Capricious Me » 2006 » February

I got a letter in the mail from some dating service company called “Great Expectations.” My reaction - “What a stupid name.” If you’re attempting a clever name for a dating service, at least choose a book with happy endings for its characters. Great Expecations is full of unrequited love and unhappy couples. Ms. Havisham died an old spinster. Estella married an abusive lout (and got out of that marriage, which I suppose was her happy ending.) Pip never got the girl of his dreams (and his “backup” ended up marrying his brother in law!) Only Herbert Pocket & Joe got luck in love, but they are hardly the characters that spring to mind when we hear “Great Expectations.”

I won’t reveal the catalyst for this… but I suddenly really really love the songs from Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (Umbrellas of Cherbourg). (Not that I’ve seen the movie again since that one time in my sophomore/junior year w/Sera.) Ok, no, not really all the songs. The object of my obsession is that slow, but lovely duet between Guy & Genevieve before Guy leaves for the war and that theme in general. Actually, maybe I like that duet because it’s one of the few songs in the movie that sounds like a song and not just the script sung to the music. and “As Time Goes By” from Casablanca just got stuck in my head from out of nowhere. Ahh… Casablanca!

( snippet of the french lyrics & my comprehension, complete lyrics to As Time Goes By )

Spring break coming up soon!! I suppose one of the few advantages of the quarter system is that when we get these “monument” breaks, the quarter is OVER. Still, our spring break is extraordinarily short. *disgruntled* I wonder why?

Audio from ANCIENT Pompeii extracted from a VASE surface of all things!!! Click on “Lire” to watch a streaming version, and “Telecharger” to download the clip. The laughter is pretty clear. That is just… wow…

This is for the dog lovers.

Top 10 Strangest Mp3 players: Notice especially the teddy bear mp3 player. So CUTE. And the mp3 toilet is by far the coolest thing ever, if a little unsanitary… Japanese toilets are certainly the most creative of all.

Dude… Agent Smith (think Matrix) was on to something (if you believe the article)!! They talk about the Mimivirus. *giggle* Hey Meems, My favorite quote from the article? “The implications of that finding are truly radical: that Mimi, or a Mimi-like ancestor, emerged prior to the three other domains and played a key role in inventing the very cells of which humans and all complex cellular life-forms are made… Mimi is like the missing link.” Just in case you don’t remember the Matrix quote, here it is…

Agent Smith: I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus.

And… save the best for last they say. (or as edits/additions.) Indiana Jones IV!!!! but… harrison ford is so old. Who are they going to use as Indiana Jones?? I know I have a few wishes… ^^;; *cough*viggo morgenstern*cough*

Yeah, that’s right: notice the plural!

( And who are my valentines? )

Seriously though, I feel like I’m in a CS bubble or something. Having bouts of self-doubt and really, really looking forward to middle/late march.

Next quarter should be better in terms of classwork/research time ratio. (I want to focus on my research. My spam!! spam!!!) I tested into the highest level chinese language class (bwahahahhaha… looks like i haven’t forgotten everything… thank god for the simplicity of Chinese grammar!) so I’m taking that next quarter. That’ll be my “stay sane by learning non-cs stuff!” class. (Not that I’m saying it’ll be a breeze, but blind memorization is SO much easier than trying to understand stuff or coming up with solutions.)

*** Update ***
Ok, ok… don’t hit me anymore! :-P I am making an amendment to my list of valentines.

You*!

*Unless I don’t know you.

GREAAT quote that came out of Friday night. “Letting math kids in a CS class is like letting healthy kids in the special Olympics.”

Today “The kind of cold that’s not warm…”
(response, sarcastic) “Yeah, that’s the worst kind of cold.”

Oh… I lust for this. Just think of how much you can customize it!! This could make learning to type in 五笔 (wubi) really trivial. And memorizing keystrokes for heavily keyboard apps, like Vi, much simpler.

In other news… my spam paper’s done. So this means Phase 1 of Yuan - Spam Hunter (Ysh!!) is done. The bad new is… I didn’t submit. Why? Because it was too damn short. I wrote my little heart out and it only filled like five pages. Siiiigh… such a disappointment.

But… on the other hand, it means I’m going to definitely continue on to part two: Finding splogs!

And… even worse news. I need to get my violin bow re-haired. I opened up the case and there were loose hairs EVERYWHERE. Why? The culprit was a little BUG that was chewing through the hair, I suppose. I’m so relieved that it only ate the horse hair and not the violin wood… oh lord, that would have REALLY pissed me off. Why can’t bugs eat the carpet hairs?