I’m going to throw it out into the aether here, but I’m wondering if anyone can help me out with my intermittently-freezing laptop? It’s an HP tx2524CA running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. It doesn’t seem to have any rhyme nor reason to the freezing then crashing (often accompanied by a blue screen but not always). If there were a pattern, I might have figured out the diagnosis with some Googling but as of late, I’m utterly at an impasse. Help?

Back to my post. I was feeling an overall paralyzing feeling of dread, of inadequacy of self-awareness and (dare I suggest this?) the slightest tincture of self-loathing. I resented myself and pitied myself at the same time. I wanted to bemoan my sorrows to the world, imagining that, as the proverb goes, a shared sorrow would be half sorrow, a shared joy would be a double joy.

Experiencing technological failure mitigated that pity party of a post. Why am I suffering inconsolable malaise? I don’t know. It’s unlikely that I will figure it out. But what’s important is that I hitch myself by my bootstraps and get out of this hole.

That I’m always pressed for time isn’t something new. I had chosen that path at the beginning of this school year. I don’t really have anyone to resent but myself. With that attitude in mind, I hope I can stop wailing over my perceived and supposed misfortunes and focus upon getting things done.

Chin up and shoulders back! Let’s push on.

And then I realise, of course there is. This is my scratchpad. I’ll have to preface that metaphor though.

I notoriously vacillate among positions on things. Hesitant to think about decisions, loathe to make them. The track record is pretty clear –  choosing to (not) go to IB, choosing Science over Commerce, etc. And I justify them (the decisions, that is) to myself somehow, someway later, post factum.

It all happens in my head which is often a bewildering and confusing place. So I blog. It’s ridiculously mundane and painfully dull, but I’ve firmly convinced myself (for now) that there is a purpose, a teleology to all of this and I have to compel myself to begin again.

Of course, it doesn’t help that my laptop has broken down. I’ve reformatted a few times but the problem still reoccurs – I love my HP tx2500 but I think it’s on its dying days with some sort of hardware problem. I’ve suspected for a while that it could be the motherboard but my dad reasons that it must be the hard drive. At any rate, the RAM seems fine and it’s 2x2GB so if I can salvage them, I will.

It’s been odd, transitioning back to paper notes for classes. I guess I do listen a bit more, lacking the distractions of the internet but at the same time, I fell as though I’ve been unplugged and am now laying dormant. I’m not as updated with news and when I do find out, I’m certainly not the first. I hardly play any games on Steam anymore, mostly because my desktop is old (but reliable). This technology detox may yet do some good.

Here is hoping that I can keep this writing thing going.

Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village

Really now, that is just too amusing.

Currently working on my term paper for ENGL 304 (you know, that topic deserves a post of its own, come to think of it) while also sorting through the swath that is SUS Finance. Not to mention the job.

*sigh* Finals are about to be upon us. Whither shall I run?

Oh and for those keeping track, I’m thinking of dropping out of Science Co-op. Anyone want to offer their advice?

I got around to installing Windows 7 and I really like it! People can complain all they want about Microsoft but I think they hit the mark this time, even if it isn’t a bulls-eye. I wasn’t entirely convinced that my life would be changed by their new taskbar (and their new-fangled jump tasks) but I find it quite indispensible now. It only took me a day or two to reinstall everything and set my preferences back. Thank goodness for Mozilla Weave!

I’ve also become a bit of a consumerist now; every time I feel upset, I buy myself something to cheer up. I really should stop that habit; it doesn’t help my back account balance.

I hope I’ll have some interesting adventures in the near future about which I can blog but I somehow doubt it. Is this all it amounts to? I feel slightly embarrassed to seem so mundane to my readers (if there are indeed, any) but I’m quite enthralled by my life, boring or otherwise.

Browsing, however, through some techie website, I can’t help but feel as though I’d love to get my hands on some things just to see what all the hub-bub is about!

Yoggie Gatekeeper Card Pro

Most people who know me know that I value my privacy and my laptop. The Yoggie Gatekeeper card is a security solution for laptop computers that fits right into the expresscard slot, working away quietly while you do your thing. I’ve commonly stated that linking to an unsecured, public Wi-Fi hotspot is something akin to diving into a pile of used needles so of course this product piqued my interest right away.

