Didn't get that job last november. Finally got another set of interviews somewhere cooler. Looks like it'll work out.

Also, my old headphones broke, got new ones. Wanted a hanger but after spending roughly the maximum I was willing to spend in a month on my new headphones, I realised THEY HAVE SPARES. And I was like "meh" about spending more money.

So. 2 dollars for a bunch of felt, some chair socks for the same amount (these are a thing), a hook that was my MK1 headphone hanger plan and raided the old box of random crap and disarmed a retort stand and


(Buying parts to fix my old one next month. And maybe a proper hanger, but this looks nice. )

I really need to update you guys more often.

Since last december

I got hired.

Got a movie credit (antman!)

Lost my job in the middle of restructuring.

Second interview for a new job tommorrow.

Oh.

Dec. 7th, 2014 02:26 pm
And I graduated as of October - Dual Major in Computer Forensics and Information Security Management (which I rocked at) and Management (which wasn't my cup of tea. I *learnt* a little, but one of the modules resulted in a bit of a delay in graduation) ;p

Gee. It slipped my mind ;p

Interview!

Dec. 6th, 2014 06:55 pm
I got a surprise interview at a VFX firm that needs a tech support geek monday before last (so, two weeks as of this monday).

I'm currently spazzing out over this cause

1. They said they'd be in touch in two weeks about a second interview and its two weeks exactly the monday that's coming up
2. I badly want this job, its a perfect fit for what I want to do (they have their own servers! And beefy desktops! and all manner of cool shit)
3. The fact I almost never get to interviews and this went awesome.

I really hope I get this, but god. my inexperience in the job hunting circle is a PITA.

Also imposter syndrome sucks. I keep wondering if I fucked something up in the interview.
Apparently you can do some witchcraft with USB OTG (for power) and some other various bits of gear to use a *proper* mic on a phone. Not a total suprise (I mean, I do have USB powered devices on a PC that can run phantom powered mics) but its fairly neat nonetheless. With the right setup, might make an awesome mobile recording setup.

This is pretty neat ;p


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p39ciSHKwo&feature=player_embedded

If I need to explain why the pacific rim theme played by 2 tesla coils and a robot is cool...

 

Well, this is not for you.


Just something I have been pondering a while, and may or may not turn into a project of sorts. If there was a new variation of the old werecards, but rebuilt from the ground up for stuff you'd actually want to find out about another therian, what would it be? I'm thinking that name, theriotype, country/state/city and community affiliations would make sense, but practically speaking, what else would you ask someone you've just met in the community? http://therian.wikia.com/wiki/Werecard thats the old werecard - other than a variation of the format, I'd probably dump *all* the things there.

Can't think of a good way to deal with gender identity, but it needs to be there, so meh. I'm thinking of this from the database design POV - you could probably take this werecard design and plug it right into a database with nice normalisation and crap.

Something like this is what I have in mind - there's some odd features, but there's a good reason for it. Notes in brackets.

Primary Identity: Geek
Alternate Name: Faileas Grey
Alternate Name: Spark

(Where there's more than one value, use seperate, repeated fields)

Gender Identity: Genderfluid

Gender Identity: Straight Male

(not the best way to deal with gender identity, might be ambigious. I like the field name, just not how this handles odder situations)

Country: Singapore
State: NA
City: Singapore
(Mispellings would be bad here. And of course for safety's sake, keep it as non specific as possible)

Theriotype/Otherkin Identity: Grey Wolf  (For real creatures, use as generic a name as possible - wikipedia entries perhaps - and leave the details for details)
Theriotype/Otherkin Identity: Angel (yeah, I need a better field name. For database purposes, these get stored together)

Community Affliation: Therian
Community Affliation: Otherkin

Additional: I tend to switch between feeling 'wolf' and a sort of winged-human like thing - I've termed it as 'angel' for simplicity, and since the mental image most people of a angel get is of a winged human. I don't 'shift' suddenly from feeling totally human to wolf or angelic. Its usually gradual, and I'm often  feeling either one of my sides to an extent. I'm not very specific about what kind of wolf I am.

 

Probably need a field-type for spirtuality as well

Entire post is an image so behind a break.Read more... )
Every year we have a spate of something we call...

THE HAZE...

Indonesian farmers generally do slash and burn agriculture, and apparently, big companies have gotten in on the fun. What we have is shit for visibiility, wood smokey smells everywhere and going out being a torture since its like walking out into something out of a steven king novel.

My throat feels sandblasted, my sinuses irritated, and we have no clue when it ends, only that its the worst haze... EVER.

I mean, I don't recall the last time we went into the 'unhealthy' range on the pollution index and we keep hitting hazardous.
I believe solarbird mentioned this some time back but this video shows how it actually works. ROBOTS!




http://gizmodo.com/apple-is-making-badass-new-mac-pros-512324822 but the new mac pro is... unusual. It looks like a dust-can. It dumps sata totally, for a PCI-e based SSD (which of course means your external storage *has* to be USB or thunderbolt based). It uses utterly non standard connectors (boo) in a wierd formfactor of 3 boards around a central, massive heatsink. It also seems to use a non standard PSU. If anything breaks, chances are you're going to have to rely on apple for spares. *Not* a very nice thing for a workstation

Did they dig up an old cray designer? It looks *waaaay* cool, but it totally went away from the neater, more accessible, PC compatible designs they have been going with. Apple's always been ruthless with legacy ports, and a little daring with design... but this is, well, unusual.

Also, it blows air up the top, so you can't actually use it as a trashcan.

 via the comments for  this 

Its a really elegant way to solve the problem, using the weight of the bullet itself to load the case in the right orientation. Works really well too.

