Abandon all hope, ye who enter here...

7:45am: Damn this past weekend's whitewater rafting trip (Youghiogheny river - Ohiopyle, PA) was fucking awesome. Especially the Upper Yough - that was almost nonstop badassness. Oh and this entire weekend I never fell out of the raft ONCE ;)

Sore as all hell, but most of it is in my lower body funny enough. My arms are too gangsta to cry over that shit.

9:56am: Oh holy shit this is hilarious-
( The effects of alcohol )

3:26pm: lol

10:20pm: Heh well, been playing with GNU Lilypond a bit tonight. Tried a couple GUIs that frontend it, and they sucked. Decided to try my hand at writing the raw text language.

Put together the main drum groove for "We Laugh Indoors" by Death Cab for Cutie-

#(set-default-paper-size "letter" 'portrait)

up = \drummode {
	\repeat unfold 32 hh8
}

down = \drummode {
	bd8 bd8 sn4 s4 sn8 bd8 s8 bd8 sn4 s4 sn8 bd8 bd8 bd8 sn4 s4 sn8 bd8 s8 bd8 sn4 s8 bd8 sn4
}

\repeat volta 4 {
	\new DrumStaff <<
		\time 4/4
		\new DrumVoice { \voiceOne \up }
		\new DrumVoice { \voiceTwo \down }
	>>
}

Which produces:


Lilypond is horribly confusing as fuck but, well, it's there. Reminds me of my aborted attempts at learning LaTeX. Maybe if I find a good variety of percussion samples I'll have an easier time figuring out the language. As with any textual language that's confusing as fuck, it's usually powerfully expressive as fuck too. Seems to be from what I've seen so far.

12:15am: variation of an oldie but goodie-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs3eo-XKxIY

2:59am: lol just remembered this one... ridiculous:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhcepEBI03M

10:49am: Merry Christmas!

7:40pm: Hahahaha. Seriously, why don't American capitalists have a sense of humor like this?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=abJOQQI18SAE

Credit Suisse Group AG’s investment bank has found a new way to reduce the risk of losses from about $5 billion of its most illiquid loans and bonds: using them to pay employees’ year-end bonuses.

The bank will use leveraged loans and commercial mortgage- backed debt, some of the securities blamed for generating the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, to fund executive compensation packages, people familiar with the matter said. The new policy applies only to managing directors and directors, the two most senior ranks at the Zurich-based company, according to a memo sent to employees today.

“While the solution we have come up with may not be ideal for everyone, we believe it strikes the appropriate balance among the interests of our employees, shareholders and regulators and helps position us well for 2009,” Chief Executive Officer Brady Dougan and Paul Calello, CEO of the investment bank, said in the memo.

The securities will be placed into a so-called Partner Asset Facility, and affected employees at the bank, Switzerland’s second biggest, will be given stakes in the facility as part of their pay. Bonuses will take the first hit should the securities decline further in value.

10:35am: [linux] libevent
random link from a coworker -- http://monkey.org/~provos/libevent/ -- library for writing event-driven programs using sockets (it handles/abstracts away all the select or poll-type stuff for you, and uses whichever is most appropriate on your platform)

9:22am: decent pic of Pete's attention whore of a cat (Eightball) ;)

11:36am: Reposted from avdi


LOL

10:37am: GNU/W00t++
The morning's activities-

1. Wake up, begrudgingly
2. Lay in bed for a while
3. Turn on the computer, drink water, take medicine.
4. Bang on the drums a bit
5. Cook 2 cups of veggies in olive oil, sprinkle shredded cheese on top, get laundry while it's cooking, then eat afterwards. Followed by a grapefruit.
6. Play music while printing directions & packing up
7. Exercise for 10 minutes on the elliptical
8. Enjoy Trader Joes Double-Cream Brie
9. Ponder how one could adjust their diet to just eat Trader Joes Brie all day long and not get fat, cure NAFLD and avoid malnutrition.
10. Shower (<-- about to do this)
11. Drive to NC
12. ??? (Watch my stocks surge? yeah right)
13. Profit!!!!!

10:36am: lol
So Sprint decided to cut all Internet tier-1/backbone links with Cogent due to litigation-
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/sprint-nextel-severs-its-internet-connection-to-cogent-communications,603138.shtml

This would mean that a lot of users who use Sprint ISPs or ISPs that solely rely upon Sprint's tier-1 networks cannot access hosts or resources (including servers/datacenter connections/etc) that rely on Cogent's links, and vice-versa. In other words, Sprint & Cogent decided to break part of the Internet :) Bastards!

Haha sho'nuff:
http://www.internetpulse.net/

11:51am: Cajun catfish + stir fry veggies for lunch. With extra chili powder on both. *that* fucking rocked.

12:33pm: OH yeah
( see under the cut )

3:20pm: Duck Tales Inflation Lesson
lol#2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_LWQQrpSc4

11:09am: LOL
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/3/43222/8057/718/618653

10:49am: hahaha
Digg never fails to deliver-
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1077
Concerned about the Economic Meltdown?: A Flowchart

7:37am: Wall Street Bailout, Part Deux
**Vote is tonight, featuring tax cuts, FDIC insurance increase, and the $700 billion BAILOUT-*cough*-I mean "rescue" as they call it now.**
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aoJ7Et81o4c8&refer=home
( article content pasted under the cut )

10:26pm: [music] TAKIN' IT BACK TO THE OLD SKOOL
for mike, who presently does not have an LJ account... or anybody else, who wants to hear oldschool electronic MIDI music from the days before MP3s were popular ;)

Neptune Rising by Michael Walthius (1997; banged out on a Yamaha QS300 XG workstation keyboard):
MIDI file - neptu_xg.mid
MP3 sequencing - neptu_xg.mp3
(sequenced from my PC's soundcard MIDI port through a Yamaha DD-65 drumset and then recorded through the soundcard mic input)

others:
inthemid.mid - inthemid.mp3
techrap.mid - techrap.mp3 (LAWLZIES IT ACTUALLY THUMPS!!)

11:20pm: yeah, fear.
(this song fucking rocks, BTW. It grows on you. They won a Grammy Award for it!)
<3 the ending.

10:59am: frakkin' moneyshot... Software RAID1 on Ubuntu Linux
http://users.piuha.net/martti/comp/ubuntu/en/raid.html

Pretty nice guide on doing the software RAID1 stuff with Ubuntu 8.04. One particular question of mine got answered--how do you install GRUB on *both* hard disks.

martti@ubuntu:~$ sudo grub-install /dev/sda

martti@ubuntu:~$ sudo grub
grub> device (hd0) /dev/sdb
grub> root (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

see boldfaced--that's the trick. Enter a 'grub' session and tell it to temporarily redefine (hd0) to the second disk (/dev/sdb), and THEN install the boot loader ('setup (hd0)'). Beautiful.

Plus, for anyone doing this with 8.04, be mindful of the bug:

WARNING: There is a serious bug which makes the boot fail if one of the physical disks in the RAID1 set is missing. The following patch helped me.

martti@ubuntu:~$ cd /tmp
martti@ubuntu:~$ wget http://www.iki.fi/kuparine/comp/ubuntu/en/local.diff
martti@ubuntu:~$ cd /usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts
martti@ubuntu:~$ sudo patch -p0 < /tmp/local.diff
martti@ubuntu:~$ sudo update-initramfs -k all -u

Please note that you need to apply the patch every time the initramfs-tools package is upgraded or reinstalled.

7:38am: I fucking hate disjointed sleep, where I sleep like a rock for a modest amount of time, then wake up around 3AM and can't get back to sleep till 4, then sleep 1-2 more hours. I always wake up tired as fuck afterwards. Argh.

1:42pm: This is just a badass story-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2669229/British-engineer-swims-jungle-river-in-escape-from-Gambia.html

10:34am: fear my L-theanine, bitches
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theanine

Theanine is an amino acid commonly found in tea (infusions of Camellia sinensis). In 1950 the Tea laboratory of Kyoto successfully separated Theanine from Gyokuro leaf, which has the most Theanine content among all teas. Theanine is related to glutamine, and can cross the blood-brain barrier.[1] Because it can enter the brain, theanine has psychoactive properties.[2] Theanine has been shown to reduce mental and physical stress[3], may produce feelings of relaxation[4] and improves cognition and mood when taken in combination with caffeine.[5]

Theanine is speculated to produce these effects by increasing the level of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) production. Theanine increases brain serotonin, dopamine, GABA levels and has micromolar affinities for AMPA, Kainate and NMDA receptors.[6] It has also been found that injecting spontaneously hypertensive mice with theanine significantly lowered levels of 5-hydroxyindoles in the brain.[7] Researchers also speculate that it may inhibit glutamic acid excitotoxicity.[6] Theanine also promotes alpha wave production in the brain.[2]

Studies on test rats have shown that even repeated, extremely high doses of theanine cause little to no harmful psychological or physical effects.[8] Theanine showed neuroprotective effects in one rat study.[9]

L-theanine may help the body's immune response to infection by boosting the disease-fighting capacity of gamma delta T cells. The study, published in 2003 by the Brigham and Women's Hospital, included a four-week trial with 11 coffee drinkers and 10 tea drinkers, who consumed 600 milliliters of coffee or black tea daily. Blood sample analysis found that the production of anti-bacterial proteins was up to five times higher in the tea-drinkers, an indicator of a stronger immune response.[10]