Friday, February 16, 2007

Staring at the screen again

Waiting for the right words to come out
But not out of my mouth
Not from my pen either
Or this glorified typewriter
But out of nothing
Just wasting my time writing
Typing typing typing...
Ideas extracted out of emptyness
Ususually end up as a mess
Hanging exhausted before the next line
Juggling thoughts to make it rhyme
Maybe not this time
The opportunity is not mine
Hanging hanging hanging
Waiting waiting waiting
The world just keeps revolving
As my timid blood keeps flowing
Preventing me from dying
As if I am living
Figuratively said
I'm dead
Dead

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

adiós teléfono

My alarm clock/phone is gone. I don't use its phone part anyway.

back to thesis work...

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Cool link free books

free science

...back to thesis work...

Monday, February 12, 2007

Bound to fail

Tomorrow supposedly will be my examination day in Music Literature. Part of that exam would be a name that tune type. In addition to their non intuitive foreign titles, I could not distinguish some tracks from the others. Not now, I need more time to familiarize with the music.

...

Back to thesis work...

Sunday, February 11, 2007

x11 problem

My Linux box didn't start in gui mode:
When I run startx from the console, I see this part of the message:

...
(EE) Failed to load module "bitmap" (module does not exist, 0)
...

Luckily I remember installing an updated (apparently buggy) version of x11-server-common. That was the last stupid thing I did with my box while attempting to install vncserver so that I can work else where in the lab.

I reverted back to the older version using x11-server-common-1.1.1-11.2mdv2007.0.i586.rpm with --nodeps and --force options in addition to the usual -Uvih option of rpm.

Back to thesis work...

Saturday, February 03, 2007

Public servant

Cluster Report for Sat, 3 Feb 2007 10:31:59 +0800

CPUs Total:19
Hosts up:18
Hosts down:0


Avg Load (15, 5, 1m):
362%, 362%, 363%
Localtime:
2007-02-03 11:02




(This is not the flag of Japan.)

Here is a preview of CSRC's ganglia cluster load monitor
The problem with public servers... Anyone just gets to do anything no matter how reckless their programming habits are. With 512MB of memory and 10GB of swap, on each node just imagine how much greedy a program/(group of programs) could get to use more than 300% of these resources.

If someone else (aside from myself) will complain that he/she cannot run his/her program, then I will have to kill...

It's ironic that some people are on a high with their problem solving skills but could not interpret their solutions into feasible/efficient programs/code.

Scientific computing environments such as Matlab, Scilab, Mathematica, Maple etc... are good since they shorten the transition from solution to code to results visualization (especially the lazy man's symbolic Mathematica that does most of the thinking for you). However, their ease does not promote efficient programming. I even know someone who worries about his/her very long complicated equation. As if he/she has to evaluate it's value in a single blow. Most formulas involving two or more terms can be broken down into parts.

I guess some will never learn.