Fooling around with The GIMP

It's been quite some time since I fiddled with The GIMP. I used to do all kinds of stuff using it, but for some reason I stopped doing that. For the last years I've been essentially using it for preparing images for posters, presentations and the like.

Today I decided to do something different. And, taking advantage of my "starbucksy" mood, I managed to take this:

and make it look like this:

and then like this:
I realize this is not much, but at least I managed to remember a few basic stuff about image manipulation. The result is kinda cool, but I'm not sure yet if I'll end up using it somewhere or not.

Explaining the "starbucksy" mood: today I received my MASP City Mug. For those of you wondering, MASP stands for "Museu de Arte de São Paulo", a museum located here in São Paulo.

Read More

Human-cyborg relations

Anthony Daniels is in Brazil. I went to see him in a local book store:
Taken with a cellphone camera, because everyone forgot their cameras.

Now I am the proud owner of a signed copy of "The Hero With a Thousand Faces", by Joseph Campbell.

Read More

Not... screwed?

Ok, I may have overreacted in my last post. Turns out, I'm not as screwed as I thought I was. Electron density mapping is a very complicated thing to do, and my advisor decided to leave it out of the work for now.

But she did want to do it when we first talked about it... oh well.

Read More

Oh fuck.

I'm screwed. Big time.

I had MONTHS do to something, and I didn't. The only excuse I have is that I don't even know where to begin to do something like what I had to do.

Anyway, I'm screwed. Big time.

Read More

Throwing away some garbage

I decided to throw away some things that have been taking up space in my room and haven't been useful in a long time.

Although this is not the first time I do that, this time it was inspired by a friend's parents, whose... strong opinions in these matters have been quite insightful. There's a load of paper and other stuff that I gathered along the past few years, and I haven't used most of it for almost anything.

The largest of them is a metal shelf I've had with me for a long time. It used to hold my books and CD's a few years ago, but since moving to the place I'm living in now, it's been put aside, literally rotting away. I have already offered if for free to a couple people (1, 2), who showed some interest in it, but to be honest, I'm tired of waiting. It's going away.

Actually, I'm using the shelf as an excuse to throw some other stuff away, too. But most of it has just been taking up space, really, and I want to free up some space around here.

Read More

More useless statistics

Today I received my shinystat weekly report. It's amazing how every now and then it gets to surprise me.

Today, I noticed a pretty cool feature: it shows me, regarding hits on the blog coming from search engines, the search keywords that caused Stairway to Geekiness to show up in the results. What took me by surprise is that, for every single month since July 2007, except for October 2007, the #1 search people made and followed to my blog was "copy pasta". No kidding.

When I trace the visits, they all were to a post in June 2007, when I incidentally used the term to talk about an ethically questionable individual from my Institute.

The second most followed search keyword is linux spdif. This one actually makes me happy. Some time ago I made a post about how to make S/PDIF output work under linux, in hopes it would help somebody else. Apparently, it did.

Read More

Six more months

I have received an extension in my funding. I am in the process of renewing it until the end of July.

I can't say this is what I've been hoping for. I actually would prefer receiving word about my PhD - I need to be sure it is going to happen. This actually worries me a lot, because that's my only chance of getting to keep working in the academic environment for now. I'm not sure what I'm going to do if I don't get the funding.

I won't say I'm not happy about the renewal - I welcome it with wide open arms. It's just that, although nothing is certain about my PhD yet, I was kind of counting on having a bigger stipend beginning sometime around the middle of this year. I'm finally getting rid of all my financial problems and I wanted to have some more breathing room for using the extra money I would get to start building up my future. This sounds cheesy at best, but I don't really have other way of saying it.

The fact is, I'm almost 27 years old and all I own is in my bedroom (which is not actually mine). This is not even close to where I wanted to be ten years ago.

