Thursday, November 30, 2006

Walk On

I was charging the cell phone, a little boring, so I started to review Friends again (and again). At the end of Episode 18 of Season 10, U2's Walk On turned on. It's an amazing and striking song, also Record of the Year at Grammy 2002. I do love those "all that ..." and have used them in my BBS signatures for a long time.

November's gone and another year comes to close. The question rose again today "why are you staying for another year". It's actually what I should pay. Taking the road less traveled by, just walk on.

And love is not the easy thing
The only baggage you can bring
Is all that you can't leave behind

And if the darkness is to keep us apart
And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off
And if your glass heart should crack
And for one second you turn back
Oh no, be strong

Walk on, walk on
What you got they can't steal it
No, they can't even feel it
Walk on, walk on
Stay safe tonight

You're packing a suitcase for a place none of has been
A place that has to be believed to be seen
You could have flown away
A singing bird in an open cage
Who will only fly, only fly for freedom

Walk on, walk on
What you've got they can't deny it
Can't sell it or buy it
Walk on, walk on
You stay safe tonight

And I know it aches, how your heart it breaks
You can only take so much
Walk on, walk on

Home, hard to know what it is if you've never had one
Home, I can't say where it is but I know I'm going home
That's where the hurt is

And I know it aches and your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much
Walk on

Leave it behind
You've got to leave it behind
All that you fashion
All that you make
All that you build
All that you break
All that you measure
All that you feel
All this you can leave behind
All that you reason
It's only time
All that you bear
No more than a feeling on my mind
All that you see
All that you wear
All that you sense
All that you scheme
All you dress up
All that you've seen
All you create
And all that you wreck
All that you hate

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Timestamp

Last weekend the BBS system was updated to Fedora Core 6 by COMMAN. Many thanks! Well, it's been two years since the first installation in 2004. It's really hard at that time: two harddisks were damaged and sources were lost. With some luck there were backup data on nowhereman's machine, which actually was borrowed from my advisor. I can still remember the rainy day that parrot and I rushed for a new SCSI harddisk, experiencing feelings of anxiety and helplessness. Later we got further financial support from Trend Micro with the help of Jackie, and COMMAN gave hands to get things ready for a new machine.

We had even no display card then, so we just "borrowed" one from lfan's machine. It's the first 64-bit machine I had ever used. Getting the operating system OK, we printed sizeof(long) and sizeof(void *) to see "8" and grinned. After this, better worked hard to port SMTH code and got it running successfully. Only a few months later another storm came and the story became ridiculous. I've no interest in politics but I really hate those full of ambition. So better and I chose to quit at the April Fool. Stupid, huh?

Last night a few reports showed that the system failed to deal with the timestamp of comments of blogs. As COMMAN figured out, the blogs were stored in an old version of MySQL and the timestamp format was YYYYMMDDHHMMSS while newer MySQL uses YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. A minor fix works, and it's said to add "+0" in the column name in SQL statements would also be OK to retain the old timestamp format.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

V for thanksgiVing

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.

Winston S. Churchill

Yeah, not V for Vendetta. Another Thanksgiving.

I was so depressed one year ago when I wrote on my MSN space with the words "thanks to those who hurt me". Well, blow it off. In fact it's always oneself hurting himself.

Thanks to the nice guys who have cared about me and helped me a lot enjoy the amazing days on campus, especially to V, the optimist who is cute and nice, a gesture for victory, or a symbol for courage and hope. Viva la V!

By the way, I come to the new domain for my blog, procfs, which is technical and short that makes it a good one.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

scons.vim

I've just uploaded a vim syntax file for SConscript, configuration files of the build tool SCons. Comments are welcome.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

We Can Go Anywhere

I'm so attracted to Jesse McCartney. Beautiful Soul and Because You Live in his last album Beautiful Soul of 2004 are that amazing.

We Can Go Anywhere is my favorite song in his new album Right Where You Want Me this year. Gorgeous! Other songs are also great, such as Right Where You Want Me, Just So You Know, Right Back in the Water.

Slow down
Things have been a little crazy
Right now
It's time to get away
You can find out
What it is you're really after
Time is on our side
C'mon we're leaving everything behind

You know that sun is shining
We'll keep driving
Doesn't matter where
'Cause we got that open highway
Leading our way
As long as you are there
We can go anywhere

Breakdown
All the pressure that surrounds you
Allow it all to fade away
We can move on
Looking in the rear view mirror
Wave goodbye
C'mon we're leaving everything behind

We're gonna be so far gone
Some place we ain't never been before
Find a new favourite song
We'll end up right where we belong

Come with me everything will be alright
Movin' on 'cause we're leaving it all behind

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Beyond Grand Canyon

Thanks to Madsen for helping me find Beyond Grand Canyon, the fourth album from Nicholas Gunn on the Grand Canyon.

The Boneyard demonstrates the impressive power of Gunn's flute once again, addressing the topic of death, in my mind. In a bleak wind bones disperse all over. In the circle of life, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. On the contrary, Bridal Falls is extremely sweet. Violin, piano and flute together create a beautiful view of rocks and water, where the sun is shining while drips are falling and reflecting. I like the two songs most in the album.

Well, the album is quite serious, at least not as springy as the previous albums. I'm afraid it's not good to enjoy it while working so that it would easily make me low in spirits.

Monday, November 06, 2006

Windy

It's so windy since the weekend, while the temperature went down below zero degree centigrade. Keeping blowing, the air became extremely fresh and the sky was really cute with the skyline of the Western Hills.

Over a month ago I got a shot of sunset at the same place, on the 14th floor of Zijing 14#. I was somewhat depressed at that time. Anyway, the October's gone.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Fall Color

Leaves of ginkgo trees turn golden, which is my favorite color of the season. There are many ginkgo trees on campus, especially around Building 6# and the Old Gate.

Behind the 1st Teaching Building there are also many trees of different colors. I was expecting to meet some squirrels there yesterday afternoon, however, out of luck.