Fri, 31st Dec '10, 11:20 am::
I just did my final chores for 2010. I cleaned up all the animals, cleaned out our Florida Room, made all the phone calls to companies (bank, credit card etc.) that I had been pushing off for a while, and finalized the paperwork for our cruise to Mexico in January. Year 2010 is almost over and I'm looking forward to 2011. Happy New Year everyone!
Four fantastic moviesSat, 25th Dec '10, 7:15 pm::
Juliet and I watched four fantastic movies today. We started with the classic Planet of the Apes. The next movie we saw was Freezer Burn. It was hilarious partly because we serendipitously saw it right after Apes and partly because the dialogs were all too real-life like. Then we caught the BBC premier of the Doctor Who Christmas Special: A Christmas Carol. Juliet's not a big fan of the Doctor and even she liked it. I, of course, loved it.
Finally we saw one of the most uncomfortably funny movies I've ever seen, Exit Through the Gift Shop, directed by the guerrilla artist Banksy. The film is presented as a documentary but it seems all too comical to be real. To me it looks like yet another elaborate hoax by Banksy. The documentary is about the life of an artist called Mr. Brainwash but seems too much like an embarrassing comedy by Wes Anderson.
It's raining outside and we were bundled up in front of the TV all day. Here's hoping tomorrow will be sunny.
Lunar Eclipse 2010Mon, 20th Dec '10, 7:45 pm::
Tonight's total lunar eclipse is very special. It is the first total lunar eclipse to occur on the day of the Northern Winter Solstice in 372 years. It'll take place over a span of 4 hours between 1am and 5am with one full hour of totally eclipsed moon. It's clear outside though a bit cold. I'll most certainly go out at different times of the night to watch. I'm so glad I have an awesome hammock in my backyard.
Juliet's Graduation from Barry University 2010Sun, 19th Dec '10, 12:20 pm::
Yesterday was Juliet's graduation ceremony at Barry University - Class of 2010. Check out the graduation pics. She received the Dean's Award for the student with highest GPA (4.0) and an award from the Pi Alpha Honor Society. After the ceremony, we went to a really good local restaurant called Grill 131. If you're in the St. Petersburg / Seminole area, be sure to check it out. We had a great time and celebrated with some yummy cake. I'm still stuffed from all the feasting and don't plan on getting up from my chair today.
Juliet graduates at the top of her class (Valedictorian with 4.0 GPA)Mon, 13th Dec '10, 4:15 pm::
I'm so proud of my wife. Juliet had her last finals today and got an A. In the last two and a half years, she's had over a hundred exams and in every single class she got an A. Her GPA is 4.0 and she'll be the valedictorian of her graduating class. Her graduation ceremony is this Saturday and I can't wait to see her get up on the stage. I'll post pics soon after.
Next month she'll take the Florida board exams to be certified to work as Physician Assistant. The day after that I'm taking her on a cruise to Mexico. That's her graduation gift :)
Sat, 11th Dec '10, 1:50 pm::
This 'blog entry is being written on a laptop that is physically in India while I am sitting on my sofa in US. I'm remotely logged into my mom's new laptop so I can customize it just for her. Her laptop was loaded with so much crapware that it was unusable. Despite having 2GB of RAM and a fast CPU it was crawling. I used Skype's screen-sharing option to see what she was seeing and got her to install TeamViewer.
Once we got TeamViewer working, I took over and for the past 4 hours have been removing crap from her laptop and installing some useful applications. TeamViewer doesn't require you to create an account or give out your email. Download software at both ends, enter the remote PC's ID & pin and you're good to go. I highly recommend it for fixing family PCs.
Motivating myselfTue, 7th Dec '10, 1:45 pm::
I love watching Doctor Who (new series mostly). I'm too lazy to exercise. So I have made a new rule to motivate me to work out and it's been working well for a few weeks now. I'm only allowed to start watching Doctor Who once I get on our elliptical machine. If I work out for 30 minutes, I can watch the show for 30 minutes during the exercise and a bonus 30 minutes afterwards. If I work out for 45 minutes, I get to watch the show for 45 minutes during exercise and a bonus 45 minutes afters. Since each episode is 45 minutes, that's two episodes. Last night I worked out for 99 minutes. What can I say, I really LOVE Doctor Who.
Thu, 2nd Dec '10, 6:40 am::
I just bought my sixth monitor, an HP 24" LCD with a resolution of 1920x1200. I already have five LCDs (1050x1680 each) and have placed them next to each other like this. Last month, I hooked the 5th one to my Mac Mini. However, programming in XCode on a small monitor like this is a pain, especially with the iPad Simulator shrinking to 50% scale by default on lower resolutions. So now I'll have a sixth monitor. I was going to put the fifth one away in storage but Juliet insists I should have all six on my desk because it makes me look like a total nerd.
Last few weeks I haven't written much code for KType because I realized there some more important material that I need to learn. So I'll be studying for the next week or two using online lectures. Sometimes I feel bad about "wasting" time watching lectures instead of just jumping into the code and hacking it on my own. But experience has taught me that one day spent learning often saves me ten days in coding.