Hayden’s Blog

Apparently, adding &fmt=18 to the end of any YouTube URL will present you with a higher quality version of the video. Interesting…

sloik2004 Lab Notes

To keep the login screen from starting too early, before NIS is initialized and NFS shares are mounted, I used this command under OpenSuSE 10.3:

insserv -r earlyxdm

I got this command from the following thread:

http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/SuSE/2007-10/msg01660.html

sloik2004 Lab Notes before, KDM, NFS, NIS, too early, XDMearly

It was somewhat embarrassing, and very confusing.

My teacher was giving us a homework assignment that consisted of putting together a comic strip. He pointed out an example on the wall, and I got up to look at it. As I walked toward it, my vision started fading to black around the corners until I couldn’t see at all. This happened very fast. I heard the faint sound of scraping chairs on the ground, and opened my eyes, staring at the floor underneath me. My chest had landed on a chair next to my own desk, I was just kind of slumped on top of it horizontally. It felt like I just woken up from a very long nap. My teacher was leaning over next to me, asking if I was alright. I was feeling no pain, just a very dull numb feeling in parts of my body. He asked what happened, and I took a second to think about it. Then he asked if I had fainted. “I guess,” I said, looking at all of the students just staring at me.

The whole situation was explained to me by one of my classmates. Apparently I just started swaying, and fell right into the chair. My teacher commented that I was only out for maybe two or so seconds.
“If you weren’t unconscious, that would’ve hurt like hell,” said my classmate. Well, good.

So I spent the last ten minutes of class in the nurse’s office, getting my blood pressure checked. It was higher than normal, so I was advised to come and get it tested again tomorrow. I will.

sloik2004 Events, Life, School

Tribes is my absolute favorite series of games out there. Probably the game I’ve played most in my entire life. The series seemed sort of dead until recently. Garage Games (the developers behind Tribes 2) are currently developing an “unofficial” Tribes game. It looks pretty good, too!

GDC 08: A Tribes Sequel? Sort Of | Tom’s Games

sloik2004 Events

I’ve been asked back to the middle school this year to help with the Sound crew for this year’s play, Grease.
Due to iTunes giving me problems last time around, I’ve begun developing a live performance sound playing program I’ve named Tonality. It’s turning out very well, hopefully it will prove useful over the next month.

sloik2004 Uncategorized

School is interesting. Mostly because of my teachers.
Mr. Schuessler, my biology teacher, is a nice guy. He’d probably be toward the top of my “teachers I like” list. He’s got good policies. Some of the more interesting/unusual ones being
1.) You can listen to your iPod in class, but you can’t blame anybody if you miss something.
2.) Late homework can be turned in before Mr. Schuessler leaves for full credit.

Now a few days ago I had a half-completed homework assignment that I’d brought to biology class. It’s one of those “this takes a minute” homework assignments. So Mr. Schuessler was going around checking people’s assignments. When he got to mine, I asked.

If I get it to you by the end of class, could I get credit?

Nope, sorry bud.

Whenever in disbelief, I have the tendency to ask “really?” So I did. I received confirmation that he wasn’t lying. So that kind of made me angry that he didn’t follow one of the policies he declared at the beginning of the year….

My World Civilizations teacher probably ranks toward the top of the “teachers I don’t quite like” list. Earlier this year I had turned in the terms a bit late for one of our units. A few days ago I was the last one out of class. She stopped me, and asked

Hayden, you turned in your terms, right?

Yeah

I responded in a surprised tone, guessing that she had somehow lost them or something.

OK, just wanted to make sure, because you tend to turn them in late.

What? What kind of comment is that? I only turned in my terms late once in the entire year. I walked out of the door and laughed to myself at how offensive she tends to be.

Mrs. Micksch, did you get any complaints this week? OK, because you tend to offend people a lot.

sloik2004 School

So tonight I came upstairs in response to the door bell to find an officer waiting for me. Uh oh.
Apparently they had recieved a call that had originated from our home line. Neither me nor my brother recall dialing 911, of course, so we check out the phone. Nothing strange there. The house’s security system seemed to be alright. Everything seemed to be OK.
So the officer got my name and my birth date, talked to my dad over the phone, and left. He was a nice guy, everything was pretty smooth. Of course the situation left me kind of freaked out, not to mention embrassed.
Later, my brother noted that he had found the phone on the floor. I’d guess that somebody (or the dog) stepped on the phone or something, dialing the magical 9-1-1 sequence. Lovely.

sloik2004 Uncategorized

To get good Xine support (good being support for codecs like mp3 and mp4, plus MOD files) under OpenSuse for programs like Amarok, this package must be installed:
http://packman.links2linux.org/package/xine-lib

One-click install is excellent.

sloik2004 Lab Notes