December 2005

November 2005 -- 2005 -- January 2006

December 14, 2005


The semester is FINALLY over. I've never been so glad to finish a semester, and after dedicating the last 2 weeks of my life to a crazy VLSI project (the layout for a 32 bit adder) and exams and programming projects, it's finally done. Not my best semester grade wise, but now that I have two internships and I'm getting a Masters, grades don't matter that much anymore. I'm just so happy to be done and finally have time to hang out with friends!

For everyone still studying for finals, here's some (cool) coffee.

In case anyone (I'm looking at you person who found this page via Google) wonders how to make their external USB hard drive or flash drive always automount to the same directory in Linux each time:
Done on Fedora Core 4 with a Western Digital 160 GB external hard drive. First read up on udev to get it set up correctly. Create a file in /etc/udev/rules.d called "10-local.rules". The 10 at the start is so udev looks at that rule set first.
Inside that file, I have:
BUS="scsi", SYSFS{model}="1600BB External", NAME="%k", SYMLINK="usbhd%n"
BUS="scsi", SYSFS{model}="USB Flash Memory", NAME="%k", SYMLINK="usbflash"
The first line is for my external harddrive, the second is for my flash drive. udev will then always mount my external drive (recognized via the model description) as usbhd with each partition on it being /etc/usbhd1, /etc/usbhd2, etc which is a static link to whatever Linux decided it should be (ie /dev/sda1 or /dev/sdb1).

Then I added the following to my /etc/fstab file:
/dev/usbhd1 /media/mp3 auto user,noauto 0 0
/dev/usbhd5 /media/photo auto user,noauto 0 0
/dev/usbhd6 /media/misc auto user,noauto 0 0
/dev/usbhd7 /media/video auto user,noauto 0 0
/dev/usbflash /media/flash auto user,noauto 0 0
Since automount is automatically enabled my default in FC4, whenever I plug-in or bootup with the external harddrive installed, it will automatically mount the first partition on /media/mp3, and so on for the rest. Remember to create those folders first however.

Oh, and as an addendum to my ID update below, here's a form of ID I do support: Incompetent Design

December 17, 2005


Cool sand sculptures

I made my stage world premire debut Thursday, in a performance of the parody of the Nutcracker. I played the brother and a snowflake. Yes, a snowflake. Thereby ruining any chances at public office I might have had. All well. Candice was very supportive, even when seeing me in a tutu. It was really fun and it was cool to see the backstage and dressing rooms of the Phillips Center, where I go to see tons of plays and ballets anyways. I got into it via a friend of mine who said I could get a part in the background as an extra in the party scene, and it just expanded from there (being I was the youngest male and had no qualms about making a fool of myself :)). So yes, pictures:
Me and my friend who got me into it
Backstage beforehand
Arrrrrrr
The one you were waiting for, me onstage as a snowflake

Things to do over the break:
Watch the entire first season of 24 in 24 hours.
Finish the 3rd season and watch the 4th season of The West Wing. Which Leo died yesterday, it'll be interesting to see how it affects the show.
Watch the entire first season of Lost and try not to get addicted.
Get through as many of the 170 movies in my Netflix queue as I can.
Rip a whole bunch of my girlfriend's CD's onto my hard drive
and of course the most important, do nothing

November 2005 -- 2005 -- January 2006