March 10, 2004
Hmm... rare update, I guess. First off, quick story of me being stupid. For the longest time, I've had this quota problem on my ITS account that I haven't been able to figure out. That is, my ITS account (the account I'm storing this webpage on) has a storage quote of about 61.4 MB, and for the longest time I've been always barely underneath it. I keep deleting random junk off it, such as old documents and other stuff, but I've never figured out why I should have so much stuff stored on my drive. Occasionally, I'd look through my directories, or use ls -lS on individual ones to sort out the files by size and delete the large ones, but even after deleting the large ones, I still had a quota problem. I guess I eventually just gave up and figured that I just had a lot of small files taking up lots of space.
Anyway, I finally discovered the du command, and was shocked to discover that my .procmail directory had something like 45000 kB in it. I mean, that didn't make any real sense. Searching through the directory revealed that the main culprit was this mail.backup file. Yeah, as you might guess from the name, it turns out that two years ago I had set up procmail to append all my received mail to this mail.backup files; I guess I cautiously backing up all my mail, and it had all accumulated into this humongous file. Well, I cleared out the file, so no more quota problems for me, at least in the near future. Definitely really embarrassing, but I'm glad I finally resolved the problem.
In other news, trying to figure out which graduate school to attend. Will be visiting a few in the next few weeks to help me with my decision. Oh yeah, and my Spring Break trip to Cabo is coming up! Should be a whole lot of fun.
I never got around to upgrading my site, as you can see. While I was gone to Taiwan and Japan over Winter Break, I actually sketched out several pages of new content, but I haven't gotten around to it. I also put together a plan to buy a new computer to serve as a dedicated web server and even bought a router/firewall with port forwarding to prepare for that, but the router I bought was capping my upload/download speeds. (By the way, it was a Network Everywhere 4-Port Cable/DSL Router NR041, in case you were wondering, and yeah, don't buy it. I suppose I got what I deserved from a $35 now-discontinued router - next time I need a router, I'm going to dish out the extra money to buy a better one) So, I returned the router, then decided I didn't really want to shell out the cash for another computer to act as a webserver (and instead blew the money on my upcoming trip to Cabo, hehe.) I think I'm going to drastically scale back my plans, and instead, just run a server off my everyday computer to host my photos. I have a whole bunch of more recent photographs that I'll eventually organize and post.
Finally, I am posting some new content (so this isn't a completely wasted update), a Buffy the Vampire Slayer PowerPoint presentation! Background: I had to take an oral presentation class for my graduation requirements (E10 in case anybody cares), and the class required making three 8-10 minute presentations, one each using the whiteboard, the overhead, and the powerpoint. One of the presentations had to be scientific, but the other ones could be whatever we damn well wanted. I ended up doing a whiteboard presentation on "How to Impress your TA," a overhead presentation on my research from the summer before last, and a PowerPoint presentation critically examining Buffy the Vampire Slayer. To be fair, I ended up elaborating quite a bit more on the slide than what my PowerPoint presentation shows, but it gives the gist of what I talked about. Hm... I guess I'll throw in rtf file outlining by "Way to Impress a TA" presentation as well. Yeah, both of these presentations kind of suck, but at least they're kind of entertaining, I figure. I'm placing both under the Random section of my webpage - I finally have something to put there.
I was scrolling down just a second ago to see how many updates I've actually had, and check it out, I updated this page exactly one year ago as well!
November 19, 2003
Not really an update today, but more of a reminder myself of a few more things to add to my site at some point (say next quarter, when I don't have to worry about apps). One things is that I find myself constantly looking around the web for open source internet utilities for various reasons (i.e. a good open source utility for burning .img and .iso files the other week). Open source because I support the whole philosophy of people freely sharing software and because I've feel guilty about all the times I've downloaded shareware and never paid for it. But even when using Google to locate open source software, it sometimes be quite a frustrating search to locate the utilities. Maybe if I start collecting an index of useful open source software, I can help save someone time in the future. So, note to self, add section of webpage dedicated to useful open source utilities. i.e. Useful utility for the day is: WinSCP (which you can learn more about and download at the aforementioned link). It's a secure alternative to ftp, under which your password is sent unencrypted, which can present a major security risk if someone is sniffing packets on your network.
Also, I'm thinking of adding another section to this site next quarter reviewing/mentioning films that are say, more unusual that one might have missed. While I'm not really a film fanatic, I definitely enjoy films that take a unique approach, and I feel I should at least try and mention them so other people might enjoy them as well. I also feel that way about television shows too.
November 17, 2003
Working on another boring-ass lab. So, this is going to strike everyone as incredibly narcissistic, but I did a Google search on my own name, as I’m sure everyone else does it too from time-to-time. hehe, I should define something like a Google self-search coefficient, something like number of times one has searched one’s own name on Google in the past year. It probably correlates positively with things like pride, insecurity, and amount of hours spent on boring lab reports. anyway, my Google self-search coefficient GSSC is probably something like 10.
