Brian's World

Free Webhosting & Tired?

November 14th, 2006 Posted in College, Life | 2 Comments »

Right now I can’t sleep. Its 12:40am on Tuesday and I can’t sleep a wink. Maybe its because the TV is tuned into football and all the lights are on or maybe I’m thinking too much. I’ll spill some thoughts in a blog and maybe I’ll get sleepy.

First I should say that I’ve never been a fan of doing things when you can’t sleep. I find them very very silly, which is why I wonder why I’m doing this right now. The only time I’ve ever done things when I couldn’t sleep was when working on an ARG I had to post some content at a wierd hour for the players to dabble with while I slept. I could never see how someone could get sleepier from reading or watching tv, personally I would need to attend a math class to get sleepier. Something I cannot do at 12:47am.

A few thoughts on my mind.

Nikola Tesla, I wonder if he could make me a teleporter. That would be very neat. Too bad he’s dead. I like the movie The Prestige, you should check it out!

I also wonder if someone like the russian’s has his death ray, if I’m not alive anytime soon I would start to think conspiracy.. but this post would be deleted because no one will read it the instant I post it.

Another interesting thought is the Tiger Times need for a server. Dell will not give me one unless I move to a state on a specific list of theirs. I emailed HP but might look into suppliers like Tiger Direct soon. If anyone has a rack mounted server that could run Windows XP please contact me.

No movement on the million dollar idea, I really need a google server to do the work for me. Then I can make the money easily. No, chances are you don’t understand.

I officially got my Eagle Award this weekend, it was so so. I’ll post details about everything and my speech later. Sorry for messing everything up love.

Dan is drumming a beat on the bed below me. I’m so totally lost.

Shelby is sleeping.

Ok, now to my completely random idea. An idea for a new club at RPI just popped into my head. While I don’t have a specific name hammered out, I’m between Web Development Club or Tech Development Club. The idea behind the club is as follows: get a few servers and use them to provide web space for members of the club. The servers are controlled by the club, not the dotCIO people. You might be asking why? Because RPI provides very basic webspace to its students and if you ask me I think there is a need for students to have very affordable access to webspace and serverspace better suited to their needs. The club could provide space and access to its members on some type of tier or dues system, depending on the financial contributions possible by the Union or whoever does that. The servers would have things like PHP, Mysql, CGI, . Fully controlled by the group. Personally, I would save about $50 a year with such a group if they could host my NON COMMERCIAL sites which i use for learning PHP and things like that. I expect there are similiar students at RPI?

I know this blog is read by few people, and even fewer RPI students, but if anyone is interested in joining said group let me know. If there are more than 2 people I’ll make a facebook group. Pass the word. If anyone knows how to start a club here at RPI, please contact me. I have no clue what to do.
In other news my girlfriend will kill me because I used the word “Server” several hundred times in that last paragraph. 🙁

I’m in a Laser Tag Team called “Tag Team”. I go by the nickname “FBI Bri”… lol.. pretty sweet huh? Check out our myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/tagteamlasers

A continuation of a story from before I love Katie a lot. I miss her a very much right now. My english can be excused, its 1am. I dislike having to rush back late Sunday because it translates to very bad goodbyes.

I’m feeling slightly more tired.. maybe the laptop on my legs is simulating the baby drinking warm milk sensation.. who knows.

Grr to classes that fill up before I’m in them. Both options I had for Humanities and Social Sciences are full now and I emailed both professors who both said no to sneaking me in. So I guess its 4 math/science/engineering things next semester, and then when I’m suppose to take Diff EQ sometime next year I’ll double with 2 H&SS to makeup time.

Ok, Time for sleep, 5 whole hours of it.

Please contact if interested in the club.

Good night moon.

Sitting Silent

November 8th, 2006 Posted in College, Problems, Stupid People | 1 Comment »

Rarely do I write a blog with a title that directly relates to the content of the blog. This time it kinda does. I transgress into RPI TV in the bottom chunk. I develop a vision I like a lot, and if funding was available it could be a reality.
Where to start.

