After a good few years of life with Mandriva, I think it’s about time for me to upgrade myself in the world of Linux. I would quite like to leave the world of the n00b binary beginner distro users to the world of advanced super-duper 3133t source-based distros. Well, though, I’m not so technically adept as to switch to something as hardcore as Linux From Scratch, however. Instead, I am now running Sabayon Linux, which is built based upon the popular source-based Gentoo Linux distro, with some modifications of its own, mainly such as the recommendation of the primary use of their binary repository manager Equo, instead of the powerful Gentoo-default Portage system (which is still included though in Sabayon though, with its own Sabayon overlays).

Pardon the many technical terms for my less technically inclined readers, but really, you should take a Linux for a spin, too,  and learn a little more about it.  It’s one of the greatest inventions of the late 20th century that will reduce your fear and apprehension to computers which Windows probably created in you since young.

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Tags: 20th century, apprehension, choices, desktop manager, fear, flags, gcc, greatest inventions, linux, linux from scratch, livecd, mandriva, repository manager, sabayon, superiority, wireless desktop

A personalized The Staccato Slur bookmark actually was created a very long time ago already, but it got lost and I never had the will to remake it. Last week, a fortunate burst of creative energy meant that I was motivated to re-craft the bookmark again for my personal use. After all, the current practice of me using my Kinokuniya privilege card as a bookmark meant that sometimes, when purchasing new books, I would conveniently forget that the card had been left in my book, at home. And why not re-create it? It doesn’t exactly take very long, and at the end of it, I have something creatively personalized to show off.

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Tags: 192, burst, creative energy, durability, inkscape, invitee, laminate, leftovers, long time, new books, paperboard, personal use, prints, privilege card, secondary school, simone de beauvoir, sourced, staccato, stock paper, visual quality

I went to the Esplanade to attend the “Gala Concert: Sarah Chang Plays Bruch” on Friday, and I had some time before the concert to go to the library. While browsing through the journals on the bookshelves, I saw this study which caught my imagination – it was something about a cellist using performance cues to remember how to perform her piece, as studied by psychologists. Then, I had a brainwave. I thought of becoming, an orchestral psychologist.

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Tags: brainwave, business economists, cellist, commercial business, gala concert, human perception, memorization strategies, music cognition, music psychology, musicality, organisational psychology, passions, payoffs, performance cues, principal players, professional tools, psychology knowledge, sarah chang, subject matter experts, vibrato

I fancy thinking myself as some sort of an intellectual. At the very least, I know stuff. Yet, academic accomplishment does not entice me. No, I’d fail ten times in a row, but still consider myself smarter than others. An arrogance. A flair. I think myself to be very, very clever, thank you.

Anyway, the guy in the post thumbnail is Sigmund Freud. He got the honours because I couldn’t think of anyone who looked cooler than him holding a cigar , and I’ve already used Guy Debord previously. I think this will be a long post, to make up for the long silence from the previous post and my hands are aching to type. If you are ever interested about my life, this will be a good read. It’s the exorcism of my ego and everything I think about, in textual form as a practice of my written craft. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: academic accomplishment, age philosophy, arrogance, cigar, conformists, exorcism, flair, honours, humility, maslov, norms, objectivity, philosophy faculty, philosophy psychology, psychology literature, second choice, self learner, sigmund freud, subjectivity, weird science

Anselm Jappe offers us a fascinating account of Guy Debord and his ideas in his book  “Guy Debord”. I would claim this book to be essential for the one who is all gaga about post-WWII French philosophy, up to the climax of the May 1968 riots and beyond.

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Tags: afterword, bandit, climax, conspiracy of silence, donald nicholson, excursion, french philosophy, gaga, guy debord, history of culture, italian proverb, last decade, mainstream commentators, reading worth, riots, scant interest, situationist international, situationist movement, situationists, sociology department

Our ideas have no equal

Their brilliance dazzles all

They see the brightness they cannot comprehend

And liken it to the last burst of a dying star

Cold, dark, devoid, empty

Yet when we bestow upon them the knowledge to see

They plead ignorance still, they fear, they don’t see

We treated them with the respect we gave to equals

For once perhaps… But not much more

Alas, the loneliness of the eternal spark!

