I wish there were an ATM nearby…. and my Thanksgiving week.

Seems I finally got a check for this program and I want to cash it! The surprising thing is that I didn’t expect it to come by regular mail so quickly. I am anxious since it will help with paying for tuition and other school related things. Keeping myself away from leisurely activities that require me to pay some amount of cash is the best thing for me right now and is easy because I don’t usually bring money everywhere I go.

Being frugal is the way to go! Imagine spending your thanksgiving break in the dorms with ramen, cereal, and other little things while doing computer programming in the dark. That was my week and you know what? As depressing as that may sound to many people (yes people have commented “oh that’s depressing”, but I’m used to it), I loved it! Very Productive and that’s only the start. I’m excited as wanting to cash this check.

Starting a new website.

I am going to be working on a new website similar to the last one I created. Think it is about time I started something already because starting websites like this is fun. It’s fun because I get to develop, make money, talk to people or even mess around, and I can add it to my resume right? Anyway, this website is going to be on a free host until I feel I am confident enough to put it on a hosted server or even a dedicated server. Things like this excite me! Though I can’t forget my obligation to college work. I’ll manage.

This whole week is dedicated to working on this site and playing pianooooo!

I am part of a team for one of my classes…

Yet, I am still pretty nervous about being part of a team/group/whatever. Uh, yeah the team is all girls and one guy. I can only say damnit because I am not so much of a team player, I guess, in a way. Really doesn’t matter though, it is just a matter of time until A+ is achieved.

We had to do a little teamwork presentation (save the squirrels) to another group of students that represented a board (you know board of directors) to which I did not feel like talking when presenting. Probably a bad idea, but I think the presentation was more or less funny and maybe the whole idea of “saving the squirrels” is unfeasible, BUT the ideas were pretty original from what I could tell. There is more I would love to say, but nah.

US and academics.

After reading some papers/articles for GS 102, I figured let me write a response to some here first before I really think about them. Anyway, why are US teachers trying to come up with new ways to tach students? and Why don’t politicians don’t get education? These are the questions (well, generally) I have come up with.

I am a student, of course, and I have my ways of learning things. If I do not put in some effort to learn something, I will not learn it/remember it and if I do remember then it’ll probably be skewed in some way. It is fine that teachers want to come up with new ways of teaching students, but as with every method developed only some students learn. It all comes with effort! There will never be a silver bullet in getting students to learn. The only silver bullet I can remember is EFFORT! I am not trying to imply a belief that effort is the only way, but effort makes the world go round.

It seems that teachers are trying to find some way to make all their students learn something. Well, I am going to be honest… There is no way that will ever happen. Motivation is needed in order to keep interest in something otherwise there will be little to no effort toward learning something. My psychology 100 teacher says learning is taking away from an experience, or at least that’s what I think he said. Teachers needs to find out why a student isn’t learning (motivation issues? problem with understanding? rote memorization?) and how to help (i guess that’s where ‘methods’ come in).

I learn because I want to, not because of some new ‘method’ or forced learning (certain teachers think punishing students for getting low grades on tests is some kind of good idea….).

Okay, politicians only care for GRADES. I think if they read articles not related to grades, then they would understand that throwing money at schools to improve is a bad idea. One article about successful intelligence and academic intelligence explains this perfectly, implicitly. Grades don’t matter when it comes to the real world although it can be indicative of certain abilities. Certain abilities have to come naturally. There is no way that schools can teach everything to a student, even if students were in school everyday until they were 18 or 24. There are certain abilities that can’t be taught. Why don’t politicians get this? They’ve been in school I presume, but I think they need to visit many of these schools that they are throwing money at unannounced or at least give little time for schools to prepare for a visit from ‘authority’.

Anyway, there are many ways to solve a problem, which is why politicians don’t get it. Money will do little, since there is so much you can give to many ‘ailing’ schools. I must say some teachers are pretty bad at teaching and seriously need to be let go, but the complications with such a feat. Oh well, back to being my insensitive, misanthrope, ‘antisocial’, and etc. self.

On UIUC Campus

Aug 19th – Well, I came to Illinois by aircraft (wish it was witchcraft :O) and stayed at a hotel. Done day.

Aug 20th – Move in day, yay. I was one of many who moved in pretty early. Met my roommate and his parents. Room isn’t as small as the one at home or at least it is because I picked the loft bed, which is high up. The bed is actually quite comfortable, but maybe that is because of the foam from the “value” pack I brought from the residence halls linens store.

Aug 21 – Went to the convocation and got the free shirt. I wonder why we have to pick the shirt we want online when we can just go to the stand and take it? Useless. Anyway, free food after convocation and it wasn’t half bad either. Hot Dogs, hamburgers, grilled chicken, soda, vegetables, and a show. Afterwards, back to the dorm hanging out in another room playing games until dinner. Dinner was at another residence hall since the one that is supposed to be for PAR was crowded. Listened to people play the piano.. heh too bad I don’t play the piano. I guess the guitar is the only instrument I really want to play. I was going to go back to my dorm when my floor decided to go to the late nighter at the Illini Union, which wasn’t too shabby at all. FREE STUFF! Too much walking for the day. Getting lost in this place isn’t a bad idea since you will know to bring a map wherever you go, but hey not bad for a second day on campus.

