April 29, 2025
emerge life
For the past week I've been working on getting Gentoo to work on my Dell 600m. All I can say is that I've never had so much fun with linux since the first time I installed Slackware about nine years back!
For the past year and a half I've been using Windows XP almost exclusively, all the while lusting for a Mac OS X computer, but never really being able to afford one. This was mainly because I was too lazy to setup linux so that everything was streamlined (procmail, fetchmail, fonts, etc etc...). Another reason is that Windows XP really is pretty stable (I have had months of uptime!)
Now I finally decided to give gentoo a shot. It is supposed to be more raw than slackware and debian, and had always caught my attention. The installation was took about a day, but that was mainly unattended. For the uninitiated, this is because gentoo compiles everything on the computer it is being installed on. This ensures best performance and no feature bloat. You simply decide what options you want to enable using the USE environment variable, and then start installing packages using the magical emerge command. It automatically resolves all dependencies, downloads the source code from the net, compiles, and installs the software!
Once you get the hang of it, it is really magical. You want to install firefox, for example; just type emerge mozilla-firefox. And the best of all, if you want to upgrade to the latest, greatest version of gentoo, simply type something like emerge sync; emerge -u world. This updates all the packages on your system to the latest. And it does this nicely in the background while you continue your work. No more re-installing from scratch, or even doing a traditional upgrade of the software - ever!
The next thing I realized is how much better Gnome is now. I've always been a KDE user, but Gnome has totally blown me away. It is kind of like the poor man's Mac OS X :)
That said, not everything works perfectly yet. I am still struggling to get the fonts just right. Suspend does not work on my laptop - ACPI support is still experimental. But its getting there...
Installation can take a long time - days of compiling on slow hardware. Tweaking the options can be hard for someone who is not already comfortable with linux. But for the brave, the rewards are amazing. Easily the best linux distribution. Perhaps even the best OS ever!
April 27, 2025
Medea/Vienna Teng
Medea was a powerful sorceresses, daughter of King Aeetes, and granddaughter of the Sun God from Greek mythology. When she learns that her husband, Jason had betrayed her and married Glauce, the daughter of Creon, she kills Gluace, King Creon, and finally her own two children, and flees with their bodies. Read more about her amazing story here, here, here, and here.
I recently heard this amazing song on Radioparadise by a little known Asian-American artist, Vienna Teng. The song really shows Medea's side of the story just before she kills her children. Really beautifully written.
My Medea
inside the labyrinth walls
there lies a tiny child who sleeps alone
and as the daylight falls
the wind becomes so wild across the stonefor I have made her prison be
her every step away from me
and this child I would destroy
if you tried to set her freeso come to me my love
I'll tap into your strength and drain it dry
can never have enough
for you I'd burn the length and breadth of skyfor it's my thoughts that bind me here
it's this love that I most fear
and this child I would destroy
for I hold her pain most dearno haven for this heart
no shelter for this child in mazes lost
heaven keep us apart
a curse for every mile of ocean crossedfor I must die for what I've done
a twist of fate a desert sun
for I see what I destroy
sweet reflection knife into me
for I see what I destroy
I can see what I've begun- Vienna Teng
Vienna Teng's music is quite different from the stuff I generally listen to. One of the things I really like is how perfectly the words blend into the music. The music is a little slow sometimes, but it i guess it kind of grows on you. Check out her website for samples to her music (some full songs as well). A piece of trivia... she is a Computer Science graduate from Stanford, and even worked in Cisco for a year or so before deciding to change careers!
April 25, 2025
Lesson of the day
If you are about 90% done with your blog entry, and have a bunch of tabs open, and you hit SHIFT+CTRL+TAB to go to the previous tab, Firefox crashes! *argh*
This just happened to me twice. I'll probably try the same entry again tomorrow; this time compose in Vim and paste here.
April 18, 2025
Kill Bill 2
Just returned from the movie. It is about as different from Vol. 1 as possible. Very little action, no ruthless decapitation, no blood fountains. In its place we get true Tarantino style dialogue, long closeups, amazing acting, and lots of fun!
In true Tarantino fashion, the story keeps jumping between different time periods. Among other things, we get to see how the Bride trained in kung-fu, why Bill wants her killed, and how Elle lost her eye. The movie gets a little bit of a drag at times. It does require some patience to watch (somewhat like Reservoir Dogs). But on the whole, it is quite enjoyable.
Inspite of being really heavy on dialogue, the movie does have some really amazing action moments. There is this sequence where Beatrix (the bride) is being burried alive. Her coffin is first hammered shut, then lowered into the grave, and covered with earth. For the better part of this sequence, the screen goes completely blank, and we can hear her struggling, and mud filling the grave. This must rank among the best sequences in cinematic history, imo. This alone makes the movie worth watching. Absolutely brilliant use of sound and video.
Very often when I am watching the sequel of a great movie, I end up trying to its spots weak points while watching it. This happened a lot in LOTR 2 and 3, which made me not like the movie as much as the first. This did not happen with KB2 though. Instead of trying to find loopholes, I found myself really enjoying every minute of Tarantino's magic!
I am finding it hard to decide which is better - Vol. 1 or 2. I really liked the camera work, the use of color, the brilliang Anime sequence, and even the intense action in the first. I loved the dialogues and the subtle humor in the second. I wonder why Tarantino decided to split the movie the way he did. Would it have been better a better balance of dialogue and action in both movies
instead? I dont know...
For the moment, I think I will prefer Vol. 1 over Vol. 2 - just for its anime sequence, if nothing else. But that might change when I watch Vol. 2 a second time though. I hope that a special director's cut DVD is released that mixes the two movies in just the right way. If it is rightly done, we will have one of the best movies ever made!
I wanted to include some really cool quotes from the movie, but couldnt find a good source. Most are instant classics, and should be appearing at imdb, and other places pretty soon.
Click below for SPOILER
Interesting observation: The bride kills just one person (Bill) in Vol. 2 (as opposed to millions in the first volume).
April 10, 2025
a place where 100 years means nothing
Starlab was a privately funded research lab that was supposed to work on technologies that become practical in decades or centuries. Located in Brussels, Belgium, it had over 70 of the world's best researchers working on crazy and sci-fi stuff such as time travel, artificial brain building, creating wealth, quantum consciousness, building serendipity, art, and even galactic civilisations!
Our role is to show the feasibility of crazy ideas. Starlab is a crazy company where you can realise crazy things without limitations. You can get people to back an idea without worrying about whether it will fit a particular business plan. At Starlab there is no risk of being conservative, because we are inventing the future. - Ronald Schrooten
On June 21, 2001, thanks to the dotcom burst, the company filed for bankruptcy, and ceased to exist :(
More info and links here