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Published: 08-29-2026

Linux Journey

Around like half a year ago I decided to switch my computer to a dual boot with windows and arch. I’d just taken CSCB09 a course that is basically designed to teach you about unix systems, and I ended up enjoying it (the terminal is pretty fun). So I continue to go ahead and setup this dual boot. Takes a couple of days and some procrastinating, but it works out and I manage to set it up without issue. Very fun process by the way, I ended up learning a bunch about my own disk and its own partitions, like how windows keeps multiple partitions for booting, data, and recovery. All the tech related stuff I had to look at I do not regret it was hella fun and cool to learn about.

Anyways, the reason why I decided to try it out was all this hype surrounding linux. Its like every dev is on linux and everyone loves to put their two cents in about how great linux is, its customizability , speed, and environment for development. So of course, since I had the option, I had to see what it was all about. I was also slightly fed up with windows as well with all of its bloat and bugs. When using linux for a couple of days, I already felt the urge to go back to windows. And within a month I was only selecting the windows option on my bootloader.

The reason was because the amount of issues I encountered on Linux was kind of unreal, immediately when installing discord and hopping into a vc I noticed that my audio quality was much worse. When sharing the bandwidth of my earbuds for both the mic and the computer audio, the audio became horrendous. It sounded like I was hearing my computer audio through someone else mic in a vc, and there was some weird noise cancelling whenever anyone talked. Everything was fine when I did this on windows though, even with the same earbuds. I searched up so many solutions to try to fix it, because I am definitely not one to back down from something like this. Like I got arch, I knew there would be issues I’d have to fix, I figured it would just be the audio enhancers on windows I needed to get on arch. But no, I tried so many packages like pipewire and looked at so many resources but I couldn’t find a solution. This was the biggest turn off, but what also sucked was available support for various programs on arch. I hated the step when getting a program where before installing I had to think: “is this supported on windows”. One of the games I tried playing, Company of Heroes 2, an old RTS game just didn’t work on linux. I searched it up and I found it would bug out 5 minutes into any game if you were on linux, forcing me to switch to windows. I tried some games too that were heavy on performance, but I did not see a crazy difference comparing it to windows. Also this is a smaller thing, but no riot games games run on arch because of vanguard :(. I also asked other people I knew who use some linux distro as a daily driver what “good for development” really ment, but I couldn’t find a clear answer either.

I had always been familiar with windows and every time I used arch, it was just telling me more reasons to switch back to windows, and I failed to see what all the hype around linux was about. I did get a cool dual boot system out of it and now I can try working on a project that supports multiple operating systems so thats pretty cool. I recently repartitioned my disc with this software called GParted to give my windows side more storage, just wanted to mention this guy as holy shit, this thing is so useful. I could literally just drag and drop or resize everything with GParted with no issues, very cool 👍.

Group Theory and Music Theory

A bit a go I had to work on a research project for my math course that focused on group theory. MATC01 was pretty cool and I’ll write about it in the next course tier list, but working on this research project was a very cool experience. The assignment was to pick a topic from anything listed to research about. The topics listed were all things that related to higher concepts of group theory, but my prof also gave the option of working on things outside of group theory and examining its relations. One of the example topics she put was music theory, and this kinda opened my eyes to how ubiquitous group theory really is. It stretched from chemistry to group theory to rubik’s cubes which was completely wild to me. Anyway, since RCM theory classes, I always had an interest in music theory so I picked this topic.

My primary focus was on this thing called neo-riemannian theory (not the math riemann), which focused on how you can transform a chord to another chord with a smooth progression of transformations. Turns out there are 3 transformations called the PLR transformations, and each P, L, and R act on major or minor triads switching them between the two chord qualitites. It defines smooth by number of notes that change between two chords, each one of these transformations transforms a major chord to a minor chord (or vice versa) with only a single difference in notes. For example, C major to A minor (G -> A, everything else stays). Turns out you can map these transformations in a Tonnetz diagram which shows that you could literally pick any two chords (only read about triads, not sure if it works with chords with more notes) and find a composition of transformations that map the first chord to the second. Then playing out each chord as it gets transformed would be your transition between those two chords.

