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Update 0 (Mon Jul 21, 2008) ---
Yeah, so, I'm bored and I happen to have an Internet connection, so why not put it to good use and write a little about what happened to me?
I disappeared in March~April and didn't show up much on the Web until after the french Baccalauréat. That doesn't mean I spent much time on it but yeah~ So I'm gonna sum up whatever happened to m from then to now. Since this spans over multiple months, it's gonna be relatively long, so feel free to just not read this entry at all~ I rarely write about what's up with me other than on my private blog and what I call my lifestats, both of which no one but me can see, bwahaha~ But let's get going...
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April and May~ The most stressful days of the year at school, and then the last exams. Did okay, it's not really a problem for me thankfully. Moving on~
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June~ I had a one-week pseudo-vacation during which I just coded ((Nespresso, )what else?), and then came the Baccalauréat, written part first.
Here's the subject (distributed in North America only), for those of you who fit the following criterias:
- Can read french
- Have enough time to read another wall of text other than this one
- Care about it
- Know what the Baccalauréat is
- Aren't tired of it already
That must be a very small number, but whatever:
[link]And I picked the hardest subject, the Dissertation. Yeah, blame me, I always pick the hardest subject, thinking it's the easiest one, whenever there's a choice xD It's some kind of lack of judgement, or maybe different easiness standards? I always end up regretting my choice anyway.
Then, the oral part. I had to explain, in ten minutes, how is modernity reflected in Baudelaire's Correspondances. Since it's (relatively) short, I'll include it here:
La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.
Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,
Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se ré
ondent.
Il est des parfums frais comme des chairs d'enfants,
Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,
- Et d'autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,
Ayant l'expansion des choses infinies,
Comme l'ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l'encens,
Qui chantent les transports de l'esprit et des sens.
- Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal (IV)
That was stressful, especially since anyone who has seen me knows I'm not much of a talker, to the point that I'm losing my ability to talk fluently even in my native manguage. But I disgress... I managed to get over that for these ten minutes. Then came the "interrogatory", another ten minutes which passed so slowly that I could have computed pi's ten-billionth digit in that time</nerd>, but I managed to survive.
The rest of June was spent, you guessed it, pretty lazily for my body, but my mind was sure not as inactive. Headaches galore, but who cares? Not I, and that allowed me to release a first build of DamnVid for win32, which I am going to talk about later.
I haven't checked my grades yet, but my parents received a letter saying they were pretty good, send me a note if you really want the numbers (I wouldn't want to anger
a few other deviants out there...). Also got a good grade on my
TPE, which can be seen online on Google Docs:
Written part |
Oral presentation.
On July 31st came a friend of mine, who happens to be on deviantArt at
. Nothing much happened that day, since he arrived late and was all jetlagged.
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July~ We had fun, mostly playing games on LAN, but also going out a lot because this guy is so popular that he is actually afraid of setting his status to "Online" on his instant messaging networks, as his harem/"h@rem" would jump on him right away; even offline, he's always getting messages, it's dazzling @_@ And so, I followed him wherever he went, but the only thing I got out of the deal is to see Hancock, yay~ I hadn't been to the cinema for almost a year, though that's nowhere near my record.
Then I went to his "chalet", "cottage", whatever-kinda-house he has somewhere near one of Canada's numerous, mosquitoes-filled lakes with this awesome guy
, accompanied by the no-less-awesome
-dono and the a-little-less-awesome-since-she's-not-on-deviantArt-so-I-can't-show-a-pretty-icon-for-her "Poupoune" (oshit, did I say it? Shhh). Since there's no tubes nor cellular network (almost), it was a little hard for my mostly-artificial self to blend in this mostly-natural world. Fortunately, the Wii smoothened the transition, along with my OTHER WII, cause now I has two thanks to this awesome guy (did I mention he's also and awesome emo-ninja?), along with no less than 31 Wii games. My family was used to a lot of generosity from him, and always tried to return the favor, but it was way too much this time, and I'm afraid the familial financial situation only allowed a genuine (yeah, really! Unbelievable) Crysis copy to get bought.
Then there's DDR, Dance Dance Revolution, you know, not
Dance Dance Immolation which is a real game. It was on both the Wii and on
's PS2, and the latter got picked (guess by who? Hint: The most dominant-and-not-afraid-of-showing-it person of the (lovely) bunch (of coconuts)). The songs are better, but I would have hoped we had played the Wii version a little, since there's a challenge that I can't seem to beat (the last one, you know, the last challenge of the campaign! Aaargh), but whatever. We still had fun, and guess who won? (Hint: Same as above). However, I didn't perform too badly, and I just happen to have recorded
myself acing Coldplay - Clocks on Difficult without missing a step, yay~ (that was taken in May at home though, not at that occasion, and yeah I'm in pajamas and yeah I like being in pajamas and yeah I don't dress up when I'm on vacations and yeah I wore that one for a little too long and yeah I should stop this ramble).