Felt solely in its own amidst the dark

‘This genius demands an audience!’ We speak

An audience? Wishes of a deluded mind in grandeur

For it still lacks its rightful men!

But this loneliness needs a witness at least

Please could we have a witness at least?

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Tags: agony, audience, brilliance, burst, deep midnight, dying star, eternity, friedrich nietzsche, genius, grandeur, heart, loneliness, r j hollingdale, sleep, translation, witness, woe, zarathustra

You see, I have got both Anne-Sophie Mutter‘s and Sarah Chang‘s interpretations of the Red Priest’s Four Seasons set of concertos in my hard disk. Currently, they are both my favourite classical violinists I have heard – nope, Vanessa-Mae and Eos Chater not included; I have grown out of the classical crossover genre into real music now. Ah well, actually I haven’t really. Just that now bass drum beats and pop conventions kinda sicken me and distract me from the talent hidden behind the violin.

It ought to be a musical blasphemy to actually compare two virtuosos and their talents. Yup, music ain’t a science. Hence I’m not exactly going to say who’s better… Just some observations… (NOTE:) From the musically untrained ear, I should qualify.

Hmm. Anyway, how come coincidentally, all the four names I mentioned are all chicks?

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Tags: air on the g string, anne sophie, bass drum, berlin philharmoniker, blasphemy, classical crossover, classical violinists, drum beats, eos chater, good first impression, live classical music, modern electronics, red priest, sarah chang, timeless piece, untrained ear, vanessa mae, vibrato, virtuosos, vivaldi

For the uninitiated, web syndication in this context refers to the retrieval of my posts via the RSS feeds you see. If you don’t exactly know what is it still (you should have a rough idea at least), you ought to go and learn more about modern web technologies. In brief, web feeds allow you to download news articles; blog posts; site updates etc. into a feed reader, like Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, Google Feed Reader or the like. And it just gives you the pure content, nothing else. No distractions from flashy ads and screwed-up page layouts (usually). Thus in one solution you get your articles stored and sorted out according to their origin site (instead of newsletters which you must manually sort into mail folders); email privacy and ease of management and distraction-free reading.

To all who understood that, or the rest who already know what I’m talking about, or use it even (on my blog or not), this lamentation’s dedicated to you.

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Tags: background images, css files, distraction, distractions, free reading, google, grand scheme of things, industrialist, lamentation, loading image, mail folders, mozilla firefox, page layouts, rough idea, scheme of things, slur, thunderbird, van gogh, web syndication, web technologies

Perhaps, two days of solitude in camp doing duties has given me the quiet and rain to inspire this melancholy which makes for a revisionism of my feelings and thoughts about Evanescence. Or rather, Amy Lee and the band, if you fancy. The continuous listening of their songs once more… Perhaps I need to start from the very beginning. Man, I’m getting philosophical over a band. This is going to be a very, very long personal post chronicling the change of my musical tastes over the past few years.

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Tags: amy lee, anne rice, bear in mind, creative direction, escapism, exhilaration, guitar riffs, humanist, inexperience, initial recovery, marius, musical tastes, necessary means, personal maturity, personal post, replays, revisionism, songbird, time college, youthful idealism

Some changes, mostly technical, but one key change.

For purposes of consistency, I have migrated The Staccato Slur from ajanimgo.com to staccatoslur.com. The old domain name will still continue to exist, but henceforth redirect visitors to the new domain while people get used to the change.  All other related web presences e.g. email address, have been adapted to the new domain as well.

In short, reach The Staccato Slur at http://staccatoslur.com from now on. Shouldn’t mispell it if you can pronounce it.

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Tags: 3ix, backend, consistency, consistent features, domain name, fluency, geeks, key change, method changes, migration, optimization, responsiveness, sidebars, site images, slur, snap shots, staccato, staff job, web host, web presences