It’s actually kind of a pain to search using my own name because it’s so damn common. If you just search “Eric Lin”, I show up on something like the 8th page of results, and it’s actually some results from some Stanford math tournament the math team and I went to senior year of high school. haha, we sucked, like completely sucked that tournament, and we called ourselves Alcoholics Anonymous, which in hindsight and probably at that time too, was pretty random.
yeah, the search: “Eric Lin” Caltech turns up about four pages of pretty relevant results, though about a third of the time, it turns out to reference other Eric Lin’s who work at JPL. the search: “Eric Lin” Fremont was pretty entertaining. random chess and math tournament references on the first page, and a really random, but entertaining reference from the web blog of Lou Huang (!!). next to the name of Benjamin Mellblom (!!). wow. go figure. the link is: http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~lou/journal/archives/2003_05.html , and it’s the Tuesday, May 13, 2003 entry. damn, that’s an incredibly randomly bizarre coincidence that Lou mentioned our names. even more fun, if you scroll down to Thursday, May 8, 2003 on the exact same page, there’s an unrelated reference to my sister Audrey Lin, discussing the controversy from earlier this year when she talked to the papers about cheating at my high school. wow again, wow. what are the odds of both me and my sister’s name showing up on a random weblog? the internet definitely presents pretty bizarre coincidences. and maybe I'm the only one, but I definitely get an almost-perverse kind of pleasure from such coincidences..
hmm… maybe someday, this entry will indexed by Google, and Lou Huang from Fremont who attends Mission San Jose High and attends Berkeley will search for his own name (as well as one of the helpful details I affixed as a description to his name in this same sentence), and he’ll reach this entry, which references his entry, and I dunno, it’ll just be awesome if that happens. so, yeah, Lou, if that happens, uh, mention it your blog or something.
so, at some point (maybe next quarter, when I don't have to worry about grad school apps), I will get around to putting together the planned section of my webpage where I will review the extensive number of computer games I have played. the vast majority of which have been RPG's. and by committing this to my webpage, perhaps it will motivate me more on some level. I dunno, it's just that there are so many damn fine RPG's out there that no one ever hears about because RPG's are not a popular (or financially lucrative) game genre. hmm... should just mention, best computer RPG story of all time - Planescape: Torment, I think it was made back in 99 or so. tune in to my soon-to-be-coming webpage section on games for more details/reasons. right.
reading this entry over, wow, it was pretty narcissistic. whatever. I can't be the only one who does this. back to my lab write-up.
April 20, 2003
For no real reason, I decided to throw in another update...
So, yeah, I was sitting in the bathroom, taking care of bathroom business, reading my God Emperor of Dune book (yeah, I recently started getting into the Dune series of books after hearing about the Sci-fi Channel's Children of Dune miniseries last month.... I actually had some trouble locating God Emperor of Dune - for some reason, my local Borders didn't seem to have it, though it had the rest of the books in the series), when for no apparent reason, I suddenly started flashing-back to two computer games I used to play as a kid - this was kind of surprising because I normally draw a blank when I think of games I used to play as a kid - and I was convinced that I didn't get into games until junior high or so. But I distinctly remember playing these games on my pre-junior high years. It's kind of surprising too, because I remember in junior high my mom started placing strict limits on how many computer games I could play - this might have been before that time, though.
But yeah, one of the games was some archaeology-related games. I think it was supposed to teach you about ancient civilizations or something. But most of the game was kind of side-scrolling adventure style, you would enter rooms one screen at a time, and you could normally enter further screens on any of the four sides. You'd jump around and try to collect artifact pieces - once you've collected all the ones in the level, you would beat the level, and you would be presented with a jigsaw puzzle that you had to match up to create the picture of a famous historical antique treasure. I also remember that upon beating some of the stages, you be presented with a "fill-in-the-missing square"-type puzzle, where you would be presented with a three-by-three matrix of square patterns, with one of the square patterns missing, and you would have to deduce which pattern went in the empty square. For the side-scrolling action, I remember that one of your weapons would be a light beam that you could shoot to freeze enemies; another item was some kind of super-jumping shoe that would let you jump really high.... I did a quick google search (since I remember it was made by "The Learning Company"), and I think it's called Super Solvers: Ancient Empires.
The other game I'm thinking of from my childhood has a 2-D "view from the top" perspective (kind of like Link 1 on the NES). I vaguely remember that your main enemies were worms that you would try to eat you up. I also remember that the game was very puzzle-oriented; there would be little blocks that would block the doorways, but you could toggle them out of the doorway by pressing on their toggle switch, represented by a dot. Of course, it was sometimes very tricky to reach these toggle switches, especially if there were lots of them arranged in very clever ways in each level. I think the point of each level was to get all the keys, but I don't really remember. There were several weapons you had to your disposal, though the only one I remember is some kind of music box or something that attracts the enemy worms to it. I also kind of recall that the game gave you the option of creating your own levels with their own clever traps. If anybody knows what game this is, it would be great if you could send me an e-mail; my e-mail address is: jedibo29 at lycos.com (I read on one of the spam-prevention studies that a lot of spammers harvest e-mails off webpages - a good way to prevent that supposedly is to write out the @ symbol as "at" when you give your e-mail address.)