Price: 99.00 USD
Website: http://www.yoggie.com/

Belkin Mini Surge Protector with USB Charger

I saw it first on Lifehacker and have often thought that it’d be such a great idea to have one of these in case I end up in a situation where there are more laptops that need power than there are plugs. I’d be a hero! And I could charge my ever-dying cellphone anyway.

Price: 24.99 USD
Website: http://www.belkin.com

Amazon Kindle

This sets the geek-meter into the red zone but I can’t help but think that this would save me the trouble of printing so many scholarly articles for perusal! Besides reading scholarly articles, I could purchase fewer books and just read them on the Kindle…or I could use it for English texts…oh my aching back would be so delighted…

Price: 279.00 USD
Website: http://www.amazon.com/

Timbuk2 Commute 2.0 Messenger

Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m always on the hunt for the next great laptop bag. I’ve already tried InCase and Oakley for their bags but I think I’m ready to try out Timbuk2. The fact that this bag is messenger style only makes me want it all the more!

Price: 100.00 USD
Website: http://www.timbuk2.com

I’ll do a quick post on what I keep in my laptop bag sometime soon (after I’ve gotten it all together). I’m such a geek but if anyone reading things has a blog, post about what you keep in your laptop bag! You’re guaranteed at least one view from me.

After reading articles on Lifehacker and HackCollege, I decided to roll my own Miro DVR setup on my computer in preparation for the fall. Miro will be downloading new episodes of my favourite television series for me to watch, then deleting them when I’m done. Think of it as video-podcasting for your shows!

Here’s what I’ll be watching this year:

• Big Bang Theory
• Bones
• Castle
• CSI
• Deadliest Warrior
• Desperate Housewives
• Doctor Who¹
• Flash Forward
• Glee
• Gossip Girl
• Greek
• Grey’s Anatomy
• Heroes
• Sarah Jane Adventures²
• Torchwood³
• True Blood
• Ugly Betty

What about you? If you like to watch TV, you might benefit from setting up something similar on your computer. Don’t you just love technology?

We begin our conversation tentatively. Having never met in person, but free to access each others’ biographies online, we aim for topics sure to extend the conversation. “How excited you must be to go to Cornell!” Risks are taken here and there. The conversation goes back and forth, the rally of words continues indefinitely. Childhood commonalities are discovered, embarrassing confessions are made and surprising revelations are unfolded. An afternoon passes.

I like to imagine that I was an engaging counterpart though suspect I babbled on a little too much about historiography and epistemology. It’s a little bittersweet – meeting such a member of the UBC blogging élite for the first (and assuredly, last) time. She leaves her legacy though.

The new first-year bloggers of the UBC Blog Squad have been selected, after all. Who among them can ever fill the void that Phoebe will leave behind?

• Morgan (“Em”)?
  I don’t know very much about her(?) except that she’s selected a rather flourish-heavy layout. I look forward to her first post.
• Jordan McGarry
  Definitely not your run-of-the-mill science student, Jordan is apparently a half Filipino, half-Caucasian, DJ hobbyist. Keep watching this one, he’s sure to have interesting first year experiences.
• Kelvin Choi
  Another science student, Kelvin hails from Sir Winston Churchill Secondary in Vancouver (much like another erstwhile much-beloved UBC blogger, hm?). He contrasts neatly with Jordan so I expect they’ll make a good tag-team for differing opinions.
• Parris
  Parris is a transfer student from…Chilliwack (which he assures is is “that place pass Abbotsford”) who’s bound to offer really great perspectives about our campus as a non-native to the Lower Mainland. Also, he seems wont to engage in spontaneous activity. Looking forward to reading his posts!
• Valentina
  Valentina hails from Guatemala(?) apparently and will bring an international perspective to the blog squad. Evidently, she has a cherry tree where she lives which makes me just a smidge envious. Not sure what faculty she’ll join but I like the look of her blog.

I wonder if that’s all the bloggers that Andre Malan has rounded up (if he is indeed continuing to mastermind the UBC blogging oligarchy that is the Blog Squad) or if he’s got a few more aces slipped up his sleeves (or cowboy hat). Only time will tell.

As for Phoebe Yu, we hardly knew ye. Best wishes and happy trails!

