DavisDoesDownUnder

Konfurmation

2012-03-06T23:44:00.001+11:00

So it's been a pretty stressful few weeks. I have been working on a paper with my advisers for a conference, and I also had my PhD confirmation presentation. The slides are here. Stupid mistake on my part to change some of the source code examples just before the presentation. There are a few typos in there..... anyways, I think the preso went well. I still have to wait for the department head to sign the sheet. Anyways, I also went to the Sydney Road Street Party last Sunday..... mega-huge-street-party. Anyways, peace, love and slayer.

-Matt

The Wall

2012-02-12T09:53:00.000+11:00

So! I went to the Roger Waters show last night at the Rod Laver Arena. Awesome show, he played the Wall, and well, built the Wall. Nice special effects on their projections. What really flipped me out was his relating the story of the Wall to the modern social situation of the world (capitalism, modern war). The faces of war victims were projected on the wall. This leads me to the Wall itself. As the Wall was being constructed during the show, every brick must have been made from some phosphorous material. When each brick was placed, it was not immediately "active" with the projection. It took a few seconds for the brick to become fully illuminated. Really cool effect. Oh yeah, and there were indoor fireworks, awesome music, and of course Waters!-Matt

Kangaroot

2012-02-11T09:43:00.001+11:00

So I went to the Healesville Animal Sanctuary in North East Victoria. This place is absolutely beautiful. It is not the stereotypical outback that many might imagine. It's in a small hometown, every-one-knows everyone else. You know, the bus driver knows all the passengers, and the kids take a tour-bus coach to school. Tons of wineries all around! It is just a nice forest-like area, with kangaroos, emu, koalas, etc. You get the idea. While I am vegan, and against animal captivity for shear pleasure (e.g. imprisonment), Healesville rescues some of the animals and the zoos here have breeding programs to combat the threat of endangerment. Anyways, I saw two kangaroos do it. Awesome. That is all.-Matt

LinuxJournal gets Chicken'd

2012-02-07T22:25:00.002+11:00

Just a few months ago LinuxJournal published an article I had written regarding Linux vDSO system calls. Anyways, after chatting with one of their employees, they have decided to put it on their front page. What is exciting is that this information is free and easy to access. Get yer' nerd on.

-Matt

Time Kills

2012-02-03T10:35:00.002+11:00

Hey faithless readers! I hope all has been jolly and well during the stroll down this new year. Well, I have been pretty quiet, and have also been working on some paper stuff for my region memory research. Anyways, I was perusing through the time-nuts mailing list and came across this great quote. So, gather a nice warm mug of coffee, and enjoy this nugget of excitement I bestow upon you:

"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all itspupils."
Hector Berlioz, before 1869

-Matt

Maker Faire

2012-01-16T23:38:00.001+11:00

SoooOoOOoO. Saturday, what did I do? Well, I met up with one of my buddies and went to Maker Fare Melbourne. This event, hosted by the Connected Community Hacker Space in Melbourne, was "sold out" even though tickets were free. Going here was quite neat, as it was located at the Swinburne University of Technology, which means train time! Quite sad were the large grey painted regions that lined the once, what I can only imagine as being lovely, graffiti-decorated train line. See, Melbourne is kinda known for its awesome graffiti, and covering it up just looks depressing. From what I was told, the government thought it would be good to shove-its graffiti heritage and make things look drab and all gray since the Queen was coming to town. But that has nothing to do with the Fare. That was way cool, and one of the coolest demos I saw was from Julien Oliver's LevelHead project, which creates an augmented reality game based on human-interaction with QR-covered cubes, some OpenGL gluttony, and a camera. Anyways, great event, and I gotta hand it to the CCHS team for putting together such a great event.

-Matt

Randy Blythe for 2012

2012-01-06T23:29:00.000+11:00

Damn right that's what I said. The lead singer from the great metal band, Lamb of God (check out the bangin' vid below) is running for president. While I can't say that I have ever voted in a US election; I must say, I found probably one of the best candidates for 2012. I am really on with the whole Penn Jillette "a vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil" Well, Penn is my ideal candidate. But, I have been reading through Randy Blythe's bid for nomination. Here is Randy's bid. Please excuse the harsh language. But Randy makes a darn good point(s). So... here it is. I might actually vote this year, if I decide to score a absentee ballot: http://randonesia.tumblr.com/post/15251001685/i-want-to-be-the-big-cheese

And here is a video with Randy and Lamb of God kicking serious anus.

-Matt

NYE Predictions for 2012

2011-12-31T19:05:00.001+11:00

In 2012 Colonel Sanders will surface and laugh at the fact that his death was all a mere joke. Upon this event, he will soon be granted an honorary doctorate from a small southern university, where abouts he will be known as Dr. Sanders and sit as the chair of ornithology focusing all of his efforts upon the study of flightless birds.

My second prediction is that an inverted microwave will finally be invented, allowing humanity to enjoy cold bananas in just a split second. I must credit my father for mentioning the concept of an inverse microwave to me years ago.

-Matt

Happy Midsumer

2011-12-25T09:31:00.004+11:00

Hey friends, family, enemies, and stalkers. The sexxyness that is bound to the name Matt hopes that you all have a good holiday season. Well, that is actually a disjoint set. Let me restate. I hope all in the sets I previously mention have a great holiday season, except for my enemies.

So, I went into the city, what else is a single guy, to do on Chirstmas Eve? Well, to my finding. The city was packed, and this was around 10PM. It was great, so many people out, I was in a rather peaceful mindset, and took a few pictures. The State Library of Victoria, and some massive church down on Flinder's (across from Federation Square) both have had projections of holiday animations for the past few night (possibly longer). Anyways, I was just surprised at all the people out. It didn't even seem like a holiday, just another, rather decent/temperate night. I have some pics from the past two nights up on my flickr http://www.flickr.com/matt-davis

What I find funny, is that the explicit use of the term "Merry Christmas" all over the city, such as Flinder's Street Station and light pole flags. No political correctness bullcrap, just straight up Merry Christmas, no Happy Holidays. I find that nice. But ultimately, and this is key: May this be a holiday season that escapes the religion that bounds it.

Oh yea, and Yule (or Midsummer here) was on the 21st.

May this be a holiday season that escapes the religion that bounds it.

Much love and peace

-Matt

Full Screen

2011-12-12T17:57:00.001+11:00

Occasionally my layout has captivated me. Here is my layout showing some compiler-plugin hackery.

-Matt

Compiler 101 not 5

2011-12-11T11:24:00.001+11:00

So I was trying to explain why, when someone is hacking on compilers, such as a compiler addition (as my PhD research is doing), the dev must adhere to such stringent standards of "quality control." Compilers must do what the user/coder instructs via their source to which they feed the hungry-hungry-compiler. Anyways, in explaining, possibly justifying some remorse for my digital masochism in trying to build a compiler-extension and then break it with tests... this little gem surfaced:
"So it's like building a house, and then trying to blow it up to make sure it still stands. Blowing it up is often easy, but building a house that still stands is paramount."

-Matt

Exploration

2011-12-05T18:29:00.001+11:00

Went into the city last week to get out and take some pics of graffiti. None-the-less Melbourne didn't let me down. The freshest of the pics are up on my Flickr page (http://www.flickr.com/matt-davis) for December 3rd 2011.

-Matt

Gettin' Devo

2011-11-26T19:06:00.001+11:00

Bought a plunger today.

-Matt

R2D2 in a Blender of Awesomesauce

2011-11-26T09:26:00.001+11:00

So whattaya get when you combine some heavy bass, low bit quality sound (such as 8-bit Nintendo, commodores, amigas), and some creativity? Chiptunes! After really enjoying some of the chiptunes I heard at the Syntax 2011 demoparty. Myself and a few friends met up at Wah Wah Lounge in the city. Needless to say, the music was quite entertaining and very creative. One of the artists had two Game Boys going to add on some sound. Anyways, here is a flyer for the event:

-Matt

ANSI and RBMM

2011-11-23T17:26:00.001+11:00

For some reason I really enjoy running the testsuite I have been putting together for my research into region based memory management (RBMM). Maybe it's the awesome color, maybe it's the satisfaction it is reporting 100% success rate. But either way, I must not mislead myself. The pass/fail check the testrig checks is the number of region creations minus the number of region deletions. Those values should balance at the end of the each test-program execution. This, is not testing all of the features of region merging and region variable passing. But creation-deletion is a rough metric, but good for a base test. This isn't at full resolution, but you get the idea, let your brain do the interpolation.

-Matt

Ruxcon 2011 and GOAT-Plugs

2011-11-21T08:50:00.001+11:00

This weekend has been totally crazy. I loved it. Oh, why you ask? Ummmmmm..... Ruxcon 2011. Great conference, lots of fantastic talks. And just hanging out and making friends. I must give a shout-out to all the Ruxcon crew for accepting my talk, and letting me speak, and putting together an awesome con! The after parties were great too! My discourse on GCC plugins, I think, went well. Sorry for the pretty poor structure here in this post, but I think information was conveyed. Weekend (including Friday) was awesome.

And now a shameless plug. The slides for my talk are here:
http://users.757.org/~enferex/enferex_ruxcon2011.pdf

And the source code for GOAT-Plugs are here (GCC Obfuscation Augmentation Tools). Sweet capra aegagrus hircus Batman! What?! This is a set of GCC plugins (primarily proof of concept and example code I wrote so people can play with plugins). The site has more information on what the individual plugins can do.
https://github.com/enferex/GOAT-Plugs

-Matt

Syntax 2011 Demoscene Party

2011-11-13T10:12:00.001+11:00

Last night I, with some Ruxcon friends, ventured to the Melbourne High School in South Yarra (near the Lamborghini dealership) where the Syntax 2011 demoscene party was being hosted. It is awesome to see the scene still fertile, even though I had never really gotten into demos when I was younger. On the note of the High School, I will mention that this event was no where affiliated with a high school, other than it was just a place to host the geek-out. The high school, which apparently is pretty posh was like a prison! I'm not sure if the high wall and barbed wire is to keep kids out or crazies out. But it doesn't help when the buildings look like guard shacks in a penitentiary. The art and music at the show was great. Chiptunes, ansi art, demos, oh my! Not to mention ... I saw someone rocking some QBasic.

-Matt

Kernel and vDSO cookery...

2011-11-08T18:27:00.000+11:00

A while back, I wrote an article on how to create a "virtual dynamic shared object" in the Linux kernel. Anyways, I sent this to LinuxJournal, and they accepted it. The November 2011 edition has the article "Creating a vDSO: the Colonel's Other Chicken"

-Matt

I just got bit....

2011-11-04T23:25:00.005+11:00

... by the Noam Chomsky. Yes! Father of CNF (Chomsky Normal Form) and linguistics guru, was speaking here at the Melbourne Convention Exhibition Center. The Professor gave a wonderful lecture titled "Changing Contours of Global Order" in which he discussed global power, primarily driven by politics and finances. It was so warming to hear someone, with such a down-to-earth non-conspiracy-theory tone, talk on this topic and not be a sensationalist. He then gave a brief question and answer session. This bad boy can speak! For 2.5 hours! It was way awesome. I have been Chomskyinated. And the tickets were gone in one day, 5000 seats! So, how did me, el Matto, score such awesomesauce? Well, my mega awesome friend Dale scored 'em! I suppose if you email the wizard personally he has contacts that can get tickets, and that is what Dale did, email the Chom.

-Matt

Hawking makes you go hmmmmmmmmmmmm....

2011-10-25T23:10:00.000+11:00

Greetings faithful readers! Guess, what?! I got a library card to the wondrous Moreland library system. After doing such, and meeting the very nice lady who spent a few years in Maine, I decided to walk.... no strut... naw, I pimp'd-out with some Stephen Hawking action. That's right fellow physics nerds, I picked-up/checked-out/ and read Hawking and Molidnow's The Grand Design. And I must say, that book is fantabulous! Marvelous ideas on the birth of the universe. But what really bakes my brain is the mention that time is just a variant of space. Wha, wha, wha?! you say?! Sure, Einstein and his General Theory of Relativity introduced space-time, but for some reason, I never thought of time as being a weird space-like thing. But, the aforementioned book by H&M (I guess I can call 'em that) mentioned that time is just space but only in one direction. Hmmmmm, crikey! I think they are right! Sweet sassy molassy, that's mega-badassery. Anyways, hope you all enjoy that nugget of knowledge. That's it for now. Much love and eat babies.

-Matt

LWN and GCC Plugins

2011-10-09T16:15:00.000+11:00

I wrote an article a while back on how to create a GCC plugin. I have been working with Linux Weekly News: http://www.lwn.net on getting it published. I must say, the team there of Jake Edge and Jonathan Corbet were great to work with. This article was originally published 2 weeks ago, but for subscribers only. It is now available for free here:
An Introduction to Creating GCC Plugins: http://lwn.net/Articles/459982/

-Matt

Much awesomeness...

2011-10-04T19:15:00.000+11:00

I saw Blind Guardian (from Germany) last night with two Australian acts, Eyefear and Black Majesty at Billboard. The show was amazing. I also caught up with some friends. Much fun. MORRRRRRRRDORRRRRRRRRRRRRRR MORDDDDDDDDOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRR!

Ohhh yea, pics or it didn't happen right? (This doesn't do it justice but still). Also, the process of ticket acrual is unusual. For those who have print-out tickets, myself included in that subset, we give away our entire ticket upon entry into the venue. After the show, tickets (as seen here) are provided for free! That way, if you are plastered out of your mind, you still can remember where you went.