Come to think of it, ten years ago I was entering my final year in high school, and preparing myself to enter college. My expectations were completely different then. I had a clear path ahead of me, I knew exactly what I wanted. Looking back at the plans I made then I can't help but feel a bit guilty of failing to live up to those expectations. In high school I was a good student, my grades were great and I basically could do anything I wanted. That certainly changed a lot once I got into college. My grades were never the same, I took longer - way longer - than I expected to graduate and I ended up in an area I would never imagine I would have any interest in. Not that I dislike what I do now, mind you, I'm just saying that ten years ago I wouldn't even have considered working with crystallography and applied physics.

I admit I learned a lot in the past ten years. Not only in physics, but as a person as well. Not that it's an unexpected thing, I believe everyone really finishes growing up during this period in their lives. However, I wish I was more mature when I began than I was. It would have saved me a lot of trouble and would have made my life a lot easier. And, although I did graduate, I can't help but feel a bit troubled by the fact that my knowledge of physics is not as extensive as I think it should be. Although I passed all the needed courses during my graduation, I fail to recollect the knowledge I allegedly acquired during those courses, with a few exceptions. Surely I can explain the basics of the inner workings of the atomic nucleus, or how Maxwell's equations give rise to the wave equation of electromagnetic radiation. But I would have serious problems trying to explain those things in detail, or more advanced topics - although I supposedly studied them. Then, of course, all of this rambling might just be completely pointless, since I haven't reviewed those topics in a while and I'm just being neurotic about it - this certainly wouldn't be unheard of.

All in all, I honestly believe everyone asks themselves whether or not their own ten-year-youger-selves would approve of them now. I do have a lot of concerns about my future, and I have no idea where I'm going to be ten years from now, but worrying too much about those concerns will only make them become reality. The best I can do is aim for the best.

Read More

Yada, yada, yada

Despite the huge amount of things that happened the past couple weeks, I did not post anything here because, to be honest, I didn't really care. 

Among other things, I've been working a lot. My work is - hopefully - reaching its end.

Anyway, I'm not really in the mood for reporting everything that has happened to me since the beginning of the year. 

I leave you with this piece of crappy translation:

Read More

Learn less, do more

I don't really have an idea for this post. I suppose this time of the year it should be about evaluating the year, pondering good and bad things that happened.

I made a lot of progress with my work. Not the amount I would consider ideal, though - I've procrastinated an awful lot this year. I'm also running late with my dissertation - I should have it almost complete by now if I had really begun writing it several months ago, like I was telling myself over and over.

I also made a lot of mistakes. I do not complain about them, though, because I tend to see mistakes as opportunities to learn and grow. But I really wish I could "learn" a bit less in 2008...

I failed (again) to begin some serious running. I also failed to get my driver's license.

However, despite this year's less than satisfying progress, I am satisfied with other things I accomplished this year. The first and foremost is swimming. I finally overcame years and years of apathy and learned how to swim with a minimal level of decency.

All in all, I don't think 2007 has been too kind to me. I had a LOT of problems with banks. I procrastinated too much. I failed to exercise my discipline.

Looking at the bright side, when I look back there's a lot of good results to gather, and it actually looks like I've been produtive this year. I just wish I were more efficient.

For 2008, there's a lot to be done. For starters, my dissertation and defense, which I want to happen before April. I need to get a PhD going, after that. I want to get my driver's license. I also want to be able to show my friends how much I appreciate them.

Read More

Serious people are rare around here.

Today's distance: 0 meters.
Yesterday's distance: 0 meters.

Yesterday the heavens fell apart, and it rained all the day. It wasn't even nearly possible to swim, so I didn't go.

Today, with an awful lot of stuff to do, I didn't go either. Although I'm thinking about going later, since my work for the day is done, I'll post 0 meters now since I have the tendency to postpone everything.

A piece of advice to you kids: never depend on people you don't trust if you want to work near the holidays. Especially around here, where everyone goes to incredible lengths to avoid working. I was supposed to still have a lot of work to do today, but I'll have to do it tomorrow because someone decided it was a good moment to party.

Parties are strange things around here. With all the bickering that goes on between the six departments on the Institute, each one traditionally decides to make its own end-of-the-year party - the direction of the institute, of course, obliviously arranges for a general party as well. As a result, everyone attends two parties: one on each department and another for the whole Institute.

