Devoid of Anything Useful

It appears I am only posting this because I have broken out of the loop of which I want to post a post but still fail in the end. Deja vu.

Rather than willingly spending time sitting down writing about something I am excited about doing, I feel that spending time actually doing it would be much better.

Chasing SeiZon, Kämpfer, NHnH2 and NyanKoi!, while watching e.f. (memories). It's the 7/8 th week of the fall season, and I must say relative to the shows those weeks passed quickly. Also following FlashForward, which is quite interesting, and supplements all that 2D I've been getting.

Scripts aplenty. I should start saying "There's a script for that". Reading Google Reader by spoofing the cookies using wget. grep and sed being my very good friends. Each script teaches me something new. Working on IRC bot with bash now.

AFA'09 Shortly. I must say it is more hyped up than last year, so they had better justify that 250% price increase. Danny Choo Stormtroopering over here was also lulz.

That Otaku Elimination Game thingy, I actually fully support it. I don't really appreciate the dilution of the "otaku" pool. I am no otaku, definitely not. Neither is anybody else who can survive in HCI able to justify themselves as being otakus.

Robocup is burning my HP with incredible speed. There is nothing else that makes me breathe acrylic, tin, lead and aluminium fumes more than this. Being cooped up in a room does things to you.

Sorry for a lack of updates, but I see social networking and microblogging has largely eradicated the need to use a blog to tell others what you are doing.

Also, Robocup has been keeping my ass up all the time.

But it's coming tomorrow! The OS that will mark my first anniversary of Ubuntu usage. And somehow I feel like doing what most otaku do with their waifu, and eat cake in front of my laptop, with a pic of either Tux or the Ubuntu logo.

It appears that NJRC has sapped my life. HP, Mana, WIS, CON, STR, INT, DEX and CHR all went down by loads.

And apparently Robocup preparation is next. FLL looks fun this year, and most likely I will just be coming up with ideas while the others slog it out.

And that marked the end of my 3 empty years in NJRC (secondary school div).

In the midst of it all, a direction marker was lost, bearings could not be found.

And Chromium received updates. Could have been anytime between this and my previous update, so forgive the lagginess. Anyway, it doesn't seem like many are doing this.

Now there is no need to have the "--enable-extensions" flag, but the "--enable-plugins" one is still necessary.

This doesn't work, but it appeared.


This looks much nicer


So does this.


By the way, good luck to those going to BSC in either Oct or Dec, I could give tips. And in return help me get some magazines from the roadside stall kthx?

This is a problem I had yet to address, but I've been driven up the wall after so long.

Please remove useless query strings from URLs you share.

A very good example is this:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWKfYa3oBSU&feature=player_embedded

Its only purpose was to tell Youtube that you reached the page from an embed player, and not others potentially following your link.

If you still do not know what I am talking about, here are a few more examples.

- http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/09/04/229204/-Code-Breaking-Quantum-Algorithm-On-a-Silicon-Chip?from=rss

- http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/09/steel_velcro.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egUDYu_qmL0&feature=related

They serve no purpose for others, increase their length, decrease their readability, add another entry to URL-shortening and Online bookmarking services, and screw up what the website put them there in the first place for.

Of course, please use your own brain and test those query strings to see if they are useless. If they are required to show the particular page you are linking (eg. ?page=2 ) then obviously leave them there.

Another thing is that occasionally, there are also cases when a page can be linked by ID alone. Examples include:

- http://gizmodo.com/5353104/steel-velcro-made-by-germans-supports-35-tons-heat-at-up-to-800-degrees-celcius

- http://lifehacker.com/5352974/this-weeks-most-popular-posts

They can be removed very safely, and the only reason you would ever want to leave them there is to let people know where it leads to. Which is quite pointless since they are usually truncated anyway.

So, make the tubes a better place to be in.

EDIT: Apparently, someone else had written a similar post before me.
http://engtech.wordpress.com/2007/02/28/how-to-save-urls/
Go read that too.

And so, I climbed a mountain.

Stuff happened in both the cyber- and meat-spheres while I was away. I was half expecting something like Rick Astley dead (touch wood) but luckily it did not happen.

And to those routed here by that short mention: Hi, welcome, nothing much here I would expect you to really like, but if you do just keep quiet. If namedropping is the path to more traffic I would rather not take it, thanks. Not that it is a bad thing but I don't really like taking advantage of it or anything. Anyway I'm the supposed noob I was made out to be.

By the way, thanks Edward for doing a little bit of PR while I was away. I didn't ask for it but I appreciate it.

And I see I've lost touch with a few things, as feeds take over (And I'm not just talking about the 5 days of flooded feeds). Nevermind, I have come to terms with a few things and hopefully I can have a life again.

Longer post later (I hope) about the climb.

And since I'm so messed up anyway, Chromium updates:
That language dialog is finally there.


