It rained all day, which was appropriate because it was a pretty miserable day. It came as a rather big shock when I learned that the first milestone (and a very big one) is due this Friday. I’m tempted to declare my professor criminally negligent in his duties of keeping us informed. I’ve already got a couple things due this week and I’m not sure where to start with VLSI.
Other than that, I reinstalled Windows (again!), read a chapter for databases, read a section for combinatorics, bootstrapped Fink from source, and went on a short shopping trip with Titus in tow.
Apple officially launched Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther). Apple’s latest major system overhaul brings a lot to the table in terms of improved overall performance, new features, and security enhancements. Student pricing is $69 and retail is $129. The packaging and software for both are identical.
Alex Lock has released the first public testing version of Tetrinet Aqua. I’ve been in contact with Alex since he started this project and I’ve seen it come a long way in a very short time due to his efforts. Binaries and source code for Tetrinet Aqua can be retrieved at the G7 Software homepage.
My main goal for the day was to reinstall Windows on my ailing PC and hopefully fix the data integrity issues and increasingly frequent crashing. It took far too many false starts and too much time to actually get a working Windows installation but I eventually prevailed. It’s seems pathetic that things can be as difficult as they can be with PCs these days. It only makes me respect this PowerBook more. I should mention that I had absolutely no problems installing Panther and getting back to a working state and it took about an hour for the entire process. It must have taken at least five hours to reinstall Windows—granted, I was playing Soul Calibur II off and on during the whole process—and the thing would simply hang on boot the after the first try. I eventually fixed that by changing BIOS settings for my onboard IDE peripherals.
If there’s one nagging problem that has plagued all the PCs I’ve owned for the past three or four years it’s been complex storage configurations and how idiotic Windows can be at handling them. Basically, whenever you toss in more than one storage controller into the mix Windows gets confused and doesn’t know what to do. The result can manifest itself in something as benign, yet annoying, as funky drive letters or something more insidious such as blue screens, hangs, or failure to recognize a boot drive at all. In my recent experience, I have to disable all hard disks that are not on the same controller as my boot drive and then re-enable them after Windows is up and running. I would like to think I’m not the only one that finds this sort of behavior uncalled for. In truth, I would like to see Windows abandon the drive-lettering scheme altogether and go with something much more UNIX-like. I feel like it would make life easier, though I could be wrong.
I watched the remainder of my “.hack//SIGN” DVD; I had watched the first episode yesterday. So far everything is pure drama, though I suspect a love interest will come along. Still, it’s very enjoyable and strikingly different from “.hack//LIMINALITY,” the OVA series that comes with the .hack games. SIGN seems to be staged entirely within the game world, whereas LIMINALITY takes place in a more traditional setting.
Nicky rented The Matrix: Reloaded so we watched some of that this evening too. I’m rather proud of the fact that I got a working software DVD player without having to use any installers at all. I basically extracted the DVD decoder DirectShow filter files from my ATI software disc and manually registered them. Once that was done it was simply a matter of using my favorite bare-bones video player, Media Player Classic, to play the DVD.
It was a normal day of classes until VLSI let out at noon. From there it was a mad dash to compile a servicable report to turn in for phase two of Introduction to Databases. It was a frustrating and, at times, humiliating experience. The difficulties were largely due to having to deal with Word and all of its idiosyncrasies. I realized that Word is not the decent word processor from a large multi-national corporation I thought it was. It’s a lousy word processor from a large multi-national corporation. For reasons unknown to me, Word insisted on butchering my careful formatting whenever I would insert one document into another. This approach was necessary due to the team-based nature of this project and various group members would frequently do a portion of work on their own and then send their part back to be combined with everyone else’s. In the end we had four different Word documents with custom page numbering such that they could be printed separately and recombined. The final page count was slightly under 50 pages.
My copy of Panther had arrived by the time I got back. After retrieving the package from the leasing office, I finished the backup process that had started days earlier and proceeded to do a clean install of 10.3. Three CDs and an hour or so later I was up and running again. Initial impressions are quite good. Everything seems much more fluid and responsive now. Eye candy effects like the genie minimize effect are smoother now than I ever remember them being in Jaguar. Xbench would back this up too, seeing as my raw score rose by about 12%. A number of applications including Mail, Sherlock, and TextEdit have received minor makeovers. Expose is probably the most significant feature that 10.3 brings to the table. Its ability to automagically arrange windows for easy access and manipulation can be activated via hotkeys or hot corners, depending on how it is configured. The Command-Tab hotkey now has a graphical element, not unlike that of Windows, that I also like. So, at the $70 student pricing you get a full retail copy of Apple’s latest and greatest on three CDs plus one developer CD. Looks good to me.
I watched three more episodes of “D.N.Angel” (episodes 4-6) with Titus. Now I have to find episode 7 before we can continue.
I left early to meet with my CS group and the TA who will be grading our project to make sure we have everything correct. Between the meeting and my first class I worked on the project, read the VLSI project description, and had a pretty good burrito at the student center for lunch. The VLSI project looks like it will take a disturbing amount of time.
I received a notification from Apple that my copy of Panther shipped today. A quick check of the FedEx tracking page revealed that they used Overnight delivery service so it should get here tomorrow afternoon. The fact that I didn’t have to pay anything for the shipping makes it that much better.
Titus and I watched episodes #2 and #3 of “D.N.Angel.” The plot seems to move pretty fast from the get-go. I’m liking everything so far.
I also passed “Sakura” (Heavy) on my home pad with a C late in the evening, with no mods at that. It’s a cool song but hardly seems like a 10-footer. I passed it on my second try and after doing it on Challenge mode on the previous stage. I hope this means I’m getting better and it’s not just the song.