It’s neatly attractive and even resizes nicely if you resize the window. Along the left are my categories and on my front page are just some stories that Feedly thought I’d like.

Have you tried it out yet? Let me know!

Also, please recommend your favourite feeds to me in case I may have overlooked some gems.

I’ve got my feeds organized into (what I think are) intuitive groups – this works well with Feedly’s magazine interface. I re-organize rather frequently as needs change.

• art
• education
• gossip
• people (this one’s the miscellany of personal blogs)
• shopping
• Vancouver
• Blogathon
• food
• humour
• politics
• technology
• Canada
• friends
• lifestyle
• productivity
• theatre
• college
• gaming
• literature
• science
• ubc

They overlap quite a bit but I try to have each blog only in one category to avoid repetition. I’ve got 209 feeds at the moment…got any suggestions? I’ll let you know if I’ve got it already.

I started by rolling out of bed (literally rolling off my bed and onto the floor) at around 9:30. Groggy and bleary-eyed, I turned on my laptop (doesn’t this tell you a lot about me?) and then I ate a quick, small breakfast. A then phoned me and informed me that we (A, N and me) would be meeting at Burrard Station at 11:30 to watch Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (of which I have only re-read 50%). Quite happily, I set off (wearing appropriate attire for the assuredly hot day) and arrived exactly at 11:30. Of course, this meant that I was awkwardly on time. A and N arrived shortly thereafter, gently reminding me of how I have a tendency to induce guilt in others by being precisely on time. I must remember that for the future – I will earnestly endeavour to arrive fashionably late, sauntering into the room with a grand entrance.

It was decided to purchase the tickets first at the Scotiabank theatre and off we went. I felt slightly crestfallen when I noticed that A’s ticket actually printed her name on it while mine was nameless. Curse my cashier for not knowing advanced functions made to impress friends and foe alike. Curse her.

After first visiting the Burrard location (at which we were turned away due to full capacity), we arrived at the Robson location of the Cactus Club Cafe and sat down for lunch. We had much deliberation over the menu and I got the J.D. BBQ burger (which was juicy and yummy! but not really my style, to be honest). We noticed the sheer number of staff our location seemed to possess; at every turn, a new staff member strolled by dutifully. N sardonically remarked about the recession and labour wages. I concurred.

After lunch, we headed to watch the movie. After reading the book in preparation for the movie, there were certainly some things I liked and disliked about the cinematic experience.

I was generally unimpressed with the movie but felt like it did the job. It was adequate but not much more… As much as I adore the movies and the books, I can’t say that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will be a particularly memorable cinematic experience. It’s a shame because I had had high hopes for David Yates’ directorial vision.

After the movie, we ventured around downtown and ended up in Sears at Pacific Centre. Excitedly, I skimmed through the stationery section, glowingly appraising the Montblanc pens and Moleskine notebooks.

We then heard the announcement of a lifetime. “Attention shoppers. We will be having a free giveaway on the fourth floor today, for shoppers only in the store right now.” I paused and looked to N and A, who were listening with rapt attention withal. I gingerly replaced the Moleskine notebook I had been thoughtfully caressing and we set off towards the fourth floor.

Needless to say, it was a disappointment. We got a dinky orange little fruit juicer (the efficacy of which I sincerely doubt) and waited the whole presentation to learn that we could have a free filet knife…with purchase of 29.99. We left.

As such, A and I were horrendously late for dinner with C and D at Thai Spice. I ordered Tom Yum which, admittedly, is a weakness of mine but I was rather disappointed with the lack of flavour. A’s pineapple rice was only passable. Happily, though, we played Sorry during dinner which (albeit displays a thorough lack of table manners) enlivened our dinner much more than the food would have done.

The crown jewel of the evening was really watching Les Miserables. It was spectacular. If you haven’t watched it yet, I assure you that you are missing out. The casting was wonderful; perennial favourites Jonathan Winsby and John Mann gave breathtaking performances while newcomers didn’t slacken at all.