More SSL options already there.


I have also just realized that it is another 2 more months to Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala. I'm looking forward to it, especially since it is a chance to clean my system of residual config.

When you filter out useless info, generally you look for words you do not want. This is easy, but sometimes we miss out on things we actually want. And these could actually be important. But it is relatively easy to do.

However, if we try to collect only the things we are interested in, the quality of content would be generally improved, and true negatives would be reduced. The difficulty is with generating the list of "interesting" keywords.

One big problem I have been facing is the lack of a good filtering method. For example, If I am not interested in stuff about the Palm Pre, I should do the clever thing and block it in the Y!Pipes already. However, it could be involved in a parody of something else that I am interested in, or just simply related to some other field I am interested in, I would not receive that info.

So now, how to generate that list of keywords that I actually want, without sitting down and writing down every single thing? I can think of something related to Bayesian theory, like I choose stuff I'm interested in and it starts to learn, but I have no idea how at the current moment.

Or I can stick with status quo and spend 15 minutes per 45 minutes weeding out the not so interesting stuff from feeds. Not very fun.

Heh, finally decided to update

I'm going to Tahan camp from 22/8 - 27/8, so I have to find some way for me to grab the full feeds while away. Google Reader should work since it is perma online, so I shall do some stuffs to it.

Heh, got up Bukit Timah Hill for the first time, a puny 163m compared to XiangShan's 588. But it was different cuz this was less windy and more humid.

I took this a while ago, when I just wanted to check my Y!Mail for a while. Failsome


Because chromium crashes and Firefox hogs memory, I decided to use wget to download large files. I just needed to get the direct link by waiting a while.


Chromium stuffs:

I got this a while ago, when some random flash crashed


Heh, this appears but i dunno how well it works

(hum to the tune of "Santa Claus is coming to town")

Apparently, the recent updates were rather major.

This is clever. Look at this and you will know what I mean. UPDATE: It seems it doesn't work for the current build...wonder why.


Flash plugin works now.


GTK theme looks better...


Character encoding list updated


Cookie manager...

If you found the lack of updates unsettling, I somewhat apologize. However, no one should have been surprised.

Life suddenly became like PvZ, where I just manage to ward off everything that is coming, yet so near to losing.

Chromium updates, though it is starting to get unbearably buggy at times.

It would appear IHE would take up quite a bit of time.

Feeds would be read less.

Hey, for the first time, FML. (though I myself don't think I deserve to say it)

And in the midst of these, chromium updates.
Old, but the new newtab page is not too bad


I dunno when these came but I just noticed:
Naisu searchbar hint


And then it tells you


Dragging tabs seem stable now

Innovation and Creation are inherently different, I believe.

It is well known that many programmers can never do media design. I think it is more of an epic lack of ability to create.

We can comment on whether a webpage design is good or bad, but never come up with a design ourselves.

We can say if a photo is nice (to a certain extent, I have made mistakes before) but can never come up with that shot.

Even for code. I find it hard to start with a blank page. I need to refer to past code, and actually copy and paste it into the program. Then I edit. For all the times that I actually code something from scratch, I would need to sit and think for at least half and hour, forming the routines, drawing out flowcharts etc. Then I can start translating that into code.

Ok. Endrant

Btw, chromium alpha updated. Apparently they added a GTK+ theme, but it was a sore sight.

So, Endless Eight (Part IV) next week.

I'm ok with repeating. Just that a) 15,500? where did the light novel go? and b) Kyon did not even let Nagato get to the point where she said how many times they found out about the loop.

Koizumi saying the same thing 3 times saved it a little, though I thought it was something wrong with my comp.

Anyway, those who desperately wanted time loop in ep2, you got it. Many times too btw.

In other news, I have somehow lacked the urge to edit r9k already, so I shall package it nicely and hopefully send it off as version 1.beta soon (yes, anything before this was a pre-alpha).

With E-learning over, the loads on my HDD, RAM and clogged tubes are eased. For now.

Chromium alpha update - taskman added.


shall do post on can't create some other time then.

K maybe I lied. After soldering up the breakout for the compass sensor I still had a little time before dinner, so I went to fix that big bug in r9k.

http://randname.pastebin.com/f4cd88808

Just some little warnings (this should be in a README...):
If you are copypastaing the code and running it just like that, remember to create directories that you may have specified. I haven't gotten round how to prevent that but just do. In the code I posted up that means you have to create [xchatdir]/r9k/logs and [xchatdir]/r9k/form ([xchatdir] is your xchat settings folder).

CHANGELOG:
1) Bugfix - Numbers now logged (number multiples are not stripped btw)
2) Logfiles now are "short" (under 10 chars), the multiples of 10 under 150 and "long" (150 and above). This will potentially be configurable. In the meantime just archive your old logs or smth
3) Toggling via PM now indicates who did it.

