I have an idea for something to code, but I don't know if anyone's thought of it before or if it already exists (hopefully one of the more geeky people who happen to read my blog will let me know...Brett?)
Basically, every now and then I get into a situation where you want to try and describe a diagram, a character, or some other simplistic image where using a capture device is too much of a pain in the ass or isn't available, and describing it in words is too much of a hassle. Think physics problems, math problems, etc. etc. And now consider that if this is an interactive thing, then taking screenshots or something every time you want to say something and sending it back and forth is a massive pain in the ass.
The solution: A real-time networked (I'm thinking over TCP to maintain integrity rather than going with UDP) drawing program! It doesn't seem like it'd be too difficult to make a basic program (maybe one that only does freehand drawings at first) that runs over a network connection. But then, this seems like such an open and obvious thing one could do that I can't help but wonder....doesn't it already exist out there somewhere? Rather than go through the severe pain in the ass it is for me to explain that there's a mass at an incline of x degrees from the plane and blah blah blah or try to explain what a Chinese character looks like based on it's part I could just draw it out and be done with it.
If anyone knows about any software that exists that's like this, let me know please! In the meantime I'll code this as a way to get away from doing the work I'm supposed to be doing.
And while I'm on the topic, any suggestions on a good GUI toolkit that's cross platform would be nice too. QT? GTK? wxWindows? Probably not Motif. I can't recall what BitTorrent uses offhand, or if the Windows version even has a GUI. Looks like all that UI-design reading I've been doing might actually come into use (though I'll probably get lazy and throw something random together).
I live next to a guy named Jon. He can be a pretty weird person sometimes, like when I can hear him through the walls playing with his stuffed bear (the same one I have, or had, rather...someone took it and I have no idea who has it now. I hope he has a better home than he had with me, I'm a rather abusive person). Or there's the time when he starts making it dance "for [me]" (according to him), or when he plays with his stuffed mashimaro rabbit. There are some other bizarre things about him, too, but those aren't too important for the matter at hand.
So Jon's the kind of guy who plays movies in the background as white noise. That or he wants to memorize every line from it, he kind of goes back and forth between the two. For the past while or so, it's been Full Metal Jacket. For those of you who've seen this movie (and if you haven't you should), the first half of it is this terribly hilarious boot camp scene, with Lee Ernie giving out abuse left and right (and sometimes up and down and in the middle too).
Jon and I are rather bored kids, so one day we're riding around the train and we're doing our usual movie quoting thing when it occurs to us that someone should make a stereotypical Asian kid parody of that movie. The script almost writes itself:
(the scene in the barracks with Tex and the sergeant, replaced with stereotypical Asian kid and parent)
Parent: How high is your SAT score!
Kid: 1430, sir!
Parent: 1430! I didn't know they stacked shit that high! Are you trying to squeeze in an extra 10 points on me!
Kid: Sir no, sir!
Or how about the scene when Pyle's trying to get up on the obstacle
Parent: Don't make any effort to get that 1600 boy, if God wanted you to have a 1600 he would've fucking MIRACLED your ass up there now wouldn't He! I bet if there was a piece of PUSSY at the end of that 1600 you'd be able to get there!
Kid: Sir yes, sir~~~~
Of course, I'm probably misquoting a bunch of lines, but I'm not the one who's been watching the damn thing nonstop for who knows how long (the person you're looking for is next door). But anyways I'm sure the folks who happen to be reading this can think of a number of their own lines to add (so do comment with them, it's so much more merry with other perspectives!)
As an afterthought, I probably should've replaced "parent" with "cram school instructor" or something. "Oh now don't FAIL private (generic Asian name), it would BREAK my fucking HEART if you failed!"
It's funny because it's true!
This happens to me every now and every again. The temptation of looking, of reading, of absorbing the words which are so lightly penned (yet carry so much weight) and find out more of the story that unfolds before me, one syllable at a time. It doesn't take much effort, hardly a movement of the hand or a click of the mouse. It doesn't take much time, modern internet connectivity makes it all almost instantaneous (but almost instantaneous is never fast enough when the mind and the heart scramble at finding out now now now whether it will be allowed to be kept whole or smashed or carved or supported today).
So I look. I read. I absorb the words.
And every now and every again, the story comes to remind me that what was right and well one day could very well turn out to be wronger than wrong tomorrow. Things don't hit you as hard when you're expecting them. It's when you think all is well, that everyone lives happily ever after that the twist really gets you.
But in real life, not everyone lives happily ever after. Someone's got to lose.
And sometimes, everyone loses.
This is one of those times.
