The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, and the Insane

The Good: our hero
The Bad: Cat Woman, Poison Ivy, Harlequin (all women?)
The Ugly: Scarface, Penguin
The Insane: Joker

Some of these tags overlap each other.

OpenOffice + LaTex

OpenOffice has an extension so that LaTex style equation can be input, it's called OOoLatex *blush*. I've been playing with it for half an hour and can't figure out how to use it. On hindsight, it's properly better to stick to LaTex alone or OOo alone, each has its advantages. Will give this OO0Latex *blush again* another try some other time.

Btw, Google Docs used to be able to handle LaTex equations (awesome!) but that feature has been depreciated. It now can barely handle fractions awkwardly and fails on exponents conversion. Why is it that it's so much worse when a feature is taken away rather than never being there at all?

In other news, Batman just said "E is still equal to mc^2 last time I checked". I'm watching the old Batman Animated Series while trying to make up an exam for my class tomorrow.

Silver cloud

Every cloud has a silver lining right? So what do you call a small misfortune followed by something really good?... a whole cloud all silver! Well I sprained my ankle yesterday, not very badly though. And just when I was depressed about having to stay home, DH brought home a brand new phone for me. Not just any phone either, this is one of those cutting edge fancy ones. Before this I had the most basic phone, that 's used mainly for, well... making phone call. Now I'm posting blog from my new phone! DH calls it "the new boyfriend". Okay let's see if this really publish the post.

Ways to do and not to do Blogger

I've been rather impressed with blogger's help directions and the ease of things. For example, do you know that if you want to move a blog from one google account from another, all you need to do is follow "How do I move a blog between accounts?" I'm just surprised that their knowledge base contain a question like this, and their application makes it easily doable as opposed to some hacks by users.

That said, I still wish that Blogger has static page built in so I don't have to go through hack like this one. But I guess that's against the nature of a blog (as a stream of consciousness kind of thing). But really, people don't just need to record events in their every day life. They need to be moored down by certain events in life... a good movie, a happy day, a memorable book. Static pages anchor things down. Every time I find a more or less interesting post in a blog, and want to know more about its author (to see whether it's worth the time reading the other posts), I wish there were static pages that the author chooses (or not) to present him/herself. And no, a simple "about me" page doesn't do a person's life justice!

Hugo results and Anathem

This year's Hugo result is in. There was a race for best novel between Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard book and Neal Stephenson's Anathem and The Graveyard book won.
I'm a fan of both authors and I've read both books recently so I really hoped Anathem would win. The Graveyard book to me was just a cute little book, intended for children while Anathem was wider in scope and ideas, and taught me so much more.

I guess another reason that I love Anathem is that I'm partial to the cloister theme, it reminds me of Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose. As I finished Anathem, I have a strange longing to be in a community like that, with people that are not dedicated to self-promotions. It seems like such a simple life, with seniors that you can look up to and trust, and a sense of camaraderie... things that modern days easily lack. After reading the book, for a while, I wanted to wear an avout garment all day long so as not to have to worry about what clothes to put on (and have an excuse not to).

The idea of the The 10,000 Year Clock by the Long Now Foundation that inspired Anathem also appeals to me with it anachronism. Here are people who are not rushing, people who realize that long after we are gone, life goes on. I can just imagine thousands of years from now, our descendants stumble upon the clock possibly broken and in ruins in a remote corner of the world. What an adventure that must be!

And then there's the chant of the Centenarians. In my imagination, their chant is a bit different from the music provided with the book. A few months after I read the book, NPR's music has a piece about throat singing by Tibetian Gyuto monks, and I was elated. This is the sound that my imagination was hinting at. This is how the centenarians sound.

An interesting point about Anathem is Stephenson's made up words. I know a lot of people couldn't get through the book because of the vocabulary. Even xkcd has a comics about how difficult it is, which totally surprise me because it gave me no problem at all. Before each chapter of the book where the word will be used, there's even a definition of it. It wasn't a hard read by any means, in fact, I remember sitting down with the book one night and couldn't stop reading until morning. But the coined words are fun. I wrote up the definition of Anathem on my Starbuck cup and was carrying it around for a while, having fun looking at the expression on people's face when they tried to read it.

War!

I had a Civ session with a few people that DH met online and been playing with today. One guy told me that DH is very lucky to have a wife who games. Needless to say, I was flattered. I'm sure there are fewer females who play Civ than males. I know it's even rarer for a gamer to have his wife liking the same game. But really, I didn't do anything! All I had to do was sit back and enjoy getting praises for being myself. Aren't nerdy girls lucky? My reply to the guy was "Well, I was lucky my husband introduced me to this game". Because really, without his effort to make the game approachable to me, his perseverance in making it enjoyable for me, I would be missing out on one of the good things in life. So here's to you, partner!
That said, playing with people is entirely different from playing with computer. One of the guy sent his troops to attack me. I found out then that my playing before was completely un-vigorous, to use a mathematical term. I vaguely knew what strengths and weaknesses each unit has, and didn't care much about certain level-ups that they can achieve. For a while, we were just moving troops back and forth to anticipate the other person's attack, very much like playing chess (which I hate). The tediousness of having to watch out for my enemy's every move, having to stop and calculate every turn frustrated me. It was to the point that all that kept me from quitting was the thought that my opponent would think that I'm no good because I'm a girl. Yeah, being a nerd girl has its pressure, even if wholly imagined. For a while, I couldn't figure out why he's so aggressive to me, someone who just joined their game, is new to Civ (compared to the other guy who's been playing for about 20 years) and not only that, a girl! (yup, I'm sexist too). Then it dawned on me that he's only attacking me because I had the top score, and my land is near his and that I was a potential threat. So I made peace with DH (you didn't think I would be friendly with him in the game, did you?) and asked for help. I managed to kill off my enemy's troops without too many losses. Now DH and I are gathering our armies to go kick his ass! At least that's what DH said: "I will avenge you!" (and looting the other guy, I'm sure).
After the session, I had a chat with a Verizon customer service person, and I almost chewed his head off. My aggressiveness surprised me. I'm usually the kind of person whom when told that a certain feature is not available, just take it as is without asking questions and finding work-arounds. Being aggressive in the game has somehow translated to being aggressive in real life. One could only guess what would happen if I continue playing this game...

Hello, world!

This is a chronicle of the life of a geek wife, the joys and trials of a nerd married to her geek husband.

Some of this will be funny, like last weekend, we were playing civ (Sid Meier's Civilization IV, with Rise of Mankind mod, earth map). DH played for Mansa Musa, and was having health problems in his city (his only city). DH: "I think Timbuktu is becoming unhealthy next turn --- *ffaarrrt*".