Here’s what I thought:

• Murphy (Valjean) displayed masterful skill at singing with a particularly strong voice and diverse range; he was a little wooden at times but his singing was spot-on flawless
• Cournoyer (Javert) was a personal favourite; Javert doesn’t get much variety in song but Cournoyer did a commendable job at conveying Javert’s character
• Hosie (Fantine) was a strong presence but her wig was very offputting; I’m usually a big fan of Arts Club costume design but here is one case where I was rather distracted
• Lipman (Mme. Thenardier) and Mann (Mr. Thenardier) offered wonderful — wonderful — comic relief but Lipman’s vocal strength was not what I would have expected
• Winsby (Enjolras) was, of course, incredible and powerful; his performance is almost so strong that it is overwhelming, actually, threatening to overshadow the performances of others
• Victor (Marius) had a perfectly respectable performance though he was really overshadowed by Winsby at times
• Talbot (Eponine) was a surprise star; I was really impressed with her performance and vocal strength!
• Harwood (Cosette) gave a good performance throughout but I can’t recall any moments where I was floored by her
• Ballard (Gavroche), Matchette (Young Cosette) and Withers (Young Eponine) gave great performances, particularly at their ages! I bet I’ll be seeing them at the Arts Club when I’m much older

I particularly enjoyed “I Dreamed a Dream,” “Master of the House,” “Stars”and “Drink with Me to Times Gone By.” Unfortunately, “One Day More” was nowhere near as strong as what I would have liked but ç’est la vie!

All in all, a marvelous day. I just hope A doesn’t tire of my company!

I returned to my desk, excited at the prospect of checking my email and generally making it a productive evening. No such luck.

I apparently booted into Startup Repair which willed my computer to find something wrong with itself. I expressed a flicker of annoyance then returned to a state of nonchalance. I wasn’t too worried at that time, assauging my fears with platitudes. I’ve seen this before. It’s no big deal.

It was, as it were, a big deal after all. After booting into Startup Repair three to four times, I decided it was time to take affirmative action. I quickly tried to enter Safe Mode to no avail, ending up in Startup Repair again. I also attempted, albeit fruitlessly, to boot from “Last Good Configuration.” My efforts were all thwarted.

I thought back to what I could have done to have angered the computer deities. I realised I had plugged in a hitherto unused mouse which must have installed a driver which had made my computer go insane. I resolved to utilise a recovery disc to see what options I had.

The prospects were not encouraging. Startup Repair indicated no solution to the problem. System Restore appeared to work…then failed. My options were either to restore to factory settings or to reformat entirely with a disc. Needless to say, I was heartbroken.

I’m going to keep trying to fix my HP tx2524CA (which, incidentally, is still under warranty) but the prospects look bleak. My best bet is probably to boot up with an Ubuntu live disc and retrieve everything I can. Don’t cry for me, Argentina, perhaps this is my laptop’s Spring Awakening and not a Wicked sign.

That doesn’t stop me from feeling heartbroken. Anyone have any solutions for me?

“You Have No New Mail”

I’m among those that are guilty of checking email obssessively, leaping for joy when new emails come streaming in. As with most, I have subscribed to some periodic emails which initially seemed useful (discounts to my favourite stores) at which I don’t even bat an eyelash anymore. But that’s beside the point.

When I check email, I attempt to make every attempt to either ignore emails (those which are merely informational), defer emails (actions that are not time-sensitive), delegate emails (actions that are unimportant but time-sensitive) or act upon emails (actions that are important and time-sensitive). I use Thunderbird so I can star emails that can be deferred or delegated while acting upon emails requiring my immediate attention. I don’t typically mark informational emails but I know I can always search for them if a need arises. I don’t tend to delete emails; rather, I amass an archive of emails, searchable at a later time.

Having done this for years before I learned about “Inbox Zero,” I advise anyone who leave emails unread to begin working towards Inbox Zero. It really makes a huge difference in workflow and you just need to learn the knack of it. Be an email ninja! I’ve even begun to apply Inbox Zero philosophy to communication with people. It just requires more of my mental desktop to process.

“If You Build It, They Will Come”

Like most, I used to check out the same websites every day for new content, assuredly spending hours cumulatively on mere browsing. Of course, we’re in Web 2.0 and so the paradigm has shifted. Users no longer need to go to the content (unless they are creating the content), the content is now coming to the users. That’s right, I’m talking about RSS!

RSS feeds are the joy of my life; they save me the trouble of going to websites and checking them each individually. But like most, I suffered from information overload with RSS feeds – so much to read in so little time. Enter Feedly.

