Defocused Temporal Perception

Whew, well now that exams and that whole Christmas thing is done I have some time to kill and write something here.  In the process of cleaning up around the home here I found a rather fantastic relic of the past, an original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).  I remember having one but up until now had thought it had gone to video console heaven to join its brethren Commodore 64 and Atari.

A long lost source of fun and adventure un-earthed again.

NES - Bird's Eye View

However, now what to do with this iconic relic of the 80’s.  A Philips screwdriver and 10 screws later showed the NES in all its boxlike glory would make it a great enclosure for something.  What just what could that something be?  My first thought was to turn it into a hard drive enclosure for regular backups was a decent idea, however, seeing that some more ambitious people on the internet turn it into a retro media PC I decided I wanted to do that too.

The gutted NES in all its internal box glory. The power buttons are the only thing I left.

So here are my specs for the internals of this experiment:

• Intel DG41MJ MINI-ITX LGA775
  A small but flexible motherboard that can handle most of the Intel Dual Core processors (as opposed to just Celeron or Micro processor). It also has 5.1 surround sound and has a high resolution digital out that will give some HD picture quality.  Also the capacity to have 8 USB ports serves my purposes well.
• Western Digital Scorpio Blue 2.5IN 160GB
  Space to put stuff.
• OCZ Gold XTC PC2-6400 4GB 2X2GB DDR2-800
  Far more RAM than I could ever justify but hey it’s on sale.
• Liteon IHOS104 4X BLU-RAY Reader BD-ROM Drive
  Blu-Ray is the way of the future I hear.

More to come I will keep this place update as I progress.

– Niels

Huston, we have improvement.  Yesterday evening’s performance by Deadmau5 at the UBC Thunderbird Arena was pretty enjoyable (see I don’t hate everyone).  Mister Joel Zimmerman certainly kept the dance floor going solid base and good, although sometimes pretty pedantic, hooks and *gasp* melodies.

I do however have a few things to say.  Zimmerman kicked off the night with a pretty cool (and nerdy) Legend of Zelda themed mix, which was pretty universally much appreciated.  However, after that point, I found the show a little long to get going, there was a lot of “4-to-the-floor” default that really didn’t go anywhere.  The “real” music started sometime about 1h 15min mark with the track “Ghosts ‘n Stuff” and from there the show took a much more melodic approach.

Thundermau5

Now here’s an interesting and rather comical point.  Zimmerman discovered that people don’t know how to dance in 3/4 time.  The dance floors was noticeably more calm for about 5 minutes during this point.  People seemed to awkwardly shift back and forth, not really finding any natural rhythm.  I’m sure most people were relieved when it was over and they were back to “safe” 4/4.

This was the first time I had ever been in thunderbird stadium for a concert.  I have to say that its a pretty good place to hold something like this.  The ice arena makes for a massive dance floor.  However, my friend and I noticed that even though the concert was “sold-out” the whole place seemed rather empty due to the fact that no one was allowed in the stands.  I’m not sure if this affected the whole acoustics of the place, which I thought was very good.

“Shut her down Rick.”
The place must have strict rules on holding a concert, the ending of the show was rather kurt and anti-climatictic.  Zimmerman RickRoll’D himself and then basically just pulled the plug at 11pm sharp after he had only been playing for 2 hours.  Keyboard kitty played him off the stage with his “leat” going away message: “kthxbye.” Within 15 min just about everyone was escorted to the door, although there was still time to play around with the Mau5 masks that were left over.

The Iconic Mau5-Mask

Overall, I’d give the show a C+ or maybe a B-.  I enjoyed it but given another opportunity I may not be so likely to shell out 60 bucks for another concert.

MSTRKRFT, one of the more prominent Canadian electro-house DJs fronted with Steve Aoki hit the Commodore Ballroom last night with a five hour set of “four-to-the-floor” electro base.  Great right?  I mean these guys have some pretty sweet tracks.

Mr. Steve Aoki on the big screen.

Well, actually not so much. I was really disappointed with most of the night.  The show consisted of five hours of what I can only describe as four-to-the-floor musical default.  This kind of stuff is supposed to be used so you can transition your way from one song to another, it certainly isn’t the main course or the reason I showed up.  None the less the crowd seemed to make due, even without anything good to dance to.  It was a pretty good crowd out and as such there was plenty of jumping, grinding, screaming and general debauchery which is key to a good concert.  However, I can’t help that feel that more than a few of my fellow patron left feeling pretty disappointed.