I've actually been planning and saving long enough that what I've got is mostly a generation newer (and in some cases better) than what I had originally planned for, and I got delayed a little by needing to replace a few things on the main computer and elsewhere that I hadn't budgeted for (things breaking, needed a new phone due to unexpectedly needing to get a new line etc etc). I might make a few minor changes over time (pondering a nicer monitor, but this particular combination works great for gaming) but this is a system thats probably going to acquit itself 5-6 years down the road. Its running windows 8 (yes yes, the start menu thing annoys me too, but I mostly use pinned apps or steam anyway), and boots in about 7 seconds, 5 of which is in the bios.

i7 3770 3.4 ghz - quad core with HT
8x2 gigs of ram
Samsung SSD 840 Series (250GB)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 - http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/NVIDIA_Series/GTX660DC2O2GD5/ this model I think
Seasonic M12II 620W Bronze modular PSU

Some pictures



I'm using the monitor on the left. The monitor on the right is an old one I was testing but has too many issues to be usable. I did work out I can use the onboard videocard alongside the lovely discrete card should I need to.





Internal pix. The case I use lets me tuck away most of the cables for better airflow and visibily. The stock intel cooler is smaller than it was for older processors but keeps the system at a comfy 35 degrees at idle. I also have a modular cable so other than the second CPU power supply (which I don't need but it inexplicably hardwared into the PSU.

System runs at a good 10 degrees less than my old desktop at idle and is whisper quiet. (Currently the old desktop is making grinding noises cause of the case fan. I need to get that replaced)


 I sorta hate talking about what I term maggots in the head, especially where there's a lot of context involved in here which I suspect most of you wouldn't know about, and I am being necessarily non specific since well, the non specificness of things is the issue here.
 
So... lets start at the beginning shall we. When I was around 10 or 11, I got REALLY angry at someone and might have screwed up something that might have been important to me (basically an exam that could have gotten me to an accelerated stream. Teacher confiscated my pens cause I was playing with them, cause yanno, I was a kid, and I sort of yelled at her very loudly). For some reason I decided that losing my temper was a liability, and tried to suppress it. I ended up suppressing most of my emotions, by accident.
 
Fast forward 6 years, and the awakening of my 'wolf' side. That re-activated my emotions, but I sort of feel that compared to 'human' emotions, as I remembered experiencing previous to that, the emotions I feel are 'simple' but intense. On the other hand, I have the same range of emotions, and on occation, I try to work out what the hell exactly i am feeling. I might feel nervious as a 'basic' reaction, and the general source of the nervousness (say about talking to someone)  but the human-logical part of me dosen't always get what exactly links the two - the 'cause' of the nervousness itself. I can obviously tell that its 'different' but not what. "Winged person" emotions are probably more akin to human, but there's some aspects of it, such as the sheer open-ness of that society that don't work well with what I have now.
 
To some extent, the old standby of social rules (relationships with people as a series of logical responses where experience or instinct of some sort dosen't work) helps in some situations, but I can't exactly run like that all the time. There's situations where deciding the 'optimal' course would take too long, and the 'stupid' instinctual option may be better. Then again, that's gotten me in trouble before so.. ugh.
 
Dealing with people is hard, when you're constantly also having to weigh up your own reactions
For some reason dad forgot to sort out one of the office filing cabinets when moving, and I found a trio of old speakers that were supposedly busted. One of them was a cruddy old one I couldn't be arsed to even test, but the other two were pairs of old altec lancing speakers that felt *heavy*. Geek's first law of salvage - if its heavy, test it. I only have one power supply, and input cable (which seems to be shot to hell. Wavering between testing and re-jacking it, or making a nice little cable for it - I should have the parts to make one, or I can go grab one). They're Altec Lancing ACS91s and for 'busted' speakers, the ones that work sound pretty darned good. 

I need to get the dog out of the way to test it, musicwise (Ash hates anything but classical), but initial impressions seem pretty good. 
Yesterday I prepared 3 systems for disposal - pulled hard drives (in theory so we can pop them into the one identical system we kept), and pulled a PSU on a whim. My dad's personal system is probably going to be run till it breaks down (and at 8 years, it could happen), and possibly be used as a testbed system for various p2v methods.

Here's the scary thing. 5 years ago, when I built the current shared rig, It was *hard* after not having done it for years. Swapping the motherboard from the dell I found in the dumpster into a nicer case was easier, but still not fluid.

I spent more time extracting a key from a broken lock (using a crappy off-brand multitool made of really flimsy steel, that happened to have the right sort of can-opener) than basically disassembling 3 systems.

I suppose practice is good, which is why (well financial reasons aside), building my next computer in stages should be a good idea, especially as i swap parts from one case to another ;)

New toy

Aug. 20th, 2012 03:43 pm
So.. I got off the flight (red eye to boot! I can't sleep on planes, so I spent most of the day zombified) from visiting my grandmother's (and my new future sister in law dropped by, - YES I HAVE BEEN BAD AND NOT TELLING YOU ALL THE GOSSIP!!!LATER I WILL ),  last weekand dad was like 'Oh, you need to get a new phone by sunday' but my old phone went dead and they messed up and cancelled it early and I got a new phone and its cute and made of metal and shiny and has a GPS thing so i won't get lost, not that it happens often and i'm just a little bit excited.

Yes, While the little thing just pushed my new desktop off a month, I'm now not the last geek to have a smartphone.



Its a cute little thing, and despite being a cellphone skeptic, I love it to bits ;p
Its a HTC One V - fairly cheap little thing, but its well built and should last me a while ;).