I would like to take a moment to thank everyone who wished me well on my birthday (either a few days earlier, the day of, or the day after...the time thing's confusing, I know).
For the curious, I spent my day at work, at school, and then at Kyoto for dinner with Jason, Paul, Jema, and Yoshika at Shakey's (ghetto beyond all which is ghetto). I wonder if I'm getting too old to have crazy wild parties (but it's much more likely I'm just lazy as all hell and don't feel like planning anything...not to mention not really having a place to throw a party here. Damn dorms).
I took some random pictures with Jason and Yoshika while we were waiting for Jema to get there, but since they're these tiny little sticker picture things all I could really do was take a picture of them (yes, a picture of a picture) and somehow hope that the shrinking of the images would apply a Gaussian blur to sort of even out the image. On the other hand, it might've been a good idea to apply a sharpening mask after that (if only I could remember if that would be a closed-mouth or an open-mouthed filter).
But anyways, thank you all for your kind wishes and warm-hearted tidings; it's one of the things that remind me of just how fortunate I am.
Seeing how I have a tendency to do everything except what I'm supposed to, I decided (upon Brett's suggestion) to add some code to my blog (forcing myself to learn Perl in the process) so that it'll display the top x number of visitors to my blog. While I haven't come to a concrete idea of what a good number for x is, and the code's not done yet (for dynamic generation anyways, though I could probably settle for generating it once a day, since it takes a pretty damn long time to generate all the data), I have learned a few things while doing this:
1) Python is so much cooler than Perl. Perl might be the force which holds the entire internet together, but what a messy, contorted, inelegant force it is.
2) You can do all sorts of things with Perl
2a) You will pull all your hair out in the process of trying to do it though
2b) You can do all sorts of things with Python too so why cause yourself the hair loss?
3) I'm starting to understand why it is that one of the professors at Berkeley prefers to learn new languages by looking through language specifications. Reading through all the tutorial stuff is way too much verbosity. I don't need to know what an if-else loop is, I don't need to know that do-while loops execute the loop at least once, I don't need to know what lexical scoping is (or the difference between local or global variables), etc. etc. (as an afterthought, s/don\'t need to know/don\'t need to be reminded/g).
4) I'm picking up funky habits (like the above) where I'm stating things in code instead of regular English. As if it wasn't hard enough to understand me before.
5) Writing software is way more fun than laying out hardware for me. Maybe my mind will change after I see my hardware descriptions manifest in actual chips I can play with and do stuff with.
6) Perl is one of those things I learn because "I think it will be good for me," not because I like it. Maybe my mind will change as I code in it more (though from what I'm told, just about everyone agrees it tends to come out as messy as they come).
7) I really like making these lists :D
8) But I will curb myself and stop before things get out of hand. (~fin)
In other news, this brings me one step closer to finally getting around to figuring out enough Perl to have updates in this blog automatically update the Livejournal one too (do I really want to do that still?).
But anyways, back to hacking away on code and figuring out how this system works.
It's almost as if you came out of the blue, coming into my life at a point when I was half hoping you'd show up while thinking that I might never once pass my eyes over you.
The sensation that plays on my fingertips as I run my fingers over you reminds me of when I was little more than a child; all hopes and dreams and so happily enjoying today that it didn't matter to me if things would be better tomorrow.
You have my name written all over you. You were meant for me, there's no way you or I or anyone else could possibly deny that. I don't think you realize how long I've been waiting for you to come, filling my head each day with thoughts of maybe-today, maybe-today, but always ending with not-today-maybe-tomorrow. It's almost as if a weight has been lifted from these cruel angel wings, knowing that I have finally seen you, that I have finally touched you and you are so very, very real.
How I long to peer within and see what it is you hold within you. To read your every word, to see your every sight and hear your every sound. But I fear that if I were to do so I would sully your beauty, that subtle flavor which you lend to the air around you, so intoxicatingly sweet. But strong is my urge to tear into you, to give in to the lust and taste of your existence.
As my eyes continue to lay upon you, I am torn between wanting to admire your charms until the clocks of Time grow weary and crumble, and wanting to unveil your every secret and make them mine.
It is a torture more pleasureable than the softest sweet kiss.
People who have a certain amount of background knowledge tend to not believe me when I tell them what day I was born on.
Fast forward. "I used to be a lot more impudent, and would say things like 'I want to see you, so make yourself free!' but I got a bit older and grew up."
Rewind. "This internet and phone thing's not going to cut it."
Fast forward. "I was going to tell this guy I like how I felt about him today, but he still has his ex on the mind, so I decided it'd be better not to say anything."
