For posterity, I will now record my actions that resulted in the installation of Windows 7 to my hard drive. Listen closely, for it is a sad, sad tale.

Maybe not so sad: the XP install I had was showing it’s age as boots took minutes and things were just generally slow. And since Windows 7 was discounted to 30-ish dollars for students, I figured I might as well get a modern OS and refresh everything in one kick (I figured trying to wrangle a copy of Windows from MSNDNAA through my university would be a pain, and more trouble than it was worth. Probably should’ve found out).

So, here’s the first hurdle: it was quite unclear what I was buying. There is an option to ship some disks out to you in addition to the access to download the update, and the site was not making it clear whether or not I was getting an iso, and upgrade executable, or both. If there was no iso, then having the disks would be extremely handy. If there was an iso, then the disks would be a redundant waste of money. To be safe, I got the disks, and discovered a few seconds later that they did give you an iso. It’s not that big a deal, but it still irks me that they need to assume their users are idiots so that you ultimately don’t know what you’re getting (probably should’ve googled it, but… yeah, probably should have. Feel free to heap shame on me for failing to do so).

So, anyways, I shuffle some data off the windows partition (although not all of it, so I lost some music. I think), wipe, and try installing. Hangs on expanding files (0%). Hmm… One night down, burn it slower, and install it successfully. Then I find out I shouldn’t have wiped my windows partition, since it’s only an upgrade key, and it needs to install over an old windows. Bust out the xp disc, reinstall, then install windows 7, key works, and the birds are singing. Now it’s time to stick grub back into the MBR (master boot record) so I can dual boot Windows and Ubuntu again.

Ominous drum roll…

So I boot up my Ubuntu live disc, and fire up gparted. And it appears that my Ubuntu partition has disappeared. Strange. Since I burned the second Windows disc from Ubuntu, the XP or Windows 7 installation must have done something to the partition scheme. Looking up how to recover damaged partition tables, I installed testdisk, learned how to use it, and took a look around. Apparently, the partition was there in the partition table, but it had somehow become a primary partition (when it was originally a logical) and hence dropped off the face of the earth as far as gparted was concerned.

Since I was using a full complement of partitions, I knocked off my swap (having 4Gb is good for something other than huge fluid sims) and put the lost partition on as a primary. Then I cp -R’d all the contents to my /home partition, and then rebuilt the extended partition. Since I also had to shuffle my data around, it took a while, until I finally got my partition scheme back the way I liked it. So, I cp -R’d the contents of the Ubuntu partition back, installed grub to the MBR, and rebooted.

Since grub didn’t have a menu.lst to go off of, I learned very quickly how to boot from grub with

set root=(hdX,0)

linux /vmlinuz root=/dev/sdaY

initrd /initrd.img

boot

It gets old after doing it 2 times.

The boot failed: it turned out that sudo was owned by someone else. Fixed that with a livecd, tried to boot again. After the 3rd or 4th boot, it dawned on me that everything was owned by root. That happens when you do sudo cp -R /media/ubuntu-partition /media/somewhere-else. So, I gave up, figured I’d screwed myself, and reinstalled Ubuntu. Verily, I tell thee that having a separate /home was a very good idea. You should do it too.

So, I learned somethings, and I’m much less restrained with partition editors than I used to be. Now it’s time to actually finish something so that I have other stuff to write about.

So, I installed Windows 7 this morning. Or was it yesterday night? Or yesterday morning? At any rate, one thing led to another and I finally got here, where I have a working windows 7 and kind of working ubuntu. Unfortunately, I learned about cp -aR too late, and now I have a whole installation of ubuntu that has screwed up permissions. It is almost not worth the effort I put into trying to save it. Maybe it isn’t, since I’ll probably have permissions issues biting me in the ass more frequently than usual.

Live and learn.

Oh, and I have some progress on the head and bow. Head has a hacky approach, and the bow may or may not look good. Haven’t taken a look yet. At any rate, I’m going to sleep. I may write up my adventures later. Maybe.

Also! http://samandfuzzy.com/ is my new drug. And we’re going to see Avatar tomorrow, so I can finally have an opinion on the matter.

