(cost of meal plan – ( dining dollars received each semester * 2 semesters ) )
/ ( meal swipes per week * total number of weeks ) = cost per swipe

The total meal plan costs can be calculated like this:

( hilltop room with meal plan of choice – hilltop room without meal plan ) = cost of meal plan

The dollar amounts can be found here, and the information about the meal plans here. I chose 33 weeks, where there are 34 weeks, but half a week for two separate breaks, condensing it to 33 weeks.

10 Meals a Week
$12.10 per swipe = ( $4,244 – $125 x 2 semesters ) / ( 10 meals a week x 33 weeks)

12 Meals a Week
$10.54 per swipe = ( $4,624 – $225 x 2 semesters ) / ( 12 meals a week x 33 weeks)

15 Meals a Week
$9.18 per swipe = ( $4,894 – $175 x 2 semesters ) / ( 15 meals a week x 33 weeks)

20 Meals a Week
$7.58 per swipe = ( $5,252 – $125 x 2 semesters ) / ( 20 meals a week x 33 weeks)

Boiler Block Plan
The block plan is a bit different as you get 246 meal swipes and $450 dining dollars for the whole year. This was kinda odd since 246 meals is about half of what the total meals the 15 meal plan provides, so I thought I saw it wrong, but I’ve checked multiple pages and that’s what it said.

$15.88 per swipe = ( $4,356 – $450 ) / 246 meals

Without a Meal Plan
With no meal plan the prices (that matter) are listed below:

Conclusion
I would recommend setting up a boiler block plan, eating breakfast at home, and only eat meals that you need to in the dining court. As an over estimate, let’s say you eat 13 meals in dining courts, that’s $3,586.44 for the whole year, which excludes breakfast stuff. That’s $1307.56 cheaper than a $4,894 15 meal plan, and $1,037.56 cheaper than a $4,624 12 meal plan, and even $657.56 cheaper than the 10 meal plan.

The blue items are activated with the “fn” key in the lower left hand corner of most laptops, while the orange are activated the “mb” key, which for me is the left Alt key. Originally it was the Caps Lock key, but I’m trying centralize all non-letters are my thumbs.

I already use the right Alt as a backspace (and Menu as Alt), and have been thinking about switching the left Alt to the space, and using the space bar as the mirrorboard modifier. I have also added some mac-keyboard-like features, such as shift+backspace yeilding a delete.

You can download the file here. To use it, simply run:

xkbcomp ~/mirrorboard-altback.xkb $DISPLAY

If you stick the file in your Home directory. You can either use the Sessions settings (in Ubuntu) to make it run on start-up, find another way to do so.

Hope you find it useful! If you have any problems, comments, or concerns, feel free to email me at c@aslamp.com.

If you click on the text, it will pause the music, middle clicking will cause it to focus on gmusicbrowser, where ever it is, and right clicking on the label will get options such as Play, Previous, Next, and Go to GMB.

First of all, you need to download gmusicbrowser, or use the rep:

deb http://squentin.free.fr/gmusicbrowser ./

With this key.

This script also requires:

• libnet-dbus-perl (for gmusicbrowser to recognize media buttons)
• xte (play, forward, back)
• wmctrl (switching to gmusicbrowser window)

Then install everything:

gksudo apt-get update & gksudo apt-get install gmusicbrowser libnet-dbus-perl xte wmctrl

Once you have everything installed:

• Open up gmusicbrowser
• Goto Settings/Plugins
• Enable Now playing
• Enter this, and replace USER with your user name
  • tee /home/USER/.config/gmusicbrowser/nowplaying.info
• Check “Send Title/Artist/Album in standard output”

Now we need to modify the now playing plugin for gmusicbrowser so it will put whether or not it is playing a song into a file so we can read it. Open up /usr/share/gmusicbrowser/plugins/nowplaying.pm:

gksudo gedit /usr/share/gmusicbrowser/plugins/nowplaying.pm

And replace the entire file with the following:

Now put this code into a file named “gmb.py” in /usr/bin/ (don’t forget root), and mark it as executable.

Then make a file called “GNOME_GMusicBrowserApplet.server” and put it in /usr/lib/bonobo/servers/ . Place this in it:

Then right click on the GNOME panel, and add the GMusicBrowser Applet.

As you can see in the screenshot, it will display “Track by Artist on Album”.

If you have any troubles or want to see anything new in it, let me know as usual at c@aslamp.com. Feel free to mess around with the code and play with things. Hope you find it useful as I have!