MSTRKRFT at the Commodore Ballroom

What makes this so upsetting is the fact that both of these artists are generally pretty talented. In the studio at least, their music is full of the standard things that make good music good, Melody, Rhythm, Chord Progressions, etc.  A quick listen to both the Steve Aoki and MSTRKRFT mySpace pages could suggest that at least ‘on paper’ this should have been a fantastic evening.  For example, some of the key tracks missing from the place were Mr. Aoki’s “HAUS OF CARDS [sic]” or the KRFT’s “Work on You” both arguably some of their best hits.

I was really expecting something a lot better.  I’m looking forward to Deadmau5’s upcoming performance at the UBC Thunderbird Arena October 2nd to bring the heat.

Bureaucracy.  Not that it is out of place during the first week of school at UBC – or any university for that matter – but the happenings this week have been particularly kurt to say the least.  So returning from 16 months of Co-op positions with two rather large software projects under my belt I was pretty excited to return to classes, with plans to graduate in the spring.

The Computer Science Department has politely deregistered me from my courses and applied its “stickler” policy due to the fact that I was missing a prerequisite that I am currently taking in concurrence with my other courses.  Upon seeing an adviser, with an attitude that was similar to another article that I was reading on dredging,  suggested I take “other biology courses” to forward my combined degree.  However, these are rather limited because of the Biology Department’s own policy on taking the required third year physiology stream of courses when you are physically a “third year” student lest you be deregistered from your specific specialization.  This leaves with a pretty empty time table containing only two courses, pushes my graduation back not one but possibly two years (that is if I wait around for some of the forth year bioinformatics courses to happen again) and the prospects of a graduate school application into limbo.

Officer "Short Shrift"

Normally, I would side with the department on this one.  It is important to take the prerequisite courses prior to taking more advanced courses.  I have even tried my best to take this course in the past; however past attempts to take this prerequisite course were limited by the University’s maximum credit policy.  Further attempts to extend my credit limit during this time were denied by the administration at Brock Hall.

Now administration details notwithstanding, the courses that am being deregistered from – particularly Introduction to Databases (CPSC 304), Introduction to Software Engineering (CPSC 310) – have a rather direct relevance to my previous Co-op experience.  While working at UBC IT I help develop the UBCevents public events calendar and my main project at the REW Hancock Lab was creating a Pseudomonas Protein-Protein interaction database and web service for Microbiologists.  So irregardless of rules and regulations there is precedence that should justify my registering for these courses.  I’d say that the whole process has given me a pretty classic “short shrift.”

Thus the appeal.  But should it even succeed I’d have to try register again for some pretty packed classes.  Leaving me no choice but to disrespectfully wedge myself in with other students in already full classes.  My apologies in advance if any of my fellow students get hurt.

This whole ordeal highlights how undergraduate students really just gunk up the “cookie-cutter” cogs of the university.

So having recently become a new “clean-cut” lifeguard after completing my National Lifeguard Service (NLS) (the fruit of 16 months of lifesaving courses) this summer, I decided to apply for a position for the UBC Aquatic centre.  Living on campus now this would have been the ideal part-time job to bring in a little extra cash.  Also quite frankly, lifeguarding has really grown on me in the last year and I’ve have to say that I enjoy it.

But “Holy Applicants Batman,” rumour has it that more than 100 other students had the same idea as me.  With only, I’d say, 5-8 positions available what it boiled down to was two days of packed, five hour, competitive staff screenings with 20+ other well qualified lifeguards (most with much more practical experience than me).  They tested our first aid with technical complications, physical NLS fitness standards, swimming technique and teaching skill.  Since we are doing this almost all at the same time its pretty much a time consuming mess on both sides.

All in all I thought I did fairly well in the screening.  There were a few bits of the First Aid that I felt I should have done better, but I thought my physical and teaching standards were pretty solid.  Now if only I were able to fetch 60-lbs from the bottom of the pool, pretty much the “superman” lifeguard standard, I’d be golden.

Now that its over, I’m just waiting for them to get back to me.

"The Hoff" - Superman amongst lifeguards

So here’s my first foray in the world of blogs.  Well not necessarily true,  I have a brief and disappointing blog attempt a few years ago.  However, I’ve resolved to pull myself up by the bootstraps and actually try to write something interesting for once.  Check back in the future and I might have something of value to say.

My dog, Geordie.