This week has been very hectic. After a rather relaxing weekend (I would recommend The Man of the Year btw) I awoke Monday realizing that I had school. Uh oh. And I had school work to do. I had a CS test that day, which I failed to “parse by reference” so I’m not quite sure how it will be graded. I could potentially get half off the entire thing, or just one questions. He only grades each question on a 0, 50, 100 basis. Hrm…

I managed to get the take home test for Growing Up In America done by the end of Tuesday which was a tad late but that class doesn’t count for anything.
Today I woke up at 6:15 to start studying Calculus which I had at 11:00am this morning. While I gave cramm a new meaning for myself, I think I did ok on the test. We’ll see when it gets graded, someday.

It was a relief to have all the academic stress off my shoulders, onto other topics. My main concern is my Eagle Ceremony sunday, as well as stuffs for Friday the 10th. For the ceremony, its been difficult to coordinate everything when I don’t talk to the scouts on at meetings on a regular basis. I could call but I haven’t gotten that worried about it. My experience with scouting is that things will fall into play if everyone does there part, of course my brother has a part so idk.. jk.. kevin will do fine.

Tomorrow I just remembered I’m suppose to register for classes during my Calc class.. who knows what I’ll do. I’m trying to take “Intro to Communications Theory”… because Communications as a minor is as close as i think i can get to television here at RPI the engineering school.

I’m also upset because I’ve learned very little helpful knowledge so far. I can say the most helpful thing I’ve learned has come from a student and an hour or two of computer work. I mean yes, I know now what I divergence test is.. or I can “pass by reference”.. but when I go back to South Hadley for the holidays and the summer, I’ll have a job, I hope its the same one I had last year. But I mean I’ll go back, make a new resume because I should, and add what… nothing…. well nothing really related to school at least. I’m doing some Microsoft Webnars in my spare time to stay current with Group Policy and Imageing and everything with Vista coming out soon. I would have expected a school like RPI to be on the bleeding edge, not the butter knife cutting one. I understand not every student comes in as a Freshman knowing how to do stuff, but the program should accept the fact that some people know more than others and let us learn at our appropriate levels. If i have to do another “tricky” lab from Malik I’m going to email him and be like please give me something that I can’t do. Ok, I lied…. he gave us one tricky problem. I could have done it, I think I know a way but I put it off until the day of. I’ll still be over the limit for points anyways.

I also wish I could minor in Information Technology, or whatever it is that puts me incharge of servers. As a CSYS (I learned the abbreviation yesterday) I fear I’ll be locked away in a corner writing a program or designing some wierd piece of hardware. Personally I’d rather be deploying software, designing a website, writing some scripts, something that keeps me learning. I hate doing the same thing 800 times.. yet I spend each summer cloning computers… lol

I spend most of my time at RPI TV meetings sitting silently laughing to myself, especially when it comes to the Programming Report. I just conducted a very brief web-study looking at the productions. I see very few (i.e 0) that stand out to me as edited productions, and even fewer that stand out as something that was planned by students, not a live event. Which makes me think, where are things going wrong. Clearly the Executive people are trying to push shows, but as I’ve seen there is a disconnect between the planning/filming/editing stages. What really got me going on this topic was when I was filming a Student Senate meeting, people were discussing WRPI (the radio station) and there several year long history of “problems”. A question was raised if RPI TV ever had problems like that, it was answered “Ha, no, RPI is way to young in its infancy to have anything like that.” The Ha almost made me feel people aren’t receptive to it, and this was coming from the person who was elected to be incharge of all the clubs. From old meeting minutes, it looks like RPI TV has been around for 2 or 3 years. If you ask me, it takes about a year to get established and well respected, if you haven’t gotten it by then something isn’t right. Tiger Times gained acceptance and respect when we started off the school year airing daily… with RPI TV its wierd. Partially I like to compare it to Tiger Times because there are similiar goal, but RPI TV is more a station, where Tiger Times was more a show.

