Ranok’s Ramblings

Hello everyone,

I’m taking just a few minutes from my busy day of painting, sanding, weed whacking and boat driving to update you on my past few days in Temagami. I arrived on the 22nd and spent a good sum of time trying to get the water running, and the propane working. The pipes hadn’t been drained properly last fall, and there were a few cracked valves that needed soldering. Once that was done, we headed to Langskib (the other camp) to perform the same tasks there, all of which went very smoothly. Since then, we’ve been cleaning, painting, hauling stuff, just general preparation stuff. It’s going very well and in a few days some more staff will arrive and we’ll get underway.

Hope everyone’s summer is going well and they are finding some time to have some fun,

Ranok

As some of you know, this summer (and many before that) I spent paddling in northern Ontario (and beyond). This year will be my second year on staff, and I’m one of the few who will be going up early to set this up and prepare for the influx of staff, campers and parents, who will take the islands by force. I’m leaving on my 564 mile journey on Wednesday, which I’m breaking up into a few chunks. I’m going to visit some friends in Westport, and spend the night in Potsdam, visiting Lauren and some of my other friends who are there. The next day, I continue my journey north, hopefully getting picked up in a boat (otherwise it’s a long swim) where I’ll start working.

For the first portion of the summer, I’ll be cleaning up rodent scat and prying open doors to reveal… more rodent scat. After the other staff members arrive, we’ll fix canoes, and prepare the rest of camp for the campers to arrive. Once they hit the docks, I will hopefully be assisting a trip of young men out into the wilderness for 3 weeks, portaging from lake to lake, and longs days under the sun and above the water.

I’ve been going to this camp since I was but a young lad, and although I love every minute of being there, there’s no way to communicate that with people who haven’t experienced it. When I try to share my journeys, I can sense that the deeper meaning of my travels is lost, and all is left is a week-long canoe paddle around a lake.

If possible, I will try to post pictures, or keep people updated, but part of the experience is being on a remote island, so if you don’t hear from me, I hope you’re having a wonderful summer, and I’m excited to see you in the fall.

That’s the reaction I’ve gotten from Clarkson for, wait for it, staying more than 24 hours past my last final. My final ended at 11:45 yesterday, and I’m hopefully going to be gone by 1:30 today. I say hopefully because everytime the maintainence people come knocking on my door (starting at 6AM this morning) they just can’t wait for me to leave. While I understand they need to clean the room, there are other rooms to be cleaned which will be rented out for senior week, and ours is not one of them as the attached room is occupied until after then.

Oh well, I guess I’ll survive.

Peace and chow,

Ranok

As the semester is coming to a close, I thought I’d list some of the things I was able to get done this semester and what I’d like to progress on in the future.

Accomplishments:

1. Released the Open Server Platform version 0.2
2. Managed COSI’s Zimbra server
3. Took the following classes: Compilers, Operating Systems, Network Security, Intro. to Psych, E. Linear Algebra.

Goals:

1. Polish off Wiki Wide Web
2. Work on OSP
3. Have a relaxing, fun summer
4. Work on MOSS

That’s all that comes to mind at the moment, I’m sure I’ll think of more as time goes by.

Peace and chow,

Ranok

As school is starting to come to a close, for many of use, rather than a time for relaxing with friends and preparing for summer internships or jobs, it is a time of stress, studying and many sleepless nights, either working of projects, or tossing back and forth thinking of what needs to be done. I want to wish all those who are in a similar situation good luck with their projects and finals, and encourage them to take a few hours to do something not school related, go for a walk, play a game, or just hang out with friends.

For the next 3ish weeks of school, here’s what is on my plate:

• 3 exams this week: Linear Algebra, Psych and Compilers
• Formal Methods homework (temporal logic)
• Finish semantic analysis and add code generation to my compiler (shudder)
• Do a Java HashMap speed comparision
• Take a small Psych quiz
• Write up my research on AppArmor and 0-day exploits and present to the class
• Complete my paper for WikiSym 2008
• Add some substantial code to MOSS so it can be demoed
• Study for my exams: Operating Systems, Linear Algebra, Psychology

Once all that is done, I can head home (or not) and relax and work on Wiki Wide Web and other projects until I head off to Canada for the summer, returning for Lauren’s birthday then working here in Potsdam for the remainder of the summer.

Wish me luck,

Ranok

Generally, I keep my opinions on this rather touchy topic to myself or to my close friends. However, I think our globalized world has reached a point where people need to get their issues resolved and stop fighting about religion. Please be aware that these are my opinions, and I’m not an expert by any means on any religion, but I do try to keep informed (I’ve read most of the Bible and the Our’an).

