Asdquefty’s Journal

I know that I haven’t posted in a while, and that my posting has decreased. The main reason for that has been a lack of ideas about what I want to do with my blog until recently.

I’ve decided that I’m going to narrow the focus of my blog to the realm of technology, as it is my main interest. Also, the most popular post here is the guide to Rainbow Six Vegas 2 I posted a few months ago.

I may make the odd off-topic post, but those will be rare. I’m going to rework the links as time allows, as well as go through my posts to decide what stays and what doesn’t.

EDIT: After reviewing my posts, I seem to have come up with a lot more good posts then I had expected. I really had the feeling that my blog was waning on me.

I know, it’s been two weeks, but here’s my review.

At this point, I would give Chrome an 85%, while it has the beginnings of a good browser it has several key faults at this point. I’m sure as it matures some of these issues will be resolved.

Pros:

• Fast page load times, beats Firefox in informal testing by several seconds.
• Ease of access to favorites.
• Clean design, no unnecessary clutter in the user interface.
• Separate processes for separate tabs increases stability.
• The failure of one tab doesn’t kill the whole browser.
• New implementation of Javascript, increases the speed of Javascripts.
• No confusion between typing in address bar and search bar, as it’s the same box for everything.
• Uses WebKit, anything that works in Safari works in Chrome.
• Releases memory faster upon closing tabs.

Cons:

• Hackish Java support, Java 6 Update 10 broke Eclipse and had to be removed, leaving no Java for Chrome. This may not affect everyone, but consider it if you use Eclipse or any other specialized Java program.
• Windows-only, Windows sucks.
• Incomplete plugin support.
• No extensions functionality, means most Chrome users will be using it alongside Firefox.
• More memory usage compared to Firefox.

If you use Windows, I highly recommend Chrome. Unfortunately, I have just moved both of my computers to Linux, which means I cannot use Chrome at the moment.

I’ll post here again if/when Chrome becomes available on Linux.

On Thursday, I noticed that I was unable to log into a selection of websites using Firefox, and I could log into them using Google’s new Chrome browser.

So, I’ve uninstalled Firefox and made sure that Google Chrome was my default browser, and I am now using Chrome exclusively. I’ll write a detailed post about how Chrome fared at the end of the week.

Canada is having a federal election on October 14, and I still don’t know who to vote for, so here’s the parties as I see them:

Conservative: Severely lacking in platform, campaign consists of smearing the Liberals and Ad Hominem* attacks on Dion.

Liberal: Non-specific platform, often attacks conservative party.

NDP: These people are actually going to do something, and have focused on building a platform instead of attacking other parties.

Green Party: Save the environment, generally far on the “left”, except for being backwards fiscal conservatives. Huh?

I am stuck between the liberals and the NDP. I really believe in what the NDP plan to do and think it needs to be done, but the most important consideration is that we have to avoid another conservative government. (It can’t even be a minority Tory gov’t, as the Liberals are clearly not fit opposition.) 

If you don’t know who to vote for, keep it simple. Ignore all of the attacks and ideology, it’s crap. Figure out what you want from the government, and vote for who’s going to give it to you.

My laptop has been acting pretty unusually over the last few days, freezing up twice, giving me 3 BSODs today, and some funkyness with the touchpad that went away as soon as I opened Device Manager.

Since I’m a computer science major, that pretty much means I get to come swinging Spider-man style and save my own day, which is fine by me because I enjoy fixing computers and I can take pride in having a working computer at the end. I am taking this opportunity to clean up my system some as well and remove programs that are useless, which leads me to my next point: Apple is retarted.

I was cleaning out programs, and I removed one called “Bonjour” that had a generic icon. Usually, such programs are malware, especially when they have a generic icon. I wasn’t immediately concerned since nothing exploded when I removed it, but I just stumbled across it in a Google search and it turns out it provides essential services for iTunes. Wonderful, as now I have to figure out if I’ve actually broken anything, just because Apple couldn’t name the program in such a way that people would connect it to iTunes and not assume that it’s spyware. “Bonjour” sounds like a pretty spyware-ish name to me, makes me think of a french version of the “Hello World” program, which is pretty useless if you ask me, which I assume you have since you’re reading my blog.

I’ve really been pondering friendship lately.

It would be cool to have friends that understand me and I can talk about anything with, and the companionship thing too.

The thing is that I seem to do fine with few friends as long as I am engaged in something, and I find that it’s more fun to engage in study or other solitary activity then be around the majority of people.