Turns out for the group theory sides of things, these transformations can also be expressed through the rotational and reflectional symmetries of a dodecagon (in otherwords, rotation or reflections functions that are bijections on a dodecagon, like a rotation of 30 degrees). In group theory, those transformations actually form a group, which is the whole study of group theory and it further turns out that this set of transformations from the neo-riemannian theory is also a group. Not only that, this group of rotations and symmetries is actually isomorphic (or in otherwords, the same as) to the group containing the PLR functions. How crazy is that. This is somthing I never wouldve expected, but you can now use group theory to extract some conclusions about this music theory (which I won’t really go into). But discovering this connection was just so fascinating to me. I’ll definitely look into the music theory side of things more as well because this was absolutely a very cool experience. I had to present about all this too and ended up getting a 96 as well which is just the cherry ontop 😼.

AI

AI has gotten me a bit tired. But I am not just tired of AI seemingly being included in every new technology or software update, but I am more referring to the doomer mentality surrounding the development of AI. Its true some things objectively suck now with the emergence of AI such as all the ram prices being absurdly high nowadays, but I am just kind of tired of everyone complaining about AI. I hear the job market sucks, or whats the point in working on anything if AI just does what I do faster. I look at these remarks and I just think, so many people have so weak mental, and its just so common that its hard to maneuver around in conversations or where it is brought up.

For my own stance on AI because I have interest in many fields that are project to be “replaced” by AI, such as music, art, and especially computer science. I really don’t see what it seems like the world is panicking all about. Like I get that AI is very strong and can literally generate fully working websites in a single prompt, but there are so many positives of AI now that I am comfortable with its existence. I don’t believe AI is strong enough to generate entire projects, and people should use it as just another tool to help them complete something faster. If its a project, what you wish to make out of it is up to your own choice. My biggest gripe with it is that in the field of cs, its so much easier to pretend to show your own interest via ai-generated projects on resumes or portfolios and I feel that it really dilutes the waters and takes opportunities from the people who are in computer science because they actually enjoy it. I think this is truly a shame, however its really my only complaint about it. The way I’ve been able to use it to my benefit is unreal. Searching through the internet is much faster now, getting started on projects where I start with 0 prior knowledge is so much easier now, getting through boring workflows is so much faster as well, and cram studying for courses I hate is so much easier too. AI has been so much more of a lifesaver then it has been of a detriment to me.

However, on sort of a side tangent relating to the dilution of real interest in computer science, I also feel that there is a right way to use AI and a wrong way to use AI. I’ve found the most success with using it as a friend who knows everything, ask it questions, ask it for help. I feel that this way, it mimicks how I would learn with a teacher, and when I am comfortable, I try to limit its use. The efficiency is much better, and I still feel like I am actually learning new things, however I have also seen people just get AI to take the driver seat and complete everything for them. Some of my old friends have been vibecoding their way out of everything, and although it is slightly disappointing to see for the reasons above, I don’t pay it too much mind.

Anyway, I feel like people are using AI as their number one target to blame. Its something I can totally understand, past the fall-out of covid, the job market is pretty rouch, and AI here is not doing everyone favours, but sometimes I feel like AI isnt always the thing you need to blame. I carried the idea that lots of people struggle with jobs in cs due to the lack of passion in this major. For years its been the major that everyone picks if you like money, and as it turns out, many people like money. CS is a completely oversaturated field with a total lack of passion, and that group with a lack of passion is struggling. Who knows though, maybe the ones with passion are also struggling, but currently going into my second co-op term, I really feel that people are blaming AI for things as excuses for things that they might lack. Maybe this will bite me in the ass later, but its getting tiring to see the 1000 I hate AI comments all over something like twitter.

I thought of this after writing all of this, but another thing that probably sucks is having to use a lot of AI in a workplace position you may be interested in. I do think that AI kind of takes the soul out of computer science and being forced to use AI to meet deadlines must suck. I didn’t have this experience in my first co-op but I could see the complaint for this scenario as well too.

Alcohol

One of the most overhyped things about life has got to be drinking.