First off, I use the xfce4-panel instead of the default gnome-panel because it is more customizable in ways that I want, and the spacing that it uses makes it look more pleasing to the eye than the gnome panel. Open up Synaptic and do a search for “xfce4″ to get a list of plugins for the panel. A few that I use are xfce4-showdesktop-plugin, xfce4-xfapplet-plugin, and xfce4-datetime-plugin.

The panel in the picture above (click for full screenshot) contains a show desktop icon, then an applet called Icon Box. My panel’s width is at about 42 pixels, to make it seem more like an actual dock. In Firefox (my default browser), I maximized the vertical page space.

Below, I use the XFapplet to run the gnome panel’s pager inside the xfce4 panel. I also have the Deskbar Applet running in the xfce panel in the same way. I alternate between that (Control + Space) and Gnome Do (Win + Space) to launch applications, or do whatever else the plugins provide. The last applet on the panel is the datetime plugin, which you can configure to display whatever font or format you want.

Other applications that I use include the Desktop Wall plugin that is a part of compizconfig-settings-manager. This allows me to right click on any screen edge to instamtly change to the respectful desktop. I moved the animation time to zero so that there is no lag or rendering involved.

I use Exaile for playing music. It is based off Amarok (KDE), but has has many built-in plugins for gnome. You can see the media icons in the system tray above, which is just one of Exaile’s plugins. The extensions that I use for firefox include Better Gmail 2, Drag & Drop Zones, Tab Mix Plus, Tree Style Tab, and TwitterBar.

If you have another questions, or want any details about what I have done, please feel free to ask.

First of all, I’ve dragged all my buttons and bars into the top toolbar, where the File, Edit, etc. are located. As you can see, I don’t use the Home button, (and whatever else was there by default that I don’t have) so I’ve taken it off. I’ve also added the New Tab button. You can have whatever you like by right-clicking on the toolbar, and Customizing what is displayed.

I also don’t use the search bar; I just type whatever I want to search for in the address bar. If you want, you can integrate YubNub into the search bar, but I just like adding your your own keywords.

Putting all of your buttons in the top toolbar will leave your other bar (assuming you don’t have the bookmarks toolbar showing) empty. You can now simply right-click on the toolbar and uncheck the navigation toolbar. I don’t use the bookmark toolbar because I have about a hundred tabs open at one time, no exaggeration. Occasionally I will go through and bookmark them, then close all the ones I won’t need in the immediate future. I like to call it archiving.

Because I have so many tabs open at one time, I use Tree Style Tabs, which arranges the tabs on the left (right or bottom) of the window. It also features being able to hide the tabs within the parent tab, like a tree (I’m not entirely sure how that’s like a tree…), which easily hides the majority of my tabs, and makes me feel better about my addiction allows me to open more.

I have also changed the “layout.scrollbar.side” in about:config to 3, which places the scrollbar on the left side (I think). This doesn’t really help that much, but it causes me to more easily scroll a page for some reason.

I’ve thought about moving or changing the status bar, but I haven’t come to any happy conclusions. If anyone has any ideas, let me know, and I’ll tell somebody about it.

If anyone was wondering, I use the Camifox theme, which gives my Firefox that dazzling appearance.

Another factor is the “indie”ness that it supplies throughout the movie. Nick’s in his own band and writes his own songs, they follow a local band (Where’s Fuffy) around town that has a reputation of being at undisclosed locations, and the soundtrack is (to my knowledge) not very mainstream. It’s made me want to listen to the Juno soundtrack quite a bit (yeah, Michael Cera!), and start writing my own music and lyrics that fits into that category.

The movie has quite a few “one-liners.” One of which, “I love you so much, it’s retarded,” is my favorite. Nick unwillingly picks up a couple who vividly makes out in his back seat as he is driving with Norah, and the male says the line. I think it kinda makes fun of how slang is evolved and overused, but maybe that’s just me over-analyzing things…

Overall, a great movie, and I would definitely recommend it, especially if you (and significant other) are into the whole indie rock thing. If not, still a neat story, and one that sort of puts you into a mood, for lack of better words. It was definitely worth the $8.75 at an overpriced college movie theathre, and the 20 minute wait for a bus to go off of, and back onto campus.

I am not and will not vote for either of you, John McCain or Barack Obama, or affiliated running-mates. Stop bugging me.

Paul ‘08 ‘12.

• AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL-60 and 512KB+512KB L2 Cache (2.0 GHz)
• 250GB (5400RPM) Hard Drive
• 3072MB DDR2 SDRAM (2 Dimm)
• LightScribe Super Multi 8X DVD+_RW with Double Layer Support
• Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit) with SP1
• HP QuickPlay
• Hp Mobile Remote Control
• Mobile Stereo Earbud Headphones
• Fingerprint Reader
• HP Webcam
• 14.1″ WXGA High-Definition BrightView Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)
• nVidia GeForce 7150M with shared graphics memory
• 802.11a/b/g/n (draft 802.11n) WLAN
• 5-in-1 Digital Media Reader
• ExpressCard/54 PC Card Slot
• Expansion Port 3
• 6-Cell Lithium-Ion battery

My personal analysis:

Pros:

• Fingerprint reader integrated into Vista and logon/locking
• Media controls–touch sensitive
• Light-weight
• Webcam/Microphone
• Cool design on top
• Two headphone jacks in front
• Remote included (not used that much)
• MultiCard reader

Cons:

• No numberpad besides the function key thing
• Three usb ports–lame
• Small screen (1280 x 800)
• Warm area near where hands rest while typing
• Keyboard doesn’t light up
• Doesn’t have an included little prop-thing to incline notebook
• No bluetooth
• Have to buy the expansion thing to have more ports =/ ($100 something)
• Hp QuickPlay is annoying, but deactivatable
• Media buttons are easily pressed (not that big of a deal)

Overall, nice machine. Consider it. I only wish that I would have gotten a bluetooth-enabled one, and the Artist Edition. Going to buy the expansion port because I want three monitors. =]

Now I just wish I could find a machine that supported multiple mice, because who doesn’t want to navigate windows/the web with two cursors?

Camera Resolution: 1.3 megapixel
Music Player: MP3, AAC, AAC+, 3GPP, 3GPP2 and MPEG3
Mobile TV: Y
FM Radio: N
Mobile Printing: PictBridge
Messaging Push to talk: N
Instant Messaging: Y
Connectivity Bluetooth: Y
Internet HTML Browser: N
User Memory: 16MB
External Memory: 64MB
Touch Screen: N

My personal analysis:

Specs:

• 190 Texts in Inbox
• 50 Texts in Outbox
• 500 Contacts
• 20 Missed/Outgoing/Incoming Calls each

Pros:

• Large screen, always displayed
• Nice buttons, easily pressed, hidden when in pocket
• Videos as ringtones
• Custom wallpaper
• Comes with 64MB micro SD card
• Bluetooth enabled
• Thin, fits nicely into pocket

Cons:

• No direct headphone/mic jack, uses adapter in port
• Ports have attached covers–annoying
• Low quality speakers, cracks at high volumes
• Atteanae is internal and where most people hold it
• Texting firmware trys to predict next word
• Texting firmware trys to use most used words more often
• Blind texting almost impossible
• Lots of features that require payment to Sprint
• Hard to text while charging
• Most options in phone disabled when internet is disabled with provider
• Can’t use mp3s as ringtones–video work around

Overall, It’s a pretty nice phone, and I think it could be a lot better with a few firmware adjustments. If I ever figure out how to hack/change it, I’ll update this ;).

On the left, there be Obama and Clinton, both seem to be lacking a credit in high school economics. There are very simple graphs of Price vs. Quantity that prove that there shouldn’t be: Health care, Minimum wage, Welfare, etc. I thought it would be easier to educate the proletarians. Apparently not, seeing as at least a fourth of the country is voting for either one.

On the right, there be McCain, who seems to be more liberal than conservative most the time. If this is what the republicans see as the most approbate candidate for the party, I’m afraid that your ranks have been infiltrated. He ensures a false hope of security through-out the nation, while installing his telescreens. Just a few signatures away from Big Brother.

But, then again, I don’t think we even need speed limits, the seat-belt law, mandatory car insurance, or anything else that limits our rights as citizens. Call me libertarian. =P

Backgammon

This is the one game on my computer, that I have failed to play and win. After years of being bored, and practically mastering every other game, It has proven to be only a series of large isosceles triangles. After trying to find it in Windows since my reinstallation and use of Ubuntu, I was thinking about resorting to online backgammon. The flashy-ness of the signs and distractions didn’t immediately aquire my favor or attention. “Backgammon Online!” seemed a bit to excited for backgammon than I was, but I guess someone feels that way about it…

Despite my ignorance for the rules of the game, it’s still sort of fun to see what the computer will let me do with the checker things. Perhaps I will learn how if I find another boring day.

I am fully impressed and ashamed that I had never seen this before. It is amazing compared to Windows. If you’ve ever had doubts about Windows and the lack of.. well, everything you’ve ever wanted, try Ubuntu. You can burn it to a CD to boot from, and simply test it out a bit, get a feel for it, tweak with things (the normal procedure I go through when testing), and decide if it’s for you.

