crash and burn

Laptop just crashed this weekend.

Had it running a decent size Matlab program over Friday night, Came in Saturday morning and it was constantly restarting, attempting to find a boot CD or a network boot command. Attempted to reboot into Windows. Failed. Attempted to run Windows in Safe mode. Failed.

Thank goodness for Knoppix. Managed to access all my files on the hard drive and ship them off on a USB key.

Finally managed to boot into Windows safe mode. Ran chkdsk to see if there were problems with the disk. Everything was fine... until it froze on me. Rebooted. Got the blue screen of death! with error code 0xF4 (which means "Critical Object Termination"). Google searched on that and found out it's a very BAD thing. Also wasn't pleased to find that many other Toshiba owners have experienced it too, and were less than happy with the support offered from the company.

Two days later I finally managed to re=install the original image of the software that came with the machine, after 6 tries (kept freezing). Now I have to try and diagnose if there's anything still wrong with the machine. I'm hopeful it is not a hardware issue.

r.

social contact

Came across an article in Wired News talking about future trends in technology. This one blows my mind:

"What's in store? How about mapping programs that show us whether anyone we'd like to see is nearby."

It's like a mobile version of the online chat feature that shows if you are logged on. Instead, your cell phone can say where you are, and anyone you permit to can then check where you are. This is crazy. Never mind being constantly in touch with a cell phone, but soon your friends can also come surprise you. I'm all for being in contact with people. But I also like being able to remove myself from contact with people. Whereas before that meant NOT MAKING a concious effort to contact people, it may soon mean MAKING a concious effort to not be in contact with people. A subtle difference, but something I'm not used to yet.

I'd really like to know more about socialogical studies of how technology is changing the way we interact. The article has a good quote on that, in which they point out that cell phones allow us to meet with friends more often, but then people end up talking on their cell phones while out with their friends. And with Seinfeld no longer on, how are we supposed to know what the proper etiquette is?

Are these new technologies bringing us all closer? or just pissing us all off? Thoughts?

fists o' fury

... my wonderfully inaccurate Karatedo nickname from my training partner. My fight record of 1-1-3 (W-L-T) doesn't seem to agree with that designation.

Everyone should take a martial arts class at some point in their lives (preferably during University). My rational is: 1) You're old enough to know that you won't be learning how to break bricks and smash boards with your hands... that's what sledge-hammers are for. 2) You're young enough that this stuff may come in handy.

I've been fortunate enough in my life to have not been in too many situations where my personal safety has been at risk. For those times that I have been, Matt and Chris have been around (thankfully). Reality though, is that at some point you may need to fight or run. It's hard to predict what I would have done a year ago, but I think it's safe to say that my odds of getting out of a bad situation are a lot better now. Simple things like being able to identify when a situation is going bad are a lot clearer since I've actually been in a situation where someone wants to kick--my--ass. Forget the referee... when someone comes at you with fists cocked, it doesn't matter that you are wearing a helmet, and that there are people around to keep things under control.

This guy wants to hurt me.

After the first few fights you stop panicking. My sensei says that once you advance beyond the basics, 80% of fighting becomes a mental challenge. It's like playing chess while someone's throwing punches at you. Bobby Fisher... you ain't gonna make it in this ring. And talk about instant feedback! You make a dumb-ass mental mistake while playing Risk, then boohoo. You get cracked in the head, you learn a lot faster.

back from the brink

Wow. Two months since the last time I posted. Judging from the lack of comments on my absence, then likely I'm the only one reading this thing anyways ;-)

Anyways, I'm actually not goint to write anything with substance right now. Instead, I wanted to get things going by talking about what I will be writing about in the forthcoming days.

1. I just passed my green belt test in Karatedo last week. It's surprising to me how much my perspective on personal safety has changed since I began my training.

2. Ethics within research. As some of you may or may not know, my PhD research is on evolution in genetic networks. In somewhat misleading terms, I'm trying to understand how humans and monkeys can share 99% of the same genes, yet be quite different.

3. Changing perspective. I realize that I pay more attention to world events now than I have in the past, but still... it seems there's a lot of terrible struggles taking place in the world right now. Tsunami, earthquake, hurricanes devastating the souther US, Mexico, Guatemala, Haiti and don't forget the atrocities occuring in Iraq and Sudan.

The stage has been set. Catch you on the next wave