Rewind. "There's this guy I like, but I'm not sure if I should tell him or not because I don't know if he cares or not...do you think I should tell him?"
Play.
There are a number of bad, or at least questionable, combinations in this world, like beer followed by liquor, or religion and dinners with the significant other's family, or geek and too much time on the hands.
As it so happens, I fall into the last category (though from what I'm told you'd never expect it looking at me).
So as a way to kill some time and satisfy some curiosity, I decided to dig through the server logs of this blog and see who's been visiting my site. Some call it IP voyeurism, I call it...IP voyeurism. No sense denying the truth!
So for the technically inclined, here's a brief synopsis of the inefficient method I used (because I didn't feel like thinking about efficient methods, I just wanted results fast fast fast), surrounded by *'s so the non-technically-inclined can just skip to my findings.
**************** BEGIN GEEKINESS **********************
So first, the server logs are on the ocf.berkeley.edu server network, particularly, on death (because death is the webserver; a subtle hint? You decide). As it so happens, logs had just been rotated so the current access log was only about...2 hours old. Not very useful. So things went like this:
1. gzip -dc /opt/httpd/logs/access_log.1.gz | grep "GET /~aoshi/blog/" > ~/access.log
Unzip last week's access log to standard out, pipe it to grep so it filters access to those going to the main page of my blog (I didn't want to count comment clicks and such), and write the findings to access.log in my home directory.
2. Use python to run the following code:
infile = open("access.log",'r')
outfile = open("access2.log",'w')
mylines = infile.readlines()
for lines in mylines:
outfile.write(lines[0:lines.index(' ')] + '\n')
outfile.close()
infile.close()
^D
If you know Python, or remotely know coding, I'm sure the above is obvious and clear. Python's meant to be that way (and if it's not, go learn Python, it's fun to code). Basically, open access.log for reading, open access2.log for writing, read in all the lines from access.log, write all the IP addresses from access.log to access2.log, delimited by newlines (the output from step 1 has the IP address, a space, then other info on each line, and my knowledge of sed tangentially approaches 0, C's overkill, so Python it was). Close the files, move on.
3. sort access2.log | uniq > access.log
Sort the resultings IP addresses so identical ones are on the same line, pipe the output to uniq, which then kills all identical adjacent lines, and write the output to access.log (overwriting the old access.log, but we don't need it anymore).
4. sort access2.log | uniq -c > unique_access.log
This was just to get a count of how many times an IP address repeated itself. More info on the results below.
5. for i in `cat access.log`; do host $i; done
This is a ghetto loop in my shell (bash) to run host on each IP address to find out what the hostname for each one is. Since I didn't particularly feel like doing traceroute analysis for every IP address in there (and a lot came from Google bots, Yahoo bots, inktomi bots, etc.), this worked well enough.
********************* END GEEKINESS *******************
And now the results!
The top 3 accessors by unique IP (this might be off for those using DSL/dial-up connections with dynamic IP's, but I think the #1 winner clearly beats out everyone else so it's a rather moot point):
Number 1: 138.23.54.x, which points to a computer on resnet.ucr.edu, with a whopping 63 visits!
Number 2: 169.232.111.x, which points to a computer on resnet.ucla.edu, with a almost-as-impressive 24 visits!
Number 3: 138.23.23.x, which points to a computer on resnet.ucr.edu, with a not-quite-so-impressive 15 visits!
The nifty part about college dorm IP's is that you can actually track down which room these IP's belong to. I suppose that's part of the danger of using p2p software on the reshall networks when the RIAA's breathing down your neck, since once they snag your IP they can find out where you live, and that's scary as hell. So be careful kids! I have my guesses as to whom each of these IP addresses belong to, and if I were a more bored and less lazy person, I would play with the forensics utilities a bit more and find out for sure...but boredom and laziness results in a race condition, and that's just bad engineering.
Now for amusing visitor IP's:
A *lot* of bots. Good gravy.
Someone out of the EECS network at Berkeley, who is getting net access via DHCP. I have no idea who in EECS would possibly be interested in what I have to say here, but I'm awfully curious *hint hint* :)
Apparently, Grace has her dorm's IP address registered in the DNS servers to her. Spiffy
I have visitors from Australia, the Netherlands, and Canada! (wtf? Who do I know there...? Not that I'm complaining)
I have visitors who use AOL...you know who you people are...get a real ISP ;)
Someone from the military machines at Berkeley is looking at my site!
Apparently, someone in LA's USD (Unified School District) is interested in my blog...weird. So is someone between kindergarten-12th grade in Alabama.
Apparently, people in Japan are reading this...and one of you is on YahooBB too (isn't it awesome? 45Mbps for $40/month....the US sucks)
I spy my home IP address. My brothers must be reading...hopefully not showing my parents.