-Matt

Ruxcon 2011: In preparation...

2011-09-27T18:09:00.000+10:00

I was awarded a spot to speak at the Ruxcon 2011 security conference in Melbourne. If you're 'round this area, I suggest going to this con. I went last year and had a blast!

http://www.ruxcon.org.au
http://www.ruxcon.org.au/2011-talks/gcc-plugins-die-by-the-sword

-Matt

More Graffiti

2011-09-25T17:55:00.002+10:00

Went on an excursion down Union Lane and Stevenson Lane in Melbourne. The former, Union Lane, had some artists creating their works. I love it when a city allows such awesome means of expression.

More pics at my Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/matt-davis

-Matt

Get Cubed

2011-09-24T08:34:00.001+10:00

Was hangin out with one of my buddies, Paul, who consequentially is one of the most intelligent people I have ever met. Anyways, he posted
this pick of me from last night.

Source: http://paul-bone.blogspot.com/2011/09/geeks-being-geeks.html

Back to the Future

2011-09-18T12:49:00.000+10:00

Jumpin' Jiggawatts. I left Norfolk at ~1:40PM Friday. I landed, in the future, 30 hours later, in Melbourne (on Sunday at 9:30AM). Figure that one out.

Not to mention... AWESOME VACATION. I love Milo, had great time with parents and friends! So much fun, I was kinda homesick on the plane and to be back in Melbourne. Thanks guys/girls/dogs for making my 2.5 weeks back home so much fun that now my bowels are in distress.

-Matt

GCC Plugins: Being a Parasite

2011-09-16T00:48:00.000+10:00

Much of my research into region based memory management has been accomplished via gcc plugins. In such a means of implementation, one does not need to do full-up re-compiles of the gcc compiler or even a small stage-1 gcc compile. Instead, the plugins provide a wealth of the gcc API and are implemented as shared objects. In other words, if you wanna test a compiler optimization pass, or do some static analysis, cough-up a plugin, compile that bad-boy, and tell gcc to run 'er via the '-fplugin=' command line argument.

Of course, one can use the force for good or evil. I prefer to ere towards a phrase I have leaned about: "research purposes." Such a lovely phrase conveys an innocent meaning of that if something doesn't work, it's not the creators fault. It is a lot Like saying: "hey... this plugin might not have been proven correct." In other words, if my plugin posts your ssh private key to pastebin... oops. Muhahahahahhaha

:-)

-Matt

165 Stickers, 165 Million Years

2011-09-13T06:39:00.000+10:00

So my mom's neighbor, an incredibly intelligent 4 year old, was rocking a nice polo shirt with a dinosaur on it. To say the least, I was floored, way cool shirt. Well, we had a nice talk about T. rex. Ya know, the kinda discussion that involves making sounds of dinosaurs (or how we as humans "guess" how they sound. Later that night, when I arrived home, on the front door was this awesome book of dinosaur stickers. 165 of them. Ironically, the period of existence for dinosaurs was around 165 million years, wayyyy cool [1].

-Matt

[1] http://www.scienceviews.com/dinosaurs/dinofacts.html

Update from the 757

2011-09-08T07:25:00.000+10:00

Wow, this has been a well needed vacation. No matter where you go, there is something nice about coming home. Well, I sorta sold my home, I will restate. There is always something nice about coming back to the general geographic location that one calls "home." Went to Taste Unlimited with some friends/cowokers today. Researched some ideas I have about quasi-polymorphic runtime manipulation earlier, and now I'm just chilling at "home" Milo beside me. Here are a few pics, these were taken earlier this past week.

-Matt

Rejoice for I have Risen... From the Otherside of the Sphere

2011-09-01T23:19:00.000+10:00

I come from the future and bring stories of a land far far away... Yep, I'm back in the 757 (for a limited time only only). So cool, I left Melbourne at 11:20AM on the 31st, and arrived in L.A. at 10AM. I come from the future, John Titor style.

-Matt

Preliminary Results

2011-08-24T23:33:00.000+10:00

Been working on teasing some results from the RBMM (region-based memory management) stuff I have been working on. I am really excited, not so much with the data, but at the mad LaTeX table I just cranked out.

-Matt

"It's good to warm my bones beside the fire"

2011-08-20T14:41:00.000+10:00

Pink Floyd? Yeah? Bueller? Bueller? That's right 757. Be prepared, grand master pimptastic from the Down-Under is planning to do it up in the 757 for a few weeks. Booked a flight home from August 31st to September 16th.

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
When I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells
-- Pink Floyd

Non-deterministic Memory Management

2011-08-18T08:27:00.002+10:00

So when the implementation mandates that all returned memory should be zero'd... it should be. In other words, if the compiler distributes memory via a routine that does not zero memory a'la malloc(), the compiler should wrap the memory allocator and zero data, or use calloc(). The result can be a non-deterministic executable.

I wonder, since Bell's theorem suggests that even if we account for all the local hidden variables, we still cannot account for the non-determinism seen in quantum mechanics. Therefore, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle seems to say that, yes, despite what makes sense to me, the universe does have non-deterministic properties. So, I suppose we could bubble-this up to the compiler world and memory management (this reduction might be grossly wrong) and suggest that non-determinism really does exist if a memory management routine, such as malloc, can induce non-deterministic behavior in an executable.

-Matt

On Self Organization and Elevators

2011-08-12T11:53:00.000+10:00

Major scientific breakthrough. I was just on the elevator with a bunch of technical (computer science, possibly engineering, students). It seemed as if we all optimized the space in the elevator as we entered it, as we all line up around the border of the car. I wonder, do people from other disciplines happen to organize themselves differently in elevators? Do particle physicists happen to distribute themselves evenly throughout the elevator car?

-Matt

On Compilers, Insanity, and Global Variables

2011-08-10T13:15:00.000+10:00

According to Einstein, the definition of insanity goes something like the following: "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Compilers should always produce the same code given the same input. However, I have noticed something now as well as before. I rely on gcc's predicate function for telling my analysis if a variable I am looking at is "global" or not. I have started to notice that I can run the compile once and the variable is not global (which is how the source code defines it). Although I can run the same compile again, and the variable is global?! The compiler is making me second-guess my sanity. How is this possible? Well, I know there is performance data that gcc can generate, which as I can imagine, aside from timestamps, is really the only non-deterministic event in gcc. I am not sure if this insanity-cause is from the front-end or from the middle-end. I have md5 summed my plugin and it is the same with both the "compiler thinks its global" and the "compiler thinks its not global" case. Hmmmmmmmmmm...

-Matt

Unification for Region Inference

2011-08-07T15:10:00.001+10:00

So I figured it would be a reasonably good idea to write out about my research into region based memory management (RBMM). Mainly, this post is targeted towards explaining how my gcc-plugin finds objects that are candidates for region'd memory. But before I start getting to far ahead of myself now, let me quickly introduce RBMM.

RBMM is a method of memory management that allows for the automatic maintenance of a programs dynamic memory usage at runtime. Through the use of static analysis at compile time, calls can be emitted into the code of the program being compiled. At runtime, these region calls (e.g. create region, allocate memory from region, delete region, etc) are executed. Some might term this as a form of compile-time garbage collection, and that is not entirely incorrect, however; RBMM can be faster than garbage collection. Most garbage collection methods require the execution of the program to be suspended (extending the total runtime of the application) so that pointers to dynamically allocated data are no longer in use can be free'd. In contrast, regions place dynamically allocated data into chunks of memory which have an identical lifetime. Therefore, freeing the memory associated to a region is really fast. Just kill the region and boom, all memory in that region can be reclaimed. This is much faster than visiting each object individually, and does not require the need to halt the program's execution. Consider a linked list. We could put the whole list into memory, allowing us to free all the nodes at once, when it is no longer needed, as well as possibly enhancing cache locality.

The approach I am taking is to study RBMM from the prospective of the gcc compiler. My RBMM implementation uses a gcc-plugin which analyzes the program being compiled and then emits the code.

The plugin operates on two primary passes, the first pass of the program analyzes the source code and generates data from which the second pass, the transformation pass, later uses to emit the code into the program which executes the region calls (create/alloc/delete). The first piece of the analysis pass looks for variables that are pointers, which could possibly be used for accessing dynamic/heap memory. The gcc compiler provides us a generic intermediate representation which is languages c, c++, ada, etc) agnostic. This intermediate representation is called GIMPLE. Further, my passes operate (analyze and transform) the GIMPLE code which is presented in a static single assignment format (SSA).

The first pass visits each statement in the program. In the case of an assignment statement, we look at what value is being assigned to. If that value is a pointer, our analysis takes note of it. Any variables used on the right-handed side of the assignment statement, which are used for calculating the left-handed side value have some association. This association we call a unification. So the left-hand side is unified with the variables in the right-hand side. But, as mentioned, we only care about pointers, so only the right-hand side pointers are associated with the left-hand side. Similar goes for the case if the left-hand side is being set from a memory allocation call (malloc/new). For example, assume we are analyizing the following statement: foo = somepointer; In this case we would add both 'foo' and 'somepointer' as a single unification piece. In the case of complex data structures, such as 'foo.bar = somepointer;' Our analysis would unify 'foo' and 'bar' followed by unifying that piece (foo and bar) with 'somepointer'.

(pssst... hey... if you read this far, send me an email or leave a really lame comment)

In the case that our analysis comes across a function call (a callee), except for memory allocation calls as mentioned above, we have to defer the analysis of that statement until our analysis (first-pass) has completed. Once that analysis is complete, we have unification data which is specific to each function, which we use as we visit each function call statement that we previously deferred. This portion of the analysis now becomes interprocedural, as it requires knowledge of other functions in the program which are being called. In other words, after we have intraprocedural data for each function, we can use that information interprocedurally to analyze function calls. If our analysis comes across a function call, we can query our stored analysis data and get the unification information about the callee (the thing being called). From this data we can tell if a function takes a pointer and if that function will need to have regions passed to it. Therefore, we can unify the arguments we
pass to the function being called, as well as any left-hand side values which are being set from the return value from the callee. This unification is based on the callee's data which we are guaranteed to have after the first pass has completed.

Once the unification process has completed, the transformation pass can rock. But ultimately that is a discussion for another post.

tl;dr Put things together

-Matt

Milestone, 666 of Them!

2011-08-04T22:43:00.004+10:00

So today I hit 666 scrobbles/hits/plays of Slayer on my last.fm account! This is a really neat number, although not prime, it is the sum of the first 7 primes [1], and 7 is a prime too. (This also happens to be my 66 post on this blog).

Sources:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/666_(number)

EDIT(6Aug2011): Whoops! I made a mistake, 666 is the sum of the first seven prime SQUARES. Not the first seven primes. Sorry!

-Matt

Woo Hoo Update

2011-07-31T09:52:00.000+10:00

Wow, the frist time I ventured to Bar Open, I ended up catching the gypsy funk/rock awesomeness of The Woo Hoo Revue. These guys and gals are frikkin' amazing! Well, last night, they were rockin' Bar Open once again, and it was awesome. Yeah, I jump'd around danced, enjoyed being white and dancing like a complete doofus. I had fun, lots of it!

Regarding research, well, it was progressing rather nicely, however I found some bugs/snags/oopses with my region-based memory management plugin that prevented certain test cases from running properly. Test cases, mainly being those slightly tailed for Go and for the Debian Computer Language Benchmark's Game. The gcc release has these in its section for Go testing. Regardless to say, region lifetime analysis has been giving me some trouble.

Just had a knock on muh door. Census, it's compulsory! Where's my freedom!?! Draconian gov waves its prowess over my apartment. Basically, I just fill-out the form online. No biggie, I just don't like the idea of a government forcing people to do things, even a non-citizen.

-Matt

Words from the Matt: Compiler Belief

2011-07-23T09:14:00.002+10:00

"Compilers are a lot like Christian fundamentalists. They read input literally and take no consideration as to what impact such input might have."

- The Matt

Unicorn Waffle

2011-07-22T23:36:00.000+10:00

Earlier today I made a comment to a post on reddit.com. This post was asking users what they do to "pay it forward." My response was a copy of a post I made here on this blog. Anyways, in my post I refer to asking an online attendant to draw me a picture of a unicorn riding a waffle and playing a ukulele. Well, someone on reddit decided to find the time and kindness to draw me such an epic picture. I am humbled.

Thanks Ezekyuhl!

-Matt

Design

2011-07-15T09:16:00.000+10:00

What do you do with the blank spot on a consumer good? Make the barcode take up the whole friggin space! While it might not be the most aesthetically pleasing, the barcodes in Australia are some serious business! (I went for earbuds, came home with TP).

-Matt

Wait ... what!

2011-07-11T10:37:00.002+10:00

I have been here for a year. I'm in the research lab and someone was like, "your what like a year now?" ... WTF... Yeah, you are right! I left on the 9th of July 2010, and didn't get here till the 11th. Anyways. 1 year, whoptie doo! What's cooler is that this is post number 60. Would have been cooler if it was a prime number, but my post earlier today, number 59, is prime!

-Matt

St. Kilda Beach +

2011-07-11T08:52:00.001+10:00

Went to St. Kilda beach this weekend. Awesome little town in Southern Melbourne. I went, mainly to get out, and to take some pics of the (hopefully penguins). It is winter, so it was fairly chilly there. However, I didn't see any penguins, maybe I did, but just didn't recognize them? I did find some interesting birds, maybe they were penguins, like babies or something? Anyways, I walked to the end of the pier. Got a nice shot of Hobsons Bay.

