a new message. This makes a new thread in clients that organize mails into threads.

6) Don’t top post.

7) If you are going to compose your message in a word processor before sending it, copy-and-paste it into the email’s body instead of sending an attachment.

8) If you must send an attachment, use an open file format.

9) This is one I am very guilty of. If you don’t have time to compose a proper reply to an email that requires a reply, you should shoot off a quick acknowledgement message.

10) If you are at all technically savvy, go ahead and install GnuPG (if your system didn’t already have it) and configure your email client to make use of it to sign your emails.

I watched STS-128 lift from 154 miles away last night. Since it was dark, I couldn’t see the cloud trail, just an orange glow on the horizon that then turned into the familiar glowing exhaust before fading to a very bright star.

Shauna and I have been landscaping the garden one bit at a time this year. The patio went in a month ago and the landscaping around it is progressing. On the left there, I’m trying to produce wildflowers.