Someone's ISP is DSL Extreme. Like EXTREME DORITOS
The rest of the IP's are kind of mundane (e.g. someone uses Verizon or Pacbell, gee whiz). But as it is I'm already thoroughly amused with the accesses this blog is gathering. Maybe I'll start poking around suspicious IP's and find out where it is they're at! (while not as accurate as the dorm networks, it's still possible to figure out within a few miles' radius where it is someone's coming from just based on IP address without contacting the ISP. Isn't technology scary?)
I should find out who's been accessing my pictures, too. I'm so curious!
Now with all that said, if you find your IP address hanging out in the top 3 there and would rather they not be there (it's okay, I understand how embarassing it is to be caught looking at my blog, I won't blame you) then email me, IM me, or otherwise let me know that you don't want it hanging around there and I'll censor it out. For all you other folks out there, if you start looking up the physical location of those IP addresses then you're just a scary scary stalker :P (or another IP voyeur trying to get a bit too close to the action...which usually leads to getting caught. Some doors are simply best left unopened, especially if you hear *"iya da~ yamete~" followed by "UGOKUNA!" coming from the other side).
* rough translation: "No~ Stop~" "DON'T MOVE!"
For the curious, tetrodotoxin (the subject of this entry) is the poison in fugu, a.k.a. the puffer fish that's considered a delicacy here, but results in a few deaths/year. Now I'm all curious...I always did tell people that one day my curiosity would kill me.
* update: I removed the class D (last part) of the IP addresses and what they resolve to. I decided it'd be best to err on the side of safety, and at least somewhat limit geographical information.
I went down to Nagoya today, using the last of my all-you-can-ride train tickets. Had a chance to meet up with Osamu and chill for at least a bit, playing a game of darts and two rounds of pool. It'd been more than 4 months since I last saw him (in Tokyo around New Year's), but it hardly seems like any time has passed at all. I wondered before how it is my parents manage to visit friends of theirs once or twice every few years and still be on such good terms with them; little by little it's becoming clear to me. The laughs and good times we have now makes me wonder why it is we didn't hang out more in Berkeley when it would have been so much more convenient (but you never know what you've got 'til it's gone), and it makes me think about how much I'm going to miss the people and places I've grown to love here.
I can remember when I thought to myself "wow it's already January, I only have a few more months here before I have to go back." It doesn't even feel like any time's passed since thinking that; yet here I am, three months further down the line with hardly another 3-4 months to go before I have to go back to Berkeley. It almost doesn't feel real, as if I'm supposed to stay here indefinitely and the only thing that makes me feel at all like I have to go back sometime is dealing with housing, course registration, and people asking me when it is I'm going back home (that last one makes it kind of obvious, of course).
I got to check Nagoya off my list of places to go. West Japan has been covered, central Japan has been covered (because there's nothing else there), east Japan has been covered (mostly), all that's left now is the northeast part, Hokkaido, and Okinawa (but that will hopefully get taken care of during Golden Week).
I catch myself pausing when I say "I don't want to go home yet," because with all the uprooting and replanting that's gone on in recent years it feels like everywhere is a piece of home.
Apparently, the cherry blossoms I thought were white are actually supposed to be pink. Upon closer inspection, the center parts of the flower petals are a light pink, and drift to white towards the ends, so if you look at it from the right angle (like...dead on) it'll seem pink. On the other hand, if you see it from far away in big masses it'll probably look white. Also, it seems there's another variety of cherry blossom (but maybe I misheard) which is of a different shape, and has sharper leaves (which I saw in Tokyo and a few other places here and there, but they were rare) which are a much more vibrant pink. I think I have a shot of Lisa with one in my photos somewhere. Those are supposed to bloom a bit later than the regular cherry blossoms, so hopefully I'll be able to catch a glimpse or two of those in the coming days (woohoo, another excuse to run away from school).
In other news, Golden Week is coming soon. Golden Week is basically around the first week of May where businessmen and such get a week off from work, and they get to do all sorts of fun stuff. Of course, this means school is out. Maybe I'll take a trip down to Okinawa and enjoy some nice tropical weather. The friend I was out with today told me that for about $300 you can get a roundtrip plane ticket plus hotel accomodations and such set up for a few days. And to think I blew that much drinking in a weekend one time x_x
I cut my hair 3 days ago. The comments I've received in response to it have been "Oh shit I can't recognize you anymore" (I think that's supposed to be a good thing?) and "You look Japanese." I suppose that's what's going to happen when you walk into a barber shop and tell the lady there "Do as you see fit." Trying to get a woman's touch, or just lacking in the necessary language ability to say anything useful? You decide.