More pics at my flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/matt-davis

I also joined Google+ social media site last Friday. Add me, if you care so much as to do so. Just use my email address (you do have that don't you?). If not, just ask for my email.

-Matt

Blow 'er up!

2011-07-05T10:07:00.000+10:00

So... what did I do on the 4th? Well, I worked on my research. In fact, the only thing I really blew up was the porcelain waste muncher on my floor in the CS building. Too much paper, not enough suction, the beast was slain in the name of single ply. Thought you all would get a kick of some literal toilet humor.

Much love!

-Matt

Yeeee hawww!

2011-07-04T11:37:00.000+10:00

Happy 4th all of my American friends. I just want to say that I genuinely believe nationalism is a terrible concept. It encourages a separation of people, and competition. In fact, Albert Einstein, whom I admire in many aspects, was against nationalism. Sure, competition is not always bad, but as a society, we should look beyond our geographical differences. The internet has made us one giant pulsating organism. But, if you are in America, blow something up for me! :-)

-Matt

Graffiti

2011-06-26T10:50:00.000+10:00

Soooo there are more pics available at my flickr page. I found some awesome graffiti the other night will lurking around Fitzroy with a friend. We ran into this piece, and I totally flipped. While, I am sure most of you know I'm a metal head. I do like some old school rap too. This, my friends, is some epic awesome art.

I have more (and a larger version) at the URL posted earlier in this post.

-Matt

A Letter to non-Melbourninians...

2011-06-25T00:45:00.000+10:00

This city is not pronounced Melburn, or Mel-born, rather MelBUN. Like cinnamon bun, but with mel.

A bit of insight...

2011-06-18T00:20:00.000+10:00

Not more than a minute or two ago, talking to a good friend of mine, Aaron, I had some insight. So how do you choose a programming language to use? Never choose a language because it is what everyone else is using. Every language has a use/purpose. Rather, the concept should be thought of from a different angle, and this is the insight: "Every problem has a language." Ultimately that is what you do when you code, you are solving a problem.

-Matt

Things I Like to do... to not be an Ass...

2011-05-28T18:06:00.001+10:00

If I have to call a institution for information, whether it's merely correcting something on a banking statement, or whatever. If the result of my inquiry is positive, I like to ask to speak to the attendant's manager. I'm sure their first reaction is like, "ohh shh crap," but then I say, "I just want to complement you" and when I speak with their supervisor, I give kudos to the attendant. Even for online "live chats" where you irc/text with a attendant, I will give them kudos on the site survey. Yeah, it feels good to not be an ass sometimes. I'm still waiting for that drawing of a unicorn riding a waffle and playing a ukulele I asked the live attendant on the website to draw for me. I need to assure myself that I have not laid any notion that the Turing test has succeeded in this case.

-Matt

SpaaaAAAHHHH... Spa

2011-05-21T16:07:00.002+10:00

So I decided to take a break from my research to hang out with a bud at the Spa, who also happen to have known Julian Assange. It was a nice hour-and-a-half away, east of Melbourne. Near the ocean. A beautiful hot spring with man made pools and a real-life cave. It cost some to go in, but it was nice. The springs were about 35-40+ in temperature (that's 90-104+ for all the Fahrenheit-ers out there or 308.15-313.15+ for all the Kelvin-ers). Anyways, it was pretty nice, just great to get out and see more of this beautiful country. Alas, I am back home now, had two showers already, and clothes are in the washing machine. Sure, it feels kinda gross when you think about it, kinda like bathing with a bunch of strangers. I did get to sport my awesome sexxyness. Ohh yeah, it was doubly cool because some individuals believe today is the Rapture, and yeah, I was hanging out on a fault-line. Apparently their god is so evil that it is gonna kill a bunch of people by an earthquake sometime today.

UPDATE: No, it's not on a fault line. But anyways, the idea was there.

-Matt

Bottle 'o Rum and a Yo Ho Ho... and Go!

2011-05-15T10:42:00.001+10:00

Wow, last night was a blast! Went to the Corner Hotel in Richmond (an inner-city suburb of Melbourne) to catch some Alestorm! Pirate metal, from Scotland. It was a blast. Not to mention, the line getting into the club was pretty dodgy. Lot's of drunk people pretending to be pirates, yelling at female passer-bys calling them "Wenches!" Funny, but, I'm not sure one of the girls knew what was really going on. The openers were great too, H.M.A.S Vendetta and prog-metal band Voyager. I got a ride home with some friends after the show. It was pretty late, and trams at that hour are not run to the most frequent of schedules.

Ohh yeah, and research. Well, I have decided to move most of the region based memory management concepts to the middle-end of gcc, and not the frontend. In this light, I get to work with the traditional gcc API, and write things as a plugin. GCC plugins are really nice, since you have access to all of the typical API that you would, if you were to write a traditional compiler-pass. Not to mention, you can reorder where in the pass-chain the plugin gets executed, and build times are fast, since I don't have to rebuild a stage-1 gcc each time I want to test my changes. Also, I'm sure there will be some runtime hack's I'll need to toss in, especially for Go, which is my primary target. But, working on the middle-end can aid all languages that gcc can consume. That is of course my modifications/optimization is at all beneficial.

-Matt

Pics are Available

2011-04-23T10:36:00.001+10:00

I have the pics from yesterday's adventure. I saw 4 kangaroo total, the only thing cooler would have been if I saw a kangaroo poo. Guess I'll have to save that for another time.

http://www.flickr.com/matt-davis

-Matt

They do exist!

2011-04-22T23:09:00.000+10:00

So I've been in Australia for about 9 months and have yet to see a kangaroo. One might think it's a total sham. Kangaroos are like Bigfoot, a mythical cryptid that only lives in stories and some plaster footprint casts. Well, today, my advisor and friend Harald, along with his wife and son, took me out on a long road trip, some bush walking, and all around fun time. We went way north of Melbourne, a little more than an hour away, to a few towns and met up with their friend, a vet, who owns some farmland out in the bush. We spent some time in Castlemaine and Daylesford. Way cool! The stars were so bright and vibrant, it was amazing. The Milky Way was beautiful! There is so much beautiful foliage around here, the hills, it's totally not the outback image people think of when they ponder on Australia. Oh yeah.... I saw kangaroo, they are not mythical creatures! Frikkin' beautiful, kinda intimidating. While at their friend's farm, she let me pick an apple and eat it. The largest and also best-tasting apple I've ever had! It was the size of a small baby, a delicious, baby.

-Matt

Flyin' Solo and Ships of Scholarness

2011-04-02T08:51:00.001+11:00

While I didn't mind living with housemates, I am kinda used to living alone. Heck, I was doing that for 5.5 years before I came out here. Sure, being that I was moving to a new place/continent/country, I do not think it was bad to be living with others. The house was friendly, but I felt on pins and needles afraid I was going to be confronted by a housemate about doing something that did not satisfy their definition of proper "housemate." Not to mention, I had a very tiny room (I do like quaintness) and the house was in an awesome location of Fitzroy (between Smith and Brunswick streets near Victoria Parade). Well, I finally found a 1 bedroom place to move to in Brunswick, not toooo far from Uni, but near the change-over from Royal Parade to Sydney Road. I have just left Heath, Paula, Zoe, Louie, and Rex. And have signed a lease (and just moved) to Brunswick.

On the other front, I was just awarded two scholarships! One covers tuition for my PhD. Well, it covers all starting since 2011 (so I get a refund for what I have paid this year, but no refund for the 1 semester last year). I'm not complaining! That is so exciting. Thanks to all who sent in scholarship recommendations for the Uni regarding me. The other scholarship was constructed by my advisors. This other scholarship covers some living expenses, a stipend. It is provided by NICTA. It is only for 18 months, but capable of being updated! This should not limit me if I want to come home. I do want to come home to do some research while also working.

-Matt

Troll

2011-03-26T10:25:00.000+11:00

Last night was frikkin' awesome. After I did some research towards my PhD, I went to two Ruxmon lectures given by some people I know, Silvio and Laurent. Great talks. After that, I went to Billboards to catch Finntroll's first tour down here in Australia. They played Brisbane last night. And one word ARRRRRRRRGgggGGGHHHHHH. It was frikkin' nuts. Hummpa/folk/black metal from Finnland mostly sung in Sweedish! Lots-o fun, and the two opening acts, the local Obsidieth provided some nice modern thrash with some folkiness to it, while the Perth-based Claim the Throne played some great battle metal/folk metal.

It was the first time I had ever been to a concert, whereby I first give the venue my ticket, a crappy-printed out ticket, and after the gig they hand out true-printed-out tickets, as if you were to have bought the tickets via mail-order... great memorabilia!

-Matt

Region Based Memory Management

2011-03-13T23:01:00.001+11:00

Aside from listening and witnessing some of the most righteous of music (I'm listening to Gogol Bordello right now), and caught some Iron Maiden, Primus, and Slayer at Soundwave last week, what have I been researching, is a question one might be asking themselves. Ok yeah that is one nasty grammatically incorrect piece of English. Well what have I been researching?

Region Based Memory Management! That's right, that is what my PhD is focused on. Sure RBMM is not fresh, but my goal is to implement it for Google's Go language. What I think will be the real unique pieces of research will be how we allocate our regions, dealing with parallization (a'la goroutines) and carrying information across multiple modules (cross-module analysis).

Backup just one second cowboy, neee hawwww! What in the name of doo dah is a region? Region based memory management is a way of managing memory at compile time, one might think of it as compile-time garabage collection. However, that is just not correct at all. At compile-time, via static analysis, dynamic memory allocation calls are located. The compiler can then emit code that will allocate objects that have the same lifetime into regions of contiguous memory. So its a neat little tango between compile-time and run-time communication. Anyways, this grouping of objects with similar lifetimes can benefit cache locality, as well as provide a fast way of deallocating objects, all at once, by just killing the region. That is fast. No need to visit each object individually and free it.

Since Go utilizes a garbage collector, we would like to leave it in place for dealing with cases where regions would live for a long, if not infinite time. Such a case would be when a global object aliases something that is dynamically allocated (in Go that would be via a call to 'new' or 'make'). Garbage collection is traditionally a "slow" process. In addition, collectors can be a burden to real-time systems, as they can slow the program's execution (or even stop it) allowing the collector time to clean-up objects that are no longer being used. Of course, there are parallel garbage collectors, which should not require a stop-the-world approach that traditional collectors implement. But, I am unaware of their actual processing capabilities/limitations.

TL;DR my thesis at this time poses to provide an elusive seductive dance between garbage collection and region based memory management. OhhhhHhh yeaaa mmmmmm mm that sounds like the sexxy.

-Matt

That's a weiner!

2011-03-06T18:01:00.001+11:00

Soooooo, I felt like I needed to score a new pair of pants, so I went to the closeout-store and got some cheap-o black corduroys. I need to get rid of my other pants that I do not wear too often, to keep things simple. I'm not a fan of acquiring new possessions. Anyways, so after I scored some pants, I decided to go to the little market store deal. As I made my way to the store, I heard some people cheering. Then.... yes.... then.... I saw two dudes pants-less riding their bicycles. Well, ya know, this is Melbourne, so I didn't think too much of it, other than, right on dude! All this craziness while I'm carrying my new pants, because I do not see the need for the store to waste a plastic bag on me. Then... more... a whole parade, women, men, some with pants, some without, frikkin' naked just riding their bikes down the road. I kinda cheered and waved my pants at them. Welcome to Melbourne. Turns out, today is Melbourne's World Naked Bike Ride. Way-cool. I guess it takes some balls to ride a bike in public.

-Matt

I went to church yesterday, SLAYERRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRR (Soundwave was my church)

2011-03-05T09:28:00.000+11:00

Being a music fan, and a lover of attending concerts, I often check the music schedules of places when I travel. When I got to Melbourne I soon learned of the most-awesomest musical orgy in this area, the Soundwave music festival. Well, that was my holy-land, and I proclaimed my pilgrimage would start on March the 4th. Well, yesterday, I was successful. For I have witnessed/experienced once more the love of Primus, Slayer, Iron Maiden, and some Rob Zombie. I didn't see all the shows I wanted to see, heck, there were 6 stages, but I had a blast. Note: Soundwave was one way of forcing myself to stay here in Melbs, even if I didn't like it (I scored my ticket pre-sale). So, my bud Mark picked me up at my house, we then picked up our other friend Ian, and made the pilgrimage. While things were already kickin' (the shows started at noon, we arrived at 2PM), we basically saw: DevilDriver, All that Remains, Primus, High on Fire, Murderdolls, Ill Nino, Slayer, Rob Zombie (very little of it), Queens of the Stone Age, and Kylesa.... ohhh yeah almost forgot... Iron Maiden!!!!!!!!!!! Some of the shows I have listed we did not see in entirety. But it was a blast! When Slayer hit the stage, awe man, it was crushing! The likes of data compression would have been impressed on how much space was compressed in so little time. People cover big area, slayer, people now in tightly packed area. Like one giant pulsating organism. Slayer is magic.

Much love

-Matt

Goin' back to...

