2001: A GEEK ODYSSEY

Wed, Jan 31

<01:43> There was a free showing of The Matrix by some Christians followed by a talk on the film's Christian implications, so I took the advantage. After everything they have done to scientists, it was just fair to get something back ;-). This was my third time (all on big screen) and it starts to feel familiar already. It was nice to be able to concentrate on the not so obvious details. But the next time I'd rather see Matrices 2 and 3.

Mon, Jan 29

<23:19> Last night around this time I came back from the movies, I'd seen Dancer in the Dark. A thoroughly different film experience. Trier's Dogma style was a bit annoying at times, though. The best thing IMHO was the music, especially the first scene. A hundred cameras places around the factory, I've been told. And the way the music emerges in each situation gives a whole new meaning to 'techno'. The story is often absurdly depressing, but the immensely positive philosophy of the main character does make up for it. Definitely recommended, but not for everyone.

Sun, Jan 28

<01:33> Bi1337. That is Finnish for pardey (sic). After last weekend's clubbing I could not stay /home doing physics, as much as I wanted to. Besides, I still had to run the first test of my new mechwarrior outfit in Cambridge climate. Consequently tonight was four hours of solid dancing - well, I did have a coke in the middle. It was pretty k3w1 and a couple of people gave really positive feedback about the cyber gear. Now I should be off to Gnapster for Aerosmith's Pink... ;-)

Tue, Jan 23

<14:12> Last night updated some scripts.py simply because they're now online for download. The new hacks page can be found from the Interests/Computing section.

Mon, Jan 22

<13:11> Prana Flow I Robot

A weekend of life. Traditional sauna on Friday unfortunately including fluid mechanics. Finished the bottle of NH₄Cl . CH₃CH₂OH. More adventurous stages after a couple hours of sleep, an early morning coach to London, me and Lauri. Met Martti (Lauri's friend studying in Canterbury) and Hanne (my IB comrade at UCL) in Camden, did some shopping for groovy cybergear for the night. I went for pink robot trousers and a matching black top.

An interesting coincidence was that Martti had served in the same RDF battalion with me in the army.

The night in Canterbury was an absolute blast, having Finlandia for starters. Martti's lady friend Martina was there as well, and as we went to the Venue, the Finns Johanna and Selina joined us, that was perfect company.

The slightly cheesy music ar the Venue, surprisingly, suited our plans of pretty heavy fluid dynamics. Guess we were a bit high since there was a security thug watching us almost all the time. Lauri got himself a spikey hair which we'll certainly do again soon. Vodka Red Bull was rather pop, and a series of demonstrations was carried out to exhibit how it could be consumed in stereo.

On the way back to Martti's place we did some horrible noise pollution by performing Finnish drinking songs, and Lauri got so excited he managed to sprain his ankle. From then on for a while, it was no fun any more. Martti and I had to carry him, but at least I didn't mind having missed gym that day.

Stayed up till about 7:30. It took most of the following day to get up and out for some food, after which it was time for us two to leave. Fortunately Lauri could walk by himself by then, though I still hope he'll get well for this weekend. It should be another blast. Until then I'm trying to manage with my legs and back which hurt like hell after all that clubbing and real-life weightlifting.

Thu, Jan 18

<01:04> LIFE and RATP

So. I'm finally coming back to life. This morning I simply had to wake up early (at 9) for the Theoretical Physics exam. Preparation had been virtually void. Practice on doing the questions was NULL. And if I didn't mention this before, I'd been in a state of deep mental numbness for a couple of weeks. I got lazy during the holidays, messed up the sleep() cycle at the 'midday night' of Finland. It may sound funny that even now I don't worry about it. Because it is utterly useless to worry. Through relaxation and positive thinking I actually did relatively well. And now I certainly know, considering the major exams at the end of the year, that I'll run out of time (again) if practice==/dev/null.

Now, I still can't say I care about things again. But one thing that is gradually coming back is my passion for life. A scary thought it had been missing. During the dark period I thought about stuff deeply, what I ultimately want and what goals to set. The conclusion remains that there are no real, solid, meaningful goals. 'I want a first class degree' is as good as any, for it enables me to work hard. This, of course, would have no effect unless the subject of this monologue were originally interested in physics.

For now, I simply want to enjoy life, physics and everything. And might as well explain a technical term: RATP - Redundant Array of Theoretical Physics. This term there's another TP course which I need not take as I already have a unit of holiday work. However, I'll attend it anyway for the sheer fun of it: hc quantum mechanics (where hc now isn't a QM term!) And if I take the exam as well, it may go better than this TP and I should get to pick the best of the two marks.. :-)

Sat, Jan 13

<02:38> $ uname -sr
Linux 2.4.0
Up and running. There were slight problems with PCMCIA, probably only in installation scripts, so I had to resort to the good old pcmcia-cs package. Otherwise it seems to work fine (even after compilation with pgcc:) and it recognises a bit more of K6's features. Which is nice. Now recompiling to get it a bit smaller...

Oh, btw I'm back @cam now since Thursday night. Wish I could say I'm back in the real sense; still suffering from an almost inverted sleeping pattern that developed during the holidays, particularly from the New Millennium celebrations. PRKL. The trip back was great, as I met Johanna, a friend of Lauri's, in the plane to London. Gotta visit her at Canterbury some time this term - probably combine that with the planned clubbing/shopping weekend at London.

In fact, you may be experiencing one outstanding feature of 2.4: khttpd. Should be lightning fast, but that's probably unnoticed with these pages and connections. The nifty thing is that, although it's for static pages only, it can forward requests to Apache or something for dynamic stuff. So it could be used to boost almost any site, as there is a lot of static stuff anyway.. (images? Not on bluesci..)

<03:00> A quick test of the khttpd through localhost shows a transfer rate of about 2.5 MB/s, faster than my Ethernet. :-)

<20:10> The 2.4.0 looks still a bit unfinished (surprise surprise :). kHTTPd is a bit quirky, after doing fine in the first run, it developed some strange issues with permissions. So currently, I'm back running boa instead. Also, Pine fails to cooperate with my .sig engine under 2.4.0 but it works OK under 2.2.18.. :-/ Fortunately, there's a lot of neat stuff like USB in 2.2.18 already.

Mon, Jan 1

<23:34> All the best and lots of Umph for the new Millennium!

Last night was spent in Kuopio with some good friends from Hog Feast and Lyseo. A nice and relaxed party at Antti and Katja's place (friends of Opo). Sauna with some chill-out outdoors was excellent. Met several new, interesting people. Nothing bad I could say about the night. Now I'm kinda looking forward to getting back to Cambridge.