Feedly is an RSS aggregator (Firefox-only) that also doubles as a social medium through its recommendation system. Basically, in Feedly, you can have a digest page listing only some of the newest news from your favourite feeds as well as some of the highest recommended articles by other uses using Feedly. The more users that are recommending different articles, the better! Feedly really cuts down on the useless articles through which you have to sift while also allowing you the serendipity of discovering new articles (which Digg doesn’t allow; serendipity is often buried).

I’ve got 159 sources currently in Feedly separated into 18 categories; only some of which makes it to my digest. I read the digest, skip anything not of great importance or interest and move on with my day. Think of browsing 159 websites in mere minutes! Doesn’t that blow your mind?

“Into…the TWITTERSPHERE!”

For the derision that it has received, Twitter has withstood the acid test and proven itself useful in several regards. Sad as it sounds, I no longer have to manually ask people what they are doing; they’re letting me know via Twitter. Saving time shouldn’t be about being antisocial but the socially mandated exchange of platitudes has now shifted to a very businesslike model: on Twitter, I tell you what I am doing. If you aren’t interested, don’t read it. If you are, then I’ve saved you the effort of asking me. Better yet, If I want to know something about you, I can send you a Tweet, freeing your time and attention to continue with your affairs and allowing you the liberty of answering me later when you are free.

Serendipity still exists in this model! Ask the world anything, anything, and anyone could conceivably reply. Twitter also dovetails neatly into so many other services; it’s the one-stop shop for status updates (Twitter->Facebook; Twitter->Blog; Twitter->Windows Live; etc.) I’d rather post updates to one, unified interface and have it disseminate to everything else. It’s like the invention of the printing press. So don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.

So there you have it. I’m sure I have more productivity tricks (I’m always learning from Lifehacker, Stepcase Lifehack, etc.) Anything you want to share with me? I might try to analyze how I spend my time more.

Just as a quick challenge for anyone who regularly reads this – have you all figured out where the blog post titles come from? And have you figured out where each one is sourced? Feel free to go check the archives to see how many you can name off the top of your head.

BIOL 335 starts tomorrow so my adventures end here.

Blogathon is an annual event wherein bloggers dedicate themselves (mind, soul and body) to blogging every 30 minutes during a 24-hour period in order to raise funds for their charities. Every year, thousands are raised through this event for notable causes. If you have a blog, I strongly urge you to consider registering for this year’s Blogathon 2009 to raise funds for a cause you believe in. If you’d like to support me, please donate what you can!

Many noteworthy bloggers have either participated in or will participate in Blogathon, including Miss604 or Hummingbird604. While our causes are different, our goals are always the same: to raise awareness and funds for charity. It’s gruelling, (sometimes) thankless and exhausting, but it’s worth it!

My charity of choice is the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation.

Here’s a description from their website:

BC Children’s Hospital Foundation (BCCHF) supports the people, places and things required to ensure BC’s kids have access to outstanding pediatric care. Since 1982, BC Children’s Hospital Foundation has worked with children, families, caregivers and hundreds of thousands of British Columbians to give Children’s Hospital, and the Child & Family Research Institute the resources they need to excel.

In 2000, BCCHF merged with the Sunny Hill Foundation for Children (SHFC), which raises funds for the children served by the Sunny Hill Health Centre for Children. The merger enables the two organizations to maximize revenues for the benefit of child health, increase efficiencies and eliminate duplication.Through a wide range of fundraising events and opportunities, the Foundation is united with its donors by a single, simple passion — to improve the health and the lives of the young people who enter BC Children’s Hospital every day.

Give what you can to those involved in Blogathon 2009, be it money, support, a word of encouragement. It’s all for charity and that’s what really counts.

Donate to the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation!

Donors

1. Sumedha Sharma
2. Jasmine Leong

I’ll simply have to study hard, make notes and spend time doing the practice problems. I even borrowed Primer of Genetic Analysis: A Problems Approach for extra problems to do in order to practice. I hope it will help.

I’ll post my crib sheet here later for anyone who might be taking the course in the future; perhaps it will be of some use to someone else.