2011-02-26T13:11:00.000+11:00

Just got back from the Mother Land. That's right peoples, I just traveled to the USA. I'm back here in Melbourne now. So, the trip was fast (left Oz last Monday the 21st around noon). The cool piece of this deal was that I left at noon that Monday, arrived in Cali-for-ni-a (the home of the Governator) the same day at 2PM. Like a super-crazy worm-hole. In-fact, many abductees claim the extraterrestrial abduction was responsible for their time shift. But, I am pretty sure, science can explain the loss in hours, I think it was probably do to flying against the international dateline. None-the-less, just a mere 2 hours after I left, I arrived in LA, but on a ~14 hour plane flight. Anyways, flying home that following Thursday, and just got back in today... Saturday... freaky. Anyways, California is mega-sweetness. I crossed over the Golden Gate Bridge.... but no jumpers.

-Matt

Acca Dacca Lane and More

2011-02-13T00:20:00.002+11:00

SoooooooOOoOoOoOoOOooOoOo.... posted pictures, I have. Enjoy.
http://www.flickr.com/matt-davis

Linux syscall, vsyscall, and vDSO... Oh My!

2011-02-12T12:07:00.002+11:00

The following article is a brief investigation I wrote up, which looks into the system call functionality of the Linux kernel. Mainly, I was trying to clarify the difference between vsyscall and vdso. This was conducted, more or less, on 2.6.32 and 2.6.37 branches, if I recall properly. Anyways here goes:

-= What are System Calls =-

System calls are routines that communicate directly with the operating system in hopes of attaining some specific piece of information, or to make a specific request that the OS needs to fulfill. For example, gettimeofday() is a request often from user-land for an application to obtain the current timing information from the operating system's kernel. In Linux this call is implemented as a system call. Often this interface exists as a means of fulfilling a request by a user for kernel information. This interface allows a lesser privileged application to access higher-privileged kernel information [1, 2].

Often these calls are not even accessed directly by an application, rather they are executed via a wrapper. The GNU C library, glibc, has wrapper functions that do all the handy-dandy wrapping. For instance, a call to gettimeofday() in an application is really just a call to glibc's wrapper for the system call for gettimeofday(). There is no overhead because the wrapper, at link-time, just associates gettimeofday() to the system's appropriate version of the routine. If one were to desire to make a true system call, avoiding the wrapper, Linux provides a syscall() routine allowing such. Both wrapper and the explicit syscall versions of gettimeofday() are demonstrated below:


#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/syscall.h>
#include <sys/time.h>

void main(void)
{
    struct timeval tv;

    /* glibc wrapped */
    gettimeofday(&tv, NULL);

    /* Explicit syscall */
    syscall(SYS_gettimeofday, &tv, NULL);

    return 0;
}

System calls are loaded at kernel boot-time. All of these calls are accessed by a number. In the example above SYS_gettimeofday is just a constant integer. And this integer is the index into an array (called an interrupt descriptor table) of system calls that are constructed at boot-time. This table/vector can be thought of as pointers to the actual routines [3]. So at index SYS_gettimeofday is a pointer to a piece of code which is where the actual sys_gettimeofday() routine exists.

-= Overhead =-

Originally, invoking a syscall in Linux was actually a pretty expensive process, as it was implemented as a system interrupt (int 0x80). When the syscall interface was called, via the "int 0x80" instruction, the CPU would pass control to the OS. The OS, would look at what value was passed in, such as SYS_gettimeofday, and then the interrupt vector would be indexed and gettimeofday() would get called. Interrupts force the CPU to save the state of execution just before the system call was executed and the system interrupted. This state is restored after the interrupt (in this case a syscall) completes.

Ok, so interrupts are relatively cheap in execution time. However, the way the kernel is designed does add some overhead when a syscall is executed. Linux is divided into two primary memory segments. User-space and kernel-space (userland, kernelland). User-space memory is that which user applications run in. Kernel-space is where all the kernel services run. This segmentation acts as a security barrier, so that crafty and/or malicious user apps cannot directly access the kernel's memory. Making a syscall, as mentioned previously, is just a bridge, a mere wormhole, between these two segments of memory. It is this hop between address spaces that causes quite some overhead, as the kernel must switch between user and kernel-land memory segments, and then back again as the syscall completes [5, 6]. Changing the memory addressing requires some register shuffling, and just imparts more overhead on the whole syscall process.

-= vsyscall and vDSO =-

To reduce the overhead of hopping between user and kernel spaces, a newer mechanism in Linux allows certain syscalls to be accessed directly from userspace, without the need to cross the user/kernel space barrier. This is just what the vsyscall and vdso (Virtual Dynamic Share Object) interfaces do. At boot-time a page of memory is dedicated to containing a subset of syscalls, deemed safe to execute from
userland, that should not cause a security hole for the kernel. The page of memory where these calls lies is mapped into each running process' user-space. Thus, when a call to one of these syscalls is made, no context switch between the memory regions of user and kernel-space is conducted, thus less overhead.

Another interesting means of reducing syscall overhead comes specific to the underlying CPU architecture. Both the more recent AMD and Intel chips have implemented a fast syscall functionality. Instead of issuing an interrupt, programs can issue instructions (SYSCALL/SYSENTER and SYSRET/SYSEXIT) that act faster than a traditional interrupt. The usage of these are based on object code in the OS. Therefore, a programmer does not have to consider how to implement/request the use of a SYSCALL/SYSENTER over a traditional "int 0x80" [1]. When applications are built, based on the architecture and the system, vsyscall and vdso linkage is done automagically.

As demonstrated above, by using the syscall() routine, a traditional syscall will be conducted, even if there is vDSO support (virtual Dynamically Shared Object). However, despite this fact, that call might still be using the newer SYSCALL/SYSENTER CPU instructions. The glibc wrapped gettimeofday() call is what most programs would use. Since the kernel has been designed to use the most efficient mechanism of syscall, that version has the potential to be a virtualized syscall that is mapped into userspace.

To determine if a specific call is using a virtualized (user-space) syscall or a traditional, memory segment-shuffling, syscall, the strace utility can be used. If a true traditional syscall is being conducted, the routine will be output by strace, will look similar to the following:


gettimeofday({1297472587, 581519}, NULL) = 0

According to comments in glibc-2.12.1: "The vsyscall page is a virtual DSO (Dynamic Shared Object) pre-mapped by the kernel" [7].

vsyscall and vDSO are similar in how they work, however there are some slight differences. vsyscall is limited to 4 entries, and is static in memory. Therefore, any statically linked applications can guarantee where vsyscalls are loaded. On-the-other-hand, vDSO is dynamically loaded into the user process, therefore it is not predictable due to Linux's randomized address space layout. If more than 4 vsyscalls are needed, then a vdso should be used instead [8].
For example, run `cat /proc/self/maps` and look at both the '[vdso]' and '[vsyscall]' entries. If your system supports these, the memory range for vDSO is different for each process issued, and vsyscall is totally predictable. If you dont believe me, run 'cat /proc/self/maps' a few times and note the addresses of vdso and vsyscall. Since this example is looking at '/proc/self/maps' the memory mappings displayed are for that 'cat' process [9, 10].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_call
[2] Linux User's Manual: intro(2)
[3] http://www.tldp.org/LDP/khg/HyperNews/get/syscall/syscall86.html
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrupt
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_(computing)
[6] http://www.linux.it/~rubini/docs/ksys/ksys.html
[7] glibc-2.12.1
[8] Linux Kernel 2.6.37 arch/x86/kernel/vsyscall_64.c
[9] http://anomit.com/2010/04/18/examining-the-linux-vdso/
[10] http://www.trilithium.com/johan/2005/08/linux-gate/

-Matt

matt += food;

2011-02-05T09:52:00.003+11:00

Soooo. Well, I never posted about me getting out of the hospital, but I was there for three weeks, and was released about two weeks ago. I have been going back to work and research, but I have also been eating more. I have weekly doctor appointments to run blood tests. I have also been enjoying cooking more, and ya know, it's not that hard and it's not boring. It's not hard cause I'm not trying to be the next Master Chef. I need to keep eating, as my ultimate goal is to regain more health. So, for all of those that cared or offered to come out to see me, or sent me messages, or were legitimately concerned... much props.

BTW, I had no idea that I would acquire so many books while being in the crazy-house. Much props to my advisor, friend, and professor for bringing me a copy of Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach. I have not completed it, but got just under halfway through while being re-fed. I must say, as much as it sucked to be held against my will, I needed it. Technically, I was only against my will for one night, but I have a feeling if I were to have tried to discharge myself, I would have gotten another Section 12 (involuntary) status; thereby preventing me from leaving. I must say I did meet some really cool people. Cool people are interesting. That could have been said in reverse, interesting people are cool. It is a commutative relation.

I did learn two things when in the hospital:

If you carry around a large book about science, you might be perceived a genius.
If you can access facebook via a proxy, you might be perceived as a hacker.
Sultanas are seemingly the equivalent to raisins in America.

-Matt

137 Trimethylxanthine!!!!

2011-01-14T11:43:00.001+11:00

So one beauty of coming to Melbourne is that it has the most cafes per square meter. For a coffee nerd like myself (I take pride in the fact that I used to roast my own), this is a pretty cool place. Well, I had no idea I would be able to sample the delicacies of the beautiful bean from the confines of a mental ward (still here re-feeding trying to get healthier, I love how they do this in the mental ward).

Anyways, the only coffee that is available, typically, here in this ward is instant decrap. Well the decrap, instant, turns to rocks in the high-humidity of this region. Likewise, since it is a mental ward, and also people with eating problems, less caffeine to stimulate the body and also metabolism is the choice. Well, I have had a bit of caffeine from the tea (they also have soda here but I don't drink that). Anyways, they had real coffee, with a press pot here today. I just sampled it...... mmmmmmm I FEEL LIKE I CAN LIFT A SMALL CAR. AHHHH HAHAHAHHAHAHA. Ok, neurons stimulated. One of the other patients here did bring in some instant (caffeinated) coffee. I did sample some of that a while back. Anyways, hopefully I am getting healthier and my bloods are stabilizing. I want out soon!

Much Love

-Matt

What what what in the butt?

2011-01-08T18:51:00.003+11:00

How was your Friday? Mine was pretty fun. I got an injection of B-12... in my ass.

-Matt

Happy 365.25 days... again (Updated)

2011-01-01T16:39:00.003+11:00

Saw a dude try to escape today, he made it to the roof. I totally was rooting for him. Well, I assume he was escaping. He climbed to the roof.

-Matt

Happy 365.25 days... again

2011-01-01T11:48:00.002+11:00

Nnnnnnnneeewwww year. Big whoop. I love how people use the revolution of the sun as some marker for them to "take control" over the issues in their life. Well, that wasn't my goal, but this is my first New Year's in a mental health ward. I didn't realize my physical health was getting so bad. My doctor suggested I go to the hospital, after my blood tests and a physical evaluation. Apparently I'm way-under weight and they didn't want me to do much physical activity. I had been eating more. I didn't realize I was so bad. So they (doc) put me in an eating disorder ward, which also happens to be in a mental ward. Let me say, yes I do eat, and I do not purge, however as it seems now, I was not eating enough and/or enough variety to support me as an individual. Hopefully we can get a plan together *cough*A-Team*cough* so that I can get on track. The program in the said ward will make sure I do very little exercise, re-feed me, and make sure that the re-feeding does not compromise my health. Yeah, even when you start restoring your body, complications can arise. Regarding the mental-ward aspect, way cool people! Who else can say they had New Year's Eve in a mental ward? Anyways, I need to get better. I'm here voluntary. Well, the first night I was here involuntary. The staff by law was not allowed to let me go. I was basically a prisoner. Anyways, I don't know how long I'll have to stay. But I didn't realize my health was this bad off. Positive thoughts. Oh yeah, and the drugs some people are on. Never take the crap they give you. It's scary, I seem some people, almost like zombies.

-Matt

Thoughts

2010-12-29T23:28:00.001+11:00

I now feel like a geriatric, I purchased Caltrate today.
Matt::CoolPoints--;

I went to Pellegrini's again tonight. Awesome coffee. Rocky was there and he tried to slip me some free cake. I felt bad for turning it down as I do not think it was vegan. He is totally cool, he tried to give me the coffee for free, so I tipped them the price of the brew. It was very good. I sat alone and removed my head from the computer so I could focus on some of the logical aspects of my research. Mainly, just thinking about region based memory management, writing down some examples of test-cases, and formulating an idea where we can allocate all space at once if we can guarantee how big the region of memory will be. The latter would assume there is no loops for variables of said region.

Walking home, a dude spotted my 2600 hoodie, and we chatted for a bit. Way cool!

I have to pee.

-Matt

Hoe hoe hoe!

2010-12-25T00:58:00.000+11:00

Man the xmas spirit is truly amazing out here. Maybe its the weather, or rather less than American sense of decorating. I never really decorated much or any for xmas anyways. Well, I was in the research lab today, and my professor/advisor rocks in and asks if I want to come over for dinner. On Christmas Eve... SURE! So I go home with him. He and his wife made an incredible dinner, and we had some pastry's and tea and juice. They opened presents and lit the Christmas Tree... which I think got part of its glow that their son was bewildered by, due to the candles actually lighting-up part of the tree. A real tree with real candles and fire! So awesome. But when they were opening presents, they gave me some! They had two presents wrapped and labeled for me! Totally a surprise, thats the true spirit, a big surprise. I had no idea this was going to happen, he just invited me over today!

Earlier in the day I stopped by the Vic market and visited my friend Dave, my buckwheat dealer. He also sells grain and nuts and stuff. Well, I kinda feel like its making a drug deal 'cause I by the metric system, in other words, I but like a quarter-kilo. I love that I by based on the kilo metric-standard unit, like professional drug dealers. Well Dave hooked me up with more than I asked for and charged me so little, it was so humbling! Lots of mixed nuts, and lots of friendliness.

