Sad

Low grades. Time to say “good bye scholarship.” Anyway, I did my best but I failed. Now I don’t know how to explain this. I really do not want to add any more heartaches to my parents. They’ve spent so much already. I really want to help them. This is really sad. Now they would think again that I’m this irresponsible, careless, and mentally inefficient lad. It’s not too late though. Sad and painful because I did my best then I will just be tagged as irresponsible, careless, you name it.

A new air-soft rifle

So dad bought a new air-soft rifle. Weeee! Now I have two in my room. The new one can adapt a .22 caliber bullet with an improvised hammer. Its recoil kicks a little stronger than when fired with air. Now even if I will ran out of C02 gas tanks it will not stop the fun. Its far and near sights were calibrated perfectly. Unlike my 15-year old air-soft gun whose (0,0) sight lands at six o’ clock.

Flashback

Now I can update my Gentoo box even on a daily basis. Using my 30GB USB mass storage device, I can do so even if my prepaid internet account runs zero. Here’s a short guide for those who haven’t tried this one yet.

An emerge –sync alternative would be downloading the latest snapshot on any Gentoo mirror site using a machine with a high-speed connection. You might want to salvage the /usr/portage/distfiles of your machine first before proceeding.

kee ~ # rm -r /usr/portage/
kee ~ # tar -xvjf portage-latest.tar.bz2 -C /usr/
...
kee ~ # update-eix
Reading Portage settings ..
Building database (/var/cache/eix) from scratch ..
[0] /usr/portage/ (cache: metadata)
     Reading 100%
[1] /usr/local/portage (cache: none)
     Reading 100%
Applying masks ..
Database contains 11268 packages in 149 categories.
kee ~ # env-update
>>> Regenerating /etc/ld.so.cache...
kee / #

Now for downloading packages for emerge.

kee ~ # emerge -fp package ... 2> somefilename.txt

The links are now stored in the text file. Download ‘em on a machine with a high-speed connection. Place all the downloaded files inside /usr/portage/distfiles of your machine then.

kee ~ # emerge package ...

I’m bored. Cheers.

Bin to hex converter in 16-bit DOS assembly

Just a quick code like putting your keyboard where your brain is. There should be another way of doing this. I hate this code.

start:
        xor al, al
        xor bl, bl
        xor cl, cl
        mov dl, 4       ; use dl as counter
	
input:
        mov ah, 00
        int 16h
        cmp ah, 1ch
        je exit
        cmp al, '0'
        jb input
        cmp al, '1'
        ja input
	
convert:
        mov cl, dl
        dec cl          ; dl - 1
        sub al, 30h     ; get original value
        shl al, cl      ; place in the appropriate bit position
        or bl, al       ; save in bl
        dec dl          ; prepare for the next bit
        jnz input       ; must be 4 bits
        cmp bl, 9
        ja letter
        jbe number
	
letter:
        add bl, 37h     ; because 'A' - 37h is 0Ah
        jmp here
	
number:
        add bl, 30h     ; because '0' - 30h is 00h
	
here:
        call display
        jmp start
	
display:
        mov ah, 02h
        mov dl, bl
        int 21h
ret
	
exit:
        int 20h

Try this out, get the assembler here.

Moving on

So I bought my self a 2.5″ hard drive enclosure for about 750 bucks. I wish I have my own tools for constructing a device as such. Instead of going for a 2GB USB flash drive, I chose to salvage the 30GB hard drive of an incapacitated laptop. Cool isn’t it? Though relatively slower than a typical USB flash drive, the storage capacity outweighs it.

[To God]

Thanks for being there always.

Hetero-stress experience

I didn’t make the CS 315 (Elementary Computer Graphics w/ OpenGL) midterm examination. Sad, but I have to admit that I am mentally, emotionally and physically disturbed these days. It seems that I am carrying a magnet attracting bad luck. I have turned out restless and confused with almost eveything. From waking up to lying down, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to start my day. This is the dullest day of my life.

Stress, pressure. Some thrive on it, others find the spotlight and the responsibility to be too much for them. It distracts and scares them. The fear translates in to a physical stiffness. Mentally they become less focused and more self-conscious. Thus, their performance deteriorates.

Motion for brain rejuvenation

Confusion, defined by WordWeb as a mental state characterized by a lack of clear and orderly thought and behavior, is infesting my brain. Can someone help me? Is there a cure for that? If serenity is sold in the market then I would pack my self dozens of it. Being a computer science student demands a lot of concentration. I’m on a worst-case scenario. If anyone of you out there knows how to cast a spell for brain rejuvenation, count me as one of your targets.

Bit masking

I was thinking of the hex to bin converter in the previous post. The fun part there was the extraction of the desired bit. With the knowledge in mind, it resulted me to devise a function in C that uses a mask to print out the bit representation of an integer.

void bitprint(int a)
{
        int i;
        int n = sizeof(int) * CHAR_BIT;
	int mask = 1 << (n - 1);
	
	for (i = 1; i <= n; ++i) {
		putchar(((a & mask) == 0) ? '0' : '1');
		a <<= 1;
		if (i % CHAR_BIT == 0 && i < n)
			putchar(' ');
	}
}

CHAR_BIT is defined in limits.h and holding a value of 8. Try it, it’s fun. I’m bored, just extending my thanks to beandog for enlisting me in Planet Larry: Gentoo Users’ Blogs.

Hex to bin converter in 16-bit DOS assembly

You can try this out, get the assembler here. This is just a simple hexadecimal to binary converter, a CS217 exercise and not supposed to be pasted here but just for the sake of having a post. Here it is:

input:
	mov ah, 00h
	int 16h
	cmp ah, 1ch
	je exit
	
number:
	cmp al, '0'
	jb input
    	cmp al, '9'
	ja uppercase
    	sub al, 30h
	call process
	jmp input
	
uppercase:
	cmp al, 'A'
	jb input
	cmp al, 'F'
	ja lowercase
  	sub al, 37h
	call process
	jmp input
	
lowercase:
	cmp al, 'a'
	jb input
    	cmp al, 'f'
	ja input
    	sub al, 57h
	call process
	jmp input
	
loop input
	
process:
	mov ch, 4
	mov cl, 3
	mov bl, al
	
convert:
	mov al, bl
	ror al, cl
	and al, 01
    	add al, 30h
	
	mov ah, 02h
	mov dl, al
	int 21h
	
	dec cl
	dec ch
    	jnz convert
	
	mov dl, 20h
	int 21h
ret
	
exit:
	int 20h

“And my God will meet all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus.” - Philip 4:19

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