Cacophony
Checked: 2 hours 26 min ago
Updated: 1 year 9 weeks ago
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New Hackergotchi?
I feel like this picture would make a decent new hackgotchi (with up-to-date hair!). I wonder if I could bribe someone with better GIMP-fu to make this happen. <twiddle>
DebConf7
Going: Best. Choice. Ever.
(Ironically?,) I spent way less time on my computer than I do when I’m at home.
Impressions
The Real Cambridge is quite a lot different from the US Cambridge. There are vast stretches of green grass everywhere. People drive little brightly-coloured Volkswagons on the wrong side of the street, and in some places one can be walking down the middle of the street and not realize that vehicle traffic can go there too until a car creeps up behind you, trying to get through. Everywhere that’s not explicitly marked “no cycles” (the colleges, historic important buildings, etc.) features dozens of locked up, often step over-framed commuter bikes, decorated with panniers and front baskets.
I still find it vaguely nerve-wracking being in a British vehicle, since I’m always expecting cars traveling in the opposite direction to come wheeling towards me. But I have yet to step off the curb and almost get hit by a double-decker bus because I looked in the wrong direction before starting across.
The Cam River is frankly quite puny. Walking alongside it you can witness such events as crew boats nearly crashing into tour boats, and apparently a sort of crew racing called “knocking” is often used because of the river’s narrowness. It’s also not very deep, as can be proven by the periodic punt hires along its shores. And here punting is not to procrastinate (very much an MIT-ism) but to propel a punt , which is a flat-bottomed boat with square ends, by pushing a pole against the bottom of the river.
It’s difficult to go six hours without being offered a cup of tea, especially if one is visiting many different people. And I have no idea how people can manage to get drunk off of beer, because a pint is quite enough to fill my stomach and leave no room left for more. So much liquid! And the prices of everything here are just about the same as in the US–except in pounds sterling, not dollars. Which means things really cost twice as much. But since the only things I really need to buy are food, drink, and miscellaneous (like anti-death-by-hay-fever-histamine), things will work out alright.
Things have been awesome so far, and the local free software-Debian-Ubuntu-GNOME crowd has made me feel right at home. Maybe someday I will actually swap Cambridges for a while. I’ve gotten to see a bit of Cambridge University here too. Since Hanna’s (really awesome) dad is a fellow of King’s College, we got to go in and look around even though it’s exam season and the general public isn’t allowed in — there’s always a person in funny academic robes standing at the gate and shooing away tourists. Right through the gates there is a large, pristine mowed lawn. It’s in such a condition because no one is allowed to walk on it — unless they’re a fellow of the college. Flaunt that. Her dad also supervises the Cambridge end of CME, so we crashed an end-of-the-year garden party for that this past afternoon.
And Saturday it’s off to Scotland, which should be just as awesome! And with more people and more Debian! I’m excited.
IBM Takeover
Made it to the “real” Cambridge in one piece. I’m currently in Dafydd Harries and Matthew Garrett’s living room.
Last night when we were all sitting around hacking and drinking tea, there were four X-series Thinkpads and four people at the table. Clearly these must be smart people.
And Straight On Til Morning
My internal clock is finding it hard to believe that it’s light outside right now, which might have something to do with the fact that I’m sitting in Shannon, Ireland. Since I only got maybe two hours of sleep on the plane, I wonder if I’m going to crash horribly later today.
I haven’t flown internationally since 2000, so I was a little paranoid about it being a horrible nightmare, but so far it hasn’t been. I haven’t managed to trip any metal detectors yet, though I did accidentally leave my laptop in my bag when I sent it through the scanner at Logan. The security people were nice enough about it, however. I’m not carrying much in terms of carry-ons, so things have been smooth.
I completely forgot that “long-haul” flights serve meals. Aer Lingus has a standard meal offering consisting of “chicken” or “beef”, neither of which are very good for vegans. Apparently if you call their reservations office in advance of your flight you can order special meals, of which vegan vegetarian is an option. But I definitely don’t remember this being mentioned at all (or at least very prominently) during the booking process, so I never thought of checking. I had just written off being able to eat the airline food and brought granola bars and snacks. Apparently this was a wrong assumption.
I was originally going to FlyGlobespan, but ended up changing my mind after experiencing their entirely broken website which didn’t allow me to make a booking, and waiting a week for a response to their “feedback form” and never getting any, all the while watching their fares creep up as every day passed. Luckily the flight I ended up getting wasn’t too much more expensive, and even allowed me the flexibility to fly into London and out from Glasgow, making it easier to accomplish my plans of visiting Dafydd Harries, Hanna Wallach, and Matthew Garrett in the “other” Cambridge before ending up at Debconf!
A Shiny!
Huzzah, and on this day, by which I mean yesterday unless we speak in UTC, I have received my account, after approximately one year and seven months going through the process. At this point it’s polite to thank everyone who’s helped one along the way: Debian Women, who poked me a lot in the beginning, [...]
Free Your Music
While I’m not a Harvard student, I’m vaguely affiliated through some friends of mine with Harvard Free Culture, a local Free Culture chapter. They are, after all, just up the street. One of our newest projects is the Free Music Project. The goal, is, well, to gather together music under free licenses, both for just [...]
Term Goes On
In MIT-land, IAP is over, and classes have been running again for a week. This term I’m doing things such as learning Scheme in the intro CS class 6.001, “The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs” — otherwise known as SICP. No DrScheme jokes. Ari, this means you. IAP was great fun — it’s kind of [...]
Armagetron Advanced and Debian
News flash: gamers and Tron fans everywhere can rejoice; Armagetron Advanced will soon be up-to-date once more in Debian! The last time a new upstream version (0.2.7.0) was uploaded was almost two years ago now, and while the Debian package has languished in neglect, upstream has chugged on, fixing bugs and adding new awesomeness to [...]
MIT Assassins’ Guild. Ten Days. Centauri. Badass.
LARPing geek paradise. And we’re only on day three of ten. I love IAP. (Assassin’s Guild, Centauri Game Headquarters) (me, far right) Update: Game’s over. I transcended my biological body and became an android the night before game end. It was pretty damn awesome and exciting. (Name badges are race-colour-coded, so new race means new name badge… yay [...]
SIPB IAP Debian Class Slides
One of the student groups I’m involved in at MIT is the SIPB, the Student Information Processing Board. It’s a volunteer computer group so old that they called it “information processing” back then. They run a bunch of different servers and provide lots of cool services for the MIT community. One of the things that [...]
a real person
Today, I am 18. It feels exactly the same as being 17, except today I can walk into Blockbuster and not get rejected while attempting to rent a movie. Any movie. (Yes, this happened to me this summer. Not 18? No Blockbuster account for you!)
drinking from a fire hose
days of class survived: 3.5 psets handed in: 1 non-pset assignments completed: 1 great dome hacks viewed: 1 I didn’t even catch the September 11th tribute part of it until I saw the flag in Killian Court. Apparently MIT firehose-mentality is taking over my brain. There are some great pictures of East Campus’s (the dorm I live in) orientation rush [...]
my world metros total > yours
Check this shit out.