Even earlier this week I went to Pellegrini's Italian joint on Bourke near Spring Street. Matt is awesome. He pulls some great espresso, as I have been going to this Italian place the past few weeks, we recognize each other. Well I was doin' the ole fold-the-US-20-dollar bill trick so that the graphics on the bill look like 9-11 and collapsing twin-towers. Matt wanted the money, and he paid me AUD for my USD. And he even gave me and my friend, Vegan Dave free espresso. He then didn't even want us to pay! I was like... man that's so nice. What a holiday gift! I still paid him as a tip. So cool!

Last weekend I went to a friend's wedding. It was unitarian. I knew I was in the right place when I ended up chatting with a dude sporting an Amon Amarth T-Shirt. But the whole deal was so cool. There was no song or dance or any other wedding BS. Straight-up, to the point. Basically can be paraphrased... "Ok your married... lets party" Ok maybe not like a crazy party scene, it was a nice reception and then the offsite party/reception. I didn't go to the latter, but the reception at the unitarian place was nice! Congrats Lev!

So here is the deal. May the holidays bring everyone a smile. Lets forget about brain washing and religion, and just recognize the love we have inside for one another. Strip-away the social corruption, we are simply animals. We can love or hate. Love is fun, its better to smile than be pissed. We are all playing this game. Either we can make life sucky by creating enemies, or simply love each other and laugh. Love is easier.

-Matt

More Aussie Curiosities, Santa in Speedos, Compiler Hack1n, and Metal!!!

2010-12-16T22:32:00.007+11:00

Ok so I wanna keep this post brief. I must first start with a major way-cool discovery I have made. There is, in fact, Outback Steakhouse restaurants, just like in the US... here. Isn't that just a shear mockery of the Australian culture. On behalf of America, I apologize to all Australians. Proof: http://www.outbacksteakhouse.com.au <---- notice the '.au' suffix.

Aye! What's that in the air? A fecal tenge of consumerism, the celebration of money and corporate whorism, Christmas time! Actually, I'm not sure how present-driven it is out here. I noticed that, while it's Christmas, my neighborhood doesn't really seem to decorate much. That's fine with me. I much rather celebrate Yule and the change of seasons. Krampus is pretty cool too. One thing I did notice is that it seems most Christmas decorations feature "stars" versus the "snowflakes" that the Northern Hemisphere litters Christmas with. Since it is summer, that does make sense. However, not everything is free from the snow and its contradictory summertime Santa Clause affiliation with the Southern Hemisphere. Santa still pilots a sleigh. Maybe that's for like when Mr. Clause decides to get trashed and cart-around in the "bush."

The "bush," apparently the term outback is more of an Americanism. The Aussies do not seem to understand that term so much, in fact, I do believe they refer to it as the "bush."

My research is finally going. I have been hackin' away on the Go front-end for the GCC compiler in an effort to implement region-based memory management. Ian Taylor did a fantabolous job, the guy (I think he is a machine) is a marvelous developer.

So I was walkin' down Smith Street this evening. I stepped into the Blue Tile Lounge and catch some metal. The band covered some Pantera. I was totally humbled, it made me feel energy! I was happy, they sang New Level, and I can't recall ever hearing a cover of that badadadaasssss track!

This post is dedicated to Mitch, who encouraged me to update this blog, and the letter X for being often used as an algebraic variable.

Skeptics

2010-12-03T09:07:00.000+11:00

So I decided to go catch the Brian Dunning and Rebecca Watson talk last Wednesday. Awesome! A ton of skeptics were there, including the Victorian Skeptics and University Secular Society of Uni Melbourne. Possibly other groups. Anyways, friendly people. Some let me sit at their table! Anyways, Dunning, from Skeptoid spoke on "Strange Sounds" recorded underwater, from numbers stations, and backwards masking, etc. Fun talk! Rebecca, from The Skeptics Guide to the Universe and Skepchick gave a hilarious talk on "How to Ruin Christmas." I chatted one-on-one after the Q&A session with Brian, totally cool guy!

-Matt

The Scene

2010-11-27T11:00:00.001+11:00

So some of the 757ers might want to know about the scene here in Melbourne, with respect to the hacker world. I must say, I think its great. There is a great group of guys at both Ruxcon and 2600 who have some old school knowledge. Many props to Chris and his Ruxcon people for creating such a fantastic conference last week. Not to mention, the speaker talks were great. I can't even imagine the stress and planning that had to go on, but Chris led-it-up and did a killer job, not to mention he used to edit Phrack, and even do some run some stuff in the ANSI art days. It seems like such an event and the Ruxcon/2600 crews are keeping the knowledge base fresh and exciting. I cant even imagine what things were like in the mid-90s. The "cyber-punk" era. These guys are good.

-Matt

Wow Yau! A Lecture.

2010-11-25T23:07:00.000+11:00

So I was about to go to the Juggling Meeting tonight, when I realized, it was kinda chilly and drizzly so I was like screw it, I'll go home. Well, I was going to short-cut through a University building when I found out there was a lecture on. Well it was on String-theory, right up my alley! So I decided to check it out, the title being "The Shape of Inner Space: String Theory and the Geometry of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions." The lecture was given by Shing-Tung Yao, who proved the Calabi Conjecture and ultimately helped to form the concept of Calabi-Yau manifolds (6-dimensional manifolds, wrap you mind around that)! Awesome lecturer, and he is a perfect example of what my definition of genius is, someone who can explain really complicated concepts to a layperson with ease.

Of Sheep and Orbits

2010-11-24T09:10:00.000+11:00

Wow, so last week, I added another ring to the Matt-tree. Yeah, I got a bit older. But it seems that age is just a gross estimate of maturity, knowledge, and health. I feel that is a misnomer. Age is just the amount of times you have orbited the sun given you are based here on the Earth.

Also, Digital Forensics Magazine just published an article I wrote, "Of Sheep & Heap," in their most recent issue (Issue number 5). I must add, their acquisitions department was a blast to work with. Much props to Roy Isbell over there!

-Matt

Ruxcon 2010

2010-11-21T23:14:00.001+11:00

Went to Ruxcon 2010 this past weekend. Tons of fun and great talks! Oddly enough, I ran into a dude who knows one of my buds back home, Sean. So that was pretty cool!

-Matt

Samhain or Beltaine, LUV, the Clause Invades, and Some Clothes Lines

2010-11-07T10:33:00.000+11:00

Wow, so it's already November down here. I guess its the same up there :-) Spring is starting, though, down here. Anyways. So since the pagan calendar is based on a lunar cycle, and probably some what of a seasonal one as well (seasons and the lunar cycle do operate together), I suppose we just passed Beltaine. This typically would have been Samhain in the northern hemisphere. No matter what though, Los Dios de Los Meurtos also occurred. I always liked that concept of holiday. Celebrate the dead, so cool. When I die, celebrate my death. Throw a party, donate me to science, and then burn me to teeny tiny bits and stuff me into some unsuspecting persons Bar-b-cue. Or do what the vikings did, toss me on a boat and set it a blaze.

Went to World Vegan Day LAST Sunday, the 31st. Mega huge turn out at the way cool Abbortsford Convent. Had a blast! Dave and myself rocked it.

I gave a presentation for the Linux User's of Victoria (LUV) back last week on the 3rd of November, with the topic about basic kernel module development and debugging. I called it "Kernel Autopsy a Brief Evisceration Into GNU/Linux Kernel Module Creation and Debugging". The slides (and other useful stuff) can be found here. The date would have been on that previous Tuesday, but the Melbourne Cup was rocking then, a public holiday. I am against horse racing, to me it is totally unfair to the horses. Plus, it seems like a really bad excuse to dress up and blah blhlhlahlah. Give the horses some respect, they didn't choose to be ridden.

Went to a mate's house yesterday for a BBQ. Paul and his wife Liz made delicious vegan tart desert stuff and had plenty of veggies and all kinds of salads. Tons of fun! But before this, I went down into the CBD. Santa Clauses' Arrival!!!! Let the consumer whoreism begin! I can hear the ring-a-ding-ding of Consumer Clause "Buy buy buy!!! Your kids expect it, and you will be bad parents if you don't give in." I must now make mention to Rev. Billy from the Church of Stop Shopping hilarious! Oh yeah, even though it is during the summer, I'm pretty sure like many christmas cards and stuff have the "winter" snow-like decorations.

But prior to the Clause, I hung my clothes up on a clothes line to dry. Never have done that before! Awesome.... it really works! I didn't go downtown for the clause event, I happened to be on my into the city at the time.

Ok the colon speaks, and the toilet needs to be fed.

-Matt

Bats are Like Rats with Wings

2010-10-25T00:25:00.001+11:00

Before I explain last night let me lead-up with the following. I've been kinda emo the past two days. Sure my research is making progress, but not as quickly as I had hoped. Anyways, last weekend I got an email about an opportunity to move out, but ultimately I realized I was trying to make friends by moving in with others. Probably not the best way to make friends. I didn't really know the others anyways. Now, I do have friends, but none that I ALWAYS pal-around with in person. Heck, I lived alone in the US for years so, I figure my share house room, is my mini apartment. I'm in such a awesome chill mood. Its 9:35, I'm sitting in the Carlton Gardens, and a possum was just mozing near the tree that this park bench is next too. I had a killer pasta/mushroom salad on Lygon street with some friends in the Juggling Club. Anyways, the Exhibition building looks beautiful. I wanna just run home to get my camera to take a shot of the nearly full moon + illuminated building + the swarm of bats chillin' in the air above it. Bats are like rats, with wings. Wow the sprinkler is getting close. Maybe ill go grab that camera.

[... I did get some pics. Want to spend more time choosing which to deep-six.]

Last night was nuts too (last Wednesday)! Kinda in a depressed mode, and I decided to take a walk around. Well, I ended up walking by the Brown Couch on Gertrude. Anyways, I saw a chick and dude, Joel, about to walk in, so I decided to ask "who was playin." Turns out it was a local band called The Watermelon Tree. They suggested I go catch 'em. Well I was like, sure. I chatted to the dude for a while, way cool. He even offered to pay the cover charge for me! I left, too stingy to dish out money, and was like WTF? Why did I just leave? I was talkin' to a way cool dude, who even offered to pay my way. Well, I turned around, and walked back in, paid the cover, and watched a show! Joel's wife even went up to sing, great voice. It gets cooler! After the show I was walkin' home and I start chattin' with some dude on the street, he mentioned he was on the way to the ER because his teeth hurt. anyways, we showed off our ninja to each other. Then I realized, when we parted, that others, I think, might have thought we both were trashed. I was sober and all. But my ninja skills
were in check. Then on the corner were two people with Kiss face paint on, a Peter Chris and Ace Frehley. I chatted with them for a brief amount of time, and then continued home. Moral of the story. Ninja moves rock.

Hangin' at the Mental Asylum

2010-10-19T23:20:00.001+11:00

So last weekend I caught up with a mate, Lev, and his companion Erica. Very freakin' awesomeness people. They are so warming. They picked me up in their car and drove me outside of the inner part of the city and to their place not technically in the suburbs, but kinda between the suburbs and the hub-bub of the city. Lev is the president of the Linux Users of Victoria (LUV). So we geekeed-out some! He and Erica also gave me the grand tour. The Kew Asylum was an 1800s mental asylum now converted to town-homes and apartments... really, how awesome is that! Freakin' awesome! So beautiful, great distance/panoramic view of the city. Not to mention, bats in the trees, as he described, it looks like beer bottles hangin' from the limbs. He's totally right! Tons of bats chillin' upside-down. As we were strollin' around, a goose mystically appeared, and it was totally friendly. I pet it! I also ate peppercorns straight from a tree from the asylum grounds.

And now, Gordon Ramsey is on TV doin' some Kitchen Nightmares. It's awesome, the show is uncensored. So much vulgar language, its great!

Oh yeah, I was at work today. Washin' my hands. Yep, the water was rollin' around counter-clockwise. I still need to find a weak toilet, so I can test to make sure the toilets also have experience the anti-clockwise-ness of the Southern Hemisphere.

P.S. My last.fm account just tapped 10000.
-Matt

Hoo Woo!

2010-10-16T00:35:00.000+11:00

Sweet momma-mojo of crazy swing + talent + gypsy-styled awesomeness. I caught the Woo Hoo Review tonight at Bar Open by muh-self. I must say, patting-myself-on-the back, awesome choice. I was feeling kinda sleepy/tired/meh. Then ... then the music kicked in. So much so, they had me jigging around, bouncing around is more like it. I'm sold. I think I want to get a RV, Gypsie-styled, and become a nomad of FOSS. Please plplplplpplleeeassee check this band out.

-Matt

Google Go: A Brief Stroll Down GC Lane

2010-10-01T17:09:00.007+10:00

The following is a quick summary of the Google compiler, gc, for their language Go. I have recently been hooked onto Go as it is a relatively new language, and my research interests are compilers. Not to mention I have been looking for a compiler to hack on for my PhD research. Oddly enough, I caught a talk about Go where Rob Pike, Go evangelist and developer, gave an awesome presentation on the language, which kinda lured me in. Plus, to benefit my cause, the source is free and open, so I decided to take a stroll down the source code lane to see how Go churns one's source code into an executable.