It does take a bit of time to figure out the basics and get things set up incase you: want to play mp3s, use nVidia drivers, or user Opera. But please, If you have any problems, let me know, and I’ll personally find a solution and try to get it working for you! I believe it is that great. The forums have been a great resource for me, and solved everything I had a problem with.

Something else that I’ve been testing out would be the new WordPress 2.5 RC2. So far, it looks amazing, especially from Matt’s video of it. Personally, in Opera, it looks kinda shifty, but I take that as my own resonsibility because I choose to use it… >.< I might have to use Firefox to update some posts here and there…. I was just using a messed up plugin… But the visual editor is still messed up in opera. =P It expands to the whole width, overlapping the right column *annoying*.

One thing I’ve noticed is that it’s a lot cleaner. Tidy and white. Less images as backgrounds and more solid colors. I like it. If you get bored with your current setup, both Windows and the old WordPress, give both of these a try! Let me know what you think of either!

I actually came up with this by accident. I was working on number sequences, such as the Fibonacci sequence, and was trying to make up my own, and it turns out (one of them, this being it) was the same as n++. I felt pretty lame and geeky at the same time.

I actually haven’t had the opportunity to test out Vista as much as I would have liked to. The first service pack is supposed to be released here pretty soon, so I might as well wait for that…

And apparently Bill Gates quit from Microsoft? I haven’t heard much of this (or researched it at all), other than from Trevor. So look it up yourself if you care that much…

I also need to stop using “…” as much as I do, but I feel it gives a sense of flow (that could also be achieved through words). And you can’t begin sentences with “and,” but I’m doing that too… Maybe I’ll start to just write in lojban. That’ll make all of you non-believers happy.

I have also decided to start learning lojban! =D And that’s pretty exciting in itself.

I’d also like to thank Decorum, which I am starting to read (backwards >.<). I guess I never really thanked xkcd either... So, thanks xkcd.

And now that I'm done narrating my thoughts, here's the first and original comic (for soc class):

When I see evolution, the big bang, the human race coming from primates, I see only one thing, and that is God’s work. Ever piece of information that supports evolution, I see it supporting Creation. It doesn’t matter how it came to be, how things evolved, God still created it, and in doing so he intended it to evolve.

The miracles experience in our biblical history have been doubted by those who say, “Well, it’s only a simple chemical reaction…” (in the example of turning water into wine, perhaps one that is currently unknown). My reaction is, “Yes! But it is by God’s laws that it happens! He created them in order to perform it!” Chemistry in itself is a miracle. Who else but the Almighty could have the power to take molecules that one cannot even imagine and turn them into something else?

Humanity has always had it problems and conflicts in dealing with the church and science. I can not understand them any other way other than always aiding and supporting each other. Science exists to explain events that happen in the natural word, and religion exists to explain how the science can exist. While both can be independent, science without religion, and religion without science, I believe it is best to combine them, faith with evidence, evidence with faith.

The following is a short list of what I have observed in one school in particular (Carroll High School):

• Study hall monitoring, no sleeping, no headphones/eletronics, must stay active.
• No more than one study hall during a semester.
• Detentions for not completing homework.
• Required classes (Literature, Social Sciences, General Math, etc.).
• School standards in general.
• Everybody Reads (ER), where everyone must be reading something
• Truancy and its punishments (unauthorized absenses).

I go to school because I want an education, not because I want uneducated and unrespected authorities to tell me what I should learn, what kind of grade I should get, what kind of person I should be, and what sort of activities I should do.

Our freedom has been limited so that we cannot be trusted to make the correct decisions. Our rights have been limited so that a criminal has more than we do. Our education is being transformed into a uniform bell-curve where the stardards are so low that 99% of our students can pass it.

Our schools are being transformed into a fascist state, and the people who care about it the most forget about it once they graduate. The students need a speaker, a representive, to let them have a voice. Give them one.

Carroll has a policy, as described on page 10 in the student handbook, that if the student is late to their first period class, they will receive a “late-to-school.” The following is a list of what happens when the student receives multiple “late-to-school”s.

• 3rd & 4th: Detention
• 5th & 6th: Saturday school, 30 day driving probation
• 7th: 1 day ISS, 60 day driving probation, request parent conference
• 8th: 3 days ISS, 60 day driving probation
• 9th: OSS, parent conference
• Habitual: Recommendation for expulsion

If the student is late to any other class period, the same punishment is provided, sans the driving probation.