Its pretty late, but I had my first and potentially last drinking experience. Like the Linux portion, I needed to see what the hype was all about, and oh boy I guess I saw it was all about. I never enjoyed the taste of most alcohol, but just for the first time I decided to give it a shot (pun intended). Yeahhh that did not go too well, I played a drinking game that resulted in me taking about like an estimated 4 vodka shots (my friend estimated I was not drinking vodka) and I died. Felt incredibly tired and bloated, resulting in me throwing up and calling it a day :(.

They say, sometimes theres a nice sweet spot, but they might as well be lying because from the first swig to the 14th, it never got good bruh. I didn’t even like the taste, and it didn’t even make me act weird either. I felt completely conscious, didn’t feel nothing crazy as some people who are drunk may be. I genuinely think I did allat for nothing and thats why I will not be drinking nothing any time soon, but maybe thats for the better since its alcohol.

Some Movies

Over the span of the past year I watched couple movies and just wanted to yap about some of them. spoilers btw

The chainsaw man movie was complete cinema, I’m really not a movies person, but even I watched this twice in cinemas. It really might be my favourite movie, the entire execution was amazing, and as a fairly longtime chainsaw man/fujimoto fan seeing this in IMAX was awesome. The animation, the cheoreography, the acting, the references, and especially the soundtrack was absolutely perfect. But I really want to talk about the scene that stuck with me since I watched it 10 months ago in theatres. And that scene would have to be the pool scene. I didn’t even really remember this scene because I read part 1 chainsaw man a while ago, but when I saw it in theatres it really brought me to tears. And I realized that I don’t cry out of sadness, but I tear up when I experience something I find amazing. The way it builds to the scene with the playful nature with denji and the insane track “in the pool” is so beautiful. The theatre would laugh and in a moment everyone would lock in. Its one of the best scenes I have really ever seen. I love the way it just oozes freedom through the playful motions in the pool, the lack of dialogue letting you just absorb the soundtrack, and the element of nudity. I saw a reddit comment about this too, but the way its used here is initally “fanservicey” for a lack of a better term, but you quickly realize that its used as a device into ones true innermost self. And the way its used in this scene to represent this free feeling is just too good. It subverts the standard anime tropes and creates something that really deserves the title of favourite movie from me at least. This scene has stuck with me since and of course the rest of the movie is great too, but I had to talk about this because it was just too cool. Another quick last glaze too, I love how this movie is completely self contained and got a lot of my friends to watch this movie despite never watching or reading chainsaw man previously, this is probably one of the biggest issues of anime movies that this one does not have.

Finally watched Interstellar as well, very well fimed movie and I really enjoyed the thing as a whole. Love the main character, and the acting overall was super top notch. A very fun and creative movie as a whole. Definitely a lot of cinema moments throughout, but now that I think of it, I can’t really think of any scenes that incredibly memorable actually. Of course this excludes the black hole scene, but I do remember a lot of very intense and well done scenes inbetween, like the betrayal and docking on the broken ship for example. I had a lot of thoughts after watching the movie, but I guess I overall thought it was pretty clever and a very engaging watch.

I also watched Obsession, and this definitely lived up to the hype. I really enjoy seeing things break the standard and Obsession definitely does that in a genre filled with slop. I first heard of the film when one of my friends messaged me to watch it at 3am one night, and I ended up watching it with some friends. I think the execution was great and the acting was also top notch. But the whole idea, is just so clever, the way it does horror was nothing like I expected. The way it does horror makes this movie so much more memorable then other horror movies. Its also pretty cool given the budget it was filmed with and the story of the creator from youtube to cinema. Really liked this movie as well, definitely lived up to the hype.

Unlike the others here, I also watched Project Hail Mary, and this movie was definitely disappointing. I watched this movie before Interstellar, and I initally thought it would be similar in tone to Interstellar, but it really was the complete opposite. It felt like a comedy almost, and more of the movie was just playful. The movie is a very fun watch, but definitely not a memorable one. Its so happy and almost low stakes that after the movie finished, I could barely remember any scenes. 3 hours movie as well, and after watching Interstellar, the plot is almost the exact same. I can confidently say, it is just a much more playful and lighthearted version of Interstellar. Still worth a watch probably, but was definitely not what I expected pre-watch.

Think I watched a couple others, but I didn’t have much else to say