Note, this is my interpretation of the gc compiler, I cannot say it is 100% accurate, nor am I reviewing the compiler. Since there is relatively little public documentation on how the internals of gc tick, I figured this exploration would be a good learning experience for me. Maybe someone else will find this somewhat useful.

TL;DR: Cool compiler for a cool language Go which focuses on memory safety and easy implementation of parallelization. GC is based on Plan 9 with their specific assembly and object file format.

The following is a brief outline of how a Google Go source file is compiled by the gc compiler taken from the Google repository at revision 6277:ed9fe47b342d (September 14, 2010)

Quick Overview

The gc compiler primarily functions from two spots in the Go source tree, the general non-architecture-specific code in go/src/cmd/gc and the specific architecture based code in the go/src/{5g,6g,8g} directory. The other portions of the build phase are also located in the respected 5l/6l/8l and 5a/6a/8a directories for the linker and assembler. The 5/6/8 prefix denotes the specific architectures ARM, x86 64-Bit, or x86 32-Bit respectively. All three of the aforementioned tools (compiler, assembler, linker) make up the build process.

The gc compiler is derived from the Bell Labs Plan 9 operating-system project. Heck, why start from scratch when part of the Plan 9 team now works at Google :-) Anyways, the main focus of this post is on the compiler, but some mention of the linker will also be made. The Plan 9 errrr go tools (compiler, assembler, and linker) are written in C. What does this mean? Well, for one, the gc compiler for Go is not self-hosting, it does not build itself, but there is good reason for this, mainly bootstrapping and to support the online community who can simply bootstrap with an existing C compiler, e.g. gcc [5]. Most users probably already have the latter.

There is also a GCC front-end for Go, gccgo, which can be obtained from the gcc project's source repository. Consider that since gccgo does utilize the gcc framework, it should be able to use a set of optimizations that gcc provides for their intermediate representation. However, this post focuses on the gc compiler, developed by Google.

From Source to Binary

The system adheres to a common build phase:
Compile --> Assemble (Plan 9 Object Files) --> Link the object files.

Object Files

The object files are not pure binary output from the compiler, rather they have some human-readable text as well. The format is specific to Plan 9 and is not documented properly (publically) as far as I am aware. The information in the object files, later to be assembled and linked, allow for link-time-optimization, roughly known as whole program optimization, or cross translation-unit/compilation-module optimization. I am unaware to the degree of cross-module optimization that takes place, as the Plan 9 Compiler document [2] states: "The loader [linker] is a multiple pass program that reads object files and libraries and produces an executable binary. The loader also does some minimal optimizations and code rewriting."

From Source to Object File

Since this post is mainly concerned with what the compiler is doing, and mostly ignoring the linking phase now, the compiler begins its work in main(), of course, remember, it is written in C. Anyways, src/lib9/main.c is where all the magic kicks-off. From there the source file(s) must be lexed, which is built on the lex/flex and yacc/bison tools. The parser and lexer do their jobs to process the source-code into data that the compiler will use to manipulate and generate object files in three passes. Those being interpreted from the commented source as:

The compiler first processes the "const, type, and names and types of funcs".
Then, in the second pass, the compiler handles "variable assignments."
Finally, the thrid pass processes function bodies.

As mentioned, the final pass is when the functions are processed. This processing starts with a call to the funccompile() routine. The body of the latter is defined in src/cmd/gc/dcl.c and then calls the architecture-specific compile() routine. compile() is specific to either the 5g or 6g compiler. The remainder of this overview assumes the x86-64 6g compiler.

The compiler builds up an internal representation, e.g syntax tree, built of Nodes. The program as a whole is a NodeList (list of Node structures). The Node structure is a mammoth generic structure that represents all constructs in the language. A function body is represented as a Node with internal pointers to more nodes defining the other pieces of that routine. For instance, a statement can be represented as a NodeList, the Nodes in that list are the various components that makeup the statement walkret() in go/src/cmd/gc/walk.c shows a traversal across the function body to find the return statement for that function.

But before we get too far, the typecheck() routine should first be examined. This routine is called for all three passes and occurs before the compiler jumps to the architecture-specific call to the compile() routine. The typecheck() routine acts on a single Node that it is passed. typecheck() first checks to determine if the Node represents an IOTA (in essence an enumerated value). If it is such, its value is changed to a constant. String literals and other constructs are further qualified, and some error checking occurs, such as array boundaries. Basically, further resolution from what the parser gives us and safety checks.

So, after some type-checking is complete by the three passes, it's time to do more architecture-specific compiling via the compile() routine. The width of the construct represented by the Node is first calculated (e.g. data types like float, int, etc). If the value is a string, a flag is flipped here making note of this needed runtime check, similarly the same occurs for some cases of arrays. Next, the arguments are setup for functions.

The walk() routine in go/src/cmd/gc/walk.c is then called which further processes the body of the function including the return statement. Unused variables are also checked. The walk{stmt,expr,switch,select}() routines are called on the function body. The walks add more data to the Nodes that comprise the ultimate representation of the function being compiled. Walking also adds calls and variables as needed. The uniqueness of how the language is implemented and works stem from these walks.

The final phase of compile() is a call to heapmoves() which, according to the source code, "migrates" the funcion input/output values "between the stack and the heap." The latter calls the paramstoheap() routine (also in src/cmd/walk.c), where the function arguments (input) are walked. This portion of compilation "generates" the "code to allocate copies of escaped parameters to the heap." Finally, after the latter call returns, and just before compile() exits, the output arguments of the function being processed (return arguments), are copied to the stack.

*whew* now the compile() is complete, and the object code is assembled in a Go/Plan9 syntax that is dumped to output. To begin this object code production, a call from main() (after funccompile()) in go/src/cmd/gc/lex.c to dumpobj() in go/src/cmd/gc/obj.c is executed. Some of the routines responsible for emitting the object code are 5g/6g compiler specific, for instance dumpdata() and dumpfuncs() located in go/src/cmd/{5g,6g}/gobj.c. The code that is internally assembled by the 5g/6g compiler can be viewed via the compiler's -S argument( e.g. ./6g my_source.go -S). The object file basically contains that information in a binary format, with some metadata for linking.

References

Google Go Source Code,
https://go.googlecode.com/hg (source code)
Revision 6277:ed9fe47b342d (September 14, 2010)
Ken Thompson, Plan 9 C Compilers,
http://lsub.org/sys/doc/compiler.ps
Plan 9 Man Pages (9c, 2a)
Google Group for Go:
http://groups.google.com/group/golang-nuts/
Google Go FAQ:
http://www.golang.org/doc/go_lang_faq.html
Plan 9 From Bell Labs (Website)
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/

-Matt

Ostara (Spring Solstice) has Occurred

2010-09-26T10:43:00.000+10:00

Ok well the Southern Hemisphere's spring solstice was earlier this week, officially marking the beingging of spring. Outside looked rather welcoming last afternoon, so I decided to go for a stroll and take pics. Mainly I wanted a pic of "mattt" Apparantly there is one that exists. I had been planning on taking a shot of this for sometime now. I know WallyBert will get a kick out-of-it.

Friday night I met up with some of the Ruxcon peeps. Had fun hangin' out with them. The meeting was more of a demo on SQL-injection and remote shell/webshell execution. Louie did a great job with the talk. Afterwards, I went to Lord of The Fries (veggie and vegan friendly fast food joint) and then met back-up with the hackers at a cafe/bar. And last night I went to the Vegie Bar with my boy Dave, and we met a few others there. One dude was in town all the way from Alice Springs, so that was kinda the reason Dave setup the meeting. Great food and good times. We went out for coffee later!

Enjoy some pics.

-Matt

Bitten

2010-09-20T23:23:00.000+10:00

So I had a pretty interesting day. It started off with me missing the tram I was hoping to score, and then taking another tram. But, if I didn't take the alternative one, I wouldn't have seen the dude ralphing into the trash can. Definitely an awesome wake-up for the morning! Well, it wasn't a lot of spew, just some orange crap into the trash can. Looked like he was just spitting when I caught him.

THEN! After work I went to the Victorian Skeptics meeting where Lynne Kelly gave her mega-awesomeness thesis on Stonehenge. Freakin' amazing! I was utterly overcome by the way cool research she has conducted. Amazing speaking skills too. I later realized that my research has an easier means of expressing results, numbers! I can show the efforts of my research via measurements and not historical "facts" that are related against multiple cultures!

After that awesome and quite enjoyable lecture, I decided to walk home. In doing so, I strolled through the Carlton Gardens, it wasn't terribly cold so the walk was rather peaceful. Anyways, I came across two females in the park, apparently possum-whisperers! They were feeding possums in the park! A bunch of Australia-style possums (not the Virginia Possum), some in the tree, the others on the ground. Well, at least one in the tree. One had a baby on its back! Well, I strolled up, quietly, to the girls. I had to greet a possum! One of the ladies gave me an apple to feed the possums. The little critter mistook my finger for the apple and bit me, not hard. It was so cool! It made my night! And you know what, it was a little later after I was back on the trail home, that I realized. Life should have a unique definition per individual. However, as a species, we have a few traits that we have yet to evolve from. Mainly, it seems many of us, including myself, and probably most people in corporate America, turn into robots. Like fearing change, we do the same thing every day. Robot. However, it seems a trait that has been ingrained in our species is that of the enjoyment for sheer experience. So my definition of life is merely the following: experience, and learning. The possums opened my mind!

-Matt

My list of 0x0A Australian Surprises for an American

2010-09-16T08:25:00.001+10:00

So I have been here for about 2 months now (arrived on July 16th). I have been asked a few times, what really surprises me about this land. Well, here is just a few, I'll do a non-prioritized list of 0x0A surprises.

0x00: Toilets flush pretty powerful and often have two buttons. This presents a decision to be made when you flush. Press the button for a weak flush or a serious flush. And its all button driven, if there is a user-assisted flushing mechanism. I have even seen pee-walls, which I was not using properly. You stand on the step in front of the wall-urinal and not behind the step. Its not a barrier. Also, the engineering of the flushing system makes testing the Coriolis effect rather difficult.

0x01: It's hard to find free Wi-Fi.

0x02: No corn (high-fructose corn syrup) in Coke. And probably numerous other products. Bread is really easy to buy for a vegan, seems fewer ingredients in the store-bought stuff and they often list the emulsifiers as being "vegetable" emulsifiers.

0x03: Houses do not seem to be insulated. And people comment negatively on this. However, supposedly, newer houses have ameliorated this.

0x04: Maccers. Even McDonalds calls themself this on TV commercials.

0x05: It's called the "toilet," not the restroom or bathroom. So when you gotta burst, you ask for the toilet. Heck, that makes sense. I know it sounds rude, but apparently it's normal and not rude.

0x06: Many seem rather interested in the environment and its wellbeing, environmentally conscious.

0x07: If you have to use the toilet, you best prepare for a walk. A few venues I have been to make finding the ole porcelain beauty a hike, sometimes actually having to go outside the venue to the get to the turd-smuggler.

0x08: DSL is rather common.

0x09: The El Camino style of cars, you know, like a pickup-truck and sedan fornicated and had a hybrid.

0x0A: It's nearly impossible to find brewed coffee at any cafe.

-Matt

I wonder...

2010-09-13T11:46:00.001+10:00

Are the constants of the universe signed and susceptible to a negative rollover?

Cap 'n Crunch Frequency

2010-09-04T15:16:00.002+10:00

Wow! So I sit here, again, in my room (one of two) in the sharehouse, typing this in vim (no network connection, we just switched DSL providers). The second room I can now have, since Louie moved. That room will probably be my "office." I do have plans to look at two places today. Ideally, I'm willing to part with more money to have a place on my own; however, one of the places is a really cheap apartment (called flat here) with a just one vegetarian guy.

In other news, I went to the local Melbourne 2600 meeting last night! Awesome crew. I had a blast, and a tad different from the HR-2600 meeting (alt site). Difference being that we all met in a cafe/bar, Caffeine at ReVault. Really cool place, about 3 others and myself went out for "cheap" food, which ended up being Thai, and then returned back to the bar/cafe. Tons of Asian places around here. After that we headed back to the cafe/bar, yes I know I just mentioned that (redundancy). Sven (the hostel bud) met up with me there too! Anyways, lots of tech talk, and just meeting people, not unlike the 757 meeting; however it wasn't at a mall, and Tony, the dude running ReVault, keeps the place open till whenever it seems; BTW, he makes a killer long-black coffee. I never put sugar in my coffee, he put some in mine, as it was his version of a long black, I suppose. And you know what, it was really delicious!

Earlier in the week I met up with CapnKernel, Gorilla, and one of my postgrad buds for a local CCHS (hackerspace) meeting, the current space was not available, as the dude who the garage was hosting the meeting was out of town. We had fun, just chilled and chatted stuff at the Jawa Bar (yes a 'w' not a 'v'). I'm such a tight-wad, I didn't spend any money... well I did buy Paul (my postgrad bud) part of a drink. I felt I owed him
since he is so nice and his wife made me awesome pizza (mentioned a few weeks ago in a prior post).

Personal rant follows:
I feel so lame not doing much work on PDFResurrect lately. I have some things in place for a newer version, however I just havent hacked it enough lately mainly to test the idea I have added. Mainly, I want to decompress the XRef tables that PDF's based on spec 1.5 or higher add. This, of course, means adding zlib support. Which is there now, but my handling of the decoded stream is not going as smooth as hoped.