The serious people keep working. But, I'm sad to say, they are few.

Read More

Following Dory's advice

Today's distance: 1500 meters.

I decided several days ago to write here the distance I swam in the day. Obviously, I failed to do that until now.

Also, I am aware that this may not be the perfect time to begin doing this, since I'm only going to be able to swim until next friday - after that, I leave for the holidays and come back only in january. Still, it's better to begin at all than continue to endlessly postpone this.

I'm still convinced that this will also help me maintain a higher frequency of posts here, even if they are not very enlightening.

Read More

VT8233 on Linux - making S/PDIF work

I'm making this post hoping it might be useful in case someone googles for something related.

A long time ago when I bought the parts for my current desktop at home I chose Asus' excellent A7V600-X motherboard. It comes with a fancy S/PDIF output RCA jack, and I thought to myself, 'sometime I should get this thing working'. I never got around to it because I didn't have access to a decoder which would be able to process the signal.

Recently Daniel brought the old home theater from his home, and so I get the opportunity. I bought the cables today and set out to the task.

The good thing is that the chipset which comes onboard is supported by Debian GNU/Linux out-of-the-box. I suppose that remains true for other distributions, since it's really a matter of ALSA and kernel compatibility, which is reasonably homogeneous.

Anyway, after a lot of searching (and very few useful answers from almost everywhere, including Alsa's own wiki), I found out that all you have to do is (assuming you run GNOME):

1. In Volume Control, under Edit/Preferences, check 'IEC958 Output' and 'IEC958 Playback AC97-SPSA'.
2. In the Switches tab, check 'IEC958 Output'
3. Back in the Playback tab, set the slider for 'IEC958 Playback AC97-SPSA' to ZERO.
4. That's it, you're done.

This is actually quite strange, since I don't have any kind of control over S/PDIF's volume output this way; anything different than zero simply kills any sound coming from the home theater set.

I hope this helps anyone who happens to stumble with this post.

Next step: to make my FX 5200's S-Video output talk to the television set.

Read More

Stairway to Heaven

Had I been there yesterday, I don't know what could have happened. One thing is certain: there were no other place I'd rather be.

Read More

Contradiction or hyprocrisy?

Interesting thing I saw on the way home: some guy to whom a mohawk is not enough. He decided to make dreadlocks on it, too. What can I say? He was the ugliest thing I've seen these days. I do not argue with taste, though. With 6 billion people in the planet, there's a taste for every thing - and bad taste for even more.

He didn't stop there, though. What really caught my eye was his t-shirt: "No more torture - boycott to everything from animal exploration". So far, so good. That's the guy's point of view, and I respect that. And then I saw his wallet, which was visible in the pocket of his pants. A leather wallet...

Read More

Briefly brief briefing.

This is not going to be a real update. This is going to be a shamelessly brief account of what happened in the last 43 days.

I'm doing good in swimming. Although there are a lot of ways I can improve, things are going ok; 2000 meters and counting. Maybe I'll begin to post here how long I swim every day.

My advisor got promoted. I'm not sure what's the english word for it, but she's now a titular professor in my department.

I'm beginning to get paranoid with my dissertation. It's about time, since I have to admit I'm far (too far) from finishing it.

Christmas is getting close - OMG it's that time of the year already?!?!

Read More

Update.

This is not really an update, but a manifestation of my acknowledgement of the fact that it's been 43 days since my last post.

So many things have happened during this time that is seems a lot longer. Hopefully later this weekend I'll manage to write something about it.

Read More

Spooky

My advisor has just scared the shit out of me. She sent me an email asking me to write an abstract for a meeting I didn't remember about. 

The good thing is, I did know about it and I did make my registration. And I did send my abstract - exactly the one my advisor asked me to write. Actually, I'm not sure why my advisor asked me to do that, I think she's probably under some stress and didn't remember us submitting it more than a month ago. Actually, it was even a troublesome submission. 

I sent her my answer, telling her that we have already made the registration and submitted the abstract. This actually makes me feel a bit odd, since usually it's me who doesn't remember stuff.