People tend to annoy my with inane stories, small talk, doing nothing other then talking, and then suddenly ending conversations just as I’m getting into the talk. I also find that most group activities are a no-go for me as I can’t process interacting with multiple people at the same time, and tend to stick on one person which they find annoying.

I also have impaired reception and expression of body language, which gets in the way of getting to know people on a deep level, and I have a higher requirement for personal space which some may read as being mean/rude when I move away from people to maintain my space.

The thing I have noticed about a lot of activities is that they arise spontaneously, which causes me to decline as I already have my routine planned for the day, and often the next few days.

I’m really selective about when, where, and how I want to be social. Like a cat.

Meow.

Ok, I just felt like having a title that rhymes, I know it isn’t the best.

Anyway, if I haven’t said it yet, I am shy. I don’t talk to anyone when I’m not at home or university, and most of the people I know because they approached me first or I met them at meet-and-greets and similar events where the point is to meet people, as then I can convince myself people want to be approached.

Which leads me into the fact that I have a belief people want to be left alone. This partly comes from the fact that I often want to be left alone, and I figure what people are thinking partly by imagining what’s happening to them happen to me which doesn’t work because few people I’ve met think the same way I do. I’m projecting my desire to be left alone onto other people and assuming they want to be left alone.

Non-verbal communication causes me a lot of anxiety as I can’t read it unless it’s extremely obvious, and even then I can misinterpret the intensity or severity of it. I’ve taken a small dirty look as a “i never want to see you again ever” look at least once and promptly left as I thought the person wanted me to leave.

My personality really tends towards introversion, likely to a moderate to severe degree, as I don’t mind spending a lot of my time alone and I need a certain amount of alone time.

I could go on forever about why, but the simple fact is that it’s troublesome because I’d like to find someone who thinks the same way I do but if we’re both shy types then it really becomes a lot less likely. Studying at a university, you’re probably all thinking why I don’t know more people, and the fact is that I don’t have a lot of the interests other students have. I don’t drink, I’m not interested in parties, I’m not a sports fan, and I don’t like talking about the gossip of what’s happening in who’s life.

Anyway, I’m going to go look for the other introverts out there, wish me luck!

I was reading my CBC news feed this morning, and found a story where someone set a cat on fire and left it on someone’s lawn. It’s horrble, and I have no idea how anyone could do such a thing.

The story can be found here.

Of course, if they find the person who did this, he’s likely to get community service which is hardly justice at all. The punishment for acts like this really needs to be increased, so that people feel what they put the animals through.

Well, I’m coming up on the end of the second week of classes, and I’ve had a lot happen since the last post.

The day after I had my meltdown last week I applied for a variety of part-time jobs on campus, as the hours at the retail store are unmanageable and there isn’t much they can do about it. So, no I’m going to be one of the lab advisors for first year CS courses as well as the marker for the course, which is something that I’ll be able to manage with my current load of assignments. I might have to miss a few of my last shifts at the retail store, but that’s how life goes sometimes.

The other thing that’s going on is that I still don’t have the software that I’m going to use to help me comprehend my textbooks, so there’s still a tad of back to school running around to do but it’s mostly over now that I have my textbooks, my laptop, my bursary, and I’ve started all of my classes.

The astronomy course I’ve started seems like it will be really interesting, and my other classes are 3 computer science classes and an linear algebra class. I just find that computers come to me naturally in a way that doesn’t happen for other people, and I find myself spending less time on assignments. For a more normal person, they would probably use the extra time to be with friends, but I have a tendency to use it to read or otherwise become engrossed in some topics not related to my courses. For the last few months, the side-topic I’ve been reading up on is the psychiatric disorders, which started after I was mis-diagnosed as an attempt to learn more about myself. It might sound weird, but I’ve learned a lot.

The most important thing to remember about people with mental health issues is that they’re people above all else, equal to anyone else.

Anyway, this post is becoming scattered, so that’s all for now. Take care everyone.

It’s that (not-so-)wonderful time of year again where we all prepare for going back to school. I’m running around buying textbooks, getting equipment, having sessions with the special needs department at school, and all that wonderful stuff.

The other thing is that this weekend at work is likely to be havoc as people rush to do all their last minute back to school shopping, even though they had all summer to go shopping. Everyone complains about the rush of last minute shopping, but nobody does anything about it. Let’s just hope I don’t get too stressed out at work on the weekend, but I’ll have to deal with that when it gets here and remember I’ve had worse jobs.

Just wanted to let everyone know that I haven’t forgotten my blog, I’m just getting busier preparing for classes.

(Update for those who have come to my little blog recently: I’m going to be starting year 2 of a 4 year BA in Computer Science.)