Hmm, since this was a bugfix I shall not think I have continued messing with xchat.

Since school has started (though it's at home), I shall not meddle too much with other stuffs first.

Chromium Alpha has some updates again. Under the Hood options updated.


Also, search options can be tweaked. Finally I can edit keywords and delete Live Search.

Major bug found in r9k.

Logs do not include numbers.

At first I thought it a little weird, but now it's confirmed anyway.

Planning to issue major changes anyway so I'll be clearing logs.

+TODO: Hash loglines longer than a certain length.

For the lack of something that I think is better to do, I have decided to edit r9k in lieu of elearning.

1) Put announce_status() in its own sub. Done, but its called r9k_status()
2) announce_status() whenever someone joins. Not doing, will redirect to 3)
3) !r9k will include status, or PM 'status' Done, but without !r9k trigger
4) Start using variables in regex. So that i can just do "blah blah ^n blah blah" and replace ^n with the nick etc. Done. Stripped chars, pm passwords and allowed triggers moved to variables.
5) Change the mute time based on repeated offences. Like the real Robot9000.
6) Hash based one-time-use remote passwords.

Other Changes (excluding those associated with 4):
a) Everything output to the channel via the script is prepended with "Robot9000: " to avoid confusion when I'm talking instead.
b) Status change now includes reasons (via Xchat, via PM, quit, reload).
c) punishes differently for empty strings/strings with whitespace.
d) punishes for "!r9k". now the only legal r9k triggers are "form [nick]" and "help"
e) Default answer for PM when r9k is off is "r9k is off".
f) Timeout help text moved to variable.

TODO 5 and 6 will prolly come very much later. New version here : http://randname.pastebin.com/f3ed439d1

The melting iceberg had frozen over again, albeit to just a quarter of its original size. People who were clinging on to the shrinking chunk can stand and move on it yet again.

And yes, I just happened to notice that Chromium can do http authing now. One less reason to run Epiphany. And even now I watch youtube from Liferea since there is a mozilla engine built in anyway.


And some short words on events past:
RIPMJ: Sad that I only knew him for Moonwalk, Bleach, Nose and Pedo.
ELEARNING: Saved the asses of a few people I bet. But we will have trouble rising on July 7.
COSFEST: July 11/12. wth is this going to happen with h1n1?
ENDLESS EIGHT: Kyoani settles this in the most elegant manner possible. Applause. Not helpful or clever, but elegant.

I just bothered to check today, so I dunno if they have been there earlier, but its new anyway.

The bookmarks bar just started working for me, as with the Bookmark Manager, so I loaded some useful bookmarklets rather immediately.


Also, finally the Personal Stuff options page has been updated. Not much but not too little, and I immediatley went to turn off Password remembering


somehow its beginning to feel bloatish, with that zygote process running. Hopefully I will not have to make a difficult choice between FF 3.5 and Google Chrome/Chromium. And now I have this really weird bug where i can only type in certain places.

In order to keep my own promise that I will not touch R9K unless a bug appears (but it seriously addictive), I shall make a todo so that I know what I would have done.

1) Put announce_status() in its own sub.
2) announce_status() whenever someone joins.
3) !r9k will include status, or PM 'status'
4) Start using variables in regex. So that i can just do "blah blah ^n blah blah" and replace ^n with the nick etc.
5) Change the mute time based on repeated offences. Like the real Robot9000.

UPDATED: 6) Hash based one-time-use remote passwords.

In fact, the main differences between my script and the real Robot9000 is that mine can only be on when I run Xchat, and that I use a (actually a few) flat file database instead of a real database with SQL. But hey, its just for entertaining friends.

I wonder when I will think it enough to put it up in official script repositories.

After breaking my own silent promise not to touch r9k for the last week of 'holidays', I believe I have reached the point where I feel it ok not to edit the code now and then.

In fact so much that I shared it: http://randname.pastebin.com/f280b7151
(Sorry for bad formatting and weird obfuscation, it's one of my very bad habits)
Feel free to edit it as much as possible. If you can get it to be more like Moderator on #xkcd-signal, why not?

Changes include:
1) No more debug mode.
2) Sets channel to +m on activation, -m on leaving. Also announces to the chan
3) Mutes for configurable (default 5 seconds) time by -o pplz
4) either say "!r9k" or pm the bot "timeout" to get the current mute time
5) either say "!r9k form [nick]" or pm the bot "form [nick]" to find out how many times you have angered the bot. If nick is left out it defaults to you.
6) Password for remote toggling. Look for "password" in the code and change that.
7) Nick list accessible from @users and also $num_users after calling load_users();
8) Xchat::EAT_NONE; instead of printing again.
9) Order of stripping: Case, Multi-letters (>3), punctuation, Multi-whitespace.

Finally, a well deserved rest away from perl. But this means I need to rush the remaining homework. Kuso.