Nevertheless, I have BIOL 335 with Dr. Berezowsky again to which I may look forward and Les Misérables at the Arts Club Theatre on July 17th as well! I’ve heard rave reviews about it and I’m really looking forward to it as a brief respite from the obligations of AMS Minischool, SUS, BIOL 335 and other duties.

Father’s day is coming up which reminds me of “The Best Day” by Taylor Swift, a really sweet and happy song. It makes me smile everytime I hear the guitar in the beginning!

Just to mention, I’ve changed up my blog a little. The Last.fm plugin stopped working after I updated WordPress to 2.8 so I replaced it with my CiteULike feed – now you can admire my geekery! I read a wide variety of scholarly articles so hopefully you’ll find something of interest there.

Also, I’ve installed the CommentLuv plugin in lieu of the OpenID one – everytime you comment, you have the option of including a link to your latest post! Consider it my thanks for commenting – when people comment, I feel a little burst of sunshine inside.

Back to studying! …And contemplation about Harper’s Island!

The Crossing Card:

I’ve already briefly mentioned CiteULike but it bears repeating – CiteULike is sort of like del.icio.us tailored for scholars reading scholarly articles. It’s a way of unobtrusively documenting articles of interest, adding annotations and tags for later retrieval and sharing them with scholars who share similar interests. It’s got really great community features, including the CiteGeist, a list of the most commonly tagged articles, and the updating frontpage which features recently added articles. Able to add articles from many online sources through the bookmarklet, it’s convenient and robust. It’s still growing and I’m very excited to see what direction it will take!

Now I hear you telling me, “but Justin! Surely this isn’t any use. What can I really do with this?” Enter Mendeley! Mendeley is a desktop client that syncs with CiteULike, allowing you to synchronize your personal list of articles through any computer you access. Mendeley has the added benefit of being able to read metadata from articles that you download and importing them automatically. I see it being an Endnote-killer if Endnote doesn’t rapidly step up its game… (Mendeley’s more attractive too…)

Technology is rapidly releasing the experts from their ivory towers; undergraduates are rapidly reading cutting-edge research papers as they are being released, linked by community groups like CiteULike and Mendeley.

The next time you’re doing a group research project, consider using CiteULike to ensure all group members can access shared articles and use Mendeley’s interface with Microsoft Word to make citations a breeze.

Now if only I had a Kindle DX so I could read the PDFs on the go…or, as Nick has pointed out, the Irex Iliad.

In case anyone from last night is reading this, I’m downloading more songs from more genres because I think I’ve got an idea of what songs you’d like. R, for example, will have New York, New York to croon to, if he so wishes. And L gets Love Story while C gets some good ol’ Pussycat Dolls. Of course, I had S’s hit single, Chasing Cars. Any requests?

The rest of the party was pretty sweet, I learned how to barbecue! Now I don’t have to worry about food poisoning as much, I even made my own burger. The only downside was that I smelled like smoky meat afterwards so I promptly showered when I got home…I’m sure the smell of meat and smoke turns some people on, but I’m not one of them!

Back to genetics and Minischool, though, and the fun and games are over at least for the next three weeks. Here’s hoping everything goes well.

Lately, I’ve been culling software from my overloaded laptop (my OCD tendencies require that I maintain ~100GB free at any time, and no less than 90GB, out of 300GB) and adding new, useful ones. Here’s a quick summary of what made the cut and what didn’t measure up.

IN: GnuCash
Now that I’m the Director of Finance of SUS, I want to try to be much more accountable and transparent with financial affairs so I’ll be tracking expenses using my own software so that the internal auditor (a role that I have filled for the past two years) can do more than just stare at numbers on trial balances, s/he can reconcile them! Hurrah. Best of all, GnuCash is free, supports sub-accounts, and runs light. Score!
Website: http://www.gnucash.org/

OUT: Quicken
I was intending to use Quicken to track the finances of SUS but it wasn’t elegant, didn’t support sub-accounts and had so much more than I needed. It’s a great program, my dad uses it for bookkeeping, but it just didn’t suit my purposes. It had really nice sound effects though (think the DING! sound made by a cash register when ringing in totals).
Website: http://quicken.intuit.ca/