How would I fix RPI TV? First I would give them a home. If WPI and The Poly both get homes, why can’t RPI TV. By home I mean an office, collaboration space, studio. I walked into a studio to get some gear last week, maybe it was the “RPI-TV” studio, maybe not.. if you ask me it was more of a closet with green walls and bright lights. There was no real studio setup in there, nothing to facilitate editing or filming on the spot. Things would have to be setup before anything could happen. Personally, my insta-fix would be a budget. A budget that included some capital moneys to establish a studio or base for RPI TV. Personally, I would take the studio.. if it is RPI TV’s.. and add two rooms, one for Linear Productions and for Post-Productions. The studio would have a decent sized space for filming in, with and L-Shaped cutout. Actually I’m starting to like this idea a lot. The studio would have instudio cameras wired in the Linear Suite, with some Monitors, decks, audio mixer, edit controllers, etc. All that stuff would be pretty permanent, or only used for special cases. The editing room would have a mac or two, and some head end stuff.. like a digital video server that could stream content or even connect into Media Ops somehow. I now have a vision. I’m in the mood to make this happen to, anyone else in on the idea?
See, I can to RPI expecting bigger and better things, all I’ve found so far is bigger lecture halls and better cafeteria food. Rensselaer’s motto is “Why not change the world?”, well.. I’d like to do my part to change the world with Television.. and right now I want to start at RPI.

With a more permanent home we could actually get together with people where there is equiptment and the ability to follow a tangent. If the computer is all setup and ready to go, or the camera is always in the studio.. I think RPI TV news could be pushing weekly, if not daily news out. Ok, I’ll bring that to the level of knowing it could be done, not just thinking it. RPI TV news is just an example…

Yes, portable equiptment is great for a lot of things, most things that have made it on the air so far… but what’s preventing other things from going on TV could very well be the over-portability of it. The lack of stability or commonality.

I hope this gets read and looked upon in a good note, I don’t want to be viewed as the Marx of RPI TV or the extremist.. I like the term experienced optomist. I know, I’m not experienced with any of this university stuff at all, I don’t know the budget, E-board, anyone else.. I just know a little about TV….

Happy Halloween

November 1st, 2006 Posted in College | 1 Comment »

Yesterday was Halloween, I hope everyone had a splendid evening trick or treating or attending a Halloween party. Personally I did none of the above. It was very unfestive and depressing. I know that I wasn’t exactly trying to make it festive, but I’m not in a position to do a whole lot. I ate my usual two hot dogs for dinner, the same thing I’ve eaten for every halloween I remember (ok, maybe one hot dog when I was little) but that used to allow me to eat fast and get outside quick.

Instead I worked on a computer science project, I’ve figured out the best approach to it but unfortunately I’m stuck on one small part.. but I’m really just out of time. I think I can take a 30 on it because I already have 150pts… and I assume another 50 are coming… plus 30 = 230.. and there are 3 more projects for me to get another 20 points on (250 = A)

This weekend was rather yucky. Six Flags cancelled because they were afraid of the rain, we called them back to find the offices open and there was no word about closing the park from the people working the phones. It was very “oh these are HS kids we can blow them off”ish. I did play laser tag, I like that game. I hope the show went over well, we ended up filming in the middle of nowhere about 3 times until we got it right.

I’ve decided certain departures are bad and need to not happen.

Oh yea, yesterday South Hadley High School has a “chemical spill day” so everyone got the day off. Katie came out here to visit for the morning/afternoon which was very pleasent. I felt bad because I had a previous committment with RPI TV to film the student senate meetings. If you know me, you know I have a wierd twisted dedication to filming/getting things on air at all costs. Its a bad habit most of the time, unless the production is for you.. then you like having me on your side.

My next thought is about a job. I heavily dislike not working or not having a source of my private income. I dislike having to use a debit card and then have my parents scrutinize all my purchases. Unfortunately I don’t have much “real-world” work experience. I’ve never worked in food services or hospitality. I’ve worked as an “Assistant Network Administrator” at my high school where I ran a “ghosting” setup, deployment, and configuration operation for approximately 250 computers. I’ve also worked as “Technical Assistant” in the local Cable Studio, where I pretty much filmed shows, programmed them to play, and held down the fort when the manager took a vacation or two.

I’m thinking about a few ideas right now… If I’m smart, I might try my hand at some “Topcoder” competitions that have cash prizes… the downside is that I probably won’t win compared to the other kids out there. Its hard for a freshmen to compete with seniors majoring in CS. My other thoughts are around campus, I can’t drive anywhere (no car), so I see that as my only option. Unforunately I can’t find any good directory where jobs might be listed *that would fit me*.

I have a CS lab in about 30 minutes.. its about searching.

Umm yea, I think I have a tv show to watch or something.

Cya later!