As a rule, man is a fool;
When it’s hot, he wants it cool;
When it’s cool, he wants it hot;
Always wanting what is not.
—Anonymous

Just fyi, my computer has been refusing to start up and hence I was unable to post recently. Now that I’m online again, I hope to make up for the lack of posts. Perhaps I’ll have a chance to do some writing tomorrow!

I had my Geography 121 exam today, Mapping Our Changing World. The building it was in has some relly cool stuff! There are a bunch of displays about various geography-related things, including a PowerPoint-like presentation projected onto the wall. The coolest thing about the presentation was the 3D imagery. They had a bunch of 3D glasses sitting there for you to wear, and when you look at the screen, it looked like the glaciers were more than just simply pictures!

The way they seemed to do it was with two projectors, situated one above the other, pointing to the same location with slightly different images. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get close enough to figure out how the images were different, but the 3D projection was very cool. It reminded me of how often I find myself interested in 3D modelling and wanting to develop 3D computer worlds. Could this be my future career path?

Also associated with Geography 121, I completed my third project today. The topic is Seafloor Mapping with Sonar, a topic that I found rather interesting and caused me to wish taht I had more time to study it. Three areas of sonar were addressed: normal sonar, both passive and active; multibeam sonar; and side scan sonar. Learn more about it here: Seafloor Mapping with Sonar

Yahoo! Answers is a fun community that Yahoo! has set up where you ask and answer questions that people have. Responses are very quick (usually several within a minute or two). It’s fun to think of answers, and to try to answer before anybody else. The website stays up to date with a list of the most recently posted questions. You can also vote on responses with a thumbs up or thumbs down. Overall, Yahoo! Answers is a very fun experience!

Borneo Island is found to be the home of 52 new species! That is, 52 new species have been found since 2005. The coolest one they mention, in my opinion, is a catfish that has suction cups so it can stick to rocks! That way, it can face the current of the water while resting. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16270956/

Mickey’s Christmas Carol is a great adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. It has almost all of the great Disney characters, Mickey, Minnie, Scrooge, Donald, Goofy, Jiminy Cricket, Daisy, and Chip and Dale, though unfortunately Pluto is not among them. It has been quite a while since I have seen any of them, and watching this tonight just cheered up my world. Donald’s persistent happiness whn confronted with Scrooge’s dislike of Christmas is very encouraging. The story itself is a wonderful tale of the importance of people over wealth, something that I think everybody suffers with to some extent. I am happy to have been reminded of it.

I was really excited a few months back when Microsoft released Windows Vista Beta 2, and I was able to get it. All I had to pay for was shipping, and soon I would be doing all kinds of fun stuff in Windows Vista! Unfortunately, My plans didn’t work as I expected.

Upon receiving the software and installing it, I found that some of my hardware wasn’t compatible, including my Intel wireless Internet card. At the time I was not using a wired connection at all, and thus I was unable to connect Windows Vista to the Internet, which meant I couldn’t get any new software for it or download anything to try on it, or anything! So, I was effectively forced to return to normal old Windows XP. Vista looked pretty cool, but that was it.

Not long after coming back to school this year, my wired ethernet port broke. I found myself wanting to try Windows Vista again, but without a working ethernet port, I was pretty much out of luck. Last week, I received in the mail a CardBus ethernet adapter from eBay, and I was connected! With my newfound high Internet speeds and a bit of work that needed procrastinating, I was able to find information online on how to dual-boot with Windows XP and Windows Vista. Now I’m able to use both of them, and I can surf the Internet from Vista! It’s a lot of fun. So cool!