OUT: 3Ds Max
So I have the bad habit of tricking out my laptop with millions of useful applications that I will probably never use. Things like DJ software, video-editing, etc. I can sort of justify to myself, I’m interested in them – but I couldn’t justify keeping this massive program on my hard drive much longer. Remember kids, if you happen to need a certain program and its an emergency, consider asking me – I’ve got a whole bunch of odd software…Matlab…Mathematica…Maple (the Triforce!)…JMP…VirtualDJ…FL Studio…etc.
Website: http://www.autodesk.com/3dsmax

IN: GanttProject
So now that I’ve got a ton on my plate, I re-downloaded an oldie I once used but largely discarded. I’m a closet fan of project management techniques and the Gantt chart has its uses. I’m a fervent Gantt charter and it shows, I usually have my business well-planned. It also makes me a bit of a square though, and that’s not swell at all.
Website: http://www.ganttproject.biz/

IN: Copernic Desktop Search
After seeing B show off the Mac Spotlight search feature, I’ll admit I was a little envious; the Windows Live Search just wasn’t doing it and I wasn’t intending on downloading Google Desktop Search. Copernic Desktop Search is awesome – it searches within PDFs, DOCs, etc to find strings of text I need. Never again will my files be missing and now I can shut those Mac fanboys up. “Hey look, my PC can do that too! So there.”
Website: http://www.copernic.com/

IN: VMWare Workstation
On the note of Mac fanboys, I’m a bit of a snob (like they are) and eschew the use of PowerPoint and Visio when I can opt for Keynote or Omnigraffle. Ideally, I would own a secondary Mac laptop for my uses but until I strike it rich, I’ll have to make due by running Leopard off VMWare and using the needed software through there. Seriously though, Keynote is amazing. It exudes sprezzatura. (Look it up!) Oh, and I almost forgot. I love Scrivener on Macs. I’m begging for someone to make something similar for PCs.
Website: http://www.vmware.com/

IN: LyX
I resolve this will be the summer I learn to use LaTeX, even if it’s through a WYSIWYG editor like LyX. Hey, you can’t tell the difference in the final output so no one can pin me, right? I wonder what my English professors will say, knowing that I formatted my term papers in LyX and not Microsoft Word? I’ll be the black sheep of the English department.
Website: http://www.lyx.org/

I’m off to go study BIOL 334 in preparation for my 10% quiz this Friday…

♫ Currently Playing: K’Naan — Bang Bang

After finishing a breakfast with my family, I headed over to Metropolis at Metrotown a tad early, playing New York Times Crossword on my DS to kill the time (the joys of which I have recently rediscovered). I was the first one in line (that’s never happened before!) and probably looked insanely dorktastic while getting my Star Trek tickets. A showed up shortly thereafter and we partook of our usual poutine ritual.

We weren’t the first ones in the theatre and I was surprised to see so many people watching it, even after the initial rush of Trekkies and newfound followers. Nevertheless, we managed to snag some great seats. I was a pretty poor conversationalist at that time.

All in all, I thought it was a really cool movie! I’m partial to movies with plenty of action but there was also a lot of characterization in Star Trek (assisted, no doubt, by a rich and lengthy canon). The actors were well-suited for their roles, I thought, and appropriate comic relief was dispensed.

I was pleased to see Sylar…Zachary Quinto as Spock – it was really fitting! In Heroes interviews, he’s said for a while he’d like to play Spock if a movie ever came out so I suppose this is a bit of wish fulfillment for him. As for Chris Pine, I hadn’t heard of him before but he’s certainly got the momentum to propel him into more leading roles. I wonder if he wears contacts in order to augment his naturally vibrantly blue eyes or if they really are that blue.

I just also have to say that I’ve always been amused by the uniforms that the characters on Star Trek wear and the movie wasn’t an exception; what’s up with the uniforms? Is there a reason why they all look…odd? Is it supposed to be futuristic? Maybe I missed the boat on this one.

At any rate, the movie was filled with explosions and guns and flashing lights, just the way I like it! I give the movie an 8 out of 10; really quite worth the watch.

I won’t get to comment about Angels and Demons as G was waylaid but it’s alright; I’m sure there will be another opportunity to watch it. I ended up buying more Agatha Christie (Death on the Nile and Three Act Tragedy) and I’ll be reading those en route to work tomorrow.