Archive for April, 2008

Earthquake

Posted by Akash under Life on April 19th,2008. 2 Comments.

At 4:37 AM, I was sound asleep. Suddenly, my eyes shot open. My bed was shaking, and things were rattling in my room. It was more like vibrations, and nothing was visibly moving. This lasted for about 15 to 30 seconds. I thought it was just a truck or the heater went on, and I went back to sleep after I checked the time.

At 5:45, my alarm went off. I hit the snooze button. It went off again at 5:55 and I got up, brushed my teeth, and went down for breakfast. My mom had the radio on, and the announcers said that there was an earthquake at 4:37 AM. It was centered in Southern Illinois and had a magnitude of 5.4 (later, it was changed to 5.2). I knew that the shaking I felt in the morning was the earthquake. I wasn’t really surprised; I knew that there was a fault down there and before, many people were saying that we were due for a large earthquake. Luckily, this wasn’t catastrophic, and there was no damage in the Chicago area, and I think a little damage in the southern parts of Illinois. At school, a few people said they freaked out and this was their “near death experience,” while others, like me, felt it and continued with their lives. About half of the students did not feel anything at all. My dad, who was up and downstairs in the kitchen, did not feel it. My mom and I were both sleeping upstairs, and did feel it.

I felt that this was an experience to note for the future, thought it wasn’t live-changing. People from California probably think that this was nothing, but for us, it’s a pretty big deal.

Can I ever make up my mind?

Posted by Akash under Internet, Life on April 13th,2008. 1 Comment.

Nope.

I switched back to WordPress because the new version looks much better and there are a lot of glitches with my own CMS-type-thing. It took my many hours to transfer stuff, but it’s all good. The main difficulty was transferring posts. I managed to do that by importing the database from mySQL, find/replace everything to match a WordPress import file, and import to WordPress. Unfortunately, I could not import my comments. I’m sure there’s a way, but it really doesn’t matter.

Last weekend, it was my first time driving! On Saturday, my mom decided to take me to a park/parking lot to drive around. At first, she only said we are going to “start the car,” but I ended up driving around and stuff. It takes a little time to adjust, but after that, it’s easy. As my mom was driving me home, she asked if I wanted to go around the neighborhood. This is very shocking coming from my mom. Driving on the real road on the first day… I didn’t expect that. I turned down the offer because I wasn’t comfortable driving around with little kids playing on the streets. The next day, my dad took me driving, and it got really boring since he wouldn’t let me go somewhere new after parking a billion times and driving around in circles. I wanted to drive in the neighborhood this time, but he wouldn’t let me. I hope I can be on the streets pretty soon.

I’m probably going to get my license in December (I turn 16 in May, but due to the Illinois driving laws, you must hold a permit for nine months before obtaining a license). Even then, I won’t have a car, so it won’t be that great. Blah. Whatever.

Everyone’s Doing It!

Posted by Akash under Internet on April 1st,2008. No Comments.

Yep. Another one of those cool website posts. This entry’s purpose is to show everyone the groovy applications/websites I use. Actually, it’s mainly for me. Maybe someday I’ll come back to this and say how lame these were or something. They are in no particular order.

– Object Dock is a really nice toolbar that is very mac-esque. I’m really sick and tired of Windows. Nothing works properly on my computer anymore! I’m getting a mac as soon as I can. Anyways, this program is very nifty and easy to use. You can manually add little shortcuts, including a start menu. You can change the size, background of the toolbar, and other special effects. It also displays programs that open. It’s very easy to use and fun to play around with.

The one and only iTunes. I’ve tested out several music library programs, and none are comparable to iTunes. It has a very neat layout, great and simple organization system, and it lets you take control of your music. The iTunes store is abundant. I would buy from it more if the price was less, though. I really like playing with the Cover Flow. It’s so easy to find music (instead of digging through thousands of songs) with the search feature. Syncing your iPod is so simple, as well. iTunes just keeps everything so neat and tidy automatically!

Last.fm is another program that does things for you. I like that. All you have to do is a simple one-time set-up, and you’re good to go. Last.fm basically stalks what music you listen to, and feeds you new music that you may like. You can listen to 30-second samples or full songs, go through recommendations, and find out more about your favorite artist. It’s a great tool for anyone who likes listening to music and you can sync it up with iTunes, WMP, and probably other media programs, as well.

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site similar to StumbleUpon. At first, I used to use SU with FireFox and Flock, but then I switched over to Safari, and SU doesn’t work with Safari. I heard a lot about del.icio.us, so I decided to try it out. It’s basically the same thing, except more simple. I actually like this better than SU because it’s not so complicated and you can discover cool sites at the same time.

I’ll probably add a few later. I like a ton of more programs, but I don’t feel like going into detail.

Quick update on life: I’ve been busy with school and Guys and Dolls, but this week is spring break so I haven’t been doing anything except hanging out with friends and sleeping and wasting time on the computer. As for my blog, I still have stuff to update. I want to add a section entitled, “OMG look at my desktop!” but I don’t know if I should put it on the sidebar or not.