Actually, I've been feeling a lot more confident about my work. In part, it's because my advisor has been praising my work recently. But it's also because I'm much more self-assured about things I have to know and do. I am feeling a bit guilty, however, mostly because I haven't done a lot of productive work in the past few weeks. I do have to work on my dissertation - I have been claiming to be writing for some time now. It's time I make it true.

Read More

Where are you from?

So I was checking traffic statistics for this blog and a few curious facts came to my attention.

The first of them is that the major source of traffic is not Brazil, but the United States. Brazil is second and the UK comes third.

The second curious thing I found out that the major referrer site is not other than phdcomics's forum. This is really surprising, since I've been away from the phorums for some time (not by choice, mind you).

I'm glad this thing has so many visitors from other countries (like Germany, the UK, Canada, Argentina, even Philippines and New Zealand!), despite the nauseating lack of worthy content. I wish I could be able to write more interesting posts so your visits wouldn't be a total waste of time.

Read More

Sound Juicer Sucks

Sound Juicer looks like a pretty good application for encoding audio tracks. To bad it doesn't work the way it should.

I have never had problems with it before, because I always used its default profiles. When I friend came by and saw a CD he liked and asked for a copy, I said ok. The problem is, he wanted it to be in the mp3 format.

After sometime trying to make it understand that I wanted if to encode mp3 files, I finally gave up. Apparently, there are no workarounds to make Sound Juicer to use custom made profiles.

I guess I'll stick with abcde, or maybe grip. Both of them never failed me before.

Read More

I hate banks. Apparently, the feeling in mutual.

So banks hate me. Or, at least, Santander does. For some obscure reason I'm not aware of, every single time I need something out of the ordinary from them, it's excruciatingly painful to get it. Somehow they find a way to keep annoying me with endless, random problems.

For the last whole month I've been trying to get myself a cheque-book to pay for my driving lessons and overdue rent. I ordered in through netbanking, that little thingy that supposedly makes life easier for everyone. However, after the 5 weekdays it asked for delivery, it still hadn't arrived. I went to the ATM terminal (here in Brazil, due to overall high usage of cheque for almost everything, they are quite common), and it refused to give me some single cheque forms. Then, I went to the manager, in order to ask why this problem was occurring. She answered that, for some reason, there were two books that were ordered that went to the postal service's limbo - four years ago. Assuming that this was the issue, she cancelled those and told me she would order another one the next day, so I wouldn't have to worry about anything, and in 6 weekdays I would receive the book at home.

Approximately twenty days later (that's today), I went again to the ATM to try and get some single cheque forms, which I needed desperately for today - no room for any more delays. However, as expected, the ATM refused to print them. Rage began to accumulate inside. I went straight to the manager, asked what the hell was wrong and demanded five cheque forms today - no discussion.

After several minutes, a crash in the computer (which runs Windoze), and two more people from the neighboring tables helping out, she finally discovered that, due to a R$ 2,70 (about US$ 1,35) tax that SOMEHOW wasn't paid - BACK IN 2003. FOUR years ago! FOUR. YEARS.

The real catch is, their "system" only allows for "negotiation" of values above R$ 10,00 (about US$ 5,00) - which means that, since it wasn't paid, and wasn't enough for "negotiation", it went nowhere else than the limbo. Until, after three managers digging thoroughly the records in their "system", it finally arose to haunt me.

This was the last time I cut them some slack for their incompetence. I finally lost my patience with this crappy hell-hole they claim to be a bank, As soon as I get my stipend for this month (which is tomorrow) I'll pay the goddamn money and close the account.

And to think that they've IMPROVED after privatization.

P.S.: I wish I could swear better in english. Since I can't, I'll do it in portuguese anyway.

Malditos filhos da puta, cuspidos do rabo de uma porca fedida no pântano do Rio Tietê! Incompetentes do caralho, como esses animais de teta conseguiram aprender a usar um computador?? COMO esses débeis mentais aprenderam a FALAR?? Façam um favor ao mundo e se matem.

Read More