What else did we do? Played Magic: The Gathering, ingurgitated truckloads of Nutella, went on the lake in which I stupidly fell while wearing jeans (it's heavier than you think when soaked!), but the most "visible" souvenir I kept from there is doubtlessly the numerous mosquitoes-and-other-things who tirelessly fed on my body, and now it's a nice add-on to my acne. Yay...
I had to stay there longer than expected, which broke what was scheduled. With the little packing time I had left, we played some Shoddy Battle, at which I completely suck thanks to my lack of Pokéknowledge D:
When all was packed (read: "burned on DVD"), off I went, alone in the plane (well, with my brother, but it's not like he helps much), and I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to many people, and that includes you guys x_X
The plane trip was long and boring, like any plane trip is, right? Brother didn't help at all, just went into his usual I-don't-know-you,-just-gtfo attitude that he seems to like. Father came along on the first part of the trip coincidentally, but stayed away.
The first plane was late, so I arrived right when the other plane started being boarded. And of course, while the plane was supposed to arrive at Terminal 6, the same as the second plane, this changed at the last minute to Terminal 5. No big deal, I mean, they're next to each other, right? Turns out I was right, save for the fact that you can't pass from that one to the other because it's under construction... Just my luck, but I managed to arrive on time, right when the bus which leads to the plane was about to go. The other part, shorter (1 hour and a bit) passed very quickly, or so it seemed, perhaps due to the duration contrast between the two flights. Upon arrival, the way to the exit was quick since I had no luggage, and my grandmother was there. Yay~
I fell asleep at 14 o'clock, slept til 19, ate, and slept again from 2 to 12... Talk about a messy jetlagged sleep schedule x_X
I stayed at their place for a day, then went to meet a childhood friend in the countryside. Only thing interesting I did there was to teach him how to use Photoshop's most important features (layers, masks, channels, blending options), you know, the features you couldn't live without but that many users sadly don't know about and yet have paid for (... *cough*p2pftw*cough*)
Since this guy's family lives close by, he has family members over at his place two thirds of the time, and they sure take a lot of time and space >.< (or spacetime?) But it's good to see that this kind of family still exists, bonds unharmed by today's extremely mobile technology. Beyond all these family gatherings, we walked randomly around the village/farms, watched anime (Mushi-shi~ <3 ... But it bored him), took care of their sheep (I can emit sheep-like noises too, ya rly), added chlorine to their little pool which had turned green, opaque and swampy but in which they still wanted me to bathe, and even downloaded Bioshock, no less, on a 56k modem, an achievement I believed to be unconceivable in a week and a half of countryside-y connectivity o:
I also cut myself on the wrist by grabbing a stone-y ledge of a random ruins thing, and everyone thought I had gotten into self-mutilation, it was funny to see their reactions x3 I didn't know that emo-awareness had spread this deeply in the countryside, though... o.o They're everywhere, noooes!
I left that place and was brought to my other grandparents, those without a computer/internet/cell phone/whatever, those still on analogic TV, those still with a screen-less home phone, in short, the rural ones~ But they're so kind with me. Needless to say, I got bored pretty quickly. Then my other grandparents, those that were there at the airport in the first place, wanted me and my brother back "cause they just had us for two days", along with a bribe: "Philosophy for Dummies", since I'm going to have Philosophy classes next year instead of french classes. And so began the grandparents war, hehe
I am supposed to go to my grandparents' vacations house by the Mediterranean sea, without connectivity, for a week. And then, who knows?
I have written this entry over the course of these days whenever the time and the connectvity allowed me, on an AZERTY keyboard, without an english spellchecker, not necessarily when my body clock was making me the most awake, and not necessarily on very convenient devices (namely, the Nintendo DS Browser), so this might not make much sense. This entry is in no way finished (I said above I'd talk about stuff like DamnVid and so on), I'll update whenever I can, if I can~ That'll leave you time to read this entry bit by bit too, instead of one big wall of text. I haven't taken any photo so far and do not feel the need to (except for artistic purposes, but I'm gonna submit that later, no worries), but if anyone wants me to take photos or videos or whatever of something, ask and make that 512 MB mini SD card worth it... </had to finish in a nerdy way>
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Update 1 (August 26th, 2008) ---
Warning: Partial Portal spoilers ahead. If you haven't heard about this awesome video game, you should be fine, but if you've started it but not finished, I do not suggest reading the following block of text. While there is no real reference to anything in the game, one can easily enough guess the original lyrics with a minimal knowledge of the game.
Forms FORM-29827281-12:
Test Assessment Report:
These vacations were a failure.
I'm making a note here:
HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT.
It's hard to overstate
my disagreement.
Summer vacations
I do what I can
because I must.
For the good of all of my family.
Except the ones who are dead.
But there's no sense crying
over every lost minute.
I just keep on trying
till I run out of patience. (which doesn't happen often by the way. Yay for uberlong attention span~)
And the vacation gets done.
