It’s a bit monotonous to meddle with databases all afternoon. But i rather do it now than later… It was quite a challenge to squeeze as much stuff into one single query as possible and reduce manual work to the minimum. Still it took quite long. To sum it up: for the Hidden Leaf Team fansub group i had to pack some releases. About 6-7 series worth of. That means i’d to change the comment’s links to the downloads to the new pack one, add all the download count and thanks to the pack and then delete the old ones. Seems easy, but i was lazy to think much so i didn’t force it even more when i ended up with seven queries per series. That goes. But i don’t want to see any phpMyAdmin anytime soon.
Juno
Yesterday i watched a movie that a long time ago Glendi suggested, Juno. It was great. It’s about a high schooler indie girl who successfully gets pregnant on her first ahem… sexually active act. The movie’s about her nine troubled months, from the first doubts of whether to bear the baby or not, and all that’s coming after. There’s a lot of crying and a lot of laughing in there. The story’s altogether simple, but great. And Ellen Page is a beauty.
Her cool style makes this movie special. That’s what “indie” supposed to be, not that totally trend-dependent hype called indie nowadays. The music’s great and perfectly fitting, as well as the graphics of the opening.
Once again i’m in trouble saying i enjoyed this movie. It was great for sure. But a drama (i think) isn’t supposed to be fun. Yet… Juno has a lot of fun in it too. I say it’s a must-see for everyone, especially those teens who are, so to say, already sexually active.
A huge 5/5. Fantastic.
Oh noes
I just translated the 203th episode of Bleach and in the afterword it’s stated more or less clearly that fillers are coming. I guessed. They were way too close to the manga, even with the Turn back the pendulum gaiden. That’s how it goes. I won’t really like to take translating jobs in the coming times. I hate to watch fillers. Especially since i’m reading the manga, so i know what’s supposed to be coming. And that rocks. While that whatever party… well i couldn’t care less about it.
Today i fixed the coming layout for IE6 too. Gave me a few minutes pure fun (not). But i still have to optimize for it, because (according to my stats) about every tenth of my visitors uses that. That’s more than i’d ignore. Well, at least when it comes to layout bugs. The resolution stuff doesn’t really interest me. Everyone can scroll, and also, why would anyone use a 800×600 resolution in 2009? Honestly… It’s another thing when it’s about mobiles, naturally i’ll have a separate handheld stylesheet.
And today i closed the autumn-winter semester.
Day of God
Yesterday was sunday, when religious people go to church and are supposed to honour that day as that’s when God rested after the six days of creation. Yesterday i decided to keep it holy too, and after arriving home soon before noon instead of spending all my time on plurk and twitting about nonsense, i rather read the Bible all afternoon, with Neal Morse for background music. It was really… a good feeling. Sometimes it really feels good to believe without doubt and praise God for every little success.
In the evening i once again did exercises, so today my legs hurt pretty much. Then played a Scrabble game with my parents and watched the snooker Master’s final. That poor Selby looked quite worn, so he was nowhere as sympathetic as O’Sullivan. The ambidextrous master won, as i hoped… But Selby would’ve deserved it too.
Again
I’d rather not give the title “plans” to any more posts. First, there are already way too many such, second, those “plans” are rathermore dreams, as i somehow never manage to follow them. But now i have a break (yesterday was my last exam in this semester) until february 10th, and i want to spend it well. I have to code a lot. I really want to finish a project that i kind of dropped many times before just to start it again and again. It’d be a great reference and it’ll be useful for others too. Now i have time for it and i’ll take it seriously. I’ll try, at least. It seems i’ll also have another project, an online typography magazine, it’ll be very interesting for sure, though yet i don’t really know any details about it.
I plan to finish at least Ulysses (but hopefully more) and start learning languages again. I’ll have to practice japanese a lot again, since in the spring i’ll start my studies in Japan, but i also want to refine my german and learn as much spanish as i can (i think i won’t really have much time for these later).
That’s about all… Now i start coding. Imagine it as if i had to fill an empty pool with water out of nowhere. A challenge.
Winamp vs foobar2000
Lately i’ve been using foobar2000. Don’t ask me why—there’s no particular reason. When i was using Winamp back for years, i was perfectly fine with that too. And so i am now. There are a few features in both that i’d miss. For example, foobar has very clever tools for tagging and renaming masses of music, which came pretty handy when i reorganised my library in the winter break. Foobar can also ping last.fm without needing any plugin or such, while i’d need to install something to do that with Winamp. But Winamp can instantly burn music cds, with it i can put music on my mp3 player, and a lot more than else ways, because i can make it transcode them if the quality’s too high—since i mostly use that gadget when i’m outside, there’s no need for extreme high quality, but file size does matter (it’s an 1 gig Creative MuVo, in case you haven’t read me back in summer 2007). Also, i have a totally legal pro licence for Winamp.
