tkh’s blog

Coffeemaker

I cleaned up the coffeemaker with vinegar in this evening. I knew it’s very easy, but I have been so lazy so I have never done it. You just need to pour the same amount of white vinegar and water to the water tank and run the coffeemaker. Then thoroughly wash it with water and run a cycle with water to remove remaining vinegar. When I did it, I saw lots of buildups due to hardwater. After the cleaning, I dripped coffee and it tasted very well and even milder. It’s so surprising that such an easy cleaning makes big difference on taste.

Writing

Yesterday’s colloquium was about technical writing by the youngest faculty in CS department. He covered all aspects of technical writing and it was very interesting.

Movie Night

Just came back from the first CS movie night in this year. We’ve seen Donnie Darko, and it is an interesting movie.

Swimming

I went swimming this evening. As I haven’t gone swimming about a month due to the travel to Japan, I was so reluctant to go swimming. I was afraid if I could keep swimming for 500 meters, but I was able to do much more and actually I swam 1500 meters. I need to make this habit again.

Carrying Guitar

I think I should write about the guitar carrying from Japan. I safely came back to the US with my guitar. Here is the whole story.

I didn’t buy a new gig bag for my guitar since all gig bags I’ve seen at guitar shops in Ochanomizu are bigger than my old soft case. When I checked in the big suitcase at the American Airline check-in counter, there was a sign that says you can only carry-on one bag. I was pissed off because I have never seen that kind of limitations. I was asked by an airline employee if I can board the earlier airplane. They didn’t tell me the reason, but obviously they overbooked the flight I was supposed to fly with. I thought that I could negotiate with them so that I can carry-on both my guitar and backpack, but since I was supposed to see my friend I haven’t seen for three years at the airport, I declined the offer and got the boarding pass for the scheduled flight. When my wife and I was waiting for him, I saw a man with an electrical guitar. I asked him if he was able to carry-on a guitar with him before. He said yes, and told me that electrical guitars can be put in the window-side compartments and if it still cannot, flight attendance will put it in a business class compartment which is slightly bigger than the ones for economy class. After the short conversation, I noticed that his gig bag has Ibanez brand, so I asked him if he has an Ibanez guitar, and told him that I have one too. He told me that he works at Ibanez and flying to L.A. to carry the guitar and attend NAMM show. I was so surprised by the coincidence. When I boarded the airplane, I was not asked anything by the airline employees. I was able to find a compartment to put my guitar and it perfectly fitted even though the airplane is Boeing 777 which is reported to have smaller compartment than other models. When I get to Dallas Ft. Worth airport, I passed the immigration and customs checkpoints. After that, I passed the X-ray gate with no problem. When I was waiting for the airplane, I saw several people carrying acoustic guitars. Even a woman was carrying a guitar without case. When I boarded the airplene to Albuquerque, the compartments were much larger than the ones in Boeing 777, so I could easily put my guitar in it.

I think as long as you carry your guitar with a gig bag, there will be no problem.

Class

I covered the first lecture for the advanced graphics class since my advisor is out of town. I showed students the demos so they can grab the ideas on what will be covered in the class and the term project. They all seemed to be interested in vertex/fragment shaders.

DVD & HDD

I installed the DVD burner and the HDD. They both seem to work well, but I haven’t burned a disc yet. The Maxtor 250GB HDD seems to be very fast. When I measured performance with hdparm, the read speed was 57MB/sec. I assigned 120GB for /home and the rest for /opt. If I don’t like this partitioning, I’d use parted to change it.

Gadgets

I bought a DVD burner, 250GB hard drive, and USB to PS controller converter in Akihabara. When I bought the USB to PS converter, I was little bit worried since I wasn’t sure if it can be used under Linux. I connected it this morning and fortunately it worked like a charm. I used a tool called jscalibrator to calibrate the analog sticks and checked that all buttons work. Now I can use PS controllers to control OpenGL apps, and games, of course .

Came back

I came back to the US last night. I had so many things to do in Japan so I wasn’t able to write blog. Here are some of the pictures I’ve taken in Japan.