After watching “Fitna“, a short movie/slide-show about Islam being an inherently violent religion bent on the assimilation and control of the world, I thought it was time to give my 2 cents. In quite a bit of America, Islam is blamed for the 9/11 attacks and everything else that’s wrong in the world. This fear of Islam is being used to remove our rights and freedoms, and I think that it is sad that our country has come to this. After watching “Fitna”, I think that it incites hatred and anger by selectively picking verses from the Qur’an and showing clips of extremists calling for blood. If you read the Qur’an, you’ll find wonderful verses such as Surah 2: 109,110 and Surah 2: 195 (I know there are more, but this is what I could find just reading part of Surah 2). If you look to the Holy Bible, you’ll find equally incendiary verses: Exodus 1:16, Numbers 31:17, etc…

I don’t think that the problem is the religion, but the extremists of any type. Those who hate those that differ from them, and would kill those who do not see their way. I think that there are extremists of most all religions, not just Islam. Watch “Camp Jesus“, which is a documentary of an evangelical bible camp that indoctrinates young children to “fight for Jesus” and that siding with the conservative right is politically the only religiously ‘right’ thing to do. I think that this is a terrifying form of extremism right in our backyard. One only has to look to the KKK to see another Christian extremism sect that is bent on the destruction of everyone who they don’t like.

Does the existance of the Taliban mean that Islam is inherently evil and violent, if so, then doesn’t that mean that Christianity is equally evil because the KKK identify themselves as Christian? Should we hate all Mormans because the fundamentalists are polygamists who ‘marry’ girls as young as 14 and have as many 65 ‘wives’? I’m asking you to answer these questions yourself, and perhaps see that one religion isn’t evil and another is good. To modify a popular saying, “Religion doesn’t kill people, people kill people”. I think this is a true statement and should be taken to heart. I sincerely believe that a religion that teaches only hate and violence will never have a mainstream following, and that there are people who are scared or ignorant and rather than face these fears, they try to destroy all opposition to what they think. These people don’t come from a single religion, but all beliefs and religions.

Only by educating our kin and teaching ethics and morals can we hope to eradicate extremist violence. I am not calling for people to abandon their beliefs, but to be open and respectful to others. Humans have enough differences (skin tone, height, language, etc…) to fight about, they don’t need to fight about things that can’t be seen (religion and beliefs).

Hopefully people will read and think about this,

Ranok

For many of you, this week ahead is one of stress, late nights and falling asleep on a pile of books. I want to wish everyone the best of luck on your exams, and I hope that everyone has a happy and healthy vacation, regardless of what you choose to do with it.

                                      Peace and chow,

                                        Ranok

After much aprehension because my enrollment period was so late (today at 8:30AM),  I was able to get into all of my classes:

• CS444 Operating Systems
• CS445 Compiler Construction
• CS457 Computer and Network Security
• CS458 Formal Methods of Program Verification
• MA239 Elementary Linear Algebra
• PY151 Introduction to Psychology

Well, I'm really excited for the semester to come, and I'm glad I was able to get into the classes I wanted to.

                 Peace and chow,

                        Ranok

After this gets posted, there will be no doubt, I'm an evil computer science student, I loathe annoyances as they remind me of seg faults and core dumps, I can't stand spam like I can't stand useless log entries to dmesg, I am heartless. But, now that everything is out in the open, I will share some of my dirty little pleasures that I derive so much fun from:

1. After a certain professor used 'clearly' to show how simple some things are (sometimes, they are about as clear as mud), I've decided to use clearly, followed by a bogus fact or proof, as no one would refute a 'clearly'.
2. This one is for those distant relatives who have your email, but nothing important to send you, so they just forward jokes that got forwarded to them. My favorite response is to start forwarding spam I get to them, so they can feel as special, and as loved I feel when I get pictures of dogs in funny hats or chain letters .

On a completely different note, I've fallen completely in love with Lisp, sorry, but now it seemes that everything in the world is just a list waiting to be LOOPed through, car'd or cdr'd. It's just like the XKCD comic, last night I was drifting through parenthesises and recursion, free of syntax and compiler restrictions.

For a COSI project, I'm thinking of playing with Ubuntu and thinclients, perhaps I could make an Ubuntu build that could be managed easily, and stay up to date.

                 Peace and chow,

                                      Ranok

    Today is blog action day, which a kind of study to see how much of an impact the unified front of bloggers can make. This year's topic is the environment, which is a very important issue in my mind.

     The current state of the environment is not looking good, this is mostly because of the lack of centralized push for newer standards. The problems lie with the big corporations that control the government and are afraid of changing the status quo. They claim that cleaning up their act will hurt the economy, but the companies that do inovate, and use less energy in a more efficient ways tend to do very well. I know as a consumer, if a company is green, I will pay a premium for their services or products. For example, if there was a second food service provider on campus besides Aramark that charged a little more, but offered locally grown (organic?) food, that wasn't served in styro-foam, I'd gladly pay extra, and feel good about it (as would my GI tract).

    Since the government is doing nothing but wasting money and causing problems, the change needs to come from the business owners, don't be afriad to change the status quo, the consumers are waiting for you, be brave, and you will reap the benefits (and feel all warn and fuzzy too).

              Peace and chow,

                    ranok