-Matt

Induction and some Prestidigitation

2010-08-27T08:39:00.001+10:00

I decided to go out to game night at The Yak Bar. Card games and other similar fun activities were conducted. I showed up late, hence missed some drawing based deal that people were humoring upon. Anyways, I met with Chris and Ben, both from the Cafe Games meetup, in a prior post. Ben is a freakin' amazing card-smith, master of prestidigitation (slight-of-hand). He has now inspired me to get back into card-trickery. This kid, relatively young, was incredible, he had the talk, and the card skills, one word... "slick."

I led half of the group in a game of Mao. I first learned of this game via observation at Shmoocon a few years in a row. I never knew what the people were playing, but Mouse would lead up this seemingly fun/insane card game. I actually figured out what game was being played after investigating her website. We had a blast playing it tonight, and I would like to see such fun continue.

After that, we all played a variation of Asshole/Bullshit card game. Lots of fun. I enjoy stuff like this because such events are social in nature.

-Matt

3lection

2010-08-22T01:17:00.001+10:00

Wow! Election day today, and they do it on a Saturday! How much sense does that make! Seems logical to me. However, their voting is compulsory, you have to do it or you get fined! That seems kinda dirty, plus the candidates are ranked, so you have to prioritize when you vote. The latter being absolutely hilarious to me, because I feel the government of the US thinks we are all twits and completely incapable of counting beyond 5, none-the-less capable of prioritizing the candidates! You all remember the hanging-chad deal right... because, well the rest of the world, I assume, was laughing too.

I went with one of my vegan friends, this morning, to look for a house. We liked both houses, and then I went with her to vote.

This afternoon was awesome. I went in to Uni, and then the professor took me home for dinner with himself, his wife, son, and another professor, his wife, and their daughter. Amazing vegan dinner! Seriously awesome and hard-working Indian cuisine. Their son made some amazing tea, and I must say, he was incredibly intelligent, cool, and just straight-up. He acted much more mature and intelligent than I ever would have at his age, mega cool. I think he was like 10 or so, totally impressed me as being just incredibly normal and intelligent, and he loved my use of the word "awesome." After the appetizers of vegan coolness (artichoke dip and a mushroom pate), we had an awesome dinner, and watched some of the election results on tv.

Later, my advisor, his son, the other professor's daughter, and myself played the boardgame, Ticket to Ride. But of course, we played the Nordic edition, after-all my advisor is from Denmark! The professor was on my team, and we kicked serious anus! Later in the evening we went outside to visit the possums in their tree! That validated what I saw in a previous blog post. I did in fact witness a possum previously, and not a drop bear, or wombat.

Then came dessert! It was a vegan-awesomeness apple crumble with custard deal. The other professor's wife made this concoction. Amazing. It's times like this that being vegan is mega-rad.

These people are so awesome. I'm lucky to have found an advisor who is much more than an academic, rather a friend/surrogate-family member. He actually cares for me beyond school. The same dude who hooked-me up with an oil heater, and also the same wife who tried to help me find a place! Such nice people. The world needs more caring individuals as such.

More Pictures

2010-08-18T22:52:00.005+10:00

The following, from my flickr
account, were taken like a week and a half ago or so. That link should have
various sizes of these pics. These are all near where I stay in Fitzroy.

-Matt

Whore, Skeptics, Wombat, Nerds Oh Myyyyy!!!

2010-08-18T00:07:00.001+10:00

Sooo, in-lieu of meeting people, I have been fairly prevalent. So lets see, where should I begin.

Well a few nights ago, a rather cute young woman caught me waiting to cross the street, near the street corner where I live. She was nice, and it was cold out, and she made mention of the cold weather. This cute young woman then asked if I was looking for a girl. My hoe-meter immediately turned to "ALERT ALERT POSSIBLE STDS IN THE VACINITY." I basically said I was going home, and walked away. She was nice, and I was quite flattered that such a nice question was presented to me, I assume she was a prostitute, but that might also be my bias or my American preconceptions coming out. She was nice, cute, and well I can't say that she actually looked like a rent-a-chick, but all of her questions/statements (cold weather and am I looking for a girl) just seems to me to be a hint of something I want nothing to do with. Either way, I am still flattered.

On Monday I went to the Victorian Skeptics meeting (a branch of the Australian Skeptics group). Nice group of people. The speaker, Don Hyatt, spoke on the "Problem with Education." The latter being an perspective of the Australian educational establishment. His talk should be available on their site. It was a fantastic talk, however I was kinda hoping more for the Intelligent Design vs Evolution in school talk. It was little on that, which I inferred from the agenda posted online. I won a chocolate (not vegan) treat "Freddo" for asking a question. I kinda just let the chocolate sit on the table as if I forgot I had won something. I met some really cool people there, and even ran into one of the board gamers from the meeting last Saturday.

After leaving the Skeptics meeting, I needed to score some bread. Not money, but actual processed flour concoction. Unlike the states, and Mitch from the local hackergroup concurs, the ingredients on Australian food products is much shorter than all the bullpoop we put in the American stuff. Why? Probably because we Americans have to have chemical crap in all of our foods to monetarily benefit the big-wigs of the food-producing world. How else could we peddle off flouride, or get rid of depleted uranium? Ok ok thats the mini-conspiracy-Matt coming out. Anyways, as I was on the way to the store I saw, what I first thought might be a racoon, or maybe a fox, but as I got closer, it was some creature I had never seen in the wild before, I think it was a wombat! Sweet! It was mega-cute and chill, kinda like opossums in the states. I think it was a wombat, maybe a wallaby instead?

And then tonight, Tuesday, I attended the Connected Community Hacker Space (CCHS), a local Melbourne hacker group. It was so cool. I met Mitch and George on the tram and they directed me to train system, and to the house where the meeting was. They walk like they are on a mission, their iron-legs. I felt totally weak in their presence. They were much fun, and lots of cool people were met at the space! They were all totally welcoming, and Mitch really made me feel welcome by saying he thought I would fit in well. Really he and George have been great help just talking with them over the net. The space had a makerbot, and made a police whistle deal, with the ball in the middle! Cool device. I suggested making a Cap'n' Crunch Whistle to generate useless bluebox tones (2600Hz). I also thought it might be cool to fabricate a whole nativity scene out of toast. That might do nice on ebay. Kinda like one-upping the "holy" images that people claim to have been presented to them by their toaster. Seems like a humorous message to me. If the toaster here starts sending me messages, like a holy-fax-machine of processed carbs, that might freak me a tad.

Weekend Update

2010-08-15T12:50:00.000+10:00

So, my mega-awesome advisor gave me an oil heater. While I think my room has given me some respiratory problems, I must say. That heater keeps the room a nice cozy 85F or so! Actually, I'm not sure how hot it is but dude... it can put out some heat!

Went out Friday night to a place called Grumpy's Green, just down the corner from me. One of my buds from the hostel, Sven, called up. We caught up and hung there all night. He has moved closer to the city. Anyways, Grumpy's was a pretty sweet bar/cafe deal. Unfortunately, they had stopped serving coffee, however, the brew was flowing, just not down my esophagus! But the best part, aside from chilling out on the bajillion relaxing couches and chairs, and hangin' out with a bud... was the live music!! The second act (and no cover to get in), which played 2 sets, was Kill Kurt Reifler. Amazing 2 person band, a drummer and guitarist!!!!! AWESOME! Jazzy/funky/quasi-indy rock.

Saturday, I had to meet people. I really want to find a group of people that get together often to hangout. I definitely want to meet with CCHS. Their location is a tad out of the way. Plus, I do not think they had anything scheduled this weekend. Anyways, I went to a meetup.com event for the local boardgame group. Probably one of a few, from what I understand. The group was a lot of fun. We all met at a cafe/restaurant that does boardgames. I had a long black, you can't find a typical American coffee here, the closest you will get is a shot of espresso and hot-water (long black), like an Americano in the states. The same goes for 7-11 too! But ask for an Americano, and you might get a puzzled look. So I had an equivalent at the boardgame cafe: My Cube Cafe. It was really pretty neat! Typically, it's a $15 voucher for the meetup and you spend the money buying food and drinks, yes they serve alcohol too. But I just bought a coffee and gave the owner, Jesse, a dollar for letting me hang, observe, and play a few games. Typically, on a non "meetup.com" event you buy a dinner and you can play games. I'd much rather see it more free-flowing. Just go and play, and buy as you wish. You don't pay to play necessarily, but the purpose of buying food so you can play, probably keeps non-paying people from coming in.

And... the network at the home was down. I hacked into our router, yeah, default user and password, go figure. Our authorization keeps failing with the provider. Or it seems to me that way. Anyways, it's Sunday... I probably should update the timestamp on this blogger.com account. I'm at the uni.

Ohh yeah... and my research. I have narrowed my topics to the following two:
1 -- Region Based Memory Management possibly focusing on mission critical/embedded systems, parallelism, real-time, and some way to benefit caching (possibly), power efficiency.
2 -- Cache-Aware Kernel Thread Scheduling

-Matt

!Hostel

2010-08-08T21:28:00.002+10:00

Sooooo. The place I was drooling over when I first hopped down here. A place in the artsy-hip Fitzroy area, called me back! They needed someone to take over rent, and well I was tossing between hostel, the vegans (Fiona and Dave), and the Fitzroy place. Well since I love the vegans, and we have been trying to look for places to start, and not yet successful, I decided to accept the Fitzroy place... until me and the vegans find a house. I must say, I have been in contact with the vegans since I first arrived and even before I arrived. So, in a since, I guess this Fitzroy place is temporary. I have two rooms here, well I should have two, there is one person that is moving out, Louie. Louie is mega-cool. My other housemates, are Heath, Zoe, and Paula. All way cool! I love these people so far. My current room here is 'ok' It has a queen bed hovering on a small frame just over the floor. I dig the house, but as common in Australia, especially with way-old Victorian-styled places, it lacks heat. Which probably isn't too bad in the Summer, but now, the winter... it's pretty cool and drafty. My main quibble is the heat. Zoe did hook me up with a small portable heater. Which is 'ok' and downstairs has a oil-heater (which is pretty much cut it on when you need to). But hey, what can I say. I just wanted to find some neat people, in a neat area, and have my own room ... check, check, check! I do need a desk and chair. But that will need to wait until Louie's room becomes available.

I met up with the vegans today to look at a house. Mega-cool house, however one of the bedrooms leads directly to the bathroom, or you have to go outside to get to the bathroom. So thats probably a no-go. We all hung out at a mega-vegan friendly Vietnamese restaurant Yong Green Food, I did not partake in the foodativities, but did hangout with muh friend. We then ventured to Coles to get some grocery action on.

Anyways, that was my early afternoon. I just had some coffee with Heath in the new place here, and am planning on some vegan-friendly pizza at my friend, Paul, one of the post-grads, place. His wife is making soy-cheese pizza. So considerate!

Hah, and for all those picture-grubbing monsters. My room... yeah it doesn't look as cool as how Louie has his decorated... but hey, I arrived by taxi around 8:00 PM last night. All I wanted was some community, not that the hostel was bad. In fact, it was a blast as I made tons of friends. The last day there I met a guy who knew, from Vietnam, Jim Webb the VA Senator. But I want to get established out here, and get a place where I can get things done. Maybe things will start to smooth out :-) Also, various sizes of these pictures can be skimmed from my Picassa album or my Flickr album.

My bedroom.

The place (center house). The last picture, the mailslot, is posted on http://www.flickr.com/matt-davis

Heath and Louie.

-Matt

Best Day so Far

2010-08-01T17:27:00.000+10:00

Yesterday (Saturday) and even Friday were amazing. Let's keep this quick.

Saturday I went out with a group of vegans I had met online, and later at university a few weeks ago. All three of us, Fiona, David and myself, had a plan to go look for places to stay. We investigated two houses that we can rock our veganism in. I had so much fun, they being well-schooled in this locale, suggested Soul Food Cafe in Fitzroy. Actually, it was Fiona's most-righetous choice, *weelyweelywhewww* (Bill and Ted airguitar). My weapon of choice, the beans and toast. It was still morning so we opted for the breakfast stuff. Let me say, I have never had baked beans and toast, and it is a pretty "common" breakfast for Australians, it's freakin' awesome! After the cannon was loaded, we checked out the second of the two houses, and later went to a grocery store to see what they had. Lots of fun, and vegan-ness there too. So now we have two applications that we are to push out Monday, for a house together. Housing seems rather competitive out here. Maybe we can rock this one!

Oh yeah, and now winding the watch back some. Friday was killer because my co-postgrads invited me out for drinks and food after we wrapped up some research. Not quite Cogans, well you could think of it as Cogan's in tapas form! The place was on Lygon street, a very Italian friendly place. We sat outside under an awning at tables that were placed on the sidewalk, I can only envision a style similar to Europe (never been), where cafes and such all have outdoor seating on the sidewalk. Tiny pizzas, pita chips and spreads, all of that kinda stuff. It was great to just get out and hang with people, that were not necessarily hostel people. Mark opened my eyes, he was buying so much food, at really expensive prices, not caring a bit about the money he was spending. He just wanted give help to those that might be less in income than he assumed. Money is great if used in ways that strengthen community and health. It's a tool and a means, not material.