Haha, never mind, I did a further search on games from "The Learning Company", and the second game is called "Think Quick" made in 1987!!! Gosh, I must have been pretty young when I was playing this one.
I really have some great memories as a kid playing these games - it'd be great to find old copies of these games and then to relieve the nostalgia.
Additional entry parts deleted upon request 5/23/04.
April 6, 2003
Once again, one of my monthly-or-so updates. I felt the need to update because ABC went ahead and cancelled their new drama Miracles a few days ago. I talked about it a bit in my last entry below, but basically it was a very atmospheric and rather dark show about a few people who investigate and explore the paranormal. Unfortunately, ABC never really gave it much of a chance to succeed and they constantly pre-empted it at the last minute. Everyone on the boards pretty much figured that it would be cancelled, and the confirmation came a few days ago. It was definitely one of the top five shows I think I've seen, and it's too bad that only five episodes of it ended up being televised. The show just had a very dark, yet very touching edge to it... and Skeet Ulrich did an awesome job of playing a sensitive, but torn protagonist.
Anyways, one of the co-creators, Richard Hatem, posted a very nice letter to all the fans after he found out it was cancelled; it can be found at: http://www.mclaughlinlabs.com/Leigh/Miracles/letter.htm . (By the way, the other co-creator David Greenwalt, was the Executive Procedure of Angel, which is another one of my favorite shows.. and incidentally, also a show that is underappreciated as well.)
Oh yeah, the new quarter started, and it should be a lot like the previous ones. I had a great spring break; went back home and relaxed for the first half, and went on an awesome road trip with my buddies Charles, Kevin, and Amanda to the Grand Canyon. We passed through Lake Havesu on the way there, and stopped by Las Vegas on the way back, and I really enjoyed it.
March 10, 2003
Been a while since I've updated, but this felt like the right time. I'm putting off this term paper I have to write for my "Core 1a" writing class. The course is basically a very small, insignificant class (2 units out of the 40 units I am taking this term), where I am supposed to write a paper on a scientific topic targeted towards a regular lay audience. Most of the students (including me) and professors seem to think this class is ridiculous and unnecessary - I'm just having trouble motivating myself since I know it is such a small part of my grade. I'll probably get a B or B- on it.
Anyway, I just wanted to quickly plug a few more shows I've be watching this year. At some point, I want to add some sections to this page that go into more depth about each one, but this will have to do for now. Two new shows that I've found have been very worthwhile and I strongly encourage everyone to watch are: Miracles (Mondays on ABC at 10 pm) and Boomtown (Sundays on NBC at 10 pm):
First off, Miracles. In spite of its title (which at least to me suggests a show like Touched by An Angel or something similar), it's a very dark, atmospheric show that deals with the supernatural. It features a main character who is hired by the church to go around and evaluate (and usually debunk) miracles, but who then stumbles upon very real supernatural phenomena that he can't understand. He runs into a group of others that are also investigating the same, strange occurrences, and the show deals with their findings and experiences as they investigate these mysteries. The single thing that stands out to me about the show is that is is not afraid to use silence to add to its mood. There are lots of moments where the silence does such a great deal to add to the creepiness and suspense. I can also honestly say that this show is one of the creepiest, scary hours I have ever seen on tv, and the even more amazing thing is that for the most part, the show avoids using blood or guts or other direct imagery. The show is very reminiscent of The X-Files and Millennium, but I find the show's mood and atmosphere to be more absorbing than either of them. Unfortunately, I get the feeling that the show will be cancelled soon. Its ratings have been pretty weak, and it is surprisingly edgy for a show on ABC; it just doesn't seem to fit very well on this network at all.
Then, there's Boomtown. The basic premise of this show is that the story is looked at from many different points of view: i.e. the police officers involved (the show kind of revolves around them), the assistant D.A., the reporters, the paramedics, and any other characters show are involved. The points of view tend to revolve around the main regular characters, but the viewer also sees the points of views of other characters who might be involved. This different points of view approach allows them to tell the story in a very non-linear way. For instance, events can be shown out of order - and an event that didn't make sense from one character's point of view earlier can be explained by a later point of view from someone else. I always find it particularly interesting when they repeat a scene, but from a different character's point of view, so the scene takes on a new significance. Unfortunately, the recent episodes have been kind of inconsistent about using the non-linear possibilities of the different points of view to full effect. The two most recent episodes have been very linear, and it's seemed like the different points of view have been unnecessary. I think is partly an issue of the writers they choose - I've noticed that episodes written by the producer Graham Yost have tended to be the most creative, while the other writers tend to stay with more linear material. There have definitely been earlier episodes where the different points of view have been used effectively, and I think they have been some of the more creative, amazing shows I have ever seen on tv. In particularly, the first two episodes, one dealing with a drive-by shooting (called Pilot), and the other dealing with a jealous murder over a woman (called Possession), have been two of the most amazing hours I have ever seen.
Hmm... I babbled on for a lot longer than I meant to; I'll have to move this to its own sub-page later.