Exam Style Studying

It seems I was at Mills library yesterday already in the whole exam style study mode (I know it does feel early). It just goes to show how much changes in your final year, if you thought you had no time before then you now have less than no time.

On the bright side however I did get my first 3 pages done so I'm off to a good start.

cell post

It's kind of one of those days that I don't feel motivated to work. Maybe I'll do my laundry today instead

Talent

I wasn't gonna blog this but:

No Water

My housemate just alerted me that there is no water currently in our house this probably has something to do with the construction crews outside.



Not to be picky or anything but isn't a memo suppose to be sent out before such work?

Hamilton: Unfinished

There are some things about this city that I'll never understand take this for instance.



When I first saw it I thought it was the wireframe for a sidewalk, but as weeks turned to months and months turned to years, I realized that it's suppose to look like that. Call it what you will but it will always look unfinished to me.

Work Work work

Everyone has their own stratergy when it comes to work. Some keep agendas, others write notes. Me I just put it up on my wall with a post it, it's actually quite effective.


Essentially nothing comes down until it's done, as you can see I've got so much work it got cut off. Funny that 1.5 weeks into class and I already got 6 assignments 2 of which are done.

Birthday!

It's times when you forget your own birthday and your friends remind you that you realize you have the best friends in the world.

What other friends will go through the effort of setting up your whole birthday and realize that you'd be too over consumed to remember your own birthday?

Spur of the moment we decided to go out to the black forest inn. Which, was a German/Austrian restaurant. To be honest we went cause the chef's name was wolfgang. The restaurant itself comes highly recommended on the student list, the enviroment is very homey, the food is very generous. It's quite a full experience.

Unfortunately in our spur of excitement we didn't bring a camera so I don't have pictures for you.

However once I got back to Jenny's house there was a cake wating for me. In geeky tradition it was lit up in binary!


The entire house at put together my birthday celebrations complete with an ever so co-ordinated singing of the "Birthday song".





And as the candles went out I realized I had the best friends in the world. I mean if it weren't for them I'd missed my own birthday :-)

Lego Tat-Tat-Tat-Tat-Tat!

With the early details of the capstone project in hand we know it'll be lego and we know it will be mindstorms.

I was thinking of markets for our project (part of our assignment) and I realized that if I build one of the lego attachments below then I'd definetly be scooped up by Darpa.

A Quick Recharge

Well I got back for the weekend and I'm back in T.O. now. I have to say this will feel like a good recharge after the noisiness and the inital chaos of welcome week and the first week of classes.

I do need to aquire a new set of ear plugs while I'm here can't really borrow ear plugs from Alex indefinetly. Other than that this blog entry is rather boring, guess I'll try and get back to the whole picture blogs that I used to have.

Oh and as a promise I'll be slowly uploading the 5G picture set once I get a new flicker account hopefully I'll eventually get around to most of them (there's about 2GB in total) once they're all up I'll cross link them to the 5G forum. Although at this point I see this as a year long on going project.

No Cisco Clean client

Here at McMaster they introduced a new annoyance called cisco clean access. Basically it's spyware that scans for other spyware (fantastic!). However not many here at McMaster are aware that you can technically connect to the internet without any additional software.

On Windows XP all you need to do is connect to openport.mcmaster.ca via a PPTP tunnel, this method is still confirmed to work.

Linux users also can avoid installing cisco drivers and go with a standard vpn that supports pptp passthrough.

Encryption will be up the the user, and the whole connection is slightly less secure then IPSec but hey your just checking your email right?

EDIT: Ok I was asked to provide more specific instructions so here goes:
1. attempt a wireless connection to verify you get an ip and are on the Mac wifi
2. XP users click start "connect to", win 2000 users click networking.
3. Add a new connection select "connect to network at my workplace" (hit next)
4. Choose "Virtual Private Network connection" (hit next)
5. Call this "McMaster Openport"
6. If the next screen presents you with "Dial an inital connection" select "no connection".
7. In the hostname section enter: "openport.mcmaster.ca" (without the quotes)
8. hit finish.

Your username should be your MACID, your password should be your MACID pass if you have problems check that your connected to mac wifi first as this will not work off campus.

Additional considerations (security)
Without the cisco clean access client you are running a more insecure network so it might be a good idea to turn off a few features like file sharing if all you need is internet. To do this goto your "McMaster Openport" connection right click and goto "properties". Goto the networking tab uncheck "client for microsoft networks" and "file and printer sharing"

In doing this you won't be able to share files or be able to let other's use your printers while on mac connect but this isn't something normal users want anyways. It's probably a better idea to upload your files for pickup anyways.

Unfortunately UTS will block you if you use any ports that viruses spread from such as RPC ports so it's up to you to keep your machine virus free.

Official Start


So the year's officially started. Started off with a party with the first year in this house. Normally I would've participated in this however there comes a time in one's life where one realizes "I'm too old for this". Wonder how many of the other guys have fully finished the move in to the Hammer on this labour day.