-Matt

Pics and Such

2010-07-25T18:49:00.004+10:00

So, I finally got out today. I walked to the CBD and browsed the Victoria Market with a bud, Sven. Anyways, here are some of the pics from that adventure, along with a handful I took at the uni and hostel. The following images, along with various sizes and such, are linked from http://www.flickr.com/matt-davis

-Matt

Matmannnnnn

2010-07-23T08:21:00.000+10:00

Wow, you know, I kinda like Batman; but more on the latter later. So, I am still searching for housing, a matcave, and I do realize that my pictures and updates have been less than frequent. I have started university, which really seems cool so far. The campus is beautiful, and I do need to get more pics. But, I have curtailed a lot of fun, in lieu of wanting to get settled. I do enjoy that the program is research, and quite flexible; however, I do get bouts of homesickness. At times, I just want to be at home or in my cube at work. Missing my family and friends kinda stinks. But, there new hacking experiences and the research, all really make staying here alluring! But my prime task from my advisor is to find a place to live!

I did just want to drop a quick post. Sorry, hopefully I can get settled soon, out of the hostel, and then let myself have a tad bit more fun; and yes I know I should let myself have fun no matter if I have found a place to settle. Don't get me wrong, I have had fun, but I really want to experience this city.

I do get in bouts of homesickness, who wouldn't? Batman lost his family as a kid, however he survived with his aspirations of being a vigilantist. So, my goal, is to pursue my research to provide a benefit to more than just myself, but to the CS community at large. So, while I do want to be home, at 757Labs, or at my work cube, or with my friends wherever they may be, I must also realize that this time I am here might be short.

I do have aspirations of researching abroad. Once I find a place to lay-my-head, aside from the hostel, my family (and friends are family) have a place to chill too! I want to take you all on this ride with me, y'all being my family and any-other internet stalker. Let the fun begin.

-Matt

What's the happs. Yeah no pictures...

2010-07-19T07:53:00.002+10:00

Wow, I feel kinda lame for not posting much. I have basically curtailed most of my fun until I can find a place to live, as that seems the priority for my sanity. Hence, no pictures. I have met some really cool people though. I have two metal heads in my room, I think both are from Germany. Another dude I met, and chatted with all night, was from Germany as well. He was a brewer of beer, and also home brews... 40 Liters!!!

A (I think) Korean girl has been really nice. She, and I assume her boyfriend "Fish," bought me some noodles. It seems like Ramen, but truly from Korea. I have yet to try that. I might get her and "Fish" to help me cook it. So courteous. Also, she and her boyfriend are leaving for Tasmania soon.

One thing I learned. Always look both ways before crossing the street. I almost have died like a hand-full of times, as they drive on the other-side-of-the-road here (the left side). So when I cross the street, I would look the wrong way and start moving. Kinda funny actually.

Also, I decided to pickup some Vegemite. It's verrrrry unique. It's high in B-vitamins, and is basically a product of yeast. I think it's an acquired taste. Still workin' on that.

Also, I almost caused a fire today. I made toast, it's a good substrate for Vegemite, but apparently if you only put half-a-piece of bread in the ginormous toaster umm, the heating element is offset not-enough, thus the toaster does not realize the bread is as hot as it is. The result being smoke and charcoal.

Yeah, I know. I need to stop worrying about getting housing. I need to enjoy the area and take pics. I did meet two other Uni Melbourne students, one from Chile and another from France (she's cute). The latter being in the CS program too. However, I am in the research portion, I believe she is taking graduate classes or combination I really do not recall now. We all walked to the Uni yesterday.

So, umm, its been kinda hard. I really miss my family and friends. Wait, friends are family. It's that safety net that I kinda miss. However, I also think that leaving such a safety-net has made me be more independent about consuming food. I need to keep up the caloric intake, so that I can stay strong and walk about this beautiful city. Plus they calculate calories via kilojoules, and I do not know the exact conversion form kJ to calories. In other words, stop counting calories and just do what your body wants; stop the OCD. That's kinda how cavemen did it.

-Matt

Melbourne ho! ... and some pics from the first day there.

2010-07-17T09:06:00.005+10:00

Ok, so excuse the possibly excessive loading time. I decided to just drop a set of pictures I have taken, somewhat documenting my journey to Melbourne. By the way, the Virgin Australia airline is crazy! Their 777 (I think) had mood-lights, music in their check-in area, courteous staff, and just felt really hip. And I feel mega-lame for saying the word hip. It's like 4:16AM, been up for a while, couldn't sleep, but I did go to be around like 9:30. Anyways, here are some pics. Actually, I am going to sleep, I'll finish the post later.

...

Ok back, its like 8AM now. I have had a lot of apprehension on going here. I think I need to move from the hostel. Things are pretty expensive around here. I kinda just want to get settled first. Anyways, here are some pics!

Ah, so what we have here is a bag full of clothes, an extra pair of shoes, a towel, bowl, spoon, container, Dr. Happy Stein, and some other stuff. And in the MRD bag, yeah, N-SA style, we have a notebook and camera. Well the camera was in my hands, but it rested in there on the flights.

This dude sat next to me from Charlotte to LAX. His name is Cameron, and he was once from Australia. He now lives in New Zealand (where he is off to), and researches molecular biology. Really cool dude, and he listens to Slayer! Not to mention he had strong encouragement for me on going to Melbourne. He might be one of the reasons I have not yet chickened-out yet. But he told me something that is of utmost importance, and stemming from Buddhist philosophy. Never worry, because if there is a solution, it will present itself. If there is no solution, it will obviously not present itself, and thus there is nothing you can do about such. So worrying is pointless.

Dan! Artist who has done work for Mattel and Disney. He is now trying to throw-together a political satire piece. He is from L.A. and is freakin' awesome. Both he, and Cameron, were strong encouragement for me to go. And he said something quite warming. A parent's role is to dust off their kids, if they ever need help. I should never feel guilty if I need to approach my parents for financing. One of his sons is a physics researcher.

I have arrived in the Southern Hemisphere!

Me and Mike. Discovered him in my room at the Hostel. From South Korea. Really nice guy.

My bunk at the hostel.

The following pics are on my Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/matt-davis

I found it!

Melbourne Central Business District, taken from the roof of the hostel.

Cheers!

-Matt

The Eagle has Landed.... Zombie Matt Lurks

2010-07-16T18:01:00.000+10:00

Everything is upside down. Wait! The earth is a sphere in a universe to which there truly is no up or down. So, in relation to how the earth orbits about the sun, I am in the Southern Hemisphere. The toilet I tested earlier, in fact flushes so hard you can't really test the Coriolis effect (it should spin counter-clockwise that opposite of the Northern Hemisphere). I need to test on a lesser powered toilet. I'm really tired, feel like a zombie, and do not feel like posting pictures now. I'm on the rooftop of the hostel (no free wi-fi BOO!). Finding free wi-fi around here is not easy. Apparently Macos has it, that's slang for McDonalds. The library has it too, but it's not as convenient as being here in the hostel. I did some war-walking earlier, also scored a crack, er, pay-as-you-go phone, and a calling card. More like a calling receipt, easy to loose. Anyways, when I get some sleep, I haven't had much since I departed Wednesday. I slept a total of maybe 30 minutes on the LA-to-Sydney flight. Anyways, me tired. And pictures need to be posted. Way-cool looking city. Tons of cafes, and prices seem pretty steep. But that might be due to the conversion differences between US Dollar and Australian Dollar.

-Matt

Friends

2010-07-14T14:51:00.000+10:00

Wow, the past two weeks have been amazing. Sure, I have been stressed-out, trying to get out of my condo, getting rid of furniture, packing, trying to get rid of my car, banking stuff, and redirecting my mailing address. But ya know what, I got the best family and friends anyone could imagine. I'd like to thank you all individually, but doing so would probably generate a list with a few absent names, unintentionally. Likewise, my co-workers, whom I classify as friends, as well, have been amazing. All of the encouragement and such has been wonderful. Just a few more hours till I hop the plane and take a ride. I sit now on a towel on my floor, the only furniture here is my bed.

Remember, this experience is temporary, so I want to make the next 6 months, or year, the best of my life. However, I am bummed that Slayer just announced their tour with Megadeth and Anthrax here in Virginia, and I should be away then! But, ah, no worries, I've experienced all of those artists before, just not on the same bill.

Cheers!

-Matt

What Have I Done!? Uncertainty and Matt's Boolean Rubric of Justification

2010-07-04T03:02:00.001+10:00

Sweet droppings from the dark-side of my mind! I am so scared! What happened? Two weeks ago I was all gung-ho about going. Then last week, once I did the plane ticket deal. It really kicked in. I don't know if I want to go. Incredibly scared. But then , I wake up this morning, take a walk, and was like; damn I'd like to be doing this in Melbourne right now.

I'm so wishy washy. I feel weird, because I have led all my co-workers/friends/family into thinking I was going to do this, and now I might just chicken out! I just want to be 7 years old eating cheerios with about 5 lbs of sugar (no, really, my mom loaded the cereal substantially) and watching ALF.

Hark ye naysayers! Well then I start to rationalize everything. I really want the degree, I want the new "job" of research. I want to meet new people and explore new things. And I eventually want to wrestle a drop bear with my bare hands. Oh, and vegemite. But I kinda feel like I'm a character in a Shakespearian play, whose hamartia, or critical-flaw, is that of being rash. I think fast, want something, and try to get it. Later it hits me... what have I done? And I fear I might have done that in this case. Likewise, if I give up now, it might also be a rash decision. It is my assumption that most people fear uncertainty. I tend to be pessimistic about this, and my uncertainty-fear produces a scary-lonely place, while others have a more optimistic sunny-happy vision.

So let me do what a few friends/family have told me to do, (thanks Danny). Danny calls this the "Matt Algorithm" Essentially it's just a break down of "why vs whynot" on going; however, I prefer to call it a boolean Rubric:

Why	Why Not
Future Job Opportunities for Lower Level Development Make a Valuable Contribution to CS Make New Friends and Collegues Avoid the Lonely/Bordom After Work, as I Plan on Sharing a House/Flat Learn Get Outside and Do Something Proving I Can Do Something On My Own Get Out of My House Avoid the Dependence of an Automobile See Bon Scott's Grave Vegemite	Expense Missing Family and Friends Leaving My Saftey-net Drop Bears

Ultimately, the money thing is lame. Money is fake, and a fabricated commodity which gives people an excuse NOT to do things.

Right now, just baby steps. I'm going no matter what, for a vacation. If I go crazy, I'll come home with an experience, and only be out the cash it took for transaction fees and school processing charges (they reimburse up till August ~31st). And possibly rent for a place, one of my first goals. If I avoid going all together, I know I will be miserable all my life not even trying. And that's a sad thought.

Positive thoughts. Heck I'm an adult, on my own, why do I feel now I'm 7 again and wanting the comfort of mommy and daddy? Grow a pair!

-Matt

Queues are one way!

2010-06-26T08:56:00.001+10:00

Just do it! Sometimes when you know you want to do something, but have the common worries, you just gotta do it. In this case, I just scored my ticket to Melbourne! Kinda reminds me of one of my friends, Harrison. He mentioned that when he was a page for Congress back in like 8th grade, that to get up early in the morning, he had a neat trick, he would stick a pencil under his butt and if he layed down, would impale himself. So, while no pencils were involved in the booking of the flight, I just basically freaked myself out and did it! Thanks Harry.

I have been really afraid about this whole move to Melbourne deal. Just worried about cash, and being physically separated from friends and family, and of course going to a place I have never been. Sure, I guess those are all common worries, and I know, going to a place I have never been before seems a little insane; but bleh it keeps things interesting.

One-way ticket. Yeah, thats kinda scary, and probably put me on some kind of watch list. But, possibly I'll make it a double-ended queue, dequeue, and come back to the US; possibly to pursue research!

So according to the ticket: July, 14th I leave, and according to the other piece of the ticket, I should arrive in Melbourne on Friday the 16th. So some quick stats:
Norfolk, VA to Charlotte, NC
Charlotte, NC to Los Angeles, CA
Los, Angeles CA to Sydney, Australia
Sydney, Australia to Melbourne, Australia

So I get 4 breaks to rest my legs. But the deal from LA to Sydney is ummmm 14 hours and 45 minutes. Not sure if that includes the dateline change or not. I'm guessing not.

If the ticket holds and I don't baby-out, I should leave on Wednesday the 14th at 3:40PM and arrive in Melbourne Friday at 9:15 AM

-Matt

push 0xd0d0

2010-06-20T04:31:00.001+10:00

So I've had a few of these pics I started taking. One might question, why am I even considering this jump? Work offers a educational-leave-of-absence, and well... why not? I find this jump as an excuse to simplify my belongings. I have a house and car I want to be free of. That kind of stuff just requires maintenance and provides stress. In addition, I want to be debt free, however the car is paid for, but maintenance is non-deterministic. One caveat: I guess I'll have student debt, I wonder if schools repossess degrees?. This educational journey provides me an out for both of those (car/house). Granted, it now ads some stress, as I have to figure out how to rid myself of these possessions. Likewise, I have furniture that needs to go. Of course, some stuff I am keeping in storage, like my guitars, some pictures, music collection, and books. I'll probably hang on to a few desks and my bed.

Luckily, I have some family members so cordial to store stuff for me. But, the goal here is to push the crap on the stack, and pop it off at a later time. Possibly pop it to a donation register or to others at a low cost. If I don't like Melbourne, at least I'll have some of my old stuff I can resurrect as I assume I would reestablish back here in that case.

Anyways, here are some shots for my move preparation (i.e. The recycle, keep, or donate phase):

Check it out! This box is big enough to hold a baby, Skinner would be happy.

Oh, yeah I need one of these too... just got it in the mail like a week or two ago:

-Matt