Bah, I am just fine without a jailbroken iPod Touch 2G anyway. [updated]

I cannot believe my iPod Toch 2nd Generation crashed therefore leading to the “stuck at Apple logo screen” problem. Followed the instructions of the solution to break out of that. The point is I cannot believe the problem still remains after the jailbreak with redsn0w 0.8, since I used redsn0w 0.7.2 before.

UPDATE: Seems I felt the urge to try the jailbreak one more time. I haven’t seen the problem I had before. I think installing Mobile Substrate first before updating Cydia is the best way. So far, so good. I haven’t used my iPod much since though.

12 Days till college.

Only 12 days until I travel to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign while 13 days are left until move-in day. Regardless of the extra day, the Illini Union Hotel is where I will reside for one night and I will cherish that one night, more or less. First official day being in Illinois for college as opposed to the time when I went for the registration day.

When I went to Urbana-Champaign for registration day, I couldn’t help but look around the place I would be spending my next four years at. It was apparent that there are a lot of places to eat there, but not enough places for electronics. It does not bother me that there are no electronics stores since I order my electronics online, but what if I wanted to buy accessories immediately? I’d have to order them the same time I order the electronic device, but sometimes I am not sure what accessory I might need at the time leading to the problem of either finding a way to get to one of the big name stores or order the accessory online included with the shipping, which may cost more than the accessory itself. I am thinking hypothetically, but a local electronics store would be nice to have around.

Another thing that is apparent is the lack of a cell phone center or something like it. I saw that TIS Bookstore is a Verizon cell phone retailer, which is nice, but it indicates there is a lack of electronics stores around. I can’t say for sure if students around campus need things immediately, but haggling with a local store is much better than ordering at full price. (I spend my time on eBay looking for good prices, heh.)

There are people who ask and wonder why did I choose UIUC. Well, first off, I wanted to get out of New York that’s a definite. I visited Texas in 2008 and felt a small town would be a better place to go to college. My major had to be one of my interests primarily being computer science and I have heard UIUC is great for engineering. Can you believe I applied to only research universities without realizing it? In fact, UIUC is the biggest college that I applied to, which is weird since I wanted a small-medium college as well.

So far, I do not think I will regret going to UIUC or the fact that I picked a college of a small town. It is harder to get distracted anyway unlike being in the city. New York is overcrowded anyway.

Is your Ipod Touch/Iphone stuck on the apple logo screen?

I attempted to jailbreak my iPod touch, which worked. I used the iPod touch firmware 3.0 and redsn0w for this, in case you are wondering. I went to Cydia, which asked for an upgrade, so I went for an upgrade. I was pretty sure this was a successful jailbreak until it crashed a third time I executed Cydia. Wow, my iPod restarted only to stay stuck at the Apple logo screen. “Fuck that!” It really scared me when I tried to go into DFU mode, but it wouldn’t. I searched the internet until I found this solution to go into recovery mode:

Hold both the power and home button while the iPod is not connected to the computer. Release the power button, keep holding the home button though, when the iPod’s screen turns black and quickly connect it to the computer. The iPod will go back to the Apple logo screen then it will go to a screen where it essentially means connect iPod to iTunes.

That means you are good and ready for restore. Yeah, be happy. If this does not work, sucks. Buy a new one and sell your old one.

EDIT: This is my most popular post yet. How about a digg? Link

Playstation 3 Fedora 11 maybe?

I have not tried yet, but it is most likely possible that Fedora 11 will install on Playstation 3. If you google or bing “Playstation 3 fedora 10″, you will see people who have confirmed fedora 10 on Playstation 3. If Fedora 10 is possible then so is Fedora 11. I do not think Fedora 11 is drastically different from Fedora 10 that it wouldn’t install.

Fedora 11 installed on external drive

I did not hesitate to swap out my main drive for an external drive and install fedora on it. After the install, I booted to Fedora and *yeahhh!!!*. Anyway, so I swapped back my main drive only to my dismay did I see that I could not boot into fedora through usb. I search and search until I found a solution. Guess what? The solution has to do with creating a new initrd for usb then editing the entry in grub.conf. Easy!

Fedora is pretty quick! 20 second boot? Eh, I say it still lives up to its name. The basics were very easy to setup. Fedora has come a long way and I see a better future for it.

Update: Due to to number of views I’ve been seeing. I guess there are other interested in doing this as well, so without futher ado.. the solution!

I booted into Fedora:

1. “su root” then type the password

2. type “cd /boot”

3. “mkinitrd –preload=usb-storage –preload=sdmod /boot/[initd_usb].img [initrd version]” (the first bracket is any name you want the second bracket is the version that you are trying to use so 2.6.9.29.4-167.fc11.i686.PAE worked for me but make sure you look at the initrd file first)

4. “cd /grub”

5. “gedit /grub.conf” (Use your favorite text editor with root permission)

6. after the initrd entry replace with “/[name you chose from step 3].img” <-{don’t think you need quotes} (You can copy the whole boot entry first and paste right under to be safe… change the title if you must then change the initrd entry)

7. Your done, but I would recommend backing up grub.conf first! Restart and connect the hd to usb and see if it works. I am not sure if I can upload my copy of the initrd_usb.img file for others to use, so I won’t upload.

Place be mindful about detecting any spelling mistakes and then telling me about it.