And you make a neat journal entry.
For the people who are still alive.
Forms FORM-55551-5:
Personnel File Addendum:
Dear <<subject names here>>>,
I'm not even angry.
I'm being so sincere right now.
Even though they broke my heart.
And bored me.
And tore me to mental breakdown.
And threw me in every corner of France.
As vacations lasted it hurt because
I was so eager to come back!
Now these points of data
Make a beautiful line.
And my code is still in alpha.
I won't be releasing it on time.
So I'm GLaD I got back.
Think of all the things I've missed
about you people who are
still alive.
Forms FORM-55551-6:
Personnel File Addendum Addendum:
One not-so-last thing:
They should have gone ahead and left me.
I think I would have preferred to stay right here.
Maybe they'd have found someone else
to accompany them.
Maybe ...
THAT WAS A JOKE butyoucouldstillhavedoneit. FAT CHANCE.
Anyway this cake is great. (It's my birthday, you know)
It's so delicious and moist.
Look at me still talking
when I gotta prepare for school.
When I look out there,
I'd be GLaD to be you.
I've furniture to prepare.
There is homework to be done.
For me, person who is
still alive.
PS: And believe me I am
still alive. (unbelieavable!)
PPS: I'll be doing Science and I'll be
still alive.
PPPS: I feel LIKE I DIDN'T HAVE VACATIONS and (yet) I'm
still alive.
FINAL THOUGHT:
While you're laughing I'll be (hopefully)
still alive.
FINAL THOUGHT PS:
And when you've laughed I'll be
still alive.
STILL ALIVE.
STILL ALIVE....
Original lyrics (c)
Jonathan Coulton, from song: "Still Alive" for the video game "Portal". Even the CaSiNg and the number of line breaks have been carefully respected.
Jonathan's music owns, by the way <3 Listen to "Re: Your Brains", "Code Monkey", or "Bacteria", they're all awesome~
In other words: All boring. I went to my grandparent's vacations-house in Provence for a week and, despite the daily visits to the swimming pool and/or Mediterranean sea, I did not get any tan at all; I actually became whiter according to my grandparents who stayed at their place. Not like I want a tan, it's actually good news because it shows that I protected nicely my very-likely-to-get-cancer skin. After this week, I just bounced between my two pairs of grandparents and eventually came back, hopefully not with empty hands: I did get an 8 GB USB stick (on which I've put
Backtrack 3's USB version), a DS game (Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2, or FFTA2), and (and this is more relevant to you, fellow deviants) a "gorilla pod" (basically, a tripod with flexible legs, allowing my camera to stand still on any surface or non-surface for that matter.
Here's a photo of it in action. (This photo begs the question: Was the photo of a camera on a gorilla pod taken with a camera on another gorilla pod?))
I came back alone in both planes and landed on August 13th or so (can't even remember, I was so sleepy X_x). Good surprise: Dad had bought (for himself) Mario Kart Wii. Since he bought the game, the save file would go to him, but fortunately Mario Kart Wii allows up to 4 save slots, so I played too~ (My friend code is 0645-7949-8264, for those who have it too :3)
I basically went into massive-coding mode (wake up at 8~9, get on compie, code, make breakfast at 12:30, eat, code again, cook for dad or get him to cook when he comes back (~19:30), code a little while, then relax a little by playing Mario Kart Wii with father), yet it was way insufficient for me to code like 25% of all the stuff I planned to do. My todo list still has like 5 big projects and a few dozens little-batch-scripts/
lifehacks-to-write-some-day.
On one day, some classmate from last year came to "visit", but actually to get his laptop fixed. His NTFS hard drive got corrupt somehow, including the boot sector, you can guess the rest x_X Ubuntu couldn't mount the disk, even when "repaired" using Windoze's fixboot utility, and of course he didn't partition it to save at least the important files, and of course he never backed up anything online, even with my suggestion of Mozy's free 2GB online storage a few months before the incident! We did play some videogames too, that was nice. He also brought Final Fantasy Advent Children on DVD with him, so I ripped it and watched it without trouble.
I shared it on BitTorrent too, look for it on TPB (I won't direct link to it, but it's a ~850 MB Matroska file, encoded with x264 and dual audio (Japanese + English) and subtitles in most languages)And that's basically it, until Monday evening, when the rest of the family came back to Canada. Noooes D:
As for today (Tuesday, August 26th), happy birthday to me! And happy back-to-school-ness on the same day. Yay, what a nice present, education system!
~
I'm too cheap to make individual gifts! 
Annoyed
Linux, it's been about 5 months. Now I can finally take pride in the operating system I use. Seriously, once you've got Linux running and tweaked to death, the other OSes look like they're 5 years behind it 
For instance, 
Movingon
Isolated
Will look into those next weekend...
Mesmerized
Warning: I have no idea about what would happen if a subscriber tried to use this userscript. It's very unlikely that something bad will happen, but I'm not taking any responsibilities.
Zeal
