Fedora Linux

Recently (on Valentine's Day actually =P) I installed Fedora 10 onto my laptop.
It's now a dual boot between Windows Vista and Fedora Linux! How exciting!

It's true that linux is a little unfriendly, especially in the installing stuff area. BUT once it's working, it's basically as good as Windows, probably better on a more technical level. I just finished a presentation for tomorrow using OpenOffice which is included in the Fedora 10 distro. I can talk to my friends with Pidgin, the included instant messaging client. And, it comes with a killer desktop background that I probably won't change for a while.

The only thing linux really cannot do is play most commercial games. Technically you could do it through a virtual PC, but you'd still need the Windows OS for that. Maybe someone brilliant will find a away around it, just like everything else. =)

Update: There is a way around it. It's called Wine and it works pretty good with the popular games and applications. To name a few, World or Warcraft, Guild Wars, Half Life 2, MS Office, more here. Wine is not an emulator (that's actually what Wine stands for) so there's no sacrifice of speed like on a virtual pc. Yay Linux!

Chain Mail

Today I decided I wanted to make authentic chain mail armour. Why? Because it's awesome, that's why. It's something I'm adding to my list of stuff I want to do over Xmas break. Even though my DnD character isn't a melee class I think I was partially inspired by all of the combined geek auras in the room.


ThinkGeek.com (one of my favorite sites) also sells chain mail shirts, but I think it would exponentially more awesome to make one.

Waloon Hamlet

Today we started playing DnD. Our party is bunch of misfits from a city called Triton. We were sent to a small hamlet called Waloon so investigate mysterious activities around it's mausoleum. After meeting some of te townsfolk and buying supplies, we entered the crypt. It's infested with graverobbing goblins. We slayed a few and got out by the skin of our teeth, each earning 525 experience points.

I've got to say, Dungeons and Dragons deserves more credit than people give it. We were sort of playing impromptu also, without any manuals. All we had were penicls, paper, dice, and a lot of imagination. Awesome.

Silent Hill and Fear

If you've never played a Silent Hill game before, I suggest you go out and rent one right now. It's one of the few survival horror games that are actually good. My roommate mentioned something about it to me today while I was in a half asleep stupor. When I got up I thought of how much fun it would be to play them again. You can get some good prices on used PSX and PS2 games on half.com. Most of the Silent Hill games are out for PC too I believe.


So anyways, what I want to do over Xmas break is buy at least one of them, if not the whole series, and play them at 3 in the morning, in the dark, volume turned way up, while wired on caffeine or maybe ginseng. My goal is to scare the living hell out of myself.

I don't know about you, but movies never seem to actually scare me. Every now and then I'll jump at those "cheep shots" the film directors make, you know the real quiet, innocent scene and then a sudden loud noise that turns out to be nothing anyways. That isn't being scared, it's a natural reaction. Now I remember the one time I played Silent Hill 3 in my room by myself. I think I was roughly 15 at this time. Well, after playing for a while I was literally afraid of being alone in the dark in my room. Luckily, it wore off after a few days. That is being scared.


I feel like I haven't been genuinely scared in a long time. Usually fear is thought of as something negative, but I think the only thing that's negative about fear is the actual danger that it is often accompanied with. Think about it, I would be scared of a gun is pointed to my head because of the possibility of premature death. That's dangerous, so it's bad. Going into a (good) haunted house would scare me, but there's no real danger, so it's good, kind of like eustress. It's good provided it's not a permanent fear and doesn't develop into some kind of phobia.

So my goal is to scare myself silly in a safe environment. Besides, what's better than getting to play a cute blonde chick AND kill zombies. Nothing probably.

Half-Elf Wizard

Recently, I realized that there was a large area of geekhood that I've never explored. That's right, Dungeons and Dragons. Perhaps one of the dorkiest games ever created. Stereotypically dorky that is. I've played fantasy type games before, but never a hardcore pencil and paper, dice rolling rpg. It turns out a few people in my dorm, whom you would never suspect, used to play it quite a bit. We all made character sheets and will hopefully get a game started tomorrow. This is going to be ridiculously awesome.

My first DnD character (I'll just put the basics)

Name: Daynor Silverbeard
Race: Half-Elf
Class: Wizard
Alignment: Neutral Good
Sex: Male
Lvl: 1
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 125 lbs
Age: 25

Stats
Strength: 6 - 2
Dexterity: 14 + 2
Wisdom: 12 + 1
Intelligence: 16 + 3
Charisma: 14 + 2
Constitution: 12 + 1

Chem Lab Practical

I just completed my lab practical for principles of chemistry. Not trying to brag or anything, but it was really easy. I could see how it would be difficult for people who aren't comfortable with doing laboratory stuff, or for people who aren't as big a dork as I am. =)

Here's what they make you do:

1. Gravitational filtration, i.e. pour something into a funnel with a piece of filter paper in it.
2. Vacuum filtration, same thing only with a Buchner funnel and a water faucet set up.
3. Light a Bunsen burner, adjust it to a luminous/"cold" and a non-luminous/hot flame
4. Read a barometer, buret, graduated cylinder, and thermometer.
5. Weigh a flask, put 10mL of a liquid into the flask with a volumetric pipet, weight the flask + liquid
6. Calculate the density of liquid from the measurements.
   

I'm guessing upper level chem labs will involve more difficult processes. It's still a relief to know that I'm done with it though.

80/20 Principle

This is one of the most interesting things I've even learned from a book (The 4-Hour Work Week). The 80/20 principle, also known as Pareto's Law, basically states that you get 80% of your results from 20% of your work.
Pareto was an Italian economist, but what's cool (and useful) is that you can apply 80/20 to practically anything. The reason I'm writing this is because of a score I received on my last comp paper. I scored 115/125 which is 92%. Pretty darn good, especially considering I didn't fully read any of the literary topics I discussed. I wrote my rough draft in about two hours, and it was awful. The thesis didn't make sense with what I wrote about. I revised it to make sense the day (more like the night) before it was due, about another 2 hours of work. Not counting goof off time, I spent about 4 hours total, with only mild interest in the subject and somehow pulled off an A.

Now this teacher isn't an easy grader, though I feel she is fair, and English papers are certainly not my forte. I think it's a good example of the 80/20 rule at work. Instead of submitting my 4 hours of work for something that's 92% correct, I could have put forth twice as much time and effort on the paper to get it 99% correct. I don't know about you, but to me that last 7% is definitely NOT worth an additional 4 hours of my time. Looking at it mathematically it's not worth an additional 1 hour. Maybe it's just because I'm a type B person, but I say screw those last few percents.

The same thing applies to social situations. I'm sort of paraphrasing from the book now, off the top of my head that is. If you know 20 people chances are you get most of your social gratification from only 4 of them. That's not to say the other 80% are worthless people you should never talk to, but they generally do not please you as much as the top 20%. Conversely, 80% of your problems and negative social feelings probably stem from the 4 most negative people, the bottom 20%. So by dealing with those 4 people, you can eliminate 80% of your problems. The remaining 20% of your problems would take an exorbitant amount of effort to clear up and would probably result in more stress in the long run. Besides, life would be boring if it didn't have little problems for us to joke about later.

See what else you can apply 80/20 to. It's a great way to prioritize everything and deal with time management.