Why do i still use foobar then? No reason (maybe the last.fm thing being the only point). I think i’ll use them what they’re fit to. I’ll categorise, organise and manage my collection mostly with foobar, while exporting will remain Winamp’s job. For playback i’ll use whichever i first start. It doesn’t matter. For opening any kind of media file (audio and video) i still have VLC as default, because it’s dead annoying when accidentally opening a file resets my carefully built playlist (sadly foobar doesn’t open a new playlist for that—in Winamp that’s not even a question, as there can’t be more than one playlist open at a time).
Oh God…
My Windows died, out of nowhere. It’s not letting me log in. I enter the pass, then wait… and wait… and then reset and decide to try what i wanted under linux. Ubuntu says it couldn’t mount my drives, because the logs show that it’s in use, indicating unclean Windows shutdown. Sure it was unclean, but not that much that all (not just the system) ntfs drives would be locked. Force mount them, they work fine, no trouble. I can’t see anything wrong with the system drive either–last time i had such a problem, i accidentally created (due to a typo) a directory named “Documents And Settings” (capital A), which confused Win. But now there’s no such. At least, not apparent.
What might be important: before shutting down the last (then working) session of Windows, i wanted to run an AdAware scan, but it crashed. I wanted to check if i had a virus but it’s not that easy installing an antivirus program with the most recent database under Ubuntu–with direct net access it would be, but my laptop couldn’t connect, because Ubuntu can’t handle my wireless network card. I’m right now trying to update the ClamAV database, and then run the scan on my drives. Maybe. (Though it shouldn’t find anything: after downloading something i always make eTrust AV scan it–and that thing won most of the antivirus tests i’ve read.)
Edit 17:40
It turned out that the AdAware service couldn’t start, and that made the logon hang. Logged on onto the command line safe mode, and managed to figure out what the problem was, so at logging on normally i could evade it using alt-tab, then uninstall the whole thing. It works fine.
Annoyed
I’m a bit annoyed right now. Yesterday i got fed up with that under Ubuntu all sounds on the output were noisy and quiet (the built-in speakers of the laptop sounded all right, but i hardly ever use those). I looked at the Ubuntu forums, and found a post asking about this very same problem. They sent that guy over to a page where the first link was a guide on how to install open sound (OSS) instead of ALSA. And i fool followed. First, installing OSS wasn’t simple. Included downloading loads of stuff and running home-made shell scripts i didn’t even know doing what. Before that Ubuntu produced noisy and quiet sound. Since then, none. So i wanted to revert back to ALSA–at least that worked somewhat. Unsuccessful. I tried reverting the steps of the OSS install, i tried following a guide on how to reinstall it, and tried running a supposedly installer script–but all failed. Then i wanted to reinstall Ubuntu as a whole. That would surely solve it. But i only had a 8.04 CD at hand, and that Hardy doesn’t recognise even my wired network card (or it does, but the main thing is that no networking works) (Asus A6M-Q035 laptop), so no updates, no use. Back under Windows i downloaded the 8.10 CD and burnt it, but it won’t boot. At all. I’m reburning it right now (i always use rw discs, and they worked fine, so i will use them later too).
All that was in vain, by the way. The problem was that the volume of my “CD drive” (in the mixer or volume control it goes by “CD”) was set too high (who would’ve thought that could make the normal sound output that noisy?). I muted it, and no noise. I hope i could get it working again.
Naturally the Total Commander CD/DVD burner plugin decides not to work properly only when i’m in a hurry. When else? This is not my day. (I hope tomorrow will be, with my linear algebra exam.)
Edit 16:30
And to further my happiness, the otherwise over-10M net in the dorm is for some reason under 1M, so downloading the alternative Ubuntu image takes about five hours (normally about ten minutes). I am overjoyed.
Checkback
What happened in the year past? 2008 was not eventless, though half not as stuffed as i’d loved it to be. My expectations are usually too high, but i’m too lazy to do anything to accomplish anything not of the highest value. What happened? I started the year in a party with school people, i enjoyed it somewhat, arrived home at dawn and ate a dish of lentil for lunch (something i really missed this year) (and why does english lack essential words, especially in culinary fields?), then the same week saw the birthday of my best friend, and with that a party. Still in january i ended up again in love with Sors (that was probably fate, as her name suggests, as it means destiny or fate in hungarian), in the spring we went to Paris together, and i won’t forget that (i hope). Then came the high school leaving stuff with all the exams and great (or just huge) parties, the summer with loads of fun, festivals (EFOTT and Sziget), spending a week by the Balaton (before another week with my family) and in Nyírjes with friends, then the university entrance with the freshmen’s camp and the dorm prelims, then the boring university life as a student of computer technology, though i’ve been to a few gigs (three in september in the ZP, another Kaukázus later and also a Sonata Arctica) and we tested a few gyros places with other bloggers, but in the autumn i became single again, started to get really fed up with the uni (even though i’ve found new friends, eg Ai and there were a few great events), so the winter break came at the best possible time. Christmas passed quietly and peacefully, and since then the silence is even more intense, the only events being the local rock Christmas “fest” and the new year’s party. Now here i am studying for the coming two exams, and hoping to survive. I wonder if in three months’ time i’ll be in japan or not. That’ll give a huge kick to the path of my life, whatever the results will be.