I’ve just added the choice to build a pdf with either pdftex or vanilla latex and dvipdf. Although they’re pretty similar, sometimes you want one over the other (pdftex doesn’t work with pst-circ, for example, or pdftex can take png images). Note: I have not overhauled the image system to deal with this yet. This might mean I’ll have to convert on demand, or something, which might be for the best, since having more images than necessary might be detrimental to my hard drive space.

Also, I just learned about hyperref. I’ll have to keep that in mind for future experiments.

Fun fun!

So, just to follow up with my gripes about Ubuntu, it turns out that upgrading was the cause of my troubles. Doing a couple of clean installs (first to find corrupt libraries killing init within 3 seconds of boot, second to find I had installed x86 inadvertently, and the final one to get x86_64) got me to a working install, and I must say, it’s pretty good to be back out from under XP. Once I get the chance and funds, I’ll have to get me two copies of Windows 7, especially that 30$ student edition (baring any revelations that said copies are crippled in some way) so I have to reformat. I also learned how to ‘burn’ an iso to my usb disk (why yes, it is an actual tiny usb hd), which means I won’t have to burn another disc, hopefully forever. Which works out, since I had just run out of discs to burn (although it’s just smaller than your average DVD image: I’ll probably have to upgrade my drive to an actual flash dongle).

Also, I’m working on another software project. I’ll post details once it does something more than display pretty boxes in the wrong proportions.

Just so you know I’m not dead or anything.

So I’ve been having troubles with Ubuntu for the last few days: first, upgrading the desktop causes a cyclic restart after logging in: sound is broken again, as I remember putting good hours in making that work: and now I couldn’t find the command to upgrade without a gui. For someone concerned with gaining some server market share, that particular command is not very easy to find. Mind you, I’m not going to jump ship: I’ve also tried to concurrently install Mandrivia, and that’s not working out too well either.

So, I woke up at 12:12 today.

Which is bad, to say in the least. It speaks of my slovenliness, the sort of behavior which I want to avoid (sleeping 10 hours is too much. It might have been enough when I was younger, but I think, despite the fact that my development hasn’t dropped to neglible levels, that I’m pretty stable physiologically). Waking up late is only one of many lifestyle component that I’m not happy with, including:

• Irregular eating: not keeping up with the 5-meal schedule I've laid out for myself, inspired by my brother. I suppose, also, that balancing the meals would be better for my health, rather than eating whatever I can find. Perhaps the in between meals could generally be 'healthy', and the other meals meant to keep up speed?
• Another thing that ties in with not eating right is not exercising, which ties in with waking up late. I usually plan on exercising in the morning, but waking up late preempts that. Without exercise, a 5-meal plan is probably too much; either too much food, or requiring too much self-control/self-knowledge to dish out the right amount of food.
• Keeping a straight view is difficult: this ties in with waking up late (in some instances) as a lack of will-power, since distractions are not something that must happen, at least most of the time.

• Engage the will-power: I'm going to need to develop some more will-power. Some of it's just practicing overriding lower-level wants, but some of it is keeping goals in mind. I can deal with the goals part with some notekeeping.
• I find that one reason I'm not getting up right is that I can't generally fall asleep fast enough: ie I lay awake and think about things for a few hours. Part of it is not being tired enough to sleep, which can be solved with more exercise, but it also has to do with not dumping my mind enough. A combination of twitter and here blog should solve that problem (hopefully). Note, though, there's a space between twitter and a blog post: I like my blog posts to be longer and thoughtful, while twitter updates are, well, off the cuff remarks. So I'll either have to compress my thoughts into 140 characters, or think about them until I have something to say.
• For eating better, I'll just have to learn the art.

PS. Here’s a good site that I’ve lifted some of this stuff off of.

So, I’ve just done what I always seem to end up doing every few fortnights or so, which is to tear through a science fiction novel as quickly as possible. I know it doesn’t do justice to a classic, but I seem to have a thing with picking up books and having to finish them. This behavior doesn’t extend anywhere else… erm, except for tearing through webcomics. Maybe it’s just a story related thing; I start a story, and I need to finish it to maintain mental continuity in the easiest way possible by never popping out of it. Anyways, it’d be helpful if I could stop doing it with stories, and do it with projects or homework, since something might actually get done then.

So, if you couldn’t tell from the title, I read Dune this time around. First impressions: for being half a century old, it seems amazingly modern in respects, meaning there aren’t too many obvious anachronisms that show up in the course of the story (versus, say, any story that assumed we would have or even want flying cars by now). However, I don’t like the use of ‘atomics’ in the story: it dates it to a time when nuclear power was considered formidable, which could prove to be interesting when the next few generations grow up with even more destructive power. Yes, these small things don’t negatively affect the story much, but if Frank Herbert had instead come up with a analog to atomics similar to his invention of Hemholtz fields, the story (in the details, at least) could last longer without causing people to double take.

The novel can also be considered fundamentally anachronistic, since it’s a reflection of the feudal structure in the European Middle Ages, much in the same way that Foundation paralleled the fall of the Roman Empire, with the obvious twist: what would happen if someone saw the fall coming, and took measures to change the aftermath? However, Dune is somewhat more of a traditional story, a revenge story that could be an isomorphic fit to a revenge story in the middle ages (I immediately thought the Count of Monte Carlo would be a good fit, but it turns out that the Count doesn’t have prescient visions, and doesn’t head a horde of Mongols). So, the story structure is familiar, although it’s a bit sparse in narrative, similar to the story telling of Foundation. I swear, these authors must have been copying each other or something! (ha) Even the faux historical quotations heading each chapter fit. And they’re both pretty good stories: just enough detail in the story to keep you involved, in the right places, with a particular de-emphasis on battle scenes, similar to how Ender’s Game describes only the formative or deciding battles of Ender. It makes you wonder how the science ficton genre has gotten so disjointed, with an emphasis on battles in cinema, and a general plot/sci-fi detailing on the page.

Although the Foundation is pretty similar to Dune, the book I immediately thought of when reading about the ecological emphasis was Mother of Demons, a relatively obscure science fiction novel by Eric Baen (which is also made freely available on the internet, as of 2009). Both introduce a new alien life form most people don’t bother to imagine (if they can): Dune introduced the sandworm, and Mother of Demons introduced an intelligent mollusk-like life form. The extremity of environments was perhaps more innovative in Dune, since (I guess) the collective mind usually thinks of a alien planet being filled with growth, instead of being barren and hostile to life, even though it makes sense that only those places hostile to life produce life that can survive for long (which is a theme Dune tries to drive home. I guess it worked on me). While I speak of themes, another theme shared by both novels is that occassional defeat is good for the growth of an entity, be it a person, corporation, or army (Orson Scott Card obviously did not subscribe to this thought).

While there are another 6 or so books in the Dune series proper, I think I’ll have to pass on the rest if they tend to be like other classic science fiction series: good series starters, and diminishing returns on the sequels/prequels. I noticed it happening in Ender’s Game and the sequels/companion novels, where there wasn’t a drop in quality, but rather a repetition of themes and thoughts. I know they aren’t all the same, but there’s only so much of another universe I can introduce into mine. I also know that the other Dune books have a different emphasis, introspection on defeat despite prescience rather than victory; maybe another day.

To freak y’all out straight away, I have a crush on a cartoon character.

Yes, yes, freaky, but maybe not so surprising. For the cartoon character in question, check out PHD the comic, and in particular the cover for the first book. Really, if there was a girl like that in my immediate vicinity (cute and geeky and nice, which is asking for a bit much), I would be sad. Since I’m kind of planning on leaving my immediate vicinity the next academic year. To pre-empt feeling sad, I plan on staying in my room for most of the school year: hopefully this lack of human contact will prevent me from having my heart crushed.

Now, it’s time to stop procrastinating and finish my Analytical Mechanics homework.

Todo:

1. Hack up a new style for wordpress. This default isn't cutting it for me.
2. Finish up EZLO.
3. Write manifesto.
4. Finish coilgun.

[Note: everything before this post was made on blogger.]

I miss git. Specifically, I miss the commits at the end of the day, that sort of self-documentation and wrapping up the day, instead of forgetting about the struggles that have come before. Blah.