The concern with this is, if the student arrives to school on time, but stays in the common area too long, perhaps working on homework, a project, reading, or just plain-out socializing, and then is late to first period, what is to differentiate between that “late-to-school” and just a regular tardy?

Well, one doesn’t really need to worry about that. As you can see, the punishment for a “late-to-school” and a tardy are exactly the same besides the driving probation for the “late-to-school”s.

In theory a student could get as many as four tardies before receiving punishment: Two “late-to-school”s and two regular tardies. However, I won’t suggest it. The administration will probably catch on…

In conclusion

It doesn’t really matter that you receive a “late-to-school” vs. a regular tardy, as long as you don’t drive to school. You still have five “late-to-school”s before you can’t drive for thirty days. The “late-to-school” really just doubles the number of tardies^[1] (to first period), and is just another name for a tardy.

Currently, I’m about one-fifth the way through it, and my mind is well near boggled. I’m quite ashamed of it, but I didn’t know that much about quantum before starting the book. Now, as Greene describes the non-locality (which is the main subject of this post, that I will get to in a second), I’m really starting to understand how deep all of this is.

Non-locality

Greene describes a scenario where two similar particles are ejected dually from a single origin, and because they (let’s call them photons) both came from the same point, the two photons both have similar position, and similar velocity. However, in order to measure the velocity of the two particles, you would have to compromise the knowledge of its velocity for its position, and its position for its velocity, at that particular instance of time. This is so because when measuring one attribute, the particle is changed so that the other changes.

Now, say that you decide to measure the velocity of one particle, and the position of the other! Ingenious! Neither the velocity or the position will be compromised because they are two different particles!

Surprisingly, each time the experiment was performed (and cutting to the chase), each particle was affected by the others actions. When the machines detected the velocity and the position of each, the waves that were bounced off of the photons affected not only the particle it hit, but the pair of them.

When I read this, I was pretty amazed. Einstein and a number of other physicists had thought that this non-locality was impossible, and they were proven wrong! And not even by theory, or math, or logic, it was by experiment!

This brings a whole new world into our dimension. The principles of locality do not allow interference between particles (or anything for that matter) across space. There must be some sort of physical contact between them, and this proves that otherwise. The possibilities of the future technology that this could bring is unfathomable: Data transfer faster than the speed of light, mapping out of universe, no longer having to the travel across light-years of stars; We, as humans traveling faster than the speed of light, perhaps even teleporting, not caring what is traveled through.

I plan on continuing to write about this book and the amazing physics in it, as I read, so please, stay in tune!

Black
And
White are
All I see
In my infancy
Red and yellow then came to be
Reaching out to me
Lets me see
There is
So
Much
More and
Beckons me
To look through to these
Infinite possibilities
As below so above and beyond I imagine
Drawn beyond the lines of reason
Push the envelope
Watch it bend

The lines portray the syllable count of 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 the first six numbers of Fibonacci’s sequence, and the reverse, indicating the “spiral” that is talked about in the song. This, along with several other instances of Fibonacci numbers and calculations, interested me in the sequence and numerology in general.

While in study hall one day, I got bored, and wrote out the sequence. I thought to myself, “There must be some sort of pattern or formula to this.” So I sat there and started dividing each of the numbers by its term, then divided each of those numbers by the previous set, and found that the number, as I continued to calculate, increased by very small amounts, those decreasing each increment. Getting bored with doing each by hand, I created a program to calculate this approaching number for me, and named it “FIB.”

Surprisingly, my calculator got to the point where the numbers were so large that the calculations weren’t being executed correctly. I thought about why this would happen, and came to the conclusion that it was the terms by which I was dividing that elongated this number-finding process.

I made another program called “FI,” taking off the “B” from the last one, and took out the term divisibility section, and executed the program. I got this number, 1.618… And didn’t really know what it meant. I messed around with it a bit, trying to figure out if it was a square root of a number, or something similar, but when I squared it, I got 2.618… the remaining decimals staying there. It was pretty amazing, a number, if squared, was the same as adding one to it.

x² = x + 1

This inspired me to start doing other calculations that don’t pertain to this topic. I did a bit of messing around, and remembered the number Phi, from Dan Brown’s books, and my previous math classes. I have no idea why it took me this long to realize it… I feel kinda ashamed about it.

But the whole concept of the Golden Ratio, Phi, is pretty amazing. I’ve read a few articles relating Phi to the human body, and other natural occurrences. Now it is one of my obsessions in the mathematics world, and an object of my boredom being turned into something productive.