Lisa sent me some rather embarassing photos of me she took while she was here. May they never see the glow of a computer screen.
My tutee tells me that about 80% of the sakura blossoms are supposed to be pink, and the other ones are white. Strangely, I've seen about 95% white and 5% pink. I must be looking in all the wrong places. Hopefully my excursion to Osaka Castle (again) tomorrow will have some nice pink ones, because white is boring the hell out of me.
Apparently Lisa had a longish conversation with my mom when she dropped off a few things I had gotten them. I think she knows more about how my mom feels about me than I do now. My goodness.
Spring break is about to end. It's time to get back into the groove of classes, work, and research again. So long as I can get my professors to cut my shackles and let me get my finals done before summer break (7/15-9/5...yeah, there are a lot of breaks, this country is awesome), I'll be able to dick around in Japan doing questionable things, get back in time to snag an old job again (it's great getting recommendations from two lead supervisors, though I wonder what they might say about me..."he might be a little weird or raunchy sometimes, but he knows his stuff" maybe...I wonder if there will be any mentions of baby eating), and actually be back in Berkeley in time to go to classes instead of trying to convince my teachers that I should be allowed a bit of leeway because I added during the 4th week of classes.
Ahh college life.
Lisa came over to visit for just a bit over a week on the 26th, and she just left back for the states this past weekend. We ran around a few parts of Japan, going to (from west to east) Himeji, Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo (only not really Tokyo-Tokyo, but Shinjuku/Shibuya/Ginza/etc.-Tokyo, because there's nothing at Tokyo-Tokyo. Really. It sucks). I have some pictures from that to put on (but Lisa's making me censor some, so not all of them are going to be made public. It's probably better this way, who knows what might happen if they were to get around).
It's an interesting experience, being with someone constantly day in and day out (minus bathroom trips and other such mundane things). I'd gotten rather used to her being there, like she was an integrated part of me and not really a separate person; when she left it was a rather odd feeling, like a part of me had been stripped off. But what needs to be said about such things has been said, so there's only the simple emotionally uncharged portion remaining to be written here.
I'm completely unmotivated to go back to school, but I like the process of choosing classes. All this potential, dreams of knowledge I will gain, things I will come to understand, ways of thinking I hadn't seen before unfolding before me sounds oh so fine and such things always seem like a great idea until the reality of the day in day out studying and reviewing and analyzing of waveforms and Carmichael numbers and convolution/deconvolution and graph theory steps in to remind me that getting There is by no means an easy thing. But once you get There and time passes and what you've learned is fused to you it seems so natural that you look back and wonder how it is that you had such trouble getting There (but now There is Here).
So I suppose a part of this growing up (and we're always growing up; you can't really grow down, unless you're a heap...and if you get that joke then you're a massive geek, get a life :P) is simply synthesizing the knowledge, and reminding ourselves, that we all got to Here only through a good deal of effort, and looking down on other people who are still trying to get There is looking down on yourself too. Like Indra's web, as we hurt others we hurt ourselves. Reverberations. Resonations.
Like echoes from the past which resurface to remind me of all the things I couldn't stand about myself that I've worked (not hard enough) to rid myself of, to let go of, to free myself from the shackles with which the foolishness of youth and misunderstanding and anger and cynicism binds and controls and taints (and such things eventually lead to stains).
Look down or look up, see the light or see the dark, reach for hope or sink to despair, these are all choices we make, and seeing things one way is no more faulty than seeing things the other. Always about balance, always. A little light, a little dark.
I remember talking to Chester years upon years ago, and marveling at how someone could be aware of all the lies and hate and other grotesque features of our existence yet, at the same time, still find hope. Time's passed; I am as old now as he was then, and it feels like I'm really beginning to understand.
It's been a wondrous week, filled with ups and downs and surprises and those feelings that you know other people have felt and do feel because they're so intrinsic and basic to us, and because of that so deeply moving and stirring. It's been the sort of week that makes me even more acutely aware of how limited the number of words I know is, because no matter how much I might want and wish and dream for a way of describing to you all the things that have transpired, the thoughts and feelings communicated with and without words and gestures (for no gesture is, in itself, a gesture), how it's like seasons changing, one phase not quite over and the other not quite begun, but swirling in this beautiful whirl of color and light that borrows from the good and bad of each to form something belonging to neither beginning nor end, but some manifestation of it's own.
Words fail. But you already knew they would. I already knew they would. But words are not something necessary for you and I, for